Chapter 3
"I've got her," an unknown male voice said nearby. "Let me do my job."
Frankie could hear sirens and gun shots, but they came from far away and couldn't distract her from the pressure on her chest. She was shifted, making the pain worse and she gasped in protest.
"Easy," came the voice again. "I have to move you to get you untangled from this mess."
"Is she ok?" an anxious voice called from a short distance away. It was oddly familiar, but she couldn't quite place it.
"Yes, Sir. Just let the other's through with the gurney. We'll have her out of her in a moment."
She was jostled again and tried to open her eyes, but they didn't want to obey the commands from her brain. She couldn't blame them. She really didn't want to see the aftermath of the wreck.
Suddenly, the weight across her chest was gone and she could breath again. She heaved a breath, but choked on the sharp stab of pain that followed the movement. Spots of light appeared behind her closed eyelids and the ringing in her ears intensified. Then the world was mercifully shrouded in darkness and everything faded away.
Rory skipped ahead of her on the sidewalk, turning to talk to her excitedly. His teenage exuberance was contagious and Frankie grinned back at him.
"So, Mr. Carson says that if I make high enough on my SAT, I can qualify for scholarship. He wants me to take calculus and physics my first year. But I think it sucks to have to take classes all over again that I took in high school."
She let him ramble on, smiling. He was so excited about the idea of going to college. Three years ago, when she first met him, he wasn't even going to school. It was amazing what a little love and a stable environment, poor as it was, could do. She had given him what no one had given her: a chance. Never mind that she had worked three jobs to keep a roof over their heads and food on their table, just so he could focus on school. Every exhausting day had been worth seeing him so happy.
"Did you hear me?" he had stopped in front of her to get her attention.
"Yes, and I was considering my answer," she told him. "But my opinion isn't the one that matters. What do you want to do?"
"Well, being an architect sounds cool and all, but I've been reading about it, and it is a very tight job market with no guarantee of success. Structural engineering is really the way to go. Engineers are always in demand."
"What would you do as a structural engineer?"
He chewed his lip and looked down, "you'll laugh."
Frankie shrugged. "Maybe, but you'll never know if you don't tell me."
"I want to build low cost housing that people like you and Mrs. Olson can afford. Buildings that don't look rundown and old. A place you would be proud to call your home." The admission rushed out of him.
She grinned at him, "that is a dream to be proud of, Rory," and wrapped an arm around him for a quick hug.
He hugged her back, but didn't let go. Instead his arms around her tightened until her ribs hurt.
"Rory, let go! You're hurting me," she pushed at him, but the body that her hands met was bony and didn't feel like her young ward. She looked at his face and gasped. A grotesque skeletal visage leered back at her, the bloodshot eyes deep in their lidless sockets.
Frankie pushed desperately at the nightmare, but strong hands gripped her arms and held them down, making her fight against them even harder. Panic rose in her when she could not free herself.
"Miss!" an insistent voice demanded. "You have to lie still or you will injure yourself further!"
Frankie quit thrashing and drew a deep breath, struggling to control her irrational fear. Opening her eyes, she looked around, seeking something to focus on. She was laying in a soft bed in an immaculate room adorned in soft, soothing shades of cream and gray. A young man, probably in his mid twenties, leaned over her with a concerned expression in his brown eyes.
She released her grasp of his white scrubs and lay back. "Where am I?"
The man stepped a respectful distance back from her bed. "You're at the Westmoreland Care Facility."
She had figured she would be at one of the city hospitals like Mercy, but this was way to posh to be one of those. She had never heard of Westmoreland, but she had only been in Chicago for six months.
"Westmoreland?" She attempted to moisten her dry lips, but her tongue was just as dry.
"Yes. We're a private facility that provides discrete care for our clients," he explained as he held a cup with a straw to her mouth for her to take a sip. "I'm Roger, your private nurse's aide for the day."
"How did I get here?"
"In an ambulance," he said as she were a child.
"No," she tried again, "why am I here?"
"You were in pretty bad shape when you arrived. You had a concussion and five broken ribs. One of them punctured you right lung and it had collapsed. They had to removed several pieces of shrapnel. You had lost a lot of blood. You have a total of 102 stitches from them along with the lacerations on your hands and right foot." He paused and regarded her gravely. "You are lucky to be alive. That crash was bad."
"What about the other two?"
"The other two?" His brow furrowed with confusion. "Oh, you mean the Avengers you were with? I thought you were asking about two other civilians, not them. They are fine, of course," he said with a finality that suggested thinking otherwise was lunacy.
"Of course," she echoed. "Do they know I'm here?"
He shook his head, "not unless you inform them yourself."
She felt like she was going around in circles and it was starting to irritate the shit out of her.
"Who is responsible for my being here?" she asked carefully. "I'm sure the ambulance didn't just pick me up on the streets of downtown and bring me here on it's own. Plus, I can't afford this," she waved her hand to indicate the room.
Roger shrugged, "I'm sorry Miss, I don't have that information. But, if you are admitted, be assured that arrangements for the bill have already been made."
"By who?"
Again he shrugged, "I'm sorry, I don't have that information."
"Who does?"
"The administrator."
"Well, I would like to see this person."
"I'm..."
"If you say 'I'm sorry' one more time, I'm going to get out of this bed and beat you to death that IV stand!"
Roger looked at her doubtfully and she returned his stare, daring him to say it again.
"It's Sunday," he finally told her. "The administrator will not be back in until tomorrow."
"Sunday? I've been out for over a day?"
"No, Miss, you've been out for over a week. You arrived last Saturday."
"A week?" she repeated weakly.
Roger nodded.
Frankie pushed the blanket back that covered her and tried to sit up. "Where are my clothes?
Roger frowned and stepped forward to push her back down, "you can't leave. The doctor hasn't released you yet."
"Then get the doctor in here!"
Roger looked down and cast a furtive glance towards the corner of the room, "I'll let him know you're awake, if you promise to stay in bed."
"Fine," Frankie petulantly agreed and watched him warily as he left the room. Once he closed he door behind him, she sighed and closed her eyes intending to gather her thoughts.
When she opened her eyes again, Roger and the nurse, whose name she still didn't know, were standing at the foot of her bed in quiet conversation that ceased when they noticed she was awake.
"Good!" the nurse announced briskly, smoothing down the front of her scrubs. "Let's get your vitals before Dr. Gibbs arrives."
For the next few minutes, Frankie was poked and prodded as the nurse went about her task. The sour faced woman didn't offer her name or wear a name tag, so Frankie decided to just call her Nurse Ratchet. She had just finished jotting down the results on a clipboard that hung at the foot of her bed, when the door opened and a tall, lean man with a receding hairline strode in.
"How's our patient this morning?" he asked in a cheerful tone.
The nurse silently handed him the clipboard, which he barely looked at before passing it back to her. He walked over to Frankie's side and looked down at her. Even though he was smiling, it didn't reach his hard gray eyes. Frankie struggled not to squirm under their scrutiny.
"How are you feeling?"
"A little sore, but I'm ready to get out of this bed and go home," she replied, giving him a weak smile back.
"Hmm, let's check your stitches first."
With that, Frankie had to submit to an examination of all her wounds. Dr Gibbs' hands were strangely warm and gentle against her skin, completely at odds with the icy stare he had subjected her too. Did he linger too long in some places or was he just being thorough? Either way, his touch creeped her out and made her feel violated. She almost breathed a sigh of relief when it was over.
"I think you need to stay in bed for at least another day, to make sure all the stitches hold. We wouldn't want you to pull any out and risk getting an infection, now would we?" He said consolingly. Frankie noticed his eyes darting over to the same corner that Roger had glanced at earlier. What the hell were they looking at? There was nothing in that corner but an exceedingly bland painting and a small table holding a plant. What game were they playing?
Dr. Gibbs cleared his throat, bringing her attention back to him..
Frankie gritted her teeth, "no, that would be bad."
"Good," he patted her on the thigh. This time his had did linger a bit too long and a bit too high. "I will check on you again tomorrow and see how you are progressing. In the meantime, I think it would be okay for you go back on solid food. Just nothing too spicy or greasy." He gave her another of his smiles that didn't reach his eyes and left the room with the nurse in tow.
Roger turned to her with a real smile, "fantastic! Let me get you a menu and you can pick your meals for the day."
Once he had left the room, Frankie allowed her anger to surface. She let out a small scream of frustration and beat the bed with her fists. She kicked the end of the bed and immediately regretted it when pain flared from her foot, which pissed her off even more. She wallowed in anger for a few minutes, considering all kinds of nasty ways to take it out on Dr. Creepy, Nurse Ratchet, and Roger. When she ran out of options for them, she fantasized about stabbing Hawkeye again or pushing him out of the jet. He was the reason for all of this mess to begin with. If it wasn't for him, she would still be in New York and Rory would be alive and studying engineering.
Fuck! How she hated that man!
After a surprisingly tasty and refreshing lunch, Frankie asked Roger for something to read to pass the time. He went to a nearby desk and returned with a tablet.
"It is loaded with several apps already, but you can customize it as you wish. An account has already been set up for you. Your user name and password are on that post it note."
After he left, she opened up the tablet and searched for the Westmoreland Care Facility. She was shocked to discover that there was nothing about it on the web. Her searches for Westmoreland and facility resulting in multitudes of hits, most from Westmoreland, Tennessee. She doubted she was in Tennessee. At least she hoped she wasn't in Tennessee.
Something wasn't right about this whole setup. She was a nobody and she knew nobody important enough to be able to afford this kind of place. Roger seemed like a nice guy, but he was too nice. Nobody was that nice without a good reason. After years of living on the streets she knew better than to trust anyone offering kindness. Either they wanted something from you, were about to do something to you, or someone else was paying to do something to you.
After several fruitless minutes, she sighed and changed her search. This time she was more successful. There were a multitude of news articles about the crash of the Quinn jet in downtown Chicago.
AVENGERS UNDER ASSAULT!
Early Saturday morning a Quinn Jet carrying an unnamed Avenger, came under fire in downtown Chicago. Numerous shots were fired using an energy weapon similar to those used by aliens during the invasion of New York over a decade ago. The jet sustained major damage and crashed into the landmark Tribune Tower, doing millions of dollars in damages, before plummeting to the ground. Traffic through downtown was diverted for the remainder of the day as cleanup crews from the city and private contractors. The mayor of Chicago denounced the destruction, claiming the Avengers had not been cleared to operate inside city limits. The owner of the damaged building is considering suing for damages. It is unknown at this time who perpetrated the attack or how they knew the infamous heroes were in the city. A spokesperson for the organization has expressed their sincere regret over the incident and promises reparations for the damages.
There was no mention about her in any of the articles or about Hawkeye falling out of the jet. Frankie searched for more recent news on the superheroes, but apparently they had a quiet week. Did she get lucky? Did he die in the fall? It would be better than he deserved. Hopefully, the rest of the Avengers wouldn't try to blame his death on her.
Suddenly, being isolated in a facility that didn't exist on the internet didn't seem so bad.
The day wore by slowly. Frankie read a few things on the tablet and halfheartedly watched a little television on the monstrously large screen mounted across from her bed. But Frankie was not used to being idle. She had spent her entire life hustling constantly and the inactivity being forced upon her now was not sitting well. It was starting to make her paranoid. She felt like she was being watched constantly and it made her skin crawl.
When Roger returned later with her dinner, she immediately tried to sit up, only to have him rush over and push her gently back down. It was pitiful how little effort he had to put into it.
"When can I get up? I'm going nuts just laying here," she huffed.
"The doc will be in to see you in the morning and make the decision. Until then, you need to stay still and not pull out any of your stitches." What had been a soothing voice earlier, sounded off to her now. His eyes darted sideways towards the right side of the room, then immediately back to her. It took all of her will power not to look over also.
After he raised her head so she could eat, and laid out her dinner, he excused himself and left quickly. Curiosity burned through her, but she forced herself to eat her soup calmly as if nothing of note had happened. She would look into things later, when the staff was reduced for the night and there were less prying eyes around. Something wasn't right, though, and she wanted to know what she had fallen into this time. Being paranoid was a survival strategy for her that was tried and true.
After an excruciatingly long, boring afternoon, Frankie was finally left alone for the evening. Checking the clock on the wall for the zillionth time, she gave a sigh of relief. It was finally time to move. Throwing back the blanket, she sat up gingerly, expecting pain and was surprised when the movement only caused her discomfort, mostly from being immobile for such a prolong length of time. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and slowly stood up. The room swam for a moment before her equilibrium settled.
Looking around the dim room, she made her way to the mysterious corner that seemed to hold everyone's interest. The table was a compact and made for corners; its surface was almost completely taken up by the silk plant. She pushed the fake foliage aside, but found nothing of interest. Taking the plant off the table, she turned it over and carefully examined every nook and cranny. Still nothing. Huffing with irritation, she returned the table and the plant to their positions.
Next, she looked closely at the painting of sunflowers, her favorite flower. The bright orange of the blooms always made her feel happy. She was surprised to see that it was an actual painting; even in the dim light of the room, she could see the brushstrokes. It was simplistic in nature and somewhat clumsily executed. It reminded her of a child's art that a proud parent would display on the refrigerator. Mixed in with the sleek, modern furniture in the rest of the room, it seemed oddly out of place.
Even odder was the ornate frame that held it. Heavy and gilded, with elaborate swirls and flourishes, it overshadowed the simple painting. Running her fingers over the details, she paused as she noticed a change of texture. The center of one of the swirls was smooth and cool to the touch. Running her thumb over it, it felt like glass instead of painted wood.
Frankie pulled on the painting to lift it off its hanger so she could take it to her bathroom and examine it under the light, but it refused to budge. She couldn't so much as get her pinkie between it and the wall. It was as if it was built into the wall instead of being mounted on it. Frankie had seen enough spy movies to know what that meant: there was a camera behind the painting that someone was using to spy on her with. In fact, they could be watching her right now as she discovered their secret.
"You can't blame a girl for being curious, can you?" she asked the unseen watcher with a lopsided grin, then froze when the door to her room creaked as it was pushed open.
