The Great Below

Freedom

Nick drove in a frenzy.

Octavia had more important things to think about – namely, Alex's body curled next to her in the backseat, his head against her lap – but at each turn the car swung wide and the wheels spun helplessly against the wet snow. It had come down in droves while they were inside. "Please," she said.

"I'm going, I'm going," Nick hollered. They slid again, straining against their seat belts.

The bulk of the damage was done to Alex's abdomen. She didn't know what it meant but he hadn't spoken when they'd lifted him to the car and his expression was of constant, unbearable pain.

She hadn't gotten the last word with Victor. Not really. She and Nick had been working out a way to carry Alex to the car when she'd stepped in his growing puddle of his blood, slid and cursed. His hands had reached for her like always, wanting. He tried touching the ring that hung from his neck, the one that belonged to his mother. Next to it, he had added her engagement ring, which glimmered under the stage lights.

Octavia had been dizzy with anger. "I don't want it. Don't you understand?" The words had come out hard and wobbly and she could barely see him past the dawning realization that Alex had just gotten the beating she had always feared for herself. But Victor had stopped moving and he probably hadn't heard her. His eyes were no longer seeing and the finger that had earnestly pointed to his mother's ring curled lazily into his palm.

Alex was trying to pull his hand up to his face. It brushed hers, cupped against his shoulder for support. Octavia sensed he was trying to take her hand, so she lay it gently in his. He put a kiss in her palm. Cupped it against his cheek, his bruised eye and temple. Trying to relax into it despite the pain.

"It's okay," she whispered. "You saved us."

His breathing slowed, glowing warm against her fingers. He went limp. Octavia said his name once, twice, heart clanging in her chest. Nick stared from the rear view mirror.

"I think he passed out," she told him.

#

They didn't talk until the hospital. Octavia had been gripped by the illogical fear that talking would somehow worsen Alex's condition, or cause her to miss that sacred moment when his breathing might stop. The streetlamps came and went in flashes of orange, alternately bathing them in light, then plunging them back into darkness. When the car finally stopped, they were in the parking lot of an emergency room. Nick had chosen as remote a corner as he could find.

"Why don't you pull us up front?" Octavia asked. "They can bring him straight in."

"Don't question me right now." Nick slammed his door, leaving the keys in the ignition. He came around and moved Alex as gently as he could, sliding him feet-first out into the snow to carry him.

As soon as Octavia could, she unbuckled her seat belt and opened her door.

"Stay here," Nick barked.

"But—"

"Sit down!" The arm braced under Alex's knees shook. "Stay with the car and don't let anyone in." He turned away into the cold, trudging slowly toward the sliding doors of the ER, Alex dangling in his arms.

#

There was time to think. Too much.

Octavia couldn't go in because unlike Alex and Nick, she had been kidnapped. There was a chance that her face might be on a missing person flyer inside the hospital, that Nick could be apprehended by police if he was seen with her. She understood that now.

It didn't make the waiting any easier. She turned the key to watch the dash clock but that only frustrated her, so she sat in the dark watching snowflakes drift on all sides of the car. Octavia wasn't sure how much time had passed when Nick emerged from the glow of the emergency room's sliding doors. She watched his slow gait, head down avoiding the snow, trying desperately to read his body language.

He came to rest against the driver side window, both arms hugging the curve of the car's roof. Octavia jammed the key until the engine came to life then rolled her window down, a cold feeling in her stomach. As it turned out, she'd been waiting nearly an hour. "What happened?" she asked.

"He's alive for now. He's not stable though. Internal bleeding."

Mostly she heard the words he's alive.

"They're doing everything they can but because it's so late, we can't stay here. We'll come back during visiting hours tomorrow. So in..." Nick checked his watch. He scowled, wrestling it off of his arm and chucked it at the ground. It made an unsatisfyingly soft, wet plop into snow.

Octavia couldn't see more than his silhouette standing over the car, moving back and forth in tiny swings. She wanted to interpret the movement without piling on to the already awful time they were having. It was a rhythmic shake that might have signaled laughing or crying. "You have something against watches?" she asked, hoping it sounded lighthearted.

"It fucking stopped," he moaned. The next sound that escaped was a howl of pain. Nick cupped his face in his hands, turning away to leave. Snow arced in the air as his foot connected with a neighboring tire.

Octavia climbed out of the car, tennis shoes sliding, but he was difficult to catch up with. She grasped him from behind, dragging him backward into an unwilling hug.

He stopped, allowed this weird moment of contact. Then he pulled out of it, breaking Octavia's hold to turn and hug her properly. His grip was ferocious and where one part of his face touched hers, he was wet and her hair stuck to him. "Why?" he cried.

"Is this about your watch?" 

A wet, choked laugh. "Yes. Obviously."

"Because there's a clock in the car." Octavia brushed a comforting hand along his back. They stood like that in the cotton-stuffed silence of the parking lot for a while, until Nick's breathing leveled out and he was calm again.

"We can come back at eight," he told her. "We need a place to crash for a few hours."

#

The apartment building was right where Octavia had left it, a fat middle finger on the night horizon. Nick parked in Victor's old spot and they trudged around front. Getting in the door to apartment 302 was easier than Octavia had expected. The knob turned effortlessly. "You didn't lock it behind you?" she asked Nick.

"We were in a hurry. On the bright side, your neighbors are trustworthy."

The inside was frozen in time on a critical night from mid-October, at the moment when Alex decided to bring her along in their windowless van. Victor's things were scattered on the floor in heaps. From the moonlight cast by the patio door, she could see a long-dried puddle staining the linoleum in front of the refrigerator.

"At least we don't have to sleep in the car," Nick said. He slid out of his jacket and yanked his shirtsleeves from his pants. "I know we're not going to sleep, though."

Octavia sighed.

"Do you have a preferred place to lie while staring uselessly at the ceiling? Where you like to ponder the crushing possibility of fate?"

She smiled weakly, noticing Victor's pull-out sofa. It was smaller than she'd remembered it. Even in the half-dark, Octavia recognized a row of scuffs on the front leg. "I'll take the back bedroom," she said.