My neck was burning, spewing hot gushing everywhere, it ran down my face and into my nose, mouth and eyes. I squinted trough bloody lashes, I saw the police try to drag Jason away as he clung to my body, I heard him screaming that he needed to stay with me. They pulled him away from me (or my body anyway) - he kicked multiple officers in the shins, and put a breathing mask onto my blood covered face. Medics swarmed around me. I thought I was supposed to be dead? Could they not just let me die? It would be easier. My husband was a murderer, my door had been broken down by cops, and my kitchen floor would forever be stained with blood. All I could think about the entire time that they pulled me onto the gurney and into the ambulance was the red paint-like fluid running across the floor, and down the cracks of the tiles. Seeing small rivers of blood in my minds eye, I passed out.


Beep, Beep, Beep. pulsing even noises. Annoying, but reassuring. I know that those are heartbeats. I'm not dead. Yet. It feels as though I should be, I'm so sore, and my eyelids feel as though they are glued shut, sealed with concrete. I force them open and look around the room. White walls, white sheets, and white clothed people is all I can see. Too much white. The doctors look at me in surprise and look at each other with a look that says Wow, can't believe she survived THAT one.


I live in the white building for weeks. The doctors say that Jason severed a major artery in my neck, and that i'm lucky to be alive. They say that if I go home and live my life normally like I want to I run the possibility of opening my stitches at any time, and it's best if I stay in the hospital. I am put into a wheelchair for travel even after insisting that I can walk just fine. The doctors say that any physical exhaustion whatsoever could strain my system because of lack of blood. So the doctors wheel me everywhere. The days are short, and the nights are bleak.


I lay awake in my bed. It was past 12, and I was exhausted, but I couldn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, Jason's face danced behind my eyelids. I tried to force my mind off of him. Was I crazy? This man had tried to KILL me. All I could think of was him. I rolled over and groaned. I wish that he would leave me alone and let me sleep.


The next day followed similar to the last. I was in a white building with people wearing only white, who wheeled me around all day for the only entertainment I had besides the hospitals 3 TV channels (none of which had the news). I was wheeled, I ate, I watched TV, and I was put back into bed and left to my own devices. And all through the entire day, nobody said more than 2 words to me.


The day afterwards was the same, and the day after that. Nobody really talked to me, and my mother even came to see me once, but she wasn't really there for long, and she didn't really say much, like she was in her own little world. And so, on that night, 4 nights after I woke up (although I have no idea how long it had been since I had last seen Jason), I lay awake in bed and waited for the sleep that would never come.

Escaping from the police is easier than they make it seem in movies. There was no insane car chases or elaborate plans, just a guy on the inside that owed me a favour. See, I thought that was it when they came into the house and tore me away from Sophie. I thought I was going to be locked up for good. I didn't even recognize the guy driving the cruiser until I looked into the rearview mirror and looked him in the eyes. It was Kevin.


Kevin and I had known each other in high school. We hadn't been friends, not at first. At first he was the nerd, and I was the idiot jock giving him a flagpole wedgie. Normal high school idiot jock stuff. The first time I really met Kevin we were in the bathroom in the middle of lunch. I had walked in when he wasn't expecting it. He had been trying to hang himself. When I saw him I immediately attempted to persuade him to get down from the bathroom toilet and NOT hang himself from the rafters. This proved more difficult than I had imagined. I locked the bathroom door and proceeded to try to talk to him. He just kept yelling at me that I had made his life hell. I didn't even know who this kid was. I looked him in the eye, walked up to him real slow holding out my hand and said “Hey, I don't think we've officially met. My name is Jason”. He looked down at me from his porcelain throne in disgust. “I know who you are. You're Jason Gerard. Captain of the Rugby team, you're the scrum-half. You're the team captain, and top of the food chain. Everyone answers to you or this happens,” he said. He pulled his glasses from behind his ears, throwing them at my feet, shattering the lenses. I picked them up and examined them. There were cracks that looked like they'd been there for awhile, the lenses were duct-taped to the arms, which were falling off, and had been wrapped in the tape several times over. “You trashed my glasses. You knocked my books and glasses to the ground however many times and stepped all over them. You pushed me to the ground, they fell off and the frames cracked. My mom refuses to replace them again, she thinks I'm just not being careful with them,”. This kid truly hated me. The loathing was written all over his face. I looked him in the eye and told him the truth. “I look at you Kevin, and I see a guy who has it all. You've got the greatest grades in the entire school. You don't have to be tutored for six hours a week just to scrape up a 58 in your applied classes. You have a family that loves you, a home to go back to. You don't have a foster home with parents that don't care wether you're dead or alive, so long as they get paid. You have friends that actually care about you, friends you can confide in. You don't have friends that only hang out with you to get girls or get popular. That's my life Kevin, and you don't want it. If anything, I should be up there looking down at you, not the other way around. Now I know that I made your life miserable, but that's only because mine isn't just miserable, it's a pathetic excuse for existing. I took my misery out on you. I shouldn't have, and I never will again, but can't you understand that I was carrying the entire world on my shoulders? Couldn't I give you Australia to carry or something?”. I was serious, but the last line kind of ruined my grand speech. It may have not been an Oscar winning speech, but it did the trick. Kevin looked me in the eye, and burst into laughter. He stepped down from the toilet and said “I can carry Australia, but that's it man. These skinny shoulders weren't built for Africa or anything”. That was the day that Kevin and I had become best friends.


After not having seen Kevin in over 15 years, I could hardly believe that I recognized him. He was my best friend from high school (after he had gone off to Harvard we had lost touch). I looked into the mirror, and I saw that scared little high school kid, standing on top of a toilet. I looked through the cage in the cruiser, and saw that his partner was fast asleep in the passenger seat. Kevin and I looked at each other in the mirror and said at the same time “Kevin?” and “Jason?”. We both started to laugh a little (quietly so as not to wake the other officer). Kevin said jokingly: “So the rugby thing didn't work out for you?”. I laughed a little at that. “No, but I was definitely not supposed to end up here.” I looked at Kevin. “Look man, I just need one more chance here. I need to fix things, I can't just leave things the way they are.” Kevin sighed and turned his head away from the mirror. He probably got the criminals claiming that they were innocent ALL the time. I continued, “Look, I know it's hard to believe me, and I'm not saying you have to, but you owe me, please just let me go, I need to find my wife. I love her, and I screwed up, but I love her, and we have to be together”. He looked at me, really looked at me. Pulled the cruiser over onto the shoulder and looked me in the eye. “Your wife's dead man. You killed her”. I laughed at him. Actually more like scoffed at him “No she's not. I barely made a mark, and there were medics on the scene. I didn't want them convict her, and think that she was conspiring with me or something. I needed them to know that she was innocent, so I made it look like I was trying to kill her. I needed her and them to believe it. See, I didn't actually kill all of those people.” Okay so that was my first lie, but it was important that Kevin believed me. He would never let me go otherwise. He turned right round in his seat so that his whole body was facing me. “And what do you want me to do?” he asked, “Just let you go? Get kicked off the force? Probably put in jail?” His partner in the front seat snorted in his sleep. He was definitely a heavy sleeper. I smiled at Kevin. I knew just what to do.


Before I knew it we were back on the road, speeding along. I was still in the back seat, but I had no handcuffs. I smirked at Kevin. He didn't like my plan, but I knew he would go along with it. He began to swerve in his lane, making dramatic noises like he was loosing control of the car. His deputy knocked his head on the window and woke up. “What the hell Kevin are you -” before he could finish his first waking thought, we careened off the road, all of us screaming, the car sailed through the air, almost like it was falling into the ditch in slow motion. The front nose of the car scraped against a tree, peeling the bark off. The rear side door of the car slammed right into a tree, pushing the door in, crushing it, and causing spider webbed like cracks to spread across the glass.


I pushed the broken door off of the car and sprinted into the nearby wooded area. It was a thin cover barely twenty feet wide before another ditch and another road. I wouldn't be hiding out in the woods any time soon. I ran through the ditch, water ran into my shoes, soaking my socks, which caused my feet to make squishing noises. I ran towards a house down the road about 100 feet. By the looks of it the owners were not home. I broke an old car's window with a rock, the car was hot wired in under 2 minutes (I had experience with this sort of thing – I had stolen cars before - and I had taken car tech in high school). I drove onto the road with my arm out of the window like I was just going for a summer's day drive. I looked over to the passenger seat and saw an old neglected ball cap sitting there. I pulled the smelly old hat onto my head, and drove off towards the nearest gas station. If I was going anywhere, I needed some fuel.


I pulled into the gas station, how was I going to work this? I knew that the whole ordeal had just happened, so nobody would really recognize me (the police hadn't really had time to get word out about the crash yet, they were probably JUST getting to the scene). That and being in the house with Sophie for a few days and not shaving during the running away days before that, I had a bit of a beard going on, and all the pictures of me on the news and such had me clean shaven (as I usually was). I doubted anyone who didn't know me personally would recognize me as long as I didn't give them a good look at me. Oh god. I thought. I need to find Sophie. I opened my door and stepped into the parking lot. I pulled the gas nozzle out of the pump and proceeded to hurriedly fill the tank. I stepped into the gas station, taking deep steadying breaths. I strode across the store and froze halfway through. There was a TV in the corner of the store behind the counter, showing a live news report. I put on a smile and a southern accent, playing the part of the hillbilly farmer guy on his way into the city. The store clerk, a tall attractive woman in her mid-twenties smiled at me. “How are you today?” she said. I looked at her and said “I'm fine. Could you turn that TV up please?” I stared intently at the television. The reporter continued with what she had been saying “..... Jason Gerard, a dangerous criminal, held his own wife hostage for over 47 hours yesterday. He severely wounded his wife and she had to be airlifted to a hospital on the coast. The cruiser which had been transporting Mr. Gerard was involved in an accident. We still don't know where he is, or wether he is presently in police custody,”. The news went to commercial.

They had airlifted her. That meant they probably had to take her to a different hospital. One with more specialized doctors, doctors that could save her. Sophie, Sophie, Sophie. How could I have done this to you? I held my breath while the cash register swung open. I was lucky, the guy whose car I had stolen had WADS of cash just sitting in his glovebox, otherwise, there was no way I couldv;e afforded enough gas to go another kilometre down the road. She handed me my change. I looked her in the eye and said (with all the flattery and charm I could muster), “Could I possibly use your phonebook?” She nodded, obviously flattered and charmed that I had taken to her so. She reached under the counter and pulled out a tattered phonebook. I flipped through the pages rapidly. Finding the name and address I was looking for rather quickly. I handed her back the phonebook, tipped my stolen hat in her direction and said with a southern twang, “Have a good day ma'am,”.


I drive for hours. Stopping for nothing. Sophie needs me. There's no way I can stop now. Of course, driving for what seems like forever with nothing but me and my thoughts, and I have a lot to think about. I bet that everyone thinks that I tried to kill Sophie. They aren't as smart as they think they are. There was no way that cut was deep enough. I've killed before, and that was nothing near a fatal wound. It was the only way they would let her go, and not question her motives for staying with me all that time without struggle. There was no way they would let her get off. They would think she was my conspirator or something. I grunt. I only wish.


I knew guys who knew guys. I had friends in low places, and one of them happened to live just off the highway. Cruising with my arm out the broken window, I pulled into his lane way, but didn't stop there. I continued on past the trashy shed, and the somewhat trashy house, over the gnarled tree roots, and into the dip behind his garage. I wrenched open the rusty, ancient, rear door (it let out a protesting scream) and peered into the darkness. Just behind the door was a large tarp. I dragged it outside and pulled it over my stolen car. I closed the door behind me and walked up to the house.

*****


I hadn't seen Jason since we had shared a small dismal jail cell for over a year. I had been released just before he had, and I'd assumed that he was still there. He was a good guy all things considered, but I just wanted that chapter of my life behind me. When I opened the door to the slightly too loud knocking, I wasn't expecting Jason. Hell, even if it had been years later or months before, I wouldn't have been expecting him. He looked at me, smiled his crooked smile and said “I've missed you old buddy!”


I always wondered why they would jail guys like Nick. Nick was that guy that you looked at, and couldn't figure out where you had seen him before. He had a tender face that made you want to protect him, almost like a child's. A slightly messy patch of dark hair on his crown. He had these crooked, gaping, teeth that always bothered me. A minor flaw in the grand scheme of things. He was a nice guy, a good guy, a non-law breaking type, until he made a little mistake, got caught up in the wrong crowd and became a network hacker. That kid had hacked himself into some serious trouble. When he'd first arrived to become my cell-mate, I had thought he was a wuss. In fact I thought he was the hugest wuss that ever lived. He had cried at night, whispering over and over into his pillow (after he thought I was asleep) “It's not your fault, it's not your fault,” like saying it would make it true. If they hadn't sent Nick to jail, and just left him off with a warning, nothing would have happened, he would have gone back to his geeky, computer programming self. Instead, they put him in jail, and the kid met me. Jail hardened him. He made friends in all the wrong (or depending on how you look at it, right) places, and now he was a professional, a criminal, out for hire, computer hacker. Facebook, Google, Twitter, you name it, he's hacked it. If he hasn't, I'd bet that's just because he hasn't had the time to.


I sit down at the battered, water ring covered table, across from Nick. I wring my hands around, looking down at them, studying my scarred knuckles. I sigh. “I need you to find my wife. That's -” he cut me off, “You can't just show up here. The police know I know you. If I get caught with you man, they'll throw me in jail again”. I raise my eyes away from my hands, and look him in the eye. “Look, I need to find her. They've got to know which hospital she's in, you've gotta have access to medical records or something,”. Nick stares me down, battling with his conscience. I know he knows there's NO money in this, but I know he feels like he owes me. “You think I don't watch the news? Dude, You've got to be kidding me. You tried to kill your wife. You're on crack man. There's no way I'm helping you find your wife, just so you can finish what you started,” he blurts. It's like he's accusing me. Pointing the finger and saying “hey, that guy right there, he's the murderer,”. But i'm not. Only he doesn't know that. Yet.


Let's just say i've always been good at telling stories my way.


(Like I had anticipated) it takes Nick less than five minutes to hack the medical records. He scans through pages of information before I've even read the title (although I've never been a speedy reader myself). His eyes are like little bullets darting back and forth across the page. As I look over his shoulder I realize I am desperately thirsty. I clear my throat and say “Nick, do you have any cold beer?”. Without even looking up from his screen, typing and reading furiously, Nick points to the dingy mini-fridge hidden in the corner of his computer room. I open it, and grab two beers, twisting the caps off with my bare hands, and take a long gulp from mine. I hand Nick his just as he prints off a sheet of information. He goes over to the printer to collect the paper and glance out the small window, set deeply into the wall. “Oh no,” he says, practically trembling with fear. I walk up behind him, and looked out the window. The fuzz are in the field outside his house, “sneaking” around. I groan and pick up his beer. I lift it high in the air and say “sorry buddy,” and let it fall gently over his head. He hits the ground, unconscious, hopefully for several hours, but none of those pretty little network hacking brains were damaged (I hope).


I sneak out the side window, knowing that the cops will be focussed on the back end of the house, where the computer room is, and the front door, the easiest escape route. I hit the ground so lightly, a feather couldn't have done it better. I roll into the corn field on all fours, crawling in several rows, to put some distance between me and the house. I hear a faint thud as the back door of Nick's house is kicked open ,and yells. I alone know what the cops will find on his computer room floor. A guy with a beer bottle bashed over his head, my stolen car keys in his front pocket, a piece of paper, bearing my wife's current address in his printer, stolen hat on his head, stolen wallet in his pocket. I feel bad for the guy. He was just trying to help a friend, but I got his ass out of trouble, and mine too (for the time being – which is, as long as his ass, stays passed out). They will assume I forced him to help me, now that I left him unconscious, and I just so happen to know where I need to go.