More Than Eyes Can See Alone
By Neon Daises

Rating: M | Status: Completed | Genre: General | Series: Read the sequel: More Than Life
Summary: Sometimes what can't be seen is more important than what can be. A 'Sands gets back to the States' fic with a twist. That twist would be, no romance, just screwed up people trying to make it through life.

Warnings: Adult language and violence.

Go to: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

She watched from the upper window of a building across the street from where the slaughter was taking place.  She had watched as soldiers and civilians alike had battled for dominance . . . for victory.  It’s unfortunate for the soldiers that the people of Culíacan actually believe in what they’re fighting for.  Perhaps if they were only being paid to defend the president, they’d surrender.  But when ethics and beliefs get involved, things have a tendency to get rather messy.  The best laid plans fall apart.  All because loyalty can be so unpredictable and so easily triggered.  She sighed and muttered under her breath, “The streets may not run red with blood tonight, but when the setting sun hits these streets and buildings of clay, it’s going to appear as if they are.”

   “Señora?  What are you waiting for, señora?  Why are you not in the streets helping the injured?”

   The woman turned from her vantage point to address the young boy who had also sought refuge in this formerly abandoned loft.  “Marcos, if I went down there right now, it is likely that I would either be shot on sight by both sides, or taken prisoner by the cartel.  Señor Barillo does not take betrayal lightly.  And if I were taken by his men, how would I help your friend?” she nodded towards the street outside.

   “Is he going to be alright?”  The young boy looked out the window down at the man lying alone in the street.

   “I don’t know, Marcos.  If what you tell me is true, then he has lost a lot of blood.  It’s within the realm of possibility that he is still living, but I can’t do anything for him until things quiet down out there.”  While she tried to comfort the boy, she was afraid that the American was indeed dead.  As much as she would love to undo as much of Barillo’s work as she could, she almost hoped that the man was dead.  Surely that would be far kinder than what the cartel leader had done to him.

   But even as she thought this, the man moved his hand.  It formed a fist convulsively as if firing a gun he no longer had.  Does he fight fate, his dreams, or reality?

   “Señora!  Did you see that?”

   “Sí, Marcos.  I saw.  It appears as if he is indeed still alive.”  That or there’s random neurons firing in his brain causing random muscles to contract . . . .  Movement in a window in the adjacent building caught her eye and brought her wandering mind to a sharp focus.

   Ajedrez.  It had to be.  The woman was beautiful, her face a study in cold and cruel perfection.  Most men were fooled by the fullness of her lips, the lushness of her body, but she knew better.  Knew exactly what kind of product had been created by Ajedrez’ upbringing.

   The woman was looking out the window that had just minutes ago housed the image of the president, and had more recently served as an exit for a man with several guns and a sash that resembled the Mexican flag.  She was scanning the street below, apparently pissed that her father’s plans had gone so far awry.  Then, with the suddenness of undeterable determination, she disappeared from view.  With her gun at the ready.

   Did she see me, or was it our friend down there in the dirt who sparked her interest?  As much as she disliked Ajedrez, she had no interest in a confrontation with the woman.  Especially when she was unarmed and her opponent wasn’t.  “Marcos, will you please bring me my holster?  It’s hanging from my bedstand.”

   “But señora, I thought you were a doctor? What use does a doctor have for a gun?”

   She looked at the boy with a sad, wistful look on her face.  “Even doctors have to protect themselves at times, Marcos.”  She returned her attention to the street, waiting to find out what her adversary’s next move was.

   Ajedrez appeared in the street outside the two buildings.  She threw a quick glance up at the window where the lone woman was still standing.  She pursed her lips as she mimicked firing a handgun.  Then she winked.

   Cocky bi-  “Marcos, get my gun.  Now!”  Ajedrez was headed toward the fallen CIA agent’s position.  Without a doubt she was out for blood.  For more blood.

   “Here, señora.”  She pulled the weapon from its holster.  Maybe I can help . . . or stop her, but before the thought could be translated into deed, Ajedrez had reached the black clad man lying in the road.  She pulled him up.  By the way he staggered and was holding his left arm it was a painful experience for him.  And more importantly, his body was now blocking any shot she might have been able to take at Ajedrez.

   Move.  One of you move.  She watched as the former AFN agent picked a pair of sunglasses up out of the dirt and slid them onto the man’s face.  She felt her stomach turn as the heartless woman below toyed with her prey, kissing him gently.  That self-serving, heartless slut.  At this point in time she could have cheerfully shot Ajedrez, and not looked back.  But before she would take any kind of action in more than her mind’s eye, she saw Ajedrez stumble back from the man she had been toying with.  She was clutching her abdomen, a look of surprise and shock on her face.  Still looking up at a man who couldn’t see her, she fell to her knees and then to her back.

   He shot her.  The thought had barely registered when the man also collapsed, his own knees buckling under his weight.  Blood loss.  He’s going into a state of shock.  He’s going to need medical attention real soon.  She was about to toss caution to the wind and race down to tend him when she felt a chill run down her spine.  She turned back to her window.

   Once again the window in what had once been the president’s private residence framed a figure.  This time it was the man she had spent the last six years cleaning up after.  Despite the mass of medical gauze that obscured his face, she knew it was him.  Knew it was Barillo.

   She observed as he spotted his daughter lying in the dirt of the unpaved road, next to the man he had tried to punish and prevent from meddling any father in his private plans.  It hadn’t worked.  The man must be either insane or insanely stubborn.

   She watched as the cartel leader’s eyes rose from the street to the surrounding buildings, to the window she was standing in.  She saw the recognition, loathing, and unbelievable rage take up residence in his eyes.  Shit.

   Before Barillo could kill her with the sheer force of his hate-filled eyes, something or someone in the room with him called his attention away.  He disappeared from view for several seconds.  Then there was a sudden round of gunfire and his body came flying out the window.  He hit the ground hard, glass fragments raining down around him like frozen tears.  There’s no way he could have survived that.  He couldn’t have.  If he was dead, then she was finally free.  Go check.  Go make sure.

   She turned from her window for the last time that day, and found behind her an empty room.  Marcos had apparently abandoned her to go see to the health of his friend.  No matter.  Get downstairs, check on Barillo and Ajedrez, then look after the American.  Barillo’s last victim.  My last charge.

The sun was starting to set on this bloody Day of the Dead.  Not that night would bring peace, or wipe the streets clean of blood.  It wouldn’t bring and end to the fights, the riots, or chaos caused by the attempted coup.  It would just make guerrilla fighting easier to carry out.  Sounds of destruction and mayhem floated on the sun’s setting rays to reach the ears of the doctor. 

   She ignored the melody of hovering death as she worked her way across the street.  The man in black was gone, although a trail of partially dried blood marked the course he had taken.  I hope Marcos is safe with him.

   Giving the prostrate form of Ajedrez a wide berth, she headed towards the place where Barillo had landed.  Getting closer, she saw that there would be no need to search for a pulse.  If the angle of his neck and the arrested spread of blood across his chest was any indication, then the cartel leader was well and truly dead.

   She felt relief and guilt flood her veins along with the knowledge that she’d never need to track this man’s movements, never again need to clean up the ruin he left in his wake. She was released from her oath.  Freed from her duty . . . except for the American.  She needed to find him and tend to him before she could celebrate.

   Quickly she walked back to where Ajedrez was lying.  The man’s trail started there.  The sooner they were tucked away from the sight of what remained of Marquez’ men, the safer they would be, and the better she would feel.

   “Traitor.”  The harshly whispered word caught her attention.  She looked down at the body at her feet.  Barillo’s daughter wasn’t yet dead, but from the amount of blood staining the ground underneath and around her, she soon would be.

   “You call me a traitor, but I’m not the one that just tried to overthrow the established government.  And failed miserably, I might add.”

   “You betrayed your family.”                                                                                                                                           

   Eyes and voice cold, the lone woman replied, “I have no family.  I never have.  I simply had people who found it was in their best interest to exploit me.  People like you.”

   Ajedrez didn’t bother to reply to this.  “Father . . . is he dead?”

   “As dead as you’ll be in a few moments.”  Years of cruelty and indifference were reaping their wages.

   “Damn you, you bitch.”  They dying woman coughed painfully.

   Watching without pity or mercy, she answered, “I think that one damned bitch is enough for one family.  I’ll remain a simple bastard, if it’s all the same to you.”

   “Go to hell.”

   “I think that’s your trip, actually.  Do you want me to see you off?”  There was no reply to this question.  No breath stirred the dust.  “Guess not.”  She left the woman lying in the dirt that she had avoided for so much of her life.  The dirt she had let others handle by having them do the messy and degenerate jobs required by the cartel.  Irony was a great thing.  But she couldn’t ponder on that now.  She had a rogue injured CIA agent to find and make peace with.

She found Marcos and the wounded man nearly three blocks away.  She arrived just in time to see him flip another man off.  He then muttered something that was undoubtedly both insulting and profane.  Amazingly, he was still on his feet, although it did appear as if the wall at his back was doing just as much (if not more) to keep him upright as his legs were.

  She was unsure of how to approach him, knowing there was no way she’d have his instant trust, or even gratitude.  Surely after the treatment he had received at the hands of the cartel, he was going to be . . . wary . . . of trusting a stranger.  So how am I going to help him without having to tie him to the bed and then pumping him full of sedatives?

   She stood idly by as she pondered that question, all too aware that every moment in the open upped the risk of being caught while trying to get to her house.  So far she had been totally silent, even the sound of her sneakers on the pavement silenced or drowned out by the distant sounds of fighting.  Not even Marcos had noticed that she had managed to track them down, but that was unlikely to last long.  She needed a plan of action before she was noticed.

   “Señor, are you alright?”

   “No.”

   Marcos smiled.  “You will be.”

   The man neither agreed nor disputed this statement.  He leaned his head back against the stucco wall that was helping him stay on his feet.  His face was a gory mess of dried and fresh blood.  His left sleeve and both pant-legs were caked with blood as well.  Even against the black of his clothes it was possible to see it.

   There is no good reason that this man should still be conscious, let alone on his feet.  She was puzzled by his stamina.  It had to be more than simple willpower keeping him vertically situated.  Drugs.  If they gave him something to keep him aware as they removed his eyes, then it could still be in his system.  Which would explain–  Her thoughts were interrupted by the same man who was centered in them so prominently.

   “Kid, get me outta here.”  He held out a hand in Marcos’ general direction.

   That’s it.  If he trusts Marcos, then I can use that.  Enough to get him off the streets.  She watched as the ever obedient Marcos took the man’s gloved hand.  He started to lead the man back down the street, back to where he had left her – towards the official residence which now more closely resembled a charnel house than a place the president had stayed.

   “No.  No, no, no.  We just came from that direction.  Lots of big, dumb, hired asses ready to shoot me on sight.  Take me someplace else.”

   When Marcos started explaining in a barrage of Spanish that was hardly recognizable since it was so full of street slang, she decided it was time to make her appearance.  Cutting Marcos off before he could fully explain what he was intending to do, she said, “Actually Marcos’ sense of direction is surprisingly well developed for such a young boy.”  She stood perfectly still as the man turned his face in her general vicinity and went for his handgun.

   “Who are you?”

   “A friend of your rather loyal guide.  He asked me to come help you.”  As she spoke the gun honed in on her position.  Clearly this man was a threat no matter how disabled he was.

   “And that makes you qualified or trustworthy how, sweetie?”

   She ignored the part of her that said this was a dangerous situation and that she needed to run before she was shot.  He’d probably just shoot me in the back anyway.  Replying to his question, she said, “I’m qualified because I’ve spent the past six years mending various bruises, cuts, gashes, gouges, and broken bones.  The four years before that were spent in medical school.”  She shrugged rather needlessly.  “As for how you can trust me, Marcos does.  That and I am possibly the only person in all Culíacan who doesn’t want to kill you.  And most convincingly, I don’t trust you any more than you trust me.”  She watched him weave on his feet.  “And if we don’t get you somewhere where you can lie down, you’ll collapse right here in the street.  Easy prey for the cartel, the military, or any passing citizens who don’t like gringos.”  The man was silent.  “However, if you prefer to be taken to the hospital, I can arrange for that as well.”

   “No.  No hospitals.  Too accessible.”  He lowered his arm, but the gun remained in his hand.

   “Mmm.  That’s what I though you’d say.”  She approached him slowly, letting her steps sound out deliberately.  They were loud enough to be heard over the faint sounds of fighting.  He tracked her, tracked the sound she made.  It was almost creepy if she let herself dwell on the fact that he had no eyes yet was still perfectly able to tell where she was.

   “I’m going to place myself on your right side, señor.  I want you to lean on me.  We have several blocks to walk as of yet,” she looked around, “and it would be best if we were quickly on our way.

   He shook his head.  “I hate to argue with a lady, niña, but I’d rather have you where I can keep a weapon trained on you.”  He heard her footsteps stop.

   “You want to support yourself with your wounded arm?”  Her tone was disbelieving.  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?  You’ve already lost a great deal of blood.  I’m not sure that you can afford to lose any more.  And we still need to get to my house.  I’d rather not jostle that arm unless it’s absolutely necessary.”  The footsteps started again.

   “You’re more concerned about my bloodcell count than you are about me shooting you.  Are you insane, or merely stupid?”

   Apparently I’m a glutton for punishment.  “Neither.  I’m practical.  I was expecting you to do or demand something along those lines.  After the day you’ve had, I’d expect nothing else.”  He felt a hand on his arm – his right arm.  Apparently she didn’t have a great deal of respect for his wishes.  “Just keep your gun in your right hand, like this,” she raised his arm so that it rested around her shoulders.  The barrel of his gun was resting lightly against her breastbone.  “Is that good enough for you?  You can still shoot me immediately should you decide that I’m up to no good, and I can keep you from falling flat on your face and doing yourself yet another injury.”

   “Lady, you’re nuts.”

   “You’re not the first one to suggest that, and I’m sure you won’t be the last.”  Gingerly (but securely) wrapping an arm around the man’s slim waist, she said, “Okay, let’s start moving.”

Sands was sure that he had somehow managed to stray into hell.  Every step emphasized the pain in his legs, his arm, and his head.  What had started as sharp knife-like darts of pain had spread and merged to become a single sheet of fire that was slowly consuming his sanity.  Or what was left of it.

   The woman at his side hadn’t spoken a word since they had set off.  He was indifferently pleased to find that she was roughly the same height as he – it made it easier to use her as a crutch.

   Oh, the pain was going to drive him fucking mad.  There had to be a way to distract himself.  Maybe by imaging the look on that bitch’s face when I shot her.  He grimaced.  Imagine the look, hadn’t seen it, couldn’t see it because he had no fucking eyes, which was why he had shot Ajedrez in the first place.  Well, that and she had betrayed him.  That didn’t work well.

   “What’s your name, niña?”  The hand gripping his wrist to help keep it in place contracted sporadically, then relaxed.

   “Most people call me Tess.”  Her voice was completely neutral, purposely void of any kind of emotion.

   “Why’s that?”  He wondered how hard it would be to piss her off.  Then maybe she’d leave him to die in the dirt instead of dragging him through what he was beginning to imagine purgatory was like.

   “Because that’s what I tell them to call me.”

   Non-informative answers.  I always did like a tight-lipped woman.  “Is there a last name to go with that, ‘Tess’?”

   “’Fraid not.”

   “So, what?  Your parents a big fan of Cher or something?”

   “No.  They just didn’t find it necessary to give me one.  In their way of thinking, bastards aren’t deserving of last names.”  This was said so matter-of-factly, yet with a very strong “drop it” vibe that Sands knew that this topic would probably piss her off faster than any other.  “Who’s bastard?”

   “If I wanted you to know that, I probably would have volunteered the information.  You can stop trying to piss me off. We’ve only got one more block to go.”

   “What can I say?  I’m bored.  It’s not as if I can entertain myself with sightseeing.”  He let the subject drop for the time being.  He was quickly losing the strength to irritate his guide.  “So, what’s for dinner?”

“How did you know?”

   “Know what?”  Tess was hot and sweaty from maneuvering her patient up the three flights of stairs from the street, and semi-nervous from the thought that her door could be knocked in at any moment.  Yes, they had gotten back to her temporary residence safely, but they hadn’t escaped scrutiny.

   But surely we weren’t the only people escorting wounded today.  We couldn’t have looked that out of place.  Then, taking a good look at her patient who was covered in blood from pretty much head to toe, was wearing sunglasses long past the time when the sun had set, and a black sequined vest, she revised that thought.  Hopefully we didn’t look too out of place.

   “Are you going to answer my question or are you going to stand there like a lackwit with your ass bare and your pants around your ankles?”

   “What?”  Oh.  No.  Actually it’s you who’s going to be caught with his pants down, although I assure you that you’re ass will be covered at all times.”  She turned from the bed for a moment.  “Marcos?”

   “Sí, señora?”

   “Will you get the really big pair of scissors from my left hand desk drawer and bring them here?”  The boy nodded and ran off.  When she returned her gaze to the bed, she found her guest slumped against the wall.  “I thought I asked you to lie down.”

   He raised his uninjured arm, pointing a gun with an attached silencer at her.  “I thought I asked how you knew where to find me?” he shot back in a reasonable yet too-controlled voice.  “Now, I’ve had a rather . . . trying . . . day.  A trying week, in fact.  I’m not in the mood to be fucked with.  So either you can answer my questions, or I can give you your own wounds to tend to.”

Tess supposed he had a point, but that didn’t mean she had any desire to have a conversation while staring down the barrel of a gun.  “You can put that away, señor.  I’m not going anywhere until you can walk out of here under your own power.”  The gun didn’t waver.

   “Señor!  What are you doing?  Señora Tessa is trying to help you.”  Marcos stopped when Tess waved a hand in his direction.  She’d answer his questions as long as it suited her to do so.  She wasn’t here to satisfy his curiosity, but to ensure that everything that could be done to atone for the sins of the Barillo family was done.

   “You want to know how I found you?  Your little friend here found me and asked me to take a look at you.  I agreed.  That and you left a rather handy trail of blood nearly from my doorstep to your location.”

   “Why?”

   “Why did I help you?”  Tess shrugged before she remembered that he couldn’t see that.  “I enjoy tweaking the cartel’s whiskers when I can.  Aiding a man who is apparently high on their list for who is due swift and inproportionate retribution seemed as if it would fit in with that agenda.  In short, I’m using you to spite them.  Even though Barillo is dead, and the cartel in temporary anarchy until a new leader murders his way to power.”  She crossed her arms over her chest.  “I suppose that I ought to thank you for that.  It’ll get some heat off my tail long enough to disappear.”

   Sands ignored that last bit.  “Why is it so important to you to meddle in the cartel’s affairs?”

   This was treading close to the line that Tess didn’t want to cross.  “Why is it any of your business?”

   In a deceptively patient voice he said, “A lack of information can get a man in deep shit, as I have so very recently rediscovered.  I have no desire to repeat the experience any time soon.  Please,” he cocked the gun, “answer my question, niña.”

   “The cartel ruined my life a long time ago.  Stole any hope of normality that I might have harbored.  But I’m not the only one who’s been hurt.  Barillo managed to ruin the lives of countless thousands with his violence, and his greed, and his drugs.  So I decided to do what I could to make up for that.  To piss him off as much as I could and in doing so, try to restore the balance his family owes.”  And you’re the last piece.  The final weight.

   “Restore the balance . . . .”  Her words echoed in Sands’ mind.  That’s what had been trying to do.  He was preparing to ask yet another question when a bolt of pain worse than any of the others ripped through his head.  Damn it!  His entire body responded to it, trying to escape the pain.  That just made things worse.  His bullet wounds screamed as the muscles the bullets had torn through contracted reflexively.

   Tess heard a harsh intake of breath come from the man on the bed.  She spun around (she had been pacing) only to witness his futile attempts to escape the pain.  The drug is wearing off.  His nerves are finally realizing that they’ve been receiving instructions to sound the alarm.  That something is wrong.  As she was thinking this, she rushed to the bed, her mind also racing through all the things that needed to be done, her will uncertain as to whether she could carry it all out.

Sands felt his gun fall from his hand as the pain finally receded to bearable levels.  “Damn, that hurt.”  He felt a set of slender fingers slip around his wrist, checking his pulse.  From the softly muttered Spanish curses that reached his ears, he knew that whatever his hostess had found couldn’t be good.  However, when she spoke, there was nothing but calm and impersonal professionalism in her voice.

   “We need to stop the bleeding and get you cleaned up.”  And a blood infusion wouldn’t come amiss.  “Marcos!  Where are you!”

   “Here, señora.”  She turned from Sands, and sure enough, there he was standing idly by, concern in his eyes.  “The señor is going to be okay, right?”

   She took the scissors from him.  “I certainly hope so.  Will you please go and get the black case you’ll find under my bathroom sink and bring it here?  It’s a bit heavy, but it’s okay to drag it.”  Once again the boy nodded and left the room.  “Good kid.”  Addressing her next words to the man sitting on her bed, she said, “Well, I’ve told you what people call me.  You want to return the favor and give me something to call you?”

   “Like my name?”

   “That would work, but so would a pseudonym if you don’t entirely trust me.  I hate undressing a man when I’m not sure of what to call him.”

   Sands smirked.  “You can call me Giovanni.”

   Tess raised her eyebrows.  “That is not your name.”

   “No.  It’s not.  But it’s been a fantasy of mine to find a woman who would call me that.  Besides, I never really liked the name my parents gave me.”

   “O-kay . . . .”  Tess just trailed off.  She really hadn’t been expecting that name.  she was called back to the task at hand when she heard Sands start grinding his teeth as another wave of pain flooded his system.  While he managed to stay still this time, she could see he was gripping the bed covers with his good hand.  Could see the sweat breaking out on his face, and his muscles clench against the need to curl up in a fetal position.  Could see fresh blood seeping out of his wounds and trailing down his face.

   She waited for the pain to recede again before saying, “Let’s get you out of those clothes.”  From the corner of her eye she could see Marcos come back into the bedroom, dragging her smallish trunk of medical supplies after him.

   “We’re going to need to soak the areas around your bullet wounds.  There’s a lot of built up dried blood, and I would prefer to not just rip that off.  And you’d probably prefer that too.”  Sands didn’t respond. 

   She sighed.  “Marcos, I’m only going to ask you to do one more thing for me before I send you home for the night.  Will you please get me a pitcher of lukewarm water from the kitchen?”  Again, the boy was eager to help, and went to carry out his task.

   Tess got down to her own work, removing Sands’ gloves, boots, socks, munitions belts (which she sat on the floor by the bed within easy reach of either of them), and his regular belt.  Then she fetched a hairband from her nightstand.  I wonder what he’d do if he knew it was pink?  Gently she got Sands to move his head away from the wall, and more gently still she pulled his hair back out of his face.  Several of the brown locks were encrusted with dried blood just like the rest of him.

   “Señora –”  Marcos had returned with the water she needed.  She could tell that he was unhappy with the prospect of being sent home.  It was best to say no before he could start begging.

   “No.  You need to go home and assure your parents that you are still alive.  Go now, before twilight fades entirely.  Keep away from the fighting.  You can come back tomorrow and visit with your friend then, but make sure you come in through the back door.  Comprendes?”

   He looked thoroughly miserable, but her replied, “Sí, señora.”  Slowly, reluctantly, he backed out of the room.  “Hasta luego, señor.”  After saying that, he disappeared from view.

When she heard the door shut, Tess dipped a clean cloth into the waiting water.  It was nearly room temperature, but a little warmer.

   “Why’d you make the kid leave?”

   “I didn’t want him corrupted.”

   “Why, niña, I didn’t know you wanted me in your bed for that reason.”

   “I don’t.  I just didn’t want him here while I’m pulling bullets out of you and poking you with needles.  Something tells me that some choice language will be flying around, and I prefer that that is not the English he learn.”  She only partially wrung it before laying it on the wound in Sands’ left thigh.  About to repeat the procedure on his right leg, she realized that this might be easier if he were lying down.  But it will be easier to get his clothes off if he’s sitting up.

   “What are you doing?”

   “Wondering what the best way to get you out of your clothing is.”

   “Ooh.  Keep talking like that and I’m going to get a raging hard-on.”

   Tess rolled her eyes.  “I wouldn’t count on that, Giovanni.  Not only have you lost a great deal of blood, more than you should have and still be conscious, but I’ll be applying Novocain to those wounds before removing the bullets and stitching them up.

   “Fun-sucker.”  Sands felt another cloth settle on his other leg.  Shortly after that, he felt the bed beneath him move as his hostess sat down.  He found out what she was doing when he felt another wet cloth start being held against his injured arm.  The water trickling through the cloths, through his clothing, and over his skin was distracting.

   Tess watched her patient’s face for any signs of distress.  It showed none.  After five minutes or so of silence had gone by, she removed the cloth she’d been holding to his arm.  “Let’s see how well that worked.”  With extreme care, she plucked at the lose fabric of his shirt sleeve, slowly moving in towards the hole in his flesh.  “Tell me if this starts to hurt or pull and we’ll soak it for a bit longer.”  She looked up from her task in time to see him nod.

   She had to soak the wound one more time before she was able to remove Sands’ shirt.  While she was doing her best to be the clinical and detached doctor (more to suppress unmerited guilt and pity than anything else) she couldn’t help noticing just how attractive her patient was.  The chest underneath the black shirt was lean and tan, with just the barest suggestions of the musculature underneath his skin.  She couldn’t help but keep her fingers from brushing against his skin as she tried to undo the buttons.

   Suddenly aware of what she was doing, she laid a hand flat on his chest.  His skin was cool and clammy under her hand.  “Damn it,” she whispered.

   “Something wrong?  I mean, normally I wouldn’t dream of interrupting what is obviously an intimate moment for you –”

   “No.  I just discovered what a total idiot I am.  I thought that the drug that Barillo’s men had given you would arrest the onset of shock as well as the delayed feelings of pain.  It must have, but the drugs are wearing off.  You’re going into shock.  Why didn’t you tell me you were cold?”  He shrugged.  “No matter.  Stay here, try not to move that arm.  I’m going to go get a blanket for you.”

Don’t go anywhere.  Where does she think I’m fucking going to go?  Not only can I not see, but I think I’m finally feeling the affects of losing so much blood.  My head is spinning and I haven’t even stood up in the past half hour.

   And the pain.  The pain was relentlessly and sadistically chipping away at his control.  He’d never passed out before in his life, but now he would be more than willing to.  He wasn’t sure how long it would be before he was willing to beg for the pain to leave, but he knew it wouldn’t be too long.  Just as he knew he’d kill anyone who witnessed such an indignity.  Or perhaps he’d just shoot himself, but he doubted that.  He’d lived this long, he wouldn’t roll over and die quietly now.

   Even as he thought that, another wave of pain crashed over him, stealing his senses from him.  He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t taste or feel anything but the pain.  Couldn’t smell anything but his own blood.  And it didn’t stop, didn’t falter, didn’t ease up.  It gripped him in much the same way that sadistic bastard of a doctor’s instrument had gripped his eyes, tearing at him.  And when it finally let up, it left him feeling hollow and raw.  Left his lungs and his muscles burning from a lack of oxygen, his mind reeling, his senses muddled and confused.  And cold.  He realized that now.

   He leaned against the wall and waited for his mind to return to normal, afraid it never would, afraid that the pain and the dark would warp his sanity until he screamed for death.  Can’t let that happen.  Won’t let that happen.  I’ll blow my fucking brains out before that happens.  With that promise, he could feel his mind and his perceptions returning to normal for the time being. 

   With the return of his mental facilities, he heard a tapping where he assumed the doorway to the room was.  It was hard to tell.  The room he was in distorted sound with echoes and hollow rings.  He was assuming that it was loft-like in design - high ceilings, uncarpeted floors, lots of open spaces and few hiding places.  A bad place for a confrontation.  Not that he currently had any weapons.  That woman had taken them.

   Tap . . . taptap . . . tap . . . t-tap. . . .  Sands realized that the source of the sound was localized.  It wasn’t getting any closer or farther away.  He listened harder, concentrating, determined to figure the puzzle out.  The sound was too soft to be a pair of boots.  The floors here were hardwood.  What is that? 

   He suddenly relaxed.  It was the sound of nails against a hard surface.  Apparently his hostess was waiting for a less awkward moment to walk into the room.  He felt rage begin to boil as he wondered how long she had been standing there – if she had stood and stared at the eyeless man in the throws of pain.  No.  Dangerous time to get angry.  Not enough control.  Her only sin is being softhearted enough to take in an injured man.  He forced himself to calm down.  If she’s standing outside the door, she’s waiting for me to let her come in.  If that’s the case, she’s the most intelligent woman I’ve even met.  In his experience it was rare to find a human who was willing to let someone deal with pain on their own without butting in or goggling.  He didn’t want to be coddled, and somehow she knew that.  That could be a problem later.  Intuitive people were often more trouble than they were worth.  They screwed plans and often instigated disorder.  Look at what he did with the information he gathered about how peopled acted.  He was a first class manipulator because he could read other people in the same way drivers read street signs.  If he didn’t watch it, this woman would become a liability.  And liabilities were always disposed with.  A shame after the way she was helping him out.  He had to make sure she didn’t learn too much.

Tess returned with the promised blanket to find her patient in the throws of another pain attack.  Perhaps the most awful thing about it was the way he refused to make a sound.  How long, how much pressure until his jaw breaks?  She desperately wished she could give him something for the pain, but knew she couldn’t.  Knew that Dr. Guevera favored the use of this particular pain altering drug because it interacted with any other pain-killer in such a way that the heart often stopped.  She wasn’t prepared to kill just to stop pain.  Not when she still had other alternatives.

   She stood in the doorway of the room and watched for several moments before turning her back on Sands.  She knew that he wouldn’t be pleased if he knew she had stood and watched him suffer.  She had known him less than two hours, but she knew that he’d rather suffer alone than endure any attempts she made to ease his pain.  He wouldn’t thank her for butting in, no matter how much her guilty conscience cried out for her to do something to let them off the hook.  No matter how much the doctor within her screamed to alleviate pain in any way she could.  I will not impose anything else upon this man.  He has lost enough today.  Let him keep what is left of his dignity.

   So she stood, a stranger in her own house, sharing her personal space with yet another stranger.  She tapped her fingers on the wall out of nervous habit – one of the few she hadn’t been broken of.  She had been a nail-biter – but after having her nails pared down below the quick on several occasions, she had taught herself to stop.  It was no fun to go around with bloody fingers, especially since any schoolwork she turned in that was in anything less than pristine condition she was punished for and made to do over.  But tapping nails was acceptable.

   Tess had no idea how long she stood in the corridor outside her room waiting for some signal that it was okay to enter.  A lazy breeze moved past her, ruffling shoulder-length waves of brown hair.  I should tie it back before I start stitching, she thought idly.  She studied her toes, thinking it was about time to repaint them.  She mentally ran through her inventory of medications, antibiotics, bandages, and saline solutions.  It would probably be best to hook the man up to an IV, get some fluids in him.  All the while her fingers went tap . . . taptap . . . tap . . . t-tap. . . against the wall.  She closed her eyes.  A stray melody ran through her mind, a fly buzzed in a corner somewhere, the harsh breathing of her patient settled out.

   She heard nothing more for several minutes, until a question came from the bloody figure on her bed, “Are you planning on freezing me to death?  Because if you are, I’d prefer you simply put a bullet between my eyes.  I’m afraid I don’t have the patience for anything else today.”

Patching Sands up was a long, tedious, and painful experience for both patient and surgeon.  Tess didn’t dare use anything stronger than topical Novocain to lessen the bite of needles and antiseptics.  The worst part of the gun wounds was making sure that the bigger pieces of cloth and thread were removed from the wounds.  This involved painstaking care and the constant swabbing of blood.  But luckily the Novocain had been enough to dull that pain to a level where she could work on him without too much guilt.

   Still worse was the need to wash out the wounds.  She used a syringe much like those given to people who had had wisdom teeth removed to flush the injuries with saline solution.  She heard “Giovanni” grit his teeth, but never mentioned it.  In fact, the two spoke little beyond the occasional question if more of the numbing salve was needed.  After the wounds were stitched and well slathered in antibacterial ointments, Tess wrapped them in several layers of gauze to keep them undisturbed for the time being.  She had a feeling that it was going to be a long night, and she’d like to do all she could to keep her stitches from being ripped out.

   The only moment that was not so grim came after Tess managed to get Sands’ jeans off him.  While in the process she had been too busy to observe anything.  It was beyond her why men or women felt the need to squeeze themselves into tight pants.  She knew why, but her intellect still declared it was stupid.  It’d probably be easier to cut them off, but I don’t know if I’m going to be able to replace these. I’d rather he have pants should the need arise. 

   Finally getting the black denim off, she looked up to see if she had caused too much pain and saw the pattern on his boxers.  They were black cotton with yellow smiley faces.  Oh my god.  That just figures, doesn’t it?

   “Look, I know the view is admirable, but when it’s cold, its really not worth the attention you’re giving it.  If you wouldn’t mind?”

   Tess looked up guiltily, before realizing that he wouldn’t be able to see what she was doing, or not doing for that matter.  Still, her cheeks were lightly flushed.  To recover her composure, she quipped, “You know, I had you figured as a boxer brief kind of guy.”

   He looked puzzled for a moment, but then his forehead cleared of the baffled lines.  “You know, I had forgotten I was wearing those today.”  He laughed bitterly.  “They were supposed to be my good-luck boxers.  Fat lot of good they did me.”  After that, the mood in the room stayed oppressively somber.

   Finally, Tess could do more.  There was nothing left to tend to but Sands’ face, and all that entailed.  This was most likely going to be one of the hardest things she had ever done.  And it would be no easier for him.  He had kept his sunglasses on as if to deny his injury, which was ridiculous.  The blood now dried and caked on his face and throat told their own story.

   She sat on the bedside for several minutes praying for fortitude for them both, and a light touch for her.  In the hour she had been tending his other wounds, Sands had had four more pain attacks, each one coming closer together with more intensity.  There was no way she was going to be able to do this without causing more pain, and she hated that.  Hated how helpless it made her feel.  She was a doctor – she was supposed to make pain go away, not incite it.  Yet here she was, numerous painkillers on hand, and not one she could safely give him.  Except for the one that was still in his system.

   Staring at her hands she asked, “You know I’m going to have to tend to all your wounds, right?”  His right hand was just visible from the corner of her eye.  She watched it curl into a fist in her bedding.  “I need to clean up your face, and then . . . and then take a look at . . . at the . . . the injuries.  And I’ll probably need to flush them out in the same way I did your bullet wounds.”  The knuckles of his hand turned white. 

   “Now, Novocain isn’t going to do much to dull the pain, even if I gave it to you in injection form.  It’s just too mild a painkiller.  But there is one possibility to make this more . . . more comfortable . . . physically comfortable.  I can give you another shot of the same stuff that the cartel gave you.  It wouldn’t make the pain go away, but it would make it seem more distant.  Less of a threat.  The cartel must have overdosed you severely, but I could avoid doing that.  I think.  I have no way of knowing how much is still in your system.  But it’s up to you.  I won’t give you anything without your permission . . . unless I feel that doing otherwise would be putting your life in danger.”  She had to be truthful with him.  This was going to put him in an incredibly vulnerable state, one that he would most likely hate her for.  Hate her for perpetuating.

   “Why can’t you put me under?”  The question was strained even if his face was emotionless.

   “Because of that bastard Guevera.  He knew what he was doing when he gave Barillo’s henchmen that medication.  It’s a type of neural suppressant that interacts badly with any kind of painkiller or narcotic.  Ten percent of patients who have a reaction slip into a coma.  But seventy percent die because their heart stops.”  She laughed dryly.  “They wanted to make sure that even if you did seek out help, it would only kill you.  I always knew there was a good reason I hated them all.”  She fell silent for a moment.  “I can tell you this though.  If we proceed with just the Novocain, it’ll handle the pain of actually cleaning the blood off your face.  But once I start cleaning and examining the actual wounds, the pain will probably be so great that it will overcome the last of the drugs in your system, and you’ll pass out.  As small of a comfort as that may be.”

   Tess let Sands think.  She was offering him a hell of a choice.  Incredible pain and oblivion in which he would be defenseless, or more of a drug that had left him defenseless enough for this to happen in the first place.

   Ten minutes or so went by as he weighed his options.  “Is this drug habit forming?  Am I going to walk out of here as messed up as an opium addict?”

   “Not after just one more dose.  Anything past that, and yes, addiction is a possibility, especially if you’re addicted to anything else.”  Tess just trailed off.  What else was there to say?  The choice was his.

   “I’d ask you to simply shoot me in the head and put me out of my misery, but I suspect you’re getting tired of cleaning up my blood.”

   “No, I wouldn’t ask that if I were you.”  She felt cold at how casually he spoke of murder and suicide.  If she hadn’t been able to tell that he was a natural killer upon first seeing him, she’d be able to now.  She wasn’t even sure why she was helping him.  She’d watched him gun down people today with no remorse.  Of course today might be a bad day to set standards for him.  But she had been around enough men like him to know that killing men gave him no more pause to stop than killing an insect.  She wondered if her own quest had driven her mad as he.  But surely, he didn’t deserve this.  If it’s in your power to help, hadn’t you do so?  The only person you’re capable of judging is yourself.  Beyond that, you’re out of your depth.

   “Give me the drug.”  Tess was startled out of her thoughts, and grateful that it had happened before she had given herself a headache.  She wasn’t too surprised by the decision.  This way he would at least be aware of what was happening around him.

   “Okay,” she whispered.  “Just give me a moment to prepare a dose.”

It was simple and easy to fill an unused syringe with enough of the medication to circumvent Sands’ nerve endings.  Tess even used a little less than a full dose to make up for what was still circulating through his veins.  She came back to the bed, needle and a jar of cotton swabs in hand.  She sat down on the edge of the bed and said, “You’re going to want to lie down for this.  When we’re through, we’ll sit you back up because it’ll probably be more comfortable to sleep in that position for the time being.”  Until your eyes stop bleeding.  He nodded, probably guessing at what she hadn’t said.  Slowly, he started to lower himself onto the bed.

   She started to help him, but then realized just how unwelcome that move would be, so she kept her hands to herself.  She supposed his silence was gratitude enough for that.  Once he was laying down, she set the syringe on the nightstand, and opened a drawer.  She removed a handgun from it – a simple revolver.  Her first weapon.  The gun she had learned to shoot with.  Carefully, she placed it in his hand.

“What’s this?”  It was a rhetorical question and they both knew it.  Sands knew what a gun felt like, no matter what his state of mind was.

   “I thought you might feel better if you knew that I knew that you could do me some lasting harm should I overstep my boundaries as a physician.  In other words, feel free to fire off a round if you have even the slightest suspicion that I’m betraying your confidence.”

   The woman was crazier than he was.  He was beginning to doubt if she was really even a doctor.  What made her think that he could keep from firing the next time the pain got the better of him?  What made her think he wouldn’t kill her as soon as she was done to keep his whereabouts a secret?  “Are you fucking nuts?”

   “No, señor.  Simply trying to level the playing field.  I thought you might appreciate the gesture.”

   “The gesture.  So what, there’s not bullets in this gun?”

   “Oh no, I assure you that there are six rounds in that weapon.  I simply know that I’m such a good doctor that you’ll have no need or cause to fire it.”  Tess reached for the pitcher of water, the wastebasket, and her cotton swabs.  Then, having everything situated to her satisfaction, she reached for the syringe.  “I’ll explain the steps I take as I take them, so you know what’s going on.”  She primed the injection.  “You’re going to feel a little jab.” 

   She gave the shot quickly and efficiently.  “Now, I want you to tell me when things start getting blurry, when reality seems to be hazy, distant.”  While she waited for the drug to take affect, she pulled on a pair of latex gloves.  She didn’t want anything from her hands getting into the wounds.

   Tess didn’t have to wait long.  After about ninety seconds, Sands made a noise.  It sounded like, “I’m ready,” but she really wasn’t sure.  It was enough to be going on with though.

   “Okay.  I’m going to start by cleaning the blood off your neck and face.”  Sands reached up to remove his sunglasses, but she stopped him.  “You can wait until the last minute to remove those, ‘Giovanni.’  I’m in no hurry.”  His hand fell back down to his side.

   She was as gentle as she could be as she cleaned the dried blood off his face.  It was stubborn, not wanting to be removed, but she was determined to remove the mask of gore that was doing so much to keep this man a mystery.  She had no desire to know him intimately, but she needed to at least be able to read his face if she was going to be able to tend him to the best of her ability and his willingness.

   As much as she lingered over her task, all too quickly she reached the point where she would have to ask Sands to remove his glasses.  She refused to do it herself.  Wanted to give him control over at least that.  “Señor?  Señor, I’ve cleaned as much of you as I can without removing your glasses.  I was wondering if you wanted me to remove them, or if you would rather do it.”  She waited for a response for several minutes, but got none.  “Señor?”

   Slowly, Sands reached up and removed the shades that were hiding the worst of his injuries.  Tess waited until his hand was back at his side before moving her eyes to her face.  What she saw was much more graphic than what she had been prepared for.  While she had seen doctors remove organs and tissue from the bodies of organ donors, this was nothing like that.  Involuntarily she gasped, “Madre de Díos.”

Tess felt herself shaking with both revulsion and nearly uncontrollable anger.  Not at the man lying on her bed, but at the men who had ordered and carried this out.  They had done a piss pour job of anything.  Ok, so they left this until the last minute and then had to rush through it.  That’s no excuse for this . . . this . . . butchery.  They didn’t even complete the procedure!  She had to swallow to keep from gagging.

   In that single instant, she wished she had pumped both Barillo’s and Ajedrez’s bodies full of lead.  They deserved it for having thought of this.  And Guevera, well, he was a dead man if someone else hadn’t already taken care of that.  The man wasn’t a doctor, he was a little kid who enjoyed pulling the wings off flies and the legs off spiders.  If he were still alive then she was going to track him down and teach him the error of his ways.  For this and for every other “procedure” he had ever inflicted upon another living being.  It would be a long and painful lesson.

   In that moment she was supremely glad that she had given her patient the nearly hallucinogenic narcotic that was keeping his pain at bay.  Even with the drug, correcting this mess was going to cause enough pain to make him lose consciousness.  At least his body wouldn’t go into immediate shock from the blood loss.  Yes, he’d be nearly unconscious for the next few days maybe, but he should stay alive.  And perhaps the greatest pain would pass by then.

   “Señor?  Señor?”  She rested a gloved hand on the side of his face, trying to be certain that he was paying attention to what she needed to say.  Not that she could be certain.  “Señor, I’m going to have to do quite a bit of . . . of housekeeping.  I’m afraid that Guevera left a bit of a mess behind when he was done.  This is going to hurt, but I’ll be as careful as I can.  If it gets to be too much, we can take a break.  Do you understand what I’m saying?”

   “The bastard did a number on me?”  The words sounded as if they were making their way out his mouth through a haze of pain and befuddlement, but at least they were semi-lucid.

   “Yeah, he did a number on you.  But I’m going to do my best to keep that number as low as I can.  I’m going to start now.  Okay?”  She was his jaw clench.  “Okay then,” she whispered.  Then she picked up a small roll of gauze and started soaking up as much of the blood as she could.

Sands was beginning to wonder if he had really lost his eyes.  He could have sworn that he kept seeing flashes of color.  Somewhere his mind was telling him that this was caused by misfired neurons in his brain, but he wasn’t paying too much attention to that.  Instead, most of his focus was set on keeping himself from screaming.  He wouldn’t have minded letting out a bellow or two if he could have been sure that it would have sounded manly.  But no, he was certain that if he let himself scream then it was going to come out as the girliest scream ever uttered by masculine lips, and that after that he would start begging for the pain to stop, for his tormentor to stop.  He last real link with reality was the handle of a gun in his hand, and the quiet, nearly incomprehensible murmurs of the woman tending him.

   No matter how gentle she was being, though, it wasn’t enough.  It seemed as if the air itself was keeping the fiery agony blazing in his eye sockets.  On and on it went, never letting up, never growing bad enough for his mind to simply shut down and let him escape.

   He had no idea how long this lasted before one particularly deep touch set off an explosion of light in his mind.  His entire body stiffened, his spine arching off the bed.  He managed to contain his screams deep in his throat, but he still heard them in all their clarity.  A muffled voice cut through the pain and the light, “Shh.  I’ll stop.  I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .”

   There was a light blinding him.  He looked around the small darkened room.  “Sorry baby, but your plan was too small. . . .”  That bitch Ajedrez was still alive.  She was sitting on the edge of a nearby table, smirking at him.  Some part of him cried out that he had already killed her, but he must have been mistaken.  Not a problem, he’d kill her now.

   “Die bitch,” he hissed.  Her expression didn’t change.  Not even when he pulled the trigger and heard faint screams.  Before he could shoot again, blackness rushed up to claim him.  The last thing he heard was a weak moan.  He sincerely hoped that he had killed her.

Tess was being as careful as she could, but she knew that each touch, each wisp of wind stirred by her movements was just increasing the man’s agony.  Why had she even agreed to give him more of the drug?  Surely it would have been kinder to them both, but especially for him, if he had been able to pass out.  But no.  She had respected the wishes of a man near crazed with pain, and now she was regretting it.

   What’s a few more regrets?  Isn’t that what led me to bring him here in the first place?  Regrets and guilt over situations I can’t change or influence, yet feel responsible for anyway?

   But if you don’t try to make payment for the cartel’s acts, who will?  Tess hated that voice, the one that spurred her to right all the wrongs made by one family.  A family she had never even truly been a part of.  But you do listen, and you listen because you’re afraid that without some sort of penance,  the blood of your father will rise in your veins and you’ll find that you’re just as capable as he of doing things like this.

   Stop.  I have other things to worry about right now.

   This was a familiar argument to Tess.  One she repeated with herself nearly every day.  It didn’t always run along those lines, but always on parallel ones.  It was enough to drive her mad, or it would be if she weren’t already.

   Yes the schizophrenia.  Always there waiting to drag you down.  It wasn’t as bad as that.  True, she had been diagnosed with the disease, but she had had one, one, episode since then.  It was extremely mild, and with regular medication it didn’t hinder her life at all.  Provide interesting voices to argue with?  Yes.  But she was always able to tell that they were generated by her own mind.

  She was so focused on keeping her touch light and her mind clear, that she didn’t notice when the hand holding the pistol shifted to rest against her side.  The first indication of trouble that she had was her patient’s spine nearly bowing his body off the bed, and a muffled scream of pain.  She responded instantly by pulling her hands back and saying in a very apologetic and near desperate voice, “Shh.  I’ll stop.  I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”  It was then that she felt the barrel of her revolver dig into her side, and heard Sands say, “Die bitch.”  

   The next thing she knew, her side was on fire, the sound of a gunshot was ringing in her ears, and the scent of gunpowder was filling her nose.  She stumbled back from the bed, a moan low in her throat.  Damnit that hurt!  Flippin’ A!  Tess pressed a hand to her side, and brought it to her face.  It was red.  “Great, more blood to clean up.”  Having made that complaint she collapsed in a nearby chair.

Tess couldn’t believe he had actually shot her.  She had thought he was too far out of it to even remember he had a gun.  She should have known better.  For all she knew, this man was a mercenary who never forgot he had a weapon.  She sat in the chair she had collapsed in, her side having settled down to a persistent throbbing, and her mind extremely grateful that she had indeed given her patient the one weapon in the house loaded entirely with blanks.  Sure, they still could do some damage at close range, but they were ever so much safer than live ammunition.  Had she given him one of the guns he had come in with, she’d be dead now rather than minorly disabled.

   She still needed to tend the wound however, and that was unlikely to be fun.  Standing slowly, she started unbuttoning her caramel colored shirt.  Pulling it off her shoulders with the utmost care, she walked into the bathroom to have a closer look at her side without acting like a contortionist.  Which would also be painful.

   Just what I expected, she thought as she gazed at her reflection in the mirror.  There was some bleeding from a smallish wound about four inches above her hipbone, and it was surrounded with two to three inches of powder burn and soot.  That’s going to be painful to clean.  She looked around for any supplies, then remembered that they were all located next to her patient’s bed.

   She walked out of the bathroom in capris and bra, stripping off her rubber gloves as she went.  Kneeling down, she rummaged until she found what she wanted.  Some gentle yet highly antibacterial soap, several large gauze pads, and burn ointment.  Before returning to the bathroom, she checked in on her patient.  He was unconscious.  Or at least she assumed he was since he didn’t respond to her gentle probing of any of his wounds, so she was ready to leave well enough alone.  She wanted to be angry with him, but had better sense than that.  She was the one who had given him the gun in the first place.  Stupid idea, that.  I’ll not be trying that again.

Hours later, Tess was woken up by the mumbled protests of her patient.  She had finished cleaning and tending to his eyes two or three hours ago, a procedure that he had stayed unconscious for.  Shortly after that, she had set up and IV and then drawn a pint of her own blood to use as a transfusion for him.  That had been decided as soon as she had been able to search through the pockets of his jeans.  His wallet had been in his back pocket, and while it was not surprisingly short on personal information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, or anything else, it did have a medical care card which listed his blood type, height, weight, and any known allergies or medical conditions.

   Now she was tired from bloodloss herself, but she knew it was more important to get blood into him than it was to keep it in herself.  If all went well, she’d be able to repeat the process once more in 48 hours.  After that, he’d either have to make do without, or she’d have to contact a woman she knew who worked for the hospital.  She’d rather not do that just quite yet.  It might rouse suspicions that she’d prefer to avoid for the time being.

   Sands was restless in his dreams, apparently reliving the recent traumas of his life.  His hands were searching for something, the only part of his body moving.  The rest seemed to be locked in place by whatever was oppressing his dreams.

   Tess wasn’t sure of what to do.  She hated to have to witness anyone in such physical or mental pain.  If it were anyone else, she’d take their hand and sit by their side for the rest of the night, but something about this stranger made that seem childish.  But surely that’s better than nothing.

   She moved over to the bed where she had managed to elevate Sands into a semi-sitting position by using every single pillow in her house.  His sunglasses were back on his face, sitting over a layer of gauze, his countenance still free of blood after several hours, which encouraged her.  She cautiously moved onto the bed, sitting on the edge, facing the same way he was.  When he didn’t wake up, didn’t acknowledge her presence in any way, Tess let out the breath she had been holding.  Carefully, she slid her hand across the blankets until his questing hand found it.

   For a second it recoiled, and noises came from his throat.  Once again she held her breath – if he awoke and attacked her before remembering who she was it was likely he’d manage to kill her before coming to his senses.  They may have been the same height, but he was undoubtedly stronger than she was.

   Her fears were unbased in this instant, however.  A second after recoiling, his hand darted forward and grabbed hers, tightening almost painfully around it.  She could feel her fingers tingling, but she ignored them.  Her patient was actually relaxing, as if the contact she had initiated was acting as a lifeline back to reality, and now that he had found it, he could rest.

   “I would wish you sweet dreams, but I think that it would be better to wish you no dreams at all.”  She sighed.  “Sleep while you can, get back your strength.  We can’t stay here forever.”

In her dreams she was eight again, and in the midst of being punished.  This time the cause had been getting a 98% on a geography quiz.  Nothing less than perfection was accepted by the man who controlled her life.  Anything else was a failure, and failure was weakness, and weakness was not tolerated.

   She had been blindfolded for the past two weeks, her eyes shut off from light for the entire time.  She tensed as she felt the hands behind her loosening the knot on the scarf tied over her eyes.  From past experience, Teresa knew that the first few minutes were going to be incredibly painful, the outside world of the noonday sun reflecting brilliantly off the white limestone courtyard just another reminder that her life depended entirely on the mercy of her father.  She contained a scream as the light hit her eyes, knowing that if she let out a single sound, she’d be whipped until she had no voice left.

   “You’ve disappointed me again, Teresa Adame.”  Her squinting eyes sought and found the source of her father’s voice.  He was the one dark spot in a sea of blinding glare.  His hair was dark, his skin dark from the sun, his eyes so dark a blue as to be nearly black.  She was convinced that he was just as dark inside as he was outside.  “I’ve given you back your sight and yet you cower and squint like a peasant child.”  She heard giggles from her half-sister, standing nearby to witness the event.  Even two years younger, the girl had their father’s complete support in a way that Tess couldn’t imagine.  But then again, she was legitimate and Tess was not.

   Straightening her posture, Tess whispered, “I’m sorry, Father.  I will do better next time.”  It was as useless now to protest that the tutor had never taught her the rest of the material on the test.  It didn’t matter.  Excuses were not wanted.  She was expected to have known anyway.

   “Yes, you are.  I can’t imagine what I was thinking when I took that whore’s word that you were my child.  Look at your sister, even two years younger and she pleases me more in a day than you have in your entire life.  Lazy, stupid, selfish.”  The words weren’t new, but they still stung and struck and clung with a physical presence, tearing at her heart and mind.  “This time, though, this time your errors have effected someone else.”  She didn’t understand until she heard the pleas of her tutor coming closer to the group.

   No, I don’t want to watch this again.  I’m sorry I didn’t do better then.  But I learned my lesson, I did.  Don’t make me see this.  She pleaded with her dream to let her go.  For a moment she thought she had swayed it, that it was going to release her.  Instead the setting changed.  She could tell that she was now an adult, but she was still at the house that had been the cartel’s base in her childhood.  Was still in that hated courtyard.

   And the screams, the pleas, they were still ringing off the stone.  Looking around she saw her father, his face wrapped in medical gauze, his hand resting on the shoulder of her half-sister who was still six years old, still grinning, delighted that Tess was in trouble.

   “See what you’ve done now, Teresa Adame.  See the suffering you could have prevented.”  Tess obeyed the voice and stepped forward, her body moving without her having to direct it.  Or maybe it was the dream that shifted around her and made walking unnecessary.  Whatever the means, she found herself staring at the back of a black clothed surgeon.  He was operating on a man strapped to a table.  The blinding light made it difficult to see for a moment, but as she squinted she saw the victim.  It was the man she had supposedly helped the day before.

   “Your fault, Teresa.  If you had stayed I would have let you drug him into unconsciousness.  I would have let you remove his eyes properly.  But you ran, and he suffered.  Too bad.”

Tess woke in a cold sweat, her side burning, her face wet with tears, and her patient still blessedly asleep.  She squinted, light from the rising sun coming in through her bedroom window and blinding her.  Not again, she thought.  She couldn’t deal with the dreams right now.  She had enough to deal with at the moment without having to relive the most hellish parts of her childhood.

   Missed sleep isn’t even the worst part of it all, she mused as she walked to the bathroom.  The worst part is how dirty I feel in the morning.  And I can’t even shower, not with this burn on my side.  She tried to keep her mind from remembering what had really happened that day when she was eight.  Maybe by tomorrow I can take a shower.  That would be nice.  It wasn’t working.  Pictures of blood and echoes of dying screams were running though her mind.

   Tess gritted her teeth and tried to focus on other matters.  Should I go for a jog this morning, or not?  She looked at her patient and was reminded of her dream. No.  I don’t think it’s a very good idea to leave him alone quite yet.  Besides, I don’t know if the fighting is over yet.  Surely it was.  Culíacan had a decent police force.  They must have quelled the fighting by now.

   The memory was rebelling against her control.  With undeniable violence it forced it’s way to the front of her mind.  She felt her body slam against the wall as the memory took control of her psyche.  The tutor hadn’t known what or who she was dealing with when she had taken this job.  Failure was not just laid at the feet of the student, but at the feet of the teacher as well.  What couldn’t be done to a child being raised for a single purpose could be done to someone as expendable as a tutor.  Tess was made to watch as the woman was beaten within an inch of her life and was then executed.  All because she had taken more time to befriend an unloved child than she took to drill places and dates into her head.

   Tess had thrown up at the sight of a friend’s blood showing with dramatic contrast on the white cobbles of the courtyard.  She was slapped hard enough to bruise both eyes and then sentenced to two weeks of bread and water meals for an unsuitable display of sentiment.  The next day she was forced to again don the hated blindfold.  Hated because all she could see against the velvety blackness of the material was her teachers broken body lying like an abomination in the sun, green grass and stately trees presenting a mocking backdrop to the scene.

   Young Tess decided that no one should ever again suffer for her mistakes.

The memory let her go.  She stood leaning against the wall, slowly realizing that the rising sun was warming her, giving comfort she hadn’t known from her so-called family.  In the back of her mind she could feel other memories and nightmares stirring, encouraged by the success one of their number had had in escaping her control.  No.  Not again.  Not until I can afford it.

   Tess raced into the bathroom, urgency making her movements quick and precise the same way they were when she was performing surgery.  Opening the mirror door to her medicine cabinet, she grabbed the injection of dopamine inhibitor she always kept prepared.  It came in a gun-like applicator, one that held several dosages.  Quickly she pressed the apparatus up to her upper thigh and pulled the trigger.  She felt a pinch as the needle injected the medication into her body. 

   Rubbing the slight hurt, she slid down the wall to sit on the floor and waited for the drug to quiet the rebellion fermenting in her mind.

Trapped.  He was trapped.  The lack of light was pressing all the air from his chest, weighing down his arms and legs, slowing his mind, curdling his wits.  But it did nothing to dampen his hearing.

   The voices.  The y were going to drive him out of his mind, which by now might be a relief.  Anything to make the voices shut the hell up.  He couldn’t even identify half of them or what they were saying.  But against the audio background provided by the incomprehensible murmurs were other, clearer voices.

   Those were the ones he would have given anything to ignore, to silence.  Accusing voices, pleading voices.  Voices raised in anger, shaking with fear and pain, letting out a last surprised gasp before dying.  Mocking voices, condemning voices, voices taunting the great Sands who now found his every strength, every tactic, every defense bound as tightly as his sight.

   And then, rising above all the other voices came his own, the voice that had ultimately betrayed him.  He heard himself explaining his entire plan to Ajedrez, heard himself explaining the glitches in his plan to the higher-ups.  Heard himself talking, walking himself through his self-proclaimed, fool-proof plan.  And what if the planner is a fool?  Heard his voice tinged with desperation and madness after emerging from the cartel’s lair.  How he hated that voice.

   He couldn’t take it anymore.  If he listened any longer, he’d awake to find himself babbling nightmares and nonsense.  But how did he wake up?

   Open your eyes Sheldon.  The madness in his voice was mocking him again.  Oh, wait, you can’t, can you?  Poor Sheldon.  Can’t wake up, can’t open his eyes.  Stuck with me for company.  Come play with me, Sheldon.  Poor, poor, weak, helpless, stupid, Sheldon.  He felt a cool hand gently stoking his brow and heard the soft, mournful voice of a woman saying,

“No tardes, Muerte, que muero; Do not linger, Death, for I am dying;

ven porque viva contigo; come so I may live with you;

quiéreme, pues que te quiero, love me, because I love you . . . .

   Sands woke with a start only to find more darkness.

It was the third hour after dawn by the time Sands awoke.  Tess had used that time well, having changed the dressings on not only her wound, but on most of her patient’s as well.  She had left his face alone, wanting some of the sensitivity to go down before she tended it.  Or perhaps she was waiting for the rest of the drugs to work their way through his system so she could give him more effective painkillers.  He should have awoken at least once by now.  There couldn’t have been that much of the drug in his system or he never would have passed out in the first place.  Even with her doubts though, she decided it was best for him to sleep, to perhaps find some peace in unconsciousness.

   She took his pulse, blood pressure, and temperature.  While his blood pressure was a bit lower than she would have like to see it, it was within acceptable limits for a man who had been wounded as severely and who had lost as much blood as he had.  However, his temperature had her a bit concerned.  It was hovering around 99.0 degrees, which was high for a man who by all rights should still be chilled by shock.  She’d have to watch him closely to make sure he didn’t develop any infections or a temperature.

   All this had only taken an hour or so, but she had done a bit of cleaning, had washed his clothes and set them out to dry.  It was unusually warm for October so far, so she thought that they would be dry by noon.  After checking on her patient, who was still sleeping, she had washed her hair in the kitchen sink.  I wonder if I have any black thread about.  Needles I have in plenty, but I’d hate to mend his clothing with catgut. 

   Idly she wondered when Marcos was going to make an appearance today.  If she knew the boy as well as she thought she did, he wouldn’t let anything from militia to parents stop him from coming by today.  Time to go check on her patient again.

   Still asleep.  She laid a hand on his forehead, checking to see if his temperature had risen considerably in the last half hour.  He was warm, but not near warm enough to start worrying about quite yet.  As she sat on the edge of the bed she roller her head back and forth, stretching her neck and shoulder muscles.  Last night had been fairly uncomfortable, but productive; every one of ‘Giovanni’s’ stitches were still in place.

   She thought about the man she had found yesterday and compared him to the stranger in her bed.  One of the many poems she had memorized to help quell the voice in her mind rose to her lips at the thought of that black and blood clad gunman.  Still stroking his forehead, she recited, in Spanish;  “Do not linger, Death, for I am dying; come so I may live with you; love me, because I love you –”

   Apparently her words had reached the ears of the sleeping man, for Sands woke with a start, nearly making her scream.  She jerked her hand back and stood up.  slowly backing away from the bed, her heart in her throat, she asked, “Señor, are you well?”  He started coughing when he tried to reply, his throat and vocal chords too dry to make any sound.  She reached for the water bottle by her bedside, “Here, drink some water, it’ll help.”  He held out a hand and she placed the bottle in front of it.

Sands drank from the bottle gratefully.  Anything that would stop the coughs, stop the pain exploding in his head each time his lungs forced air out his throat.  The water didn’t taste as if it were straight from the tap – it was free of the chemicals pumped into the city’s water supply.  Despite those chemicals, he had avoided drinking any of the tap water here.  Yes, he had gotten the required shots before coming out here, but he didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks.

   Right.  No unnecessary risks.  Though he was awake, the voice still mocked him, although not as loudly.  Willing himself to concentrate on something else, he lowered the bottle from his lips and asked his doctor, “Is that how you break bad news to all your patients, or am I a special case?”

   If he could have seen Tess, he would have seen her blush, abashed at being caught at what she considered a childish pastime.  “No.”  The word got caught in her throat; Sands heard her clear it.  Trying again, she said, “No.  I was simply passing time until you woke up.”  He heard her approach the bed again, her steps hesitant as if she saw him as a wounded animal who would lash out at her at the slighted provocation or opportunity.  He liked that idea, that even lying down in a bed he was still dangerous.

   Tess saw the man smirk and knew it was because of her hesitance.  Gathering her courage she quickened her step, taking the now empty bottle from his hand.  Turning to throw it in the wastebasket she said, “You should lie down again.  You’re still weak after losing so much blood yesterday.  I doubt your body has recovered.”

   Damn the girl, she was right.  He could feel the pain taking prominence in his mind, drowning out the last echoes of that voice that haunted the darkness that now surrounded him waking and sleeping.  While he no longer had to try to ignore that voice, he now wanted to take his mind off the pain.  “What was that poem you were reciting?”

   “Umm . . . that was part of ‘Dos Canciones’ by Jorge Manrique.  He’s one of my favorite Spanish poets.”

   “Grim subject material.”

   She was surprised, not that she was sure why.  She hadn’t thought he knew Spanish for some reason, but surely he had to have some knowledge of the language to get into so much trouble with the cartel.  Most of their written intelligence was coded Spanish, and most of the members didn’t even know English.  She saw he was waiting for a reply of some kind.  “Yes, well, a favorite nonetheless.”

   The American sighed.  “Well, don’t let me stop you.  I’d hate to have to look up how it ended for myself, especially since that might take me awhile.”  When he didn’t hear his hostess say anything, he commented, “What?  Scared of a private recital, niña?  Or don’t you know the rest?”  If she wasn’t going to talk, perhaps he could entertain himself with pissing her off.

   It was working to.  Tess was glaring daggers at the man, not that it was having any affect on him.  She supposed it was hard to intimidate a man who couldn’t tell you were trying to.  Why don’t you just humor the man?  Afraid of admitting you need help to ignore me? 

   No, I just don’t want to.  That’s why.  Go mind your own business. 

   You are my business, dearie.  Determined to show her know-it-all mind that it did not know everything about her, she started where she had left off.  “ . . .for with your coming –”

   “From the beginning.  And in the original Spanish if you don’t mind.”

   Tess sighed and started from the beginning.  Within seconds she was lost in the language and feeling of the poem.

“No tardes, Muerte, que muero; Do not linger, Death, for I am dying;

ven porque viva contigo; come so I may live with you;

quiéreme, pues que te quiero, love me, because I love you,

que con tu venida espero for with your coming I hope

no tener guerra conmingo. not to struggle with myself.

Remedio de alegra vida There is not, by any means,

no le hay por ningún medio, a remedy to make life happy

porque mi grave herida because my grave wound

es de tal parte venida has come from such a place

que eres tú sola remedio. that only you can be my remedy.

Ven aquí, pues, ya que muero; Come, then, because I am dying;

búscame, pues que te sigo; look for me, because I follow you;

e con tu venida espero and with your coming I hope

no tener vida conmigo. not to keep life in myself.”

Only after she was done, did Tess consider that might not have been the best thing to say to her patient.  It must have struck too close to home for him at the moment.  She knew that it did for her at times, that she had memorized the poem thinking that should she ever wish to commit suicide, it would have made a lovely parting statement, a fitting epithet.  She couldn’t tell what the American was thinking, and she wasn’t particularly eager to find out.

   Before she could inquire as to the state of his psyche, there was a loud knocking at her back door, a kind of desperate pounding meant to wake the very dead from their graves if that’s what it took to capture attention.  “Crap,” Tess muttered.  She sincerely hoped that it was Marcos at the back door in a state of extreme excitement.  She wasn’t sure she could take anything else being heaped on her plate right now.

   Crouching down, she removed two of ‘Giovanni’s’ guns from their holsters.  Making sure they had ammunition, she gave one to him and took the other for herself.  “I’m going to go see who is trying so enthusiastically to get my attention.  Try not to shoot me.  It would be a rather abrupt ending to a short day.”  He flipped her off.

   Holding the gun down at her side, she approached the kitchen where the backdoor was.  It was a small house so this didn’t take long.  She sidled along the walls, trying to remain out of sight of the small window in the door.  Carefully she peeked out it, blows falling on the wood the entire time.  “Shit,” she breathed.  Louder she called out to her guest, “It’s just Marcos.”

   She opened the door and let Marcos come in along with his three siblings.  The two middle children were crying, the youngest a babe, too young to realize anything was wrong.  Tess felt her stomach sinking as she met Marcos’ eyes.  They were far too serious for one so young.  “What is it Marcos?  What has happened?”

   “My parents . . . they’re dead.  Our home isn’t safe.  Can we stay here?”

Tess started to wonder how much worse things could possibly get before they started to get better, but stopped before she could jinx herself.  That was the last thing she needed.  Besides, if trouble and bad news did indeed come in threes, then there was another misfortune out there looking to claim someone she had taken under her roof.  She refused to give it any more power.

  “Sí, Marcos, of course you can all stay with me.”  But how long will I be staying?  I had been planning on leaving within days before I decided to take in an injured man.  She looked at the children and her heart melted.  I have to look after them.  They came to me.  They trust me.

   Trust wasn’t enough to get Tess’ frozen wits to move, however.  As she stood in the middle of her small kitchen with four children of various ages ranged around her, she fought off the panic and stress that would overwhelm her mental defenses against the schizophrenia that was always waiting for her to let her guard down.  Even the booster she had given herself that morning would be hard put to suppress all the symptoms, and she needed as much control as she could get at the moment.  Plan, plan, plan.  I need a plan.  What first?  Finally.  A question she knew the answer to.

   Deep breath.  That’s it.  She filled her lungs several times.  Ok.  Get the children settled, check on ‘Giovanni,’ start some soup for lunch.  That’s enough to do for now.

   Marcos shifted on his feet as the baby started to fuss.  “Señora?”  The woman had this blank look on her face, like she was scared and didn’t know what to do.  That was bad.  She was an adult, she wasn’t supposed to be scared.  “Señora?  Are you alright?”  He reached out a hand to touch her arm.

   Pull it together, Teresa Adame.  You’re scaring Marcos.  Get out of your mind and into the real world.  Start talking, start doing.  It was a struggle not to give into the temptation to hide in her mind, to simply find an unoccupied corner and ignore things until they got better.

   That’s it Tessa.  Just sit in a huddle for days on end until all your problems go away.  I could help you forget your problems.  All you have to do is come play with me.  Play with me, Tessa.  I’m so lonely . . . .

   No!  She would not give into temptation, into madness.  She ripped her attention away from the sweetly cloying voice.  Marcos jumped back as Tess’ eyes suddenly focused on him.  The baby started crying at the sudden movement.  Looking at him, Tess saw how overwhelmed, how lost and afraid he was, and she felt guilty for adding to his fears.

   “Don’t worry, I was just thinking.”  She had to raise her voice to be heard over the baby.  Holding out her arms, she said, “Here, let me.”  Gently taking the baby from him, she asked, “Her name is Selena, right?”  Marcos nodded.  “And these two are Alma and René, right?”  The other boy and girl nodded, shy of this strange woman and her even stranger habit of staring blankly into space.  Tess understood what it was to be shy.  She wouldn’t press her presence on them, but would let them warm up to her in their own time.  Until then, she’d let Marcos take charge of them.  Besides, a little responsibility might help him take his mind off other matters.

   “Marcos?  Will you show Alma and René around?  Show them the bathroom, and the spare bedroom where you’ll all be sleeping?  There’s some games in the living room if they would like to play.  I need to check up on your friend, or I would do it.”

   “Can I see him, señora?”

   Tess saw the hope shining in his eyes.  For whatever reason, the boy had decided to attach himself to the mysterious man in her bedroom.  I wish I knew whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.  “If he’s feeling well, I don’t see why not.”  She bounced baby Selena on a hip, trying to quiet her.  She probably needs her diaper changed.  “Go on.  You and I can discuss what will happen next later this afternoon, okay?”  He nodded.

   Content that everything was as good as it was going to get at the moment, Tess left the three orphans to their exploring.

Tess was incredibly thankful that she always kept a few baby supplies with her in case of emergencies.  There wasn’t enough to last for an extended amount of time, but she did have what she needed to change Selena’s diaper and to fix her a bottle, even though she knew that the young child was probably hungry for some solid food.  She wasn’t that prepared though.

   With a semi-happy baby on her hip, she entered the room where Sands was staying.  The man seemed to have fallen asleep while waiting for her to come back.  He must be in worse shape than I thought if he’s dropping off like that.  He doesn’t seem to be the kind of man to let his guard down while in enemy territory.  I wish I had better equipment to monitor him with.  She knew that was a foolish wish.  This man was suspicious enough of her – he’d end up killing a nurse out of pure nerves.  Sighing as she set Selena on the floor where she’d be content to play with some shoes, Tess approached her patient’s bed.

   Her hand was halfway to his forehead to check his temperature when the gun in his hand snapped up to point at her face.  Well, about three inched to the right of her face.  “Señor!”  When she spoke, Sands corrected his aim with a surety that unnerved her.  “It’s just me, Tessa.  Don’t shoot.  Don’t freak out.  You’ve already shot me once in the past twenty-four hours, and I can’t deal with another crazy person right now.”

   “Who’s the other crazy person?”  She didn’t answer, mainly because she didn’t like how he had honed into that part of her reassuring speech first.

   When he decided that she wasn’t going to reply, he sighed and lowered the gun.  “What do you mean I’ve already shot you once today?  I haven’t had the chance yet.”

   “Earlier, when I was tending your injuries.”  He clearly didn’t remember, but that didn’t surprise her.  She hadn’t thought he was that he had been totally aware of what had been going on.  From what she knew of such men, they were always sure of what they were doing, even if they had some reason for doing it that no one else would understand.  If he had forgotten the events of the night before, he must be struggling now to keep a grasp on reality.  “You managed to shoot me right before you lost consciousness last night.”

   “I shot you?”  There was a hint of suspicion in his voice.

   “Yes, right in the side at point blank range.  With my own gun I might add.”

   “Then why aren’t you in considerably worse shape, niña?”  Again he raised his weapon.  “Is there anything else you’d like to share with me?” he asked mildly, for all the world as if he were a parent inquiring into a child’s whereabouts when he was perfectly aware that she was somewhere she shouldn’t be.

   How about that I’m an idiot, in more ways than one?  Or that I’m really regretting giving you a gun again?  With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, Tess slowly said, “If you’re asking whether I lied to you or not, the answer is no.  I told you the gun had six rounds in it, and it did.”  She swallowed, “I just didn’t tell you that they were blanks.”

The conniving little minx.  If I didn’t know better, I’d say that I’ve just run into a fellow agent.  Sands, while he could appreciate the careful distribution of information, found he was upset to find himself at the opposite end of the food chain.  He was the one who was supposed to have all the cards, who was supposed to deal out who got what information like a card sharp stacks a deck to make sure the odds are in his favor.  It was bad enough he was fucking blind, but to be humored in the way that this woman had humored him?  It was intolerable.  He may be blind, but he wasn’t stupid, and anyone who thought that they could take advantage of his current disability was in for a rude awakening.

   He was about to set into a verbal berating that would have made even the most oversexed man in the country lose his balls when a quiet thud sounded in the corner of the room.  Nerves already on highest alert reacted without him having to tell them to.  He took aim and fired his weapon three times at whoever had made the sound.  Once he was sure they were dead, then he’d take care of the woman who’d let them in.  “It’s just Marcos,” indeed.  You just made one very large mistake, niña.

   Unfortunately, Sands underestimated Tess’ own reflexes.  As soon as she had heard the shoe drop in the corner, she had known what her patient was going to think and how he was going to react.  Barely in time to move his hand before his finger squeezed the trigger, she slammed her shoulder into the man’s arm, throwing off his aim.  The three bullets slammed into the wall about a foot from Selena, who started screaming from the sudden noise of the gunshots.  Sands dropped the gun as the baby started crying in order to slam his hands over his ears.  Apparently the high pitched wails of the frightened little girl were more than his poor head could take.

   Thinking that was the worst of it, Tess relaxed a mere nanosecond before the full scope of the chaos those three rounds had wrought made itself known.  Even as she was torn between seeing if she had further injured Sands or running to make sure Selena was alright, she heard screams coming from the living room.  Por Díos! she had forgotten the other two children.  She didn’t know where they had been when their parents were killed, but it was entirely within the realm of possibility that they had either heard or seen the whole thing.  But no matter what, hearing a gun fired in the same house they were currently in was going to scare them, even if they had no idea how their parents had died.  Yes, let’s give a severely injured and possibly mentally unbalanced man a gun!  Brilliant idea, Tessa!  I’ll be surprised if you don’t get a Nobel for that one.

   Scooping up the gun and placing it on the window sill where she doubted Sands could get to it, Tess ran across the room and knelt by Selena.  A quick visual examination confirmed that the child was fine other than being scared out of her wits.  Scooping her up, she heard all sound in the living room abruptly come to a stop, as if cut off by a silencing hand.  However, the screams of the child in her arms more than made up for the decrease in noise.  They echoed off the walls and bare floors of Tess’ house, making everything seem louder.

   “Damnit!  Would you stop that noise?!”

   “Maybe if you could manage to keep your overactive trigger finger from sporadically firing at things that you can’t identify, I wouldn’t have any noise to stop!”  Tess threw that thought over her shoulder as she made her way into the living room to check on the status of her young houseguests.

   She found them in a huddle on the floor, Marcos and Alma trying to keep a panicky René from crying out again.  They apparently knew the value of being silent when it was possible they were in a dangerous situation.  Marcos was looking more and more overwhelmed by the moment, and Alma had silent tears running down her cheeks.  The sight of their silent and terrified tableau made Tess want to cry out in agony.  No child should need to have such self-control at such a young age.  No child should be scared out of their wits in their last refuge.  How many other children in Mexico and America alike had cowered in this same way as the destruction and devastation caused by her family ran rampant around them?  How few had she helped?

   Quickly walking towards the group she set a still wailing Selena down.  “It’s okay.  You don’t have to stay quiet.  No one lives in the houses around here.  It’s safe.  No one will hear you.”  How did one encourage a child to act like a child?  “This is my fault.  I surprised a patient of mine and he overreacted.  But it’s safe.  He won’t hurt you.  I won’t let him.  I won’t let anyone else hurt you.”  Please, believe me.

   Marcos was the first to respond, letting go of his younger brother.  Alma slowly followed suit.  As soon as he was no longer restrained, René started crying, slow heart wrenching sobs.  He slowly got up and approached the one person in the room that represented even a modicum of safety in a world gone mad, and the woman he trusted to control the circumstances around them was only a knife’s edge away from going mad herself.  But Tess did what she could, holding the boy as he shook and shivered and cried in fear and grief and loss.  What else could she do?  She was an adult and no matter how unprepared or  ill-equipped she felt, she was the one they were looking to for guidance.

   But even knowing that children had an inflated sense of what adults could understand or prevent, she felt herself making another oath, another promise to add to the bushels she had already made.  I will care for this family.  She wasn’t sure what that entailed, but she knew it didn’t matter.  Whatever it took, she would see these children live without fear for as long as she could.

   Marcos and Alma soon followed their younger brother’s lead, coming to hang and settling on and around Tess.  She looked at them.  Marcos had taken a position behind her, his hand resting on her shoulder, the other holding a fussing Selena.  Alma had practically melded herself to Tess’ side, wrapping her small body around her arm.  Tess could feel the warmth of the girl’s tears soaking through the sleeve of her cotton t-shirt. 

   Now what?  This isn’t the way I would have chosen to earn their trust, but now I have it.  So how do I comfort?  Tess realized just how little she knew about children.  She knew she could manage as a pediatrician in a pinch, but that didn’t mean she knew anything about kids.  As a child and teen, the only person younger than her that she had had any interaction with was her younger half-sister, and she was sure that didn’t count.  Her sister had always had the upper hand when it had come to their interactions.  She had never come running to Tess for comfort, had never asked Tess for advice.

    Ok, then how did I ever comfort myself as I child?  Searching through her memories of a time in her life that she’d rather forget altogether, she remembered one particularly memorable Christmas.  Barillo had decreed that the entire faction of the cartel based in the compound where she lived was to attend Christmas mass.  It was then that she had first been grateful for her learned talent for near instant memorization, when she had heard the priest singing the Ave Maria.  For years after that, Tess had thought of that song whenever she got scared or whenever the pain from her most recent punishment was threatening to overwhelm her discipline. It had been years since she had let the words escape her lips, but she let them now, hoping that somehow the timeless song of praise would bring some sort of peace to her audience.

Sands was alone in the bedroom once again.  He had faintly heard Tess’ reply and exit over the ringing in his head.  I almost killed an innocent child.  For all the people he killed without discrimination, he hadn’t yet killed an innocent child in cold blood.  Set things up so that there was the possibility they would die?  Yes.  But he hadn’t actually ever pulled the trigger that had sent a bullet into one.  It was perhaps the one standard that he still had, a slight value for a life that was still innocent of manipulation and deception.  Although at the moment I would be glad to revise that.  How that child had managed to hit the one note in the entire human vocal range that would shatter his mind, he’d never know.  Probably some kind of female intuition.  All he knew was that her first wails had sent a exploding light of white pain through his nervous system. 

   For several minutes he did nothing more than lean against the wall and wait for the incredible pain in his head to retreat.  Slowly and reluctantly it did, or at least it narrowed its focus to the empty sockets of his head.  Rationally he knew that it was nothing more than the rush of blood pulsing in the gaping holes, but part of his mind insisted that it was the permanent darkness there that trapped and amplified the fading pain, making sure that he didn’t forget what he had lost yesterday.  Yesterday?  It couldn’t have been yesterday.  It had to have been years ago and I’ve been trapped in a pain induced delirium for weeks since then.  Years perhaps.  And it’ll never get better, just like I’ll never see again.

   Seen too much . . . seen too much . . . seen too much . . . .  The phrase repeated itself with each pulse of blood through his head.

   Stop it.  Think of something else, Sheldon, anything other than that.  How weak had he become that he was begging himself to shut out the last sound he had seen.  No, that was the drill.  The last sound I saw.  He was going to find that gun that his physician had taken from him and simply kill himself.  Anything to end this constant torment, the pain and memories, and the echoes of the last sound he had seen.

   Slowly and painfully he levered himself out of the bed.  The muscles of his legs were incredibly stiff with pain and a lack of motion.  He body was as weak as his mind he decided as a small gasp escaped his lips and his legs threatened to give out from underneath him.  But his will was still strong, or perhaps it had simply been taken over by madness.  Or was feeding off a combination of madness and pain.  No matter.  He was determined to die with some of his sanity intact.

   Where did she set the gun?  Even in the throws of pain Sands had been aware enough to trace the woman’s movements.  It was a gut feeling, pure survival instinct that made it possible for him to do so.  An injured animal’s knowledge that every little sound and sight and smell might mean the difference between life and death. 

   By the wall, she set it by the wall.  He reasoned that there must be a window or something nearby that provided a resting place for the weapon.  Slowly moving his body, he felt a wave of heat fall across his face.  Window.  There’s the window.  Thinking back to what he had heard from Tess, what direction she had moved in.  It was possible that this was where she had set it down.

   Carefully, having to support himself against the walls and hating it, he made his way towards the window.  Carefully he felt along it’s surface, feeling like the stereotypical blind man the entire time, he found the barrel of the gun.  Just as he was telling his fingers to close in around it so he could pick it up and put an end to his misery, he heard a faint sound coming from the living room.  It was soft and almost soothing if he allowed it to be.  Deciding that it was worth postponing his own death to find out what the hell Tess was doing now, he made his slow and feeble way down the hall.

   He was quiet as he moved, he made sure of that.  It was bad enough he knew that he was having a hard time moving.  No one else had to witness the extreme awkwardness with which he was making his way down the hall.  With every step the soft sounds of a woman singing quietly and with a certain amount of unease increased until he could understand what she say singing.

Ave Maria, gratia plenta/Hail Mary, full of grace

Ora pro nobis peccatoribus/pray for us sinners

Nunc et in hora/now and in the hour

In hora mortis nostrae/in the hour of our death

Amen.

This benediction was the last thing Sands heard before he collapsed in the hallway from exhaustion.

Tess stopped singing when she heard the unmistakable sound of a human body dropping gracelessly to the ground.  For a moment she simply sat where she was with her head bowed and her eyes closed, as if she were praying, but really doing nothing more than cursing all men alike for being stubborn and indescribably foolish.  She sat and listened to Marcos’ cries of surprise and alarm at finding his new special friend up and more severely injured than he had remembered.

   “Señora!  The man is hurt!”

   “Yes Marcos, I know.”  Carefully she stood up, needing to be able to move freely but unwilling to shake loose her small companions.  As she stood up and made her way over to Sands with one child hanging on her arm and with another grasping her leg, she felt a certain measure of surrealism.  Like she was in a dream.  Perhaps I’ll wake up and find this was a dream, find myself back at that window watching a blind man make his last stand in a deserted street under the hot Mexico sun.

  “Let me go for a moment, René,” she murmured.  “I need to check on our patient.”  The boy shook his head and tightened his grip around her knee.  I’ve only had enough time to dry a few tears and already I’m dealing with rebellion within the ranks.  “Marcos?”  She let the older boy deal with his brother at the moment. 

   Now able to crouch down at her patient’s side, she checked Sands’ pulse.  It was a little quick, the exertion of walking halfway across her small house had clearly been too much of a strain on his depleted stores of strength and endurance.  Idiot!  Is he trying to kill himself?  She sighed; there was nothing she could do for him as long as he was passed out on the floor.  And I can’t get him back into bed without breaking open all his wounds because I’m not strong enough to lift him, even if Marcos helped.  Damnit!  Why do men always have to complicate things?

   “Señora?  What do we do now?”

   “I don’t know Marcos.”  She looked at the boy and saw how surprised he was by this confession.  She remembered when she too had thought that adults had all the answers, but growing up had simply showed her that adults just stopped asking questions because they were ashamed that they didn’t know the answers.  “I know where you and you, and René, and Alma can start though.  You can all start by calling me Tessa, and then yo can go play, or read, or take a nap, or draw a picture until I get lunch started.  And I will decide what we’re going to do with Sleeping Beauty here.”

   “Who’s Sleeping Beauty?”  Alma had decided to enter the conversation.

   “Who’s Sleeping Beauty?”  Tess pretended to be shock and appalled.  “Are you telling me that you don’t know who Sleeping Beauty is?”  All three children nodded.  “Well, we’ll have to fix that, won’t we?  Come into the kitchen and I’ll tell you the story while I make lunch.”

The story of Sleeping Beauty had lasted halfway through lunch and when she had finished that tale, she had started telling the story of Aladdin and his magical lamp.  It was now nearly two in the afternoon and all but one of her charges were asleep.  And none of them were in the same room.  Baby Lena was asleep on the kitchen floor in a diluted patch of sunlight.  (Tess had been afraid of waking the child if she had tried to move her, so she had let Lena be.)  René was asleep in the living room, sprawled across the armchair.  Alma had disappeared some time before; Tess had found her in the spare bedroom, dried tears on her sleeping face.  Sands was still unconscious in the hallway.  Only Tess and Marcos were still awake, and by all appearances the boy was loosing the battle to keep his eyes open.

   Five minutes later the boy was asleep and Tess was left alone with her thoughts.  Might as well do something useful as I wait for ‘Giovanni’ to come around.  Thoughts like the ones currently in my head need to be reflected over as I keep my hands busy.  Guess this is as good a time as any to work on my stitches.

  Gathering Sands’ clothes from the window she had left them in, Tess collected needled and thread as went to sit near her patient to piece together his holey clothing even as she pieced together her plans for that night.  There was much that needed to be done, and she needed to decided what order to do it all in.

   That afternoon, after his brother had fallen asleep and his sister had disappeared, Marcos had told the short story of how he had discovered he death of his parents.  It was bad, but not as bad as Tess had feared.  While he had been walking home the night before, he had stumbled across a police barricade.  Through the milling figures of militia and city lawkeepers, he had seen the bodies of his parents.  Afraid, he had run home only to find his house under the surveillance of two men in a dark car.  This alone amazed Tessa – she doubted that she would have been in any state to notice possible dangers after seeing the slain bodies of two people she loved.  But first I would need to love two people.

   Anyway, after seeing the men watching his apartment complex, he had been careful to sneak into the building by other (most likely less legal) means.  Reaching his apartment, he had found his three younger siblings alone and confused.  Knowing that it was probably a bad idea to stay in their home, not knowing if the men outside represented a threat or not, Marcos had huddled together his brother and sister and had managed to get them out of the building the same way he had gotten in.  The rest of the night had been spent trying to avoid the few mobs that were still out and clashing with the militia, more out of mob mentality than any real quarrel, and various sections of the city that had been seriously damaged by the fighting.  It had taking time, fortitude, and many rest stops, but Marcos had gotten what was left of his family to Tess and safety, a feat that impressed the woman.  She doubted that she would have tried something at that age.  The earliest I tried to run away was at thirteen.

   Tess sighed for what seemed to be the thousandth time that day.  She was so sick and tired of simply living in the moment and not being able to plan farther ahead than the next few hours.  She liked having a reliable schedule, liked being able to predict how things were going to happen each day.  When was stability going to return to her small world.  That’s not the question I need to be worrying about.  The real question is, how were Marcos’ parent’s killed?  Was it the rioters, Marquez’ army, the cartel, or some other element to this tragedy that we know nothing about?  The only way to be sure is to talk to the police, view autopsy records, talk to any witnesses – none of which I can do without drawing unwanted attention to myself.  Excluding those steps, my next course of action should be to examine the sight where they were found myself, and then to try to get a look at whoever was surveilling Marcos’ apartment building, providing they’re still there.   She sighed, then looked at her watch.  It couldn’t have been more than three minutes since the last time she had sighed.  And, to top that all off, I need to get groceries.  Preferably at a store where no one knows who I am.  Glancing at her sleeping patient she added another chore to her growing mental list.  And it wouldn’t be the worst idea to find out where he was staying and pick up some other clothes for him.  I can’t have him wandering around the house in nothing but a pair of boxers.

Either he was imagining things, or the bed beneath him had gotten a lot harder in the space of time he had been asleep.  And why was he lying on his face?  These were the questions that plagued Sands’ mind as he woke up from his impromptu swan dive.  It was still a shock to tell his mind to open his eyes and find that there was nothing there to open, but he was quickly growing accustomed to the shock.  He was growing practiced at shoving the horror and the panic down to where they couldn’t reach him.  Each time he shoved harder and deeper, and each time it became easier to ignore the faint echoes of distress the action caused.  He wanted to scream, to rant, to rave – but all these things meant that he would be out of control, and control meant everything.  It meant the difference between the triumph of your enemies and your not so total defeat.  Sands didn’t like losing.

   He lay without moving a muscle, trying to piece together where he was.  Whatever he was laying on was hard and criss-crossed with some kind of grid.  A quick twitch of his fingers showed him that he was lying on a tile floor.  What do I remember last?  The image of a drill came to mind, but he pushed that away.  Pain, a child screaming.  I was looking for my gun . . . then I heard that woman singing some kind of nonsense . . . I went to see what it was . . . Latin.  She was singing in Latin . . . and then . . . and then . . . .  Despite his best effort, Sands was unable to remember anything beyond that.  Disgusted with what that meant, he decided that he was still in the hallway where he must have collapsed.  So, where’s everyone else?

   The house was almost completely silent.  He could hear rafters expanding in the heat, heard what he thought was the whimpering of child, but it was coming from another room.  Then off to his side, he heard a nearly inaudible sigh.  Siesta.  The word popped into his mind.  He wondered if the entire house was indeed asleep.  Wait.  Wait for more sound.  Seconds later, he heard a quiet voice reciting in a murmur, “Because I could not stop for Death/He kindly stopped for me;/The carriage held but just ourselves/And Immortality./We slowly dro–”

   Crap, she’s closer than I expected her to be.  “Why is it that every time I wake up you’re prattering on about Death?”  He really was beginning to wonder if he had been shut up with a madwoman for a keeper.  Perhaps the rest of the cartel was standing behind glass partitions laughing at him.

   “I thought I had already told you that the subject was something of a hobby for me.  In a literary context.”  Tess could feel her heart racing with surprise.  It was nearly impossible to tell when this man was awake or asleep.  “Besides, there’s been so much written on the subject for me to read and remember, and there hasn’t exactly been an abundance of conscious people for me to talk to recently.”  She stood up, her bare feet making soft slapping sounds against the tiles of the hallway floor.  “We should get you back into bed.  I would have done it sooner, but I’m afraid that I couldn’t manage it without your help.”

   He winced as felt her hands trying to get him to roll over.  He finally did it himself, letting out a muffled groan as he did so.  “Did that hurt a lot or just a little?”

   What kind of question is that?  Of course it hurt.  “If I said ‘hell yes,’ would you be able to translate that into some kind of measurement?”

   “I’d say that it was probably safe to give you some painkillers.”

   “No.  I’ve been out of it for long enough.”

   “I could give you enough to take the edge off and leave your mind still mostly aware of what was going on around you.”  As she spoke she touched his shoulder, the feel of her skin against his a reminder that he had been wandering around in his boxers.  “Com’on, the next step is to sit up, and from there we can hopefully get you to your feet.”

   Sitting up was more of a chore than it should have been.  Despite the fact that he couldn’t see, somehow he knew that the darkness he now lived in got darker as the blood rushed from his head.  “Hmm . . . looks like you’re going to need that other transfusion.”  He heard this through the fog currently hazing his mind.

   “What do you mean, I need another transfusion?”  He hated having to repeat everything this woman said, but so often she managed to lose him with her thought process, as if he were only getting half of an important telephone conversation.

   “I gave you a blood transfusion last night, after you . . . fell asleep.”  How cute.  She’s trying to be tactful.

   “What kind of half-assed plan was that?  What makes you think I want some untested, disease carrying, peon blood running through my body?”

   “It may surprise you to know that there are medical protocols followed for the donation of blood even in Mexico, señor.  It may surprise you even more to find out that I didn’t drag some disease ridden transient off the street to draw blood from.  I happen to be able to guarantee that the blood you got last night was not only chosen because it wouldn’t interact badly with your blood-type, but because I could personally guarantee that it was free of any microbes that would make you unduly sick.”  She took his arm in a grip that was only slightly less gentle than it had been earlier.  “Upsy-daisy.”

   “You’re out of your fucking mind, lady,” Sands informed her as he struggled to his feet.  Once again he found his arm wrapped around a surprisingly strong pair of shoulders.

   “I am but mad north-northwest.”  This quote seemed to quiet him for a bit, but that could have been the walk back to her bedroom.

Tess’ side was aching by the time she managed to get ‘Giovanni’ back into bed.  As she watched him settle in, she murmured, “You know, I don’t think ‘Giovanni’ suits you all that well.  I mean, yeah, you’re cute enough to pull it off, but that’s the problem.”  She sighed, “You’re more than cute.  You’re really more dangerous than cute.”  Suddenly her eyes widened.  “Did I just say that aloud?”

   “Oh yeah.”  Sands could almost feel her blushing.  It amused him to no end, or at least he told himself it did.  It was better than trying to bring up a nonchalant way of asking if insanity ran in her family.  “What would you name me then?  Taking account for my apparently indescribable bad boy appeal, of course.”

   Crap.  There was no way to get out of it.  Tess really needed to learn when to keep her mouth shut.  Why couldn’t she learn that every time she though he wasn’t paying her any attention, he was.  Yeah, talking out loud is a bad habit when there’s other people around, Teresa.  You should try to stop doing that.

   Oh yes, otherwise they may think you’re insane or something.

   “Niña?”

   “Oh, sorry.”  Please let me off the hook.  “Umm, are you sure you want to hear more of my rather senseless ramblings?  I really don’t think that they’re all that entertaining –”

   “No, by all means.  What could be more entertaining for a blind man than listening to such a revealing voice?”

   That was a double edged compliment if ever I heard one.  “Well, I was thinking that ‘Tirado’ might suit you better.  It means – ”

   “Marksman or sharp-shooter.  I know.  I speak the language, if that’s what you want to call what most of the people around here speak.”

   “Well, I wouldn’t say that most Americans speak English.”

   “And what do you know of Americans, niña?  For that matter, where did you get the blood you were ever so merrily pumping into me?”

   He’s fishing for information.  I think.  It could just be that he’s bored, or trying to find something to keep his mind off the pain.  Would it really be all that bad to humor him?  I mean, as long as he doesn’t find out who my closest relatives are . . . were.  “Umm . . . the blood.  Right.  Well, I got it from an American who happened to be in the area.”

   “Right, another American just happened to be walking by at just the right time to let you poke them full of holes and bleed off a pint of blood.”  Looks like you are a quart dry, my friend.  There were times that being a smart ass really came back to bite him in the butt.

   “No . . . .”  Either she could clam up or she could stop being wishy-washy, but she needed to decide and stop talking like a mindless freak of nature.  “I gave you the blood.”

   “Niña, for someone who claims to tell the truth, you sure take a lot of detours getting there.  If you gave me the blood, then how did you get it from an American?”

   “America may not recognize people who have dual citizenship, but Mexico does.  And so does Canada for that matter.  I’m an American citizen because my mother was an American.  My father is . . . was . . . Mexican.”

Well, that would certainly explain why she speaks English so well.  While Sands was surprised by this news, he wasn’t shocked.  When she spoke English, some of her words had a distinct American accent to them instead of a Spanish one, or the more cultured European one that would have been taught by tutors in upper-class Spanish homes.  “So what, you spent the school year in America and spent the summer in Mexico?  Or was it the other way around?  Or did your parents simply throw you back and forth without warning?”

   The last situation would have been the most accurate had her father not felt the need to keep all those around him under this thumb.  He certainly hadn’t cared for her, and had he not found a need, a role for her to fill, she certainly would have been thrown out.  But that was none of this man’s concern, and he wouldn’t feel sympathy for her if he did know.  “I didn’t go to America until I was seventeen, and that was only to go to university.  Before that I lived in my father’s house.”  Not his home – home implies family.  Family implies some sort of caring for one another.  I lived in a wolf pack, and I was the one they chose to pick on.  A virtual slave, being raised to be a subservient nonentity to my sister.  “But anyway, my shots are all up-to-date.  The ones required by the US government and the Mexican government.  And that’s all you should need to know.”

   Sands heard the sound of a stool or chair being dragged across the floor to a position near the bed.  He listened as his hostess took a seat, a knee or some odd joint popping.  “Now, if I have laid any and all objections to rest, can I take a look at those stitches I spent so much time putting in last night?”

   “Smart ass.”

   “Takes one to know one.”  There was a clink of metal against a hard surface.  “I’m going to cut the gauze off, so don’t get jumpy on me.  These may be medical scissors, but there’s still the risk that I could cut you, and I don’t want to run it.  I think we’ve both dealt with enough blood for the time being.”

   Sands tried to keep still as Tess sliced away the bandages, but the feeling of cool metal against his skin made him tense.  It was too much like a medical procedure for him to be able to actually relax.  The blasted woman noticed and actually tried to comfort him.  “It’s okay.”

   That irritated him beyond explanation for some reason.  He wasn’t a gun-shy dog that needed a steadying hand to keep from bolting or a high stung thoroughbred that needed a firm hand on the rein.  “Of course everything is ‘okay.’  I have three extra holes in my appendages and a madman left two gaping vacancies in my face.  Yeah, everything is just peachy-keen.  And if you believe that, then you can kiss my scrawny American a– ”

   -Ring-  The sound of a ringing cell phone cut him off before he could get suitably crude.  Both adults froze – Tess wondering whose phone it was and where it was, and Sands silently cursing Ramirez for throwing the phone back to him.  Damn interagency cooperation.

-Ring-  Tess wondered if she had managed to overlook a phone in ‘Giovanni’s’ belongings.  Her cell phone never played a basic ringtone.  She had too much time on her hands at times to allow that.  She froze when she saw her patient do the same.  Either he was still incredibly jumpy (which was entirely understandable), or he had some idea of who was calling.

   She got up.  “Don’t answer that.”  Tess ignored the directive, much to the irritation of the man on the bed she was sure.

   -Ring-  Where is it?  She was sure it was in the room, but she couldn’t seem to locate it.  Not that the room was messy – Tess kept things almost compulsively neat.  Mess gave madness a foothold.  But while she could hear the ringing of the phone, she couldn’t seem to see it anywhere.  -Ring-  Under the bed.  It must have gotten caught in the American’s many belts and holsters, and when she had put them on the floor the night before, it must have slid under it.  -Ring-  Tess got down on her hands and knees. 

   “What are you doing?”  She would have responded with a rather snarky comeback if she hadn’t felt some sympathy for this man who had been on the wrong end of the Barillos’ wrath.

   “I’m getting the phone.”  She stuck her head under the bed.  There it was, sitting like a legless scarab beetle halfway between her and the wall.  Lowering herself to her belly, she reached out and grabbed it.

   -Ring-  The display was lit up, a number flashing slowly on it.  It was a stateside number, she knew that much, but she didn’t recognize the area code.  Vaguely she thought that it was from somewhere on the East coast.  Not that that mattered.  What mattered was that someone was clearly trying to get a hold of her patient, and he (though he might deny it) was distinctly nervous about that.

   -Ri-  She pressed the receive button.  Speaking in Spanish she said in a voice that was a cross between cautiousness and fear, //Hello?\\

   “Who is this?” demanded a man’s voice.  “Who’s using this line?  This is an official line, and anyone who uses it without permission will be subjected to the penalties laid out by the United States government.  Where’s the agent this phone belongs to?”

   //I don’t speak English, sir.  I am sorry.  Please repeat that in Spanish?\\  Tess heard cursing coming from the man.  He clearly didn’t speak Spanish, and it sounded as if he didn’t have anyone nearby who did.

   Idiot.  In a nearly hysterical voice she started spouting nonsense, rambling drivel as fast as she could, trying to sound as if she were afraid for her life.  Or paranoid.  Or mad.  //Did you know that the pink crayons gallop on icebergs in front of fancy garages?  And the raining sun falls down on arrogant know-it-alls who can’t speak the native language, which is why I can get away with saying nonsense like this.  Only seven different types of fool would wear their pants backwards and speak in a foreign tongue to stupid Mexican señoritas.  Or perhaps people who get off from that sort of thing, but that is just sick in the same way that an anteater picking it’s nose is sick.\\

   “Hold on, señora.  Calm down.”  There was a muffled conversation before a new voice came on asking, //Señora, what’s wrong?  Where are you?  We’d like to send someone to help you.\\  Oh crap.  I have to start making sense.  //Señora?  Are you still there?\\

   Thinking fast, Tess let out a small despairing shriek.  //The sun!  The sun!  It burns my face!  And the man!  Black Death with no eyes!  Where are they?  My husband, my children?!  Dead.  Lost.  Taken from me.\\  She stopped for dramatic effect.  //What?  No!\\  The person on the phone was trying to get her to talk the him, but she ignored that.  //No!  Leave me alone!  NO!\\  She let out a strangled sound, then cut it short.  Crawling out from under the bed, she placed the phone on the wooden floor and grabbed the stool she had been sitting on.  Turning it so the seat would contact solidly with the floor, she brought it down on the phone, smashing it and terminating the connection.  With a sense of satisfaction she had not had in some time, she raised the stool so she could survey the damage.

   “Amusing ourselves were we?”  Turning to look at the room’s other occupant who she had momentarily forgot, she blushed, embarrassed to be caught letting some of her madness out.  “You almost had me believing you were crazy.  Perhaps you should have gone into radio theater instead of medicine.  You certainly aren’t doing much to make me feel any better.”

   “It’s not my fault that real life insists upon intruding on my schedule.”  Picking up the stool, she brushed electronic bits and plastic crumbs off the seat .  Bringing it back over to the bed, she set it on the floor and sat back down, acting as if nothing had just happened.  “Besides, you have to admit that it was fairly entertaining, more so than me reciting poems about death.”  Picking up the scissors again, she resumed taking the wrappings off the flesh she had labored over the previous night.

Sands was mentally kicking himself for not getting rid of that phone when he had had the chance.  In a sudden reversal of his luck in finding dependable people, this woman seemed to genuinely want to help him.  But it was a slim piece of luck at best, and who knew how long it would last.  I thought that Cucuy, Ajedrez, and ‘El’ were dependable too.  Cucuy left me for more money, Ajedrez was lying the whole time, and the guitar player . . . I really don’t know if he managed to complete his mission or not.  Probably not.  Probably got all loyal and angst ridden at the last moment.  He didn’t know though.  He knew nothing.  Lack of information led to failure, and failure was not tolerated.

   And this girl who says she wants to help you.  What about her?  She seems to be rather mysterious.  What has she told you beyond her name?  If that’s even her name.  Nothing, no news of what happened yesterday, no news of what happened today, nothing.  Sure you may get a tidbit here and there; her name is ‘Tess,’ she’s a bastard with American citizenship, she attended medical school in America, and she seems to know what drugs the cartel prefers to use.  How does she know that?  It doesn’t seem like information they would randomly or freely hand out.  A sudden flare of pain stopped the voice in his head.  Pity – he was starting to enjoy its chatter.

   “I thought you were checking up on the state of your blue ribbon stitches, not tearing them out with your bare hands.  I’ve had enough experience to know that the customary procedure is to use scissors, not pliers.”

   So much for being gentle, she thought.  “This one has broken open again, señor.  Two of the three stitches have come loose and the third is about to.  The dried blood from the wound is making the fibers of the bandages stick unnecessarily.  I’m doing my best to be careful, but the truth is, I wouldn’t need to be careful had you resisted the urge to go exploring.”

   “What can I say?  The sound of your siren-like singing drove me to measures that I normally wouldn’t have taken.  Surely no man chooses to commit suicide in such an inane and painfully drawn out manner unless he’s otherwise compelled to.”

   The mockery she heard in his voice pricked her temper.  Under normal circumstances she could have easily ignored him, but at the moment she was faced with caring for four children and a tetchy stranger, she had gotten little sleep the previous night and she was tired from donating a pint of blood to the man before her who was doing his best to imitate a sieve, plus her dopamine suppressant was fraying her control over even simple emotions.  She had sat and listened to many insults in her lifetime that had been more hurtful, but this one was the card that caused her frail emotional balance to collapse.  Under her breath she muttered, “At least Odysseus was able to blind his monster instead of things happening the other way around.”

   Bitch.  “You know, they say that when a person loses one sense their others become more honed to make up for it.”  The hands on his thigh froze.  “In other words, niña, I heard that.”

   A wave of guilt wiped out Tess’ anger.  This man had been through a lot in a short amount of time.  She should understand that and keep her temper in check, or at least her tongue.  He had every right to be angry and bitter – just as she was the last rightful target for those feelings.  “I’m sorry.  That was cruel.”

   Sands was going to make some kind of snide remark when he was interrupted by an unfamiliar voice.  “Señora Tessa?”

Tess gave a short prayer of thanks as she turned from her patient to the boy standing uncertainly in the doorway to the bedroom.  She pretended not to notice as Sands turned his face in the same direction, although her voice was screaming at her for being an unfeeling bitch, a worthless doctor, and a bastard with the I.Q. of 30 or so for not explaining what had happened since the man had awoken that morning.  Shut up.  “Yes, René?”  Focusing on the boy and what he had to say would drown out the voice.  “What is it?”

   “Lena woke up.  I think she’s hungry.”

   “Thank you, René.  I’ll make sure that I go check on her as soon as I’m done here.”

   “I don’t think you need to do that.”  Tess was about to ask what he meant, when she saw a small head capped in flyaway dark hair appear around the corner.  Little Lena seemed to have mastered the art of crawling sometime in her short life.

   “Well.  She’s determined, isn’t she?”  The boy nodded.  Not sure of what else she needed to say, Tess turned back to her patient, slowly pulling more of the bandage off.

   “Who’s that?”  Looking over her shoulder she saw that the young boy had gathered the courage in walk farther into the room, braving the company of a strange man.  “Why are his eyes covered?”

   It was an innocent question, one asked simply to gain information, not to cause hurt or to show horrified fascination.  But when she saw her patient freeze, Tess was afraid of how he would react to the boy, of how he would answer that question.  He’d undoubtedly answer in English, but anger and aggression could still be transmitted, and that was something the boy didn’t deserve.  She did, but not a child who had unwittingly stumbled into the midst of this mess.  Before the man could say anything she said, “This is –”

   “Giovanni Tirado.”  Tess looked at him in surprise.  She hadn’t thought he had taken her seriously when she had mentioned the name.  He probably wasn’t.

   “Why do you have bandages around your eyes, Señor Tirado?”

   “They got hurt.”  The answer was short and curt, as if admitting such a thing out loud pained him.  And since it was in English the boy didn’t understand it.

   “What did he say, señora?”  When Sands didn’t offer to do the job himself, Tess translated slowly, hoping she wasn’t starting something that she would come to regret.  Once he understood Sands’ answer, René asked another question.  “Did you come to señora Tessa so she could help you too?  My brother Marcos said that’s why we had to come here, so she could help us.”

   “No, I came here because I was looking for my own personal angel of death.”

   Tess was not going to translate that, so she merely said, “Yes, I brought señor Tirado here so I could help him.  Why don’t you go see if you can find a banana for me so I can give Lena something to eat?”  The girl was currently trying to put on one of Tessa’s shirts, but was having a hard time finding a hole to put her head in.

   The boy left on his mission, and Tess turned back to hers.  As she placed a hand on Sands’ wounded leg again, she nearly jumped in surprise as the man grabbed her wrist in a tight grip.  Slowly he started to increase the pressure until she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out.  “What are you doing, señor?  Are you loco?  Let me go.”  All she got for her pains was a sharp twist to her wrist.  If he didn’t stop soon he was going to break something.

   In a low conversational tone he said, “Let’s get one thing straight, niña.  I want some answers from you.  Mainly to the questions of what the hell happened yesterday, just how many people are in this house, and how did they come to be here, and just what are you trying to do?”  Bringing his free hand up to his chin he tapped it, as if trying to remember something.  “Oh yes, and how the hell do you know so much about the cartel and Barillo and his pet medic?  And how is it that you just happened to be in this miserable excuse for civilization just in time for yesterday’s slaughter?”

   “Señor, please, if you’ll just let me finish–” the hand imprisoning her wrist tightened yet again, and this time Tess swore she could feel the bones of her arm bending in towards each other.  “Please, I will answer your questions, but I need to replace those stitches if we’re to keep as much of your blood in you as possible.”

   “You’re stalling for time and I am not a patient man.”

   “No, I’m not.  I swear.”  The pressure rose another fraction; Sands’ arm was trembling from the prolonged force he was exerting.  Tess could practically hear her bones creak – any moment they were going to snap.  “Please, you’re hurting me.”

Go to: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

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