Trigger Warning.
Reaching for the bobby pins, Meg stopped sharply. She couldn't force her arms up that high; the glass in her shoulders prevented her from making the reach. Any movement on her part caused the shards to dig in, pop out, and slice, slice, slice – it was all a lost cause. Even trying to tilt her head down toward her hands was a monumental effort. Meg's vision blurred and her stomach heaved, but whether that was from the alcohol or the number of times Jackson hit her, she wasn't sure.
'I don't know how to fix this. I can't call Dave. Maybe I can call Dave.' Meg groped across the bathroom counter for her clutch, but exhaled heavily when she realized she had dropped it on the floor outside the bathroom. 'Not an option now.' She braced herself against the counter, and felt her arms begin to quiver from the effort. 'Is Randy even here? He's just going to panic. I'm so fucked. I'm so, so fucked.' Meg looked at herself in the mirror with no small degree of effort; the harsh overhead lighting was painful.
Behind her, Randy thumped on the door. She ignored it.
The edge of Jackson's palmprint was evident in a vertical line across the right half of her face, leaving small splits in her lips and as-yet light bruises over her eye and cheekbone. 'Knew that would be there. Fucking anemia.' What was once a carefully constructed upswept puffed-bun-hairdo-of-sorts was now tilted dramatically; whole locks and plaits fell off the sides. Eyeliner had pooled into mascara which had dried under her bloodshot and puffy eyes. Her lipstick and eyeshadow were smeared at odd angles. Meg reached up to touch the mirror; even though it was a shorter reach than the top of her bun, the pain in the backs of her shoulders caught her again and forced her to stop.
Fingerprint bruises were forming on the sides of her neck and around her arms. Carefully lifting the front of her dress, Meg could see the start of deep purple, knee-shaped imprints on her inner thighs; more bruises were beginning to show on her knees. 'Jackson. Ever the charmer.' Her stomach sent up a warning roll, and she dropped the hem down, letting her head fall forward. Tiny bits of mirror shook loose from her hair and skittered across the counter before tumbling to the floor. 'This will cut Randy. Meg, you did this to yourself. Deal with it. Get a towel down, get the dress off, get your hair down, dig this shit out of your shoulders, and get in the shower.'
It seemed like sound, drunken logic at the time. Even as the room began to glow.
"Meg? Meg, doll, I know you're in there. Are you okay? Open the door. Or at least, tell me you're okay." Randy was trying to keep the tone of his voice in check, but it was becoming a struggle.
"Is this because she went out with Jackson?" Joe whispered. He knew Randy well enough to know that he was teetering on the brink of panic; if Meg had his room key, there had to be a reason.
Randy appeared not to hear him. He was pressed to the door, barely breathing, listening for anything that would tell him what Meg was doing. Joe shrugged and moved around Randy to the trail of items Meg left behind.
Meg carefully toed a large bath towel across the floor and forced her neck to crane enough to look over her shoulder, using the mirror to track the zipper. Taking a deep breath and biting down on a washcloth, she swung her elbow up behind her, reaching for the middle of the back of the dress. The metal tab wasn't within reach of her forearm. 'Of course. Too easy. Now I have to force it.' Willing her shoulder to compress an inch further, she gritted her teeth into the washcloth, snatched the tab of the zipper, and yanked down as hard as she could. The back of the dress peeled away, revealing a set of horizontal-stripe bruises across her middle and lower back. 'Elevator railing. Lovely.' The air in the room felt too hot against her skin as Meg let the dress and washcloth fall away, standing there in her bra and panties, almost fascinated, watching the blood roll down her back, the light sparkling against each shard of embedded glass.
Joe picked up Meg's clutch and keycard, turned on the small lamp on the bedside table, and dumped the contents of the small bag across the bed. Everything was slightly...slick. Her phone, low on battery, was locked. 'Randy wouldn't hear me even if I asked him to guess the code.' A credit card and her ID - 'No, not now. Later. And ask her, not him,' - went into a pile. A small, cracked, empty phial of clear, rose scented oil explained the slickness; two small, square, foil-wrapped caramels, and a pot of neutral lip balm made another pile. He untangled her necklace with the small Saint Julian medallion before carefully piling it on the screen of her phone. The rose oil was everywhere now, and the scent surrounded him. Smiling wistfully, but with no further clue as to why she was in the bathroom and not answering the door, Joe walked back to where she left her clutch.
A piece of glass near the bathroom door grazed Joe's foot, scraping but not cutting the inside of his arch. He startled, then reached down to pick up the pieces of glass along with Meg's shoes. 'Why is my hand...sticky? What's on her shoes?' Joe waked back to the bedside lamp, dropped the shoes on the floor, and rubbed his fingers together.
"Hey, Randy," Joe called quietly, "Uh, you need to come here."
Randy was still talking through the door, getting nothing in response from Meg.
"Randy," Joe tried again, a little louder, more urgent, "Randy, just get the door open. Now. Please."
No motion, just pleading, kiddo, hon, sister, talking about opening the door. Randy was long-gone in his own world, trying to talk Meg out of the bathroom.
Joe's fingers were a coppery red, and the ankle straps of Meg's shoes were sticky with blood. That, plus shards of glass, the broken phial, and the silence from the other side of the door - 'I just got her back, please, please no,' - and Joe quickly passed Randy's level of concern.
He shoved his hand in Randy's face at the door. "Look," he hissed, "Look at my hand. Can you please open the door now? Something. Is. Wrong."
For a split second, Randy didn't seem to understand what he was looking at, and then suddenly, his eyes went wide. "Oh. Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck. And she locked the door. If I just break the door open, and she's on the floor, it can hit her, and then what do we -"
Joe knelt down and ducked to look under the door. "She's standing. On a towel. And...on her dress? Now can we open the door?"
"How? I'm not going to just bust the door down. Neither are you. Someone will get hurt. Unless you have a better idea." Joe knew the tone in Randy's voice. As far as he was concerned, the only person who was going to open the door, short of Jesus, was going to be Meg.
Joe pressed his forehead to the door, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply. Roses. And a sickly, metallic undertone. 'Please, let this work. You made a promise to me, now it's my turn.' In his mind, his plan was perfectly, spontaneously, drunkenly, logical. There wasn't much sober thought going on in Randy's room at that moment, though none of the occupants seemed inclined to point out that particular fact.
Somewhere at the back of Meg's mind, it occurred to her that Randy was talking to her, and someone else was talking to him. 'Great, Meg. Wreck his night. He has company.' The voice was familiar, somehow, but she couldn't place it. Her head ached, yet felt completely detached from the rest of her. 'I don't know what to do.' She went back to watching the glass move in her shoulders, transfixed. The room was getting hotter and hotter against her skin, even though her dress was around her ankles. Her bruises were dark, an angry red-violet that usually took a day or two to fully develop. 'I look crazy. Everything hurts. Maybe I can just bleed to death. Maybe I'm dead now. Everyone says Hell is hot.'
Randy inhaled sharply. "Well? What's your -"
Joe held up a hand to silence Randy for the second time that night, then motioned him towards the floor, indicating he should look under the door. "Meg. Meg, I need you to listen to me now." Joe's voice was quiet, but firm. "A long time ago, you promised you would take care of me. Remember?"
The bathroom was silent and still.
"...And I wasn't good at letting you keep that promise. I made everything complicated. I was wrong. Meg, I need you to listen. Open the door, Meg."
Meg, slowly turning her head from the mirror toward the door, seemed to hear Joe's voice from a tunnel. 'Okay. Not in Hell. Why do you want me now?'
Randy looked up. "She's not moving."
"Meg, please. I need you to listen. I need you to open the door. You promised to take care of me. Now I need to take care of you." Joe's palms had crept up the door, fingertips walking along the surface, willing his hands to be able to press through the door and touch her, to know she was breathing, alive.
Inside the bathroom, she cocked her head. 'Joe. The door. Right. Open it, Meg.' Meg turned, slicing the soles of her feet on the bits of glass embedded in the bath towel and hiding in the folds of her mangled dress. She tried lifting her arm to the door handle, but the glass in her shoulders dug in one more time, harder. She wasn't close enough, couldn't reach that far, and Joe's voice started to rattle around in her head, competing with Jackson's, then Randy's, please, whore, promise, care, need, need, need, and Meg threw herself forward at the door, hands up as far as she could force them, praying she would catch the handle and hold on.
"Shit, shit, shit, she's falling!" Randy looked like he was trying to tunnel under the door, through the tiles, and Joe closed his eyes and prayed she was aiming for the handle. A sharp metallic ping confirmed what he hoped – Meg connected.
"Where did she land?" Joe was still leaning into the door, eyes shut, half-afraid of the answer that could come from Randy.
"She...didn't? Meg, what the fuck? Sit down! What are you doing?" Randy stopped trying to dig through the door and started banging on it instead.
"What is she doing?"
"She's fucking trying to hang on to the door. Meg, sit the fuck down. Joe, I swear to God, I saw her almost hit the floor, and now she's trying to stand up. Meg, stop it and sit down. We can't open the door if you're hanging on it, and if you fall, we're fucked. Sit! Down!"
"Randy...you know she's not going to listen." Joe started to panic. Meg was one problem he couldn't solve; Randy was about to be a second. One crisis was enough, two was beyond what he could handle with that much bourbon in his system. "Go get a drink. Let me see if I can talk her down. Shit, get two drinks, and bring my bourbon in."
Randy fixed a positively evil glare on Joe. "You've fucking lost it if you think I'm walking away from this door. Meg, stop trying to stand up!"
"Okay, okay. But at least stop yelling." Joe shook his head. "I'll go get our stuff. You watch her. Just...try to get her to calm down." 'Maybe that will get YOU to calm down.'
Joe backed toward the balcony, not taking his eyes off of Randy or the bathroom door. He picked up both bottles - 'Liquid courage, right? Christ, do we need it,' - and went back into the room. Randy, for all his protestation, drank heavily when Joe nudged him with the bottle of tequila. The bourbon made it as far as the floor near the frame of the door.
"Fine. Fine, I won't yell. But she's still against the door."
Joe leaned into the door again, keeping his voice low. "Meg? I'm still here, Meg. You hit the lock. It can open now, but you're still leaning on the door. I can't take care of you if I can't come in. Meg, you're hurt. I need to help you. I promise, I'll help you."
Meg's whole body was shaking from the effort of holding herself up across the narrow stretch of the bathroom, feet still tangled in the towel, hands locked around the handle of the door. 'Let go, Meg. Move.' She shoved backwards as hard as she could, tripping herself in the towel and her dress, pulling down on the handle as she went. The door creaked quietly, slowly open, as though it was unaware of how quickly it ought to move, given the circumstances. Meg hit the edge of the counter with an audible grunt and dug her nails in, waiting. 'Why is it so hot? He promised. I promised.' She waited.
They waited, too. The door continued to slowly swing open on its own, as though there was all the time in the world to deal with whatever came next. Randy hadn't stood from his crouch on the floor; Joe hadn't moved from the doorway. Finally, Meg's frame slid fully into view, coated in makeup, glass, blood, a thin sheen of sweat, clutching the edge of the bathroom counter like it was her last tether to the world, quivering, wearing only her bra and panties, drunk, breathing fast and shallow, bruised, and strangely, smiling.
"Hi...Ran...Joe...Sorry about the mess..." She went back to looking over her shoulder into the mirror, watching the glass move around between her shoulderblades.