Borderline [On hold for major revision]

Chapter 9: A Promise I Shouldn't Have Made

On the right is a picture of El Centro Regional Medical Center, which is also mentioned in Chapter 4 and maybe a couple other places. Yes, I use real locations for this book. You can look any of them up if you're really curious. :) By the way, the receptionist is based on real reviews of the hospital (but not a specific person) that say that the people who work there are really rude.

Chapter 9

Saturday  I woke up feeling even more tired than when I fell asleep, if that was possible. There was just too much to think about, yet not enough. My mind was constantly trying to fill in blanks with imaginary information, attempting to make sense of what it didn’t know. In the end I decided to keep myself awake rather than drift in that half-asleep state in case my perceptions of reality began to become skewed by my pseudo-dream world.

I was starting to get really sick of my job. Recently it seemed like I couldn’t go a single day without some new aspect of my life spiraling out of my control. When this was all over, I was going to have some serious trouble picking up the pieces—if there were any left by then.

            I looked in the bathroom mirror and frowned at the cuts and bruises that covered my body, all starting to turn yellow by now. Physical reminders of the emotional turmoil storming my mind.

            If the repeated attacks on my life weren’t enough, now I had the whole Coleman situation to deal with. Just yesterday morning Martina was practically interrogating me about those shelters, and I knew there was more to it than her mere curiosity. She was out for blood, looking for anything that might tie me in with illegal activity.

            And I’d given her another reason to suspect me.

Did I seriously agree to hide evidence of a shooting in front of her? Why in the world did I do that?

            Of course, she was the one who suggested it. When I told her what happened, she seemed genuinely concerned about the whole incident. I felt I could trust her to keep the secret, but I wouldn’t put it past her to…

            I didn’t want to think about the repercussions if she told. I had enough going on in the present to worry about what could happen in the future.

            Instead I thought about the young girl that was injured. She reminded me a lot of my oldest brother Jason’s daughter, Amanda. I didn’t know how old the Hispanic girl was, but she couldn’t have been more than thirteen. I felt sorry for whatever parents had been so desperate that they let her cross the border alone. Or maybe she didn’t have any parents, and was just trying to keep herself alive. Either way, she didn’t deserve to get shot in the head for what she did.

            I couldn’t help but be a little angry at Jared. Okay, really angry. If he had just listened to me and not jumped the gun on the arrest, everything would’ve likely gone smoothly and the girl would be returning to wherever she came from later today. But he wanted to do things his own way, and the young teen ended up in an ICU with a bullet lodged in her brain. If she died because of his mistake…