"Good morning."
Kalinda opens her eyes to Josie, the only one of Alicia's nurses whose name she has managed to learn.
Josie's smiling gently. Kalinda struggles to smile back. Even under more reasonable circumstances she doesn't wake easily, and this morning is anything but reasonable. She wants to be asleep, just a little longer, with her hand on the sweet, smooth flesh of Alicia's right shoulder, Alicia's breath drifting through her hair. Just another moment before she has to put it all together.
"I've got to take her down for a CT scan," Josie says. "There won't be room for you in the machine." She's a very young Latina woman with small, pretty eyes that glow when she smiles. She's almost too young for Kalinda to trust Alicia to her.
"Everything okay?" Kalinda says.
"We hope so. Don't worry." Josie's expression is tender. Kalinda has seen her leaving the building at the end of her shift, early in the morning; she noticed the pin with the pink triangle, "Silencia=Muerte," that adorns Josie's bag among a legion of others.
Kalinda separates herself from Alicia gently, gently, but still Alicia wakes up, her right arm (which had rested on Kalinda's thigh as they slept) patting the mattress as she regains her focus. She looks disoriented, and Kalinda still sees a spattering of pain across her cheeks.
"I'm here," Kalinda says, softly. Alicia stares at her, and Kalinda wonders if that was even a question in Alicia's mind. "You just need to get—"
"The scan, Mrs. Florrick, remember. We talked about it yesterday."
"Right," Alicia says. She looks at Kalinda. "It's good, Kalinda. It means they think I'm well enough for it."
"You could be out of here in a few days, Mrs. Florrick." Josie grins. The idea of Alicia out of the hospital sounds inexplicably terrifying to Kalinda. She turns away, just a little, and feels Alicia looking at her.
"I'll see you later, Kalinda?" Alicia says softly. Her voice is still croaky.
"I have to go to work." Kalinda does her best to smile. "I'll see you tonight, yeah?"
Kalinda isn't sure what to do. She hovers by the chair where her jacket and boots still rest. That feels tremendously uncomfortable, so she sits down to zip her boots on while Josie unplugs Alicia's machines—there are only a couple now—and recruits a physician's assistant from the corridor to help wheel the unwieldy bed out of the room. Kalinda watches them turn, then follows them into the hall after some hesitation.
"Josie?"
"Yes?" It's possible Josie still doesn't know Kalinda's name; Kalinda is pretty sure she's never introduced herself. Josie trots the few steps back towards Kalinda, leaving the physician's assistant, a young white man with freckles and a brownish-blond bowl cut, to steer the bed on his own.
"Her voice has been like that for more than a day. Alicia's." Saying Alicia's name somehow makes Kalinda feel she's violated a sacred trust. "If you could mention that to Dr. Liang, that would be great. If it's strep or something—"
"Sure," says Josie. "I'll let the doctor know." The smile she gives Kalinda is satisfied; Josie is pleased with what she's said, and with whatever conclusion she has come to. Kalinda watches them round the corner, headed towards the elevators. Then she ducks back into Alicia's room to put her jacket on.
/
Midafternoon finds Kalinda in her own office, reviewing the cellphone records of the cheating hotelier represented by Louis Canning.
She's partway through October 2011 when her idiocy hits her like a football to the gut. She leans back in her chair, her lips parted, her breath rushing loudly between her teeth, trying not to push all the documents off the table.
What was she thinking?
She hasn't been thinking, that much is clear. Even if she were the sort of person who could be trusted with Alicia Florrick, she's been manipulative beyond belief. Not her usual manipulations—she's crossed a line, acting out her fantasies (or, to be fair, the first few minutes of her fantasies) on someone more drugged than conscious, a colleague and friend still in the potent grip of violence and trauma. Violence and trauma that come from Kalinda, come with Kalinda. Kalinda is blinded by her own desires, which have led her to nothing but disaster in the last several months.
"You all right?"
"Huh?"
"You look a little … scared," Cary says, edging into her office. "Not the first word that comes to mind when I think of you."
"I'm fine, Cary."
"How's Alicia?"
"What?"
"Did you see her yesterday? After work?"
"Yeah. Better. She's better," Kalinda says.
"I'm glad," Cary says. "I can't believe … that was a little rough for me, honestly. Seeing her last week."
Kalinda has no desire to go through that door. "She might go home on Friday. She's going to have some tests today."
"What are you working on?" Cary says.
"Canning." The case, like most of those that have fallen to Kalinda since yesterday, had been Alicia's. Cary has taken second chair on it now, Julius Cain first.
"Anything good?"
"Not yet."
"I bet Canning misses Alicia."
"Sure."
"Do you think he knows what happened to her?"
"Everyone knows," says Kalinda.
Everyone does know. Which only adds another tier of error to Kalinda's already precarious tower. Too many people pass in and out of Alicia's hospital room to ensure any kind of privacy, and even if she wanted to, Kalinda couldn't ask Alicia to endure another scandal on top of her physical recovery. Kalinda will sleep in her own bed tonight, maybe return to the hospital on Thursday. With carnations, a few trashy magazines.
"I guess," says Cary. "What was going on with you and the tow-truck guy?"
"Nothing."
"Kalinda, stop being an ass," Cary says. Kalinda raises her eyebrows, but Cary doesn't budge or falter. "Did it ever occur to you that it could have been me?"
His eye. Kalinda swallows. Neither of them speaks for a while.
"Yeah. It did."
"And?"
"And you should think about it, Cary." Kalinda isn't sure what else to say, how else to explain this. "There are reasons I don't want people in my life."
Cary shakes his head. "The problem isn't people in your life. The problem is that you won't admit we're in it." He pats the pile of phone records. "Let me know what you find out."
He slides out the glass door, closes it gently behind him.
Kalinda blinks, then turns back to the phone records. They've been trying to track down the mogul's mistress since before Alicia was shot, apparently, but this is the first day of access to the phone records and Kalinda remembers very little about the case. Their client, the ex-wife, wants access to a share of the profits given her role in starting the company, but Canning's client claims the marriage was hardly functional at that point. (It's probably just as well, Kalinda thinks, that Alicia's off this case.) However, comments from their daughter have led Kalinda to suspect that the timeline's a bit off; the lover is the only one who could confirm it.
Kalinda's phone rings. It's an unknown number, but somehow she's confident of who it is. "Hi," she says, unable to keep the tension out of her voice. She wanted some time to think, at least.
"Hi." There's a short pause, as if Alicia needs to breathe. "This is the phone in my room. I'm still not getting a cellphone signal."
Kalinda nods for several seconds before she remembers that Alicia can't see her. "I'm at work," she says.
"I know, Kalinda." Alicia sounds amused, though tired. "What are you working on?"
"The Mercury Hotels case."
"I think the other woman was from Arizona," Alicia says, her voice still scratchy. "If that helps. Who has it?"
"Julius and Cary."
"Tell them to kick Canning in the balls from me."
Kalinda laughs out loud. The sound is unfamiliar; she supposes she hasn't laughed in a while. "This is a new side of you."
"I've learned from the best," says Alicia. "I'll see you tonight?"
Kalinda's throat freezes.
"I thought so," Alicia sighs, the signal distorting her voice just slightly, a mosquito buzz underneath her words. Her exhalation rushes through the phone, as abrasive as sandpaper against Kalinda's ear. "Kalinda, I don't know what to tell you."
Kalinda bites her lip.
"If you want to go home, I understand," says Alicia, slowly, very slowly. "I'm grateful for … But after last night …" Kalinda doesn't even want to look up from the printed phone records, so she can only hope that neither Cary nor anyone else is watching her at the moment; even her face feels far out of her control. "I would like you to be here with me."
The silence on the phone stretches, bare as that horrible waiting room in the ICU.
"Do you want to say anything?"
"No," says Kalinda. Right now, she'd sooner stab herself in the leg with an ice pick.
Again the silence. Then Alicia says, briskly, "I feel safer. When you're here." The words sound as if they've been forced out of her, and given the potency of the drugs she's still on, Kalinda supposes that in a way they have.
Kalinda bites down on her lip again, hard, because it's trembling. When she's ready to open her mouth again, she says, "Yeah."
"Yeah?"
"I'll be there tonight, Alicia."
Alicia exhales a quiet, "Thank you."
"I have a few more hours here," Kalinda says.
"Of course."
In her mind, Kalinda sits next to Will at a bar, more than a year ago.
You want to stop acting and actually feel?
Yes. Ow.
That's what it feels like.
"Alicia?"
"Yes."
"I want to be there," says Kalinda.
Alicia says, "I know," and hangs up the phone.