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Where are you going? Where have you been? - Printable Version

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Where are you going? Where have you been? - Vincent Lane - 07-26-2015


Inspiration: "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" by Joyce Carol Oates


My face is so numb I can barely feel the weight of my mascara as it streams down my cheeks in black rivulets.

My hands are shaking as I clutch the limp fingers of my comatose fiancé, “Loverboy” Vinnie Lane, in my own.

I’ve been here every day and night since leaving the arena in Illinois on Monday and catching the first red-eye flight back to LA. I haven’t changed my clothes, showered, or even brushed my teeth since arriving at Vinnie’s bedside early Tuesday morning, fresh from what should have been a moment of celebration and victory for the two of us.

However, I’m reminded by the way strands of my blonde hair stick to the tape residue around my wrists, not all moments end the way they should.

I defeated Nico Lavey on Monday Madness, my one and only wrestling match. An homage and a dedication to my love, hoping to send good vibes and waves of emotion his way. The crowd was in my corner, they chanted his name. They still love him, and they wanted him there in that ring. It was beautiful.

Then, I was assaulted. The Dimallisher raped me, jabbing his filthy fingers into my mouth and humiliating me in front of millions of people. He made a mockery of my tribute to my beloved, and he ruined a truly wonderful connection between the fans, myself, and Vinnie.

At least, though, I knew that wherever Vinnie had been he must have felt that power. It had to have done some good.

That was why when, upon returning to my locker room after the match and the following attack, I was at first excited to see messages from the hospital. My heart swelled. I thought I might have done it. He might have been awake. Maybe he even got to see the show. Instead, the voice mail simply said that the time had come to remove the breathing machine from Vinnie and bring use it for someone else. My world shattered.

I called and spoke to the doctors and they insisted that the machine was only acting as a backup for Vinnie, that his unconscious body was performing all of its necessary functions on its own anyway, and that the machine had simply been acting as a safety precaution in case something changed.

But what if something DOES change? What if he stops breathing one night and the only thing that might have saved him was that machine? They told me that there were others in more dire need of care and they needed the resources… but my resources are my man. My life.

I tried to make the point again when I arrived at the hospital, even getting close to being arrested or thrown out of the building by security. The head nurse, an older black woman, saw me coming and cut me off before I’d even said a word. She must have known I was on my way and put two and two together when she saw a barefoot Playboy bunny running down her hallway with a pair of sparkling heels in her hand and an overnight bag on her shoulder.

“Ma’am, you need to relax,” she said to me in that condescending, professionally detached tone that medical workers all seem to acquire.

“Don’t you tell me to fucking calm down!” I wailed at her, “The love of my life is in a coma, and you’re going to let him just DIE!”

The security guards grabbed me and they held me still, but the nurse softened and led me to Vinnie’s room instead of having me ejected. She even sat with me on his bed and put her hand on my shoulder while I sobbed over him.

“See,” she said to me in a comforting tone, managing to calm me enough to catch my breath, “his chest is rising and falling on his own. His heart is beating. Strong, actually. Biologically, physically, he’s fine. He’s in perfect shape. Even his wounds have healed. If he were awake he would probably feel great right now.”

“But he isn’t awake,” I choked through my tears. As if the nurse needed to be reminded of the medical situation, I went on. “He hasn’t voluntarily moved in weeks. He doesn’t respond to anything. You’re taking machines away from him that could save his life, and you’re doing it because you know it’s hopeless. His body is alive, but his brain? His brain is dead, isn’t it?”

That’s when she smiled. I was so confused by that. Here I was bawling my eyes out in front of a total stranger, beginning to mourn for the death of the only man I’ve ever truly loved, and she’s smiling. For a second, if I’d have had the strength of spirit, I might have stood up and beaten that smile off of her. Luckily, though, I didn’t.

“Miss Cotton,” she began, still with that half-smile on her face that was driving me mad, “your fiancé isn’t braindead. Far from it.”

And she stood and walked to the head of Vinnie’s bed, leaning over him and brushing the hair away from his face, dabbing the saliva away from the corners of his mouth with a cloth and then gesturing to him.

“Come and see for yourself. Get closer to him. Look.”

And so I did, but all I saw was the unmoving face and the closed eyelids. The tepid flare of nostrils as just enough air flowed through them to keep his lungs partially full. Not so much as a blink.

“I don’t understand. What am I - ”

And then there it was. Barely noticeable. The slightest twitching beneath Vinnie’s eyelids as his eyes darted back and forth beneath them, almost as if he were looking around himself without opening those beautiful blue eyes of his.

“What? What is it? What’s happening?”

My tone was strained, anxious. I even grabbed at her wrist, demanding some sort of explanation as if I could yank one from her body by force. She remained calm and placed her free hand over mine, again easing the tension out of me with a nearly latent skill.

“Miss Cotton, what you are seeing is called rapid eye movement, or REM. It’s what happens to you in the deepest levels of sleep. Delta waves emit from your brain, and you dream.”

“You mean he’s dreaming? He’s just asleep?”

“No, not at all… he is comatose. There are no signs from his visual cortex on the FMRI that was performed… but there you see it. Signs of life. Brain life, more importantly. This isn’t a reflex… don’t really know what it is, honestly.”

That was Tuesday, of course. Now, days later, I’m still here staring down at the motionless face of my lover, waiting for the few seconds of every hour that his eyes flicker and move. Every tiny movement giving me another burst of hope that Vinnie and I will be together again.

So, you are probably wondering, then, if things are looking better, why am I here crying?

Well, the answer is simple. Late last night - or early this morning, I’m not sure - the police in Orange County positively identified the body they’d found earlier in the week as my sister, Dani.

Not only is this devastating in the obvious ways, but it brings to mind a series of questions, considering they say she’s been dead for weeks. The most disturbing of which is, who has been texting me from her number and telling me it was her?

I try to steel myself against the tears, wiping them away and leaving garish streaks like tire treads across my face with warm, wet palms.

I wriggle my toes into the stiletto pumps on the floor next to the bed and stand up, striding into the tiny bathroom and taking a good look at myself for the first time in days. I’m a ghoul. A specter of the Roxy Cotton the world has come to know from television and magazines.

In the back of my mind, I think this is how I would look if they ever found me on the side of the road the way they had Dani.

Needing to shed that image from my mind, I run the tap over my cupped hands and douse my face in the cool water. I baptize myself in the sink of my comatose lover’s hospital room, watching the whirlpool of black makeup swirl towards the drain as it bleeds from my skin.

Finally, with a face bereft of any cosmetics, I sweep my hair back into a loose, messy ponytail and then, after a deep breath, I head for the door. For the first time since Tuesday I’m outside of Vinnie’s claustrophobic little hospital room and walking quickly down the hallway, determined to force myself to face the day.

I always get lost in hospitals. Every hallway looks the same, just full of sad, dying, hurting people and rushing medical personnel. I just follow the signs for the Emergency Room, since I know I parked out there anyway.

It’s when I get almost all the way back outside that the doors to the ER burst open and a cadre of harried EMT’s cart in what’s left of a young woman, followed by a handful of completely dumbfounded police officers.

“Move, move, move, we need a room, NOW!”

My eyes are wide with horror when I see that one of the EMT’s is literally holding the girl’s chest together with his hands, like she’s been cracked open for open heart surgery and left to die. Her face is a jigsaw mess. There’s blood everywhere. Miraculously, though, she’s alive.

They hurry her past me and through a set of doors, leaving a trail of horror as well as blood. I knew deep inside what I had just seem wasn’t a car accident or anything of the sort.

Whatever did that to that girl killed my sister.

Just then, startling me back to my senses and getting me moving toward the door again, my phone vibrates hard in my purse. I pull the cell out and check the notifications and then nearly audibly gasp with shock.

It’s from Dani.

“Hey there Roxy Cotton. How’d you like that?”



[Image: Y9miYPw.gif]



About an hour later, I’ve worked my way home through the disgusting Los Angeles traffic on the 405. I’ve made a few calls to make sure everyone is safe and that they know I am, too. Talking to mom back in Kamloops is the hardest. She doesn’t know what to think, what to do. She’s destroyed by the news of her baby girl ending up the way she did on her first trip to America.

I shower, quickly, and get myself put back together. Pack a few things, have a quick snack of something other than what they sell at hospital cantinas. I’m squeezing myself into a different dress and working the zipper up the side when a hard banging echoes from my door.

“What the fuck?”

The surprise and fear are momentary, replaced by anger. This day has already done enough to me, and I’m not allowing it to take anything else away.

I storm to the door and look through the peephole, but there’s nobody there. Probably a prank, or just a wrong door situation.

“Whatever.”

I walk away from the door, headed for my purse on the kitchen counter, but the banging coms again before I take even three steps.

“Are you fucking kidding me right now? Who is it?”

My shout rings through the silent room, the hint of insecurity in my voice muffled, hopefully, by the air conditioner kicking in at the perfect time.

“Who the fuck is there?”

My only answer is another three raps on the door. Hard, the kind a police officer would give. Again, I walk up to the door and get my eye close to the peep hole, seeing nobody. I keep looking anyway, straining to see in my peripherals, trying to angle up and down.

“Fucking ridiculous…”

As I’m about to pull away from the door, it comes again.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

I feel the reverberations of the impact move through my face and body, but still, I see nobody there.

“How the… you know what, fuck this. It’s the middle of the day, motherfucker, what are you gonna do, huh?”

And so I swing the door open. For a second I think I’ve lost my mind. The stress of the events this week must have finally gotten to me. There is nobody tapping at my chamber door.

But then, when I look down the stairs, I see a man leaning against a car idling in the parking lot. Like something out of an S.E. Hinton novel, he’s got hair slicked back into a classic duck-ass style, a leather jacket despite the summer heat, jeans tucked into work boots… he’s got his arms folded over the white tee shirt beneath his jacket and he smiles up at me as he crosses one boot over the other, still leaning against the old car.

“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?”

Stunned, my instinctive reaction is to fall into some sort of pose. Before I do, though, I realize he’s talking to me, not about me. He’s referring to the car.

“1964. Original. These things are classics, but they’re hard to find. The good stuff always takes a lot of work to find, doesn’t it, Roxy?”

“Who are you? How do you know my name or where I live?”

“Easy, babe, easy. I know a lot.”

“I’ll call the police.”

“You won’t do that.”

“Well I’m fucking going to if you don’t get out of here right now!”

“You should come for a ride. Come on. It’s a nice day. Your man isn’t waking up today, don’t worry.”

“Who the fuck are you? What are you talking about?”

“Sweetheart…”

He walks a few steps toward me, unbalanced it seems, like he’s walking on his toes inside of those boots.

“… I told you. I know a lot. I’ve been around.”

I’m nervous, but I want to stand my ground. Show him I’m strong, that I’m in control. I keep a stiff upper lip and I fight the urge to back away from him as he reaches the stairs. He stops at the bottom, on hand on the rail, and just looks up at me. I can see the brightness of his blue eyes even through the lenses of his dark sunglasses.

“Don’t you dare come any closer to me. I have a gun!”

“No you don’t.”

He takes a step up and I start to feel myself waver. I bring my purse around in front of me like a shield, and he laughs.

“Come on, Roxy. You’re afraid? I have a lot of answers for you. A lot of things to show you. Why don’t you get in the car?”

“Back up!”

I yell. I look around me but somehow, in this huge metropolis, there’s no one to hear me. He sees me looking and failing to find anyone and he laughs again. He even shakes his head.

“Stop trying to get others to make your decisions for you, Roxy. Come on. I came here just to see you. I’m A Friend.”

“Friend my ass. Who are you really? Why are you here?”

“I told you,” he says, taking another step up towards me still with that broad grin across his face like a Cheshire cat, “I’m A Friend. Look, I even brought you something.”

He slips his hand into his jacket pocket and I recoil, turning half away and reaching into my bag to call the cops. He sees me pulling the phone from my purse and the smile vanishes for a moment before returning in full force.

“Roxy, you won’t be calling anyone. I know things. If you want your Loverboy to wake up in time for his big show, you’ll just come with me.”

When he says Vinnie's name I freeze. He says it full of emotionless confidence, like someone telling you he's going to check the mail.

“What? What are you, crazy?”

I pull the phone out and unlock the screen, and there’s another message from Dani waiting for me. Of course, I know it isn’t her, but I can’t help but pull it up anyway.

Every ounce of breath leaves my lungs in a fight between gasping and screaming. There on my phone’s screen, in capital letters, it says:

PUT THE PHONE DOWN AND COME WITH ME

While I was messing with the phone he’s gotten closer. Close enough to reach out and nearly touch me. But instead, he’s handing me something.

A cell phone.

Dani’s cell phone.

“Get in the car, Roxy.”

I break the spell for one desperate second and I spin away from him, but the door is shut and locked. I have no memory of closing and locking the door, but there it is. There’s no place for me to go other than forward right into this enigmatic man who probably murdered my sister and seems to know entirely too much about Vinnie.

“This is the last time I’m giving you the option of coming on your own, Roxy. I don’t want to hurt you, okay?”

Shaking, crying, I take a step towards him. He swings his arm back and open, presenting the way for me to go, and I don’t know why but I do it. I go down the stairs and walk to the car, its old engine rumbling beneath the hot hood, and I wait while he comes around to the passenger’s side and opens the door for me. He’s a gentleman, even. He shuts it only after seeing I’ve gotten my legs fully into the vehicle, turning the key in the lock, and I find myself again instinctively reacting the way I’ve been trained my entire life to do. I lean over and make sure his door is unlocked for him.

He gets into the car and turns to me, smiling.

“Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

His face is handsome but his breath is hot and smells like blood.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“I’m A Friend, Roxy. We’re going to make a deal, and then your fiancé is going to wake up.”

“But… how?”

He just smiles again and drops the car into gear without answering. I don’t have to look to know that there is no way to unlock my door from the inside or to understand that I may never be home again.

As we pull off onto the main road, I can only think one word over and over to keep my composure.

“Vinnie.”