Panic rolls over me, making my insides do unpleasant twists, as I see mom losing consciousness on the back seat. I turn in my seat to get as close to her as possible (thank God, that American cars are so impossibly large!), and I manage to make sure that her tongue is not in her throat so she won't suffocate. I check her pulse, and it's faint, and her breathing seems terribly shallow.
"I need to get her to a hospital, right now", I say to myself.
"We're on our way", Jack answers and pushes the gas pedal a bit further. We're speeding as it is, and I'm thankful for it. Mom's face has a weird ashen-greenish colour to it, and she really doesn't seem that well. I feel close to tears, and I'm not even embarrassed about it. Mom is all I have - although all these years, she kept on talking about dad and mentioning him as if he was just about to waltz through the front door; reality was, that I had only one parent, only mom. Dad was this funny but weird stranger from stories. Dad - Jack wasn't there. It's only mom and me, and mom's not well now, and I gotta take care of her. He'll probably just dump us in front of some hospital and speed away. Jack won't risk getting caught because of us.
"Check her pulse and breathing again", Jack's voice startles me from my thoughts. He sounds concerned.
"It's the same", I tell him after I have done the check, and then I add, "She looks bad."
He seems like he won't reply, but he changes his mind after a minute, "She inhaled a lot of fumes. The fire started in our bedroom, so she was exposed to it way longer than me or you."
"And where were you?", I ask and I try not to sound as if I'm accusing him. But I do sound just like that because I actually am accusing him. I don't know where this suspicion comes from, but now that it's here, I can't get rid of it.
"I had to go out to meet a guy. I was gone for less than ten minutes, and when I came back, the room was already in flames", he says in a very neutral tone. He knows what I'm thinking. He's waiting for my reply, I guess he wants me to say that it's ok, that it was all a big coincidence. I, however, don't want to say a word, because I want to see what he'll do or say next. Maybe I'm onto something.
It takes him exactly two minutes of this tense silence to explode.
"I didn't set the fire, you little shit!", he yells and slams his hands on the wheel a few times.
"I never said.."
"Oh, spare me your bullshit!", he growls at me, and this makes me feel a bit better, because his anger seems genuine.
We suddenly make a sharp turn as the huge car gets into a driveway. Obviously, this is not a hospital. I don't want to ask stupid questions, but I want my mom to get the best care possible, so I got to know what is going on.
"What is this? We should take her to a hospital!", I hiss at Jack.
"Help me get her out of the car", he orders me, ignoring my question. He pulls mom under the armpits, and I get her legs. He only needs my help with getting her out, and as soon as she's out, he carries her himself, bridal-style, towards the front door of a large but mostly dark house. To my surprise, the front doors are open. My surprise is even bigger when I find that from the inside, the house is completely lit, meaning that the front windows must be somehow tinted. An older lady sits in front of the TV in the room next to the entrance hall and gets up as soon as she hears us.
"You got someone else here?", Jack asks her. Obviously, he knows her from before.
"Just a hooker sleeping off a bad beating. She's in one of the room upstairs.", the lady answers calmly and then she briefly looks at my mom with her cold eyes, "I'll wake the doctor up right away. A fire, right? You all stink like fire."
"Hurry up.", Jack growls after her and the menace in his voice actually makes the lady run a bit. In the meanwhile, dad – mom is still in his arms, and if her face wasn't so damned grey, I would have thought she was sleeping – carries mom down a hallway, and I trot along, feeling completely useless. We end up in a large and brightly lit room, dominated by a huge examination table. Jack puts mom on the table, as gently as possible. This is obviously a doctor's office, judging by all the medical gizmo I saw only on TV shows.
"It's a doctor's office for patients who value, uhm, privacy", Jack explains, without looking at me, and I nod. I notice that his eyes never leave my mom's face. And, grease paint or not, I can clearly see he's troubled. It seems like he cares for mom.
"Now, what? Have you blown yourself to pieces, finally?", we both turn as we hear a voice coming from the hallway, "There's only that much times I can sew you together, wild boy..", and finally we see the figure of a short, old skinny man, obviously still half-asleep, draggle into the room.
"Listen", in a second, Jack is hovering over the old doctor, a knife flashing dangerously in his hand, and his voice makes me terribly uncomfortable with dread, "Here are the rules. She dies, you die."
"Dear Lord almighty", the old dude smacks Jack's hand away, "Hold your horses. You just make sure you have my money, and I'll fix the lady."
Irritatingly slow, the doctor approaches my mom, checks her pulse, uses a flashlight to see if her pupils react. He listens to her breathing, using a stethoscope.
"Mhmm. Ah-hah.", he comments, and Jack and I exchanged the same irritated glance, "There will be some coughing, I'll say. Ah, you..you, boy, get me that machine in the corner, will you..?". I roll the device he pointed out and this very strange doctor puts a mask on mom's face, and finally I realize this is an oxygen machine.
"Ahm. Joker-boy, your lady friend should be all right in a day or two. She just needs a bit of oxygen, and a lot of rest. She'll probably experience strong headaches and nausea for a while. Let's keep her here for the time so I can check on her regularly", the doctor casually leans on the examination table, "So that's 3000 for the treatment, and an extra thousand because you were so rude to me earlier."
"Fucking leech", Jack comments as he starts counting from a rather large bundle of money.
"And also, don't forget an extra-large tip, since you burst in here in the middle of the night, with your wife and kid in tow..", the old guy apparently is bored of being alive.
"I have an extra-large tip for you, right here", Jack is already on the doctor, smiling menacingly as the tip of his knife slowly but surely rips into the doctor's clothes.
"What are you..?", the old man's question is silenced by both Jack's merciless grip on his throat and the knife, now buried deeply in the man's belly.
"Oh, shut up and die already", Jack tells the dying man, who politely obliges.
I am shocked. I mean, mom told me about dad..she told me that he does things..I saw some of the things he does on news, and I googled him and stuff…but that was the Joker. Not Jack, not..not my dad. But here he is, my dad, letting a corpse he's responsible for falling to the floor. My dad, killing a man in front of me, like it's no big deal.
"Worry about it later. We need to get out of here, and fast", he guesses my thoughts correctly."
"Not so fast", we hear a voice behind us. The lady who met us at the entrance stands in the doorway, holding a gun pointed at Jack. She clearly sees him as the major threat, and me she almost ignores.
"What", Jack asks her blankly, as if he really has no idea what might be wrong.
"That is how you repay us our help. How many times did you turn up here, shot, stabbed, beaten up. And we took you in every time.", the lady talks calmly, but her hands are slightly trembling.
"And you charged me every time and every time I paid double. Didn't I?", he counters just as calmly.
"It as a mistake to ever let you in", her hands are now violently shaking.
"Put down the gun", Jack tries to appear nonchalant, "I won't kill you. I know you won't say a word. I don't an issue with you. Never had."
"As if you would ever let a witness live", her finger starts to fumble around the trigger, and I react before really thinking. I mean, it's clear that she is sure he will kill her (which he probably will, in all honesty), so she is trying to defend herself by killing him. But have I been aware of that in this moment, when I'm jumping on her, making us both crash and fall down on the floor? I will never really know. I just think I sensed her being desperate enough to pull the trigger and shoot dad. No one is shooting my dad. So, I just reacted.
Jack reacted, too. As soon as we land on the floor, his knife is already out, and I don't even get up yet, his knife is already cutting her throat. Her dying gurgling and choking in blood takes place just a few feet from my face, making sure I have a trauma or two for life. Fuck. An eventful night with daddy.
Jack doesn't let me freak out but pushes me out of the room and the house. Soon enough, mom's back in the car and the oxygen machine is cramped in the trunk. As we pull out of the driveway, the first flames start to shine the house from the inside. I look at dad questioningly, and he just shrugs with his shoulders. This really doesn't help with my misplaced distrust from earlier that evening, but I don't want to think about all that right now. Mom is in the back, and if the old dead guy is to believed, she should be fine soon. That's all that counts.
We drive for quite a while, and almost 45 minutes pass before we finally turn into a long driveway. We are pretty far out from the centre of Gotham, this is one of those areas where houses are hidden within huge estates.
Again, he carries mom to a room on the first floor. It's about 4.30 in the morning and I don't have the strength or will to think about where we are and what we're doing and all that happened this night. I just watch Jack turn on the machine and put the mask on mom's face.
"There, there.", he murmurs and gently caresses her face.
I collapse on a nearby couch and fall asleep, dead to the world.
…
It must be sometime around noon when I finally wake up. Jack is there, right next to mum on the bed, laying next to her and snoring quietly. I approach the bed quietly to check on mom, and to my immense relief and joy, her eyes are opened and she even manages to give me a weak but warm smile.
"Mom", I whisper, "How do you feel?"
"Tired. Hungry. And sooo thirsty", she answers, "But alive."
"You look much better", I say stupidly. As if she knows how she looked the night before. Anyhow, I'm glad to see that the sich colour she sported just a few hours ago is now almost gone.
"Where are we?", she asks me, her voice extremely raspy.
"I have no idea", I shrug, "How about I get you some water and then try to find something to eat?"
"That sounds wonderful", Jack's sleepy voice interrupts us.
"Jack!", my mom lets out a happy squeal and then falls into a coughing fit.
"Get that water, kid", Jack tells me as he pulls mom into his embrace, also patting her back as if he's trying to ease her coughing.
…
Afterwards, I find my way to the kitchen in that rather large house. There is no fresh food in the fridge, but I find the freezer with some chicken and veggies in it. I could try my hand at a chicken soup. I never made on before, but I saw mom do it a few times. It didn't look that complicated. I wonder what is should put first in the boiling water. The chicken, right? It takes longer to cook than the veggies. Or maybe I should put it all in simultaneously? Do I need herb for chicken soup? Should I ask mom? No, I don't want to bother her with such stuff. I'm sixteen, God damn it, I can make a chicken soup.
I plop the entire chicken into the water and stuff the veggies into it, too.
Maybe I should have washed the veggies.
Why, though? They're in boiling water anyway.
And what is this house? Is it Jack's? Is he rich or something?
"Are you actually cooking?", Jack's voice startles me and to my embarrassment, I jump. Of course, he laughs.
"Very funny", I grumble. I slept too little and witnessed two murders and a fire last night. Not to mention I feared for my mother's life. I have the right to feel jumpy. Ok?
"She's sleeping again.", he says.
"That's good", I nod.
He walks a bit around the kitchen, inspecting this, looking at that, but I feel his eyes are actually on me. I pretend to be busy with stirring the mess that hopefully will turn into a soup someday.
"…we should talk.", he finally says.
"Then talk.", I shrug my shoulders and I can feel waves of his annoyance hitting me.
"As if you don't have a thousand of questions.", he makes a valid point.
"Actually, I do", I say angrily.
"Then ask.", he pays me back.
"Ok. First of all, what about the fire?", I ask.
"My best guess is faulty wires. The house was old. I guess it was a matter of time something would happen", he says simply and I actually believe him. That house was pretty crappy.
"But we can get a fire marshal to go and check so you could rest your little heart knowing that daddy didn't do it", he adds childishly.
"Yeah, where the fuck would I ever get the idea that you might do something outrageous. Right?!", I yell.
"As if I would do that to my wife and kid!", he yells back.
"..wife?", I ask once I realize what he said. He pales a bit.
"I mean, it's not official…we never talked about it..I doubt any of us is into that marriage stuff…but for all intents and purposes..you know", he stumbles over his own feelings, ideas and sentences. His eyes inspect the ceiling and he seems to find the answer he's most satisfied with, "I mean, she's my woman. You're my kid. You two are not…not for killing."
"Hah.", I just nod my head lightly when I see this is the best response I'm likely to get, "Ok. Let's move on. Where are we going to live, now? Here?"
"Yeah.", he says as if it's a given.
"Is this place yours?", I'm a bit surprised.
"Hmh, hmmm. Almost. Let's say it's a friend's place, and that friend won't ask to get it back."
"Because he's dead..?"
"Yeah."
"And you killed him."
"No. Contrary to popular belief, I do not kill each and every person I meet."
"Speaking of that, what about those two people from last night? What was that place anyway?", I use my opportunity to drill him.
"Ok, kid. It's actually a very simple case of economy. You have demand, and you have supply. On one hand, you have people who don't have easy access to medical services because what they do isn't strictly legal, on the other hand, you have an old disbarred doctor who likes cash on hand. The entire system relies on strict confidentiality and a hefty cash flow.", he explains.
"That part I understand. What I don't understand is why you actually killed him..?"
"Because you and I..", he takes a few steps closer to me and looks me directly in the eyes, "..actually look very similar. And he noticed that and realized we're related. And then, he was a money-hungry whore who wanted extra cash for keeping shtum about it. Listen, I don't mind paying. I pay dozens and hundreds of people to be quiet when needed. But what he tried..it doesn't work like that. I pay you because I chose to pay you. You don't make me pay you. You won't blackmail into anything. Especially if you're mentioning my woman and my kid in the same sentence. So that's why the old fart had to go."
"So I'm actually a liability to you?", I ask and I don't know how I feel about it.
"No man is an island", he laughs with a hint of bitterness to it, "I never actually understood what that really means. Now I do."
"Will I have a normal life here?", I ask myself, and then realize I said it out loud. Mom does that, sometimes.
"Probably not. But if we're able to separate what I do and whatever it is you'll want to do, then maybe…maybe to some extent you could have your beloved normal life.", he ends up spitting out the last two words, "Speaking of normal, if you want to keep your mom normal, you won't mention what happened last night. She would freak out."
"I think so, too", I agree. There's nothing to be gained by telling her about the bloodshed.
"By the way, kid", he turns towards me once more and shots me one of his looks that indicate he's about to say something important to him, "Thank you for what you did yesterday. And never do that again."
I look at him, dumbfounded, and it takes me a second or two to realize he's talking about how I jumped on that old lady who wanted to shot him down.
"Don't mention it", I say, not really knowing what to say. I think it will take me some time to process last night. And whether dad likes it or not, normal life sounds about glorious right now to me.
"I won't.", he answers somewhat darkly, "And try not to poison us with that shitsoup you're making."
A/N Again I had no time and again I wrote this in one sitting and therefore you poor guys get all the typos and stuff. Sorry for that. Let me know how you liked the chapter!