Manhattan Is My Beat (Rune 1)

An older woman with a snake of a stethoscope around her neck finally looked up. "Oh. We just heard about your friend."

"What? Tell me!"

"They just took her to Radiology for more scans. She's still unconscious."

"That's what you were going to tell me? That you don't know anything?"

"I thought you'd want to know. She'll be back in ICU in forty minutes, an hour. Depending."

Useless, Rune thought.

"I'll be back. If she wakes up, tell her I'll be back."

Oh, please, Pan and Isis and Persephone, let her live.

Rune stood by the East River, watching the tugs sail upstream. The Circle Line tour boat too. A barge, three or four cabin cruisers. The water was ugly and ripe-smelling. The traffic from the FDR Drive rushed past with a moist, tearing sound, which set her on edge. It sounded like bandages being removed.

Just an adventure. That's all I wanted. An adventure.

Lancelot searching for the Grail. Psyche for her lost lover Eros. Like in the books, in the movies. And Rune would be the hero. She'd find Mr. Kelly's killer, she'd find the million dollars. She'd save Amanda and would live happily ever after with Richard.

O God of heavenly powers, who by the might of thy command, drivest away from men's bodies all sickness and infirmity, be present in thy goodness...

These were the words she'd said so often during the last week of her father's life that she'd memorized them without trying to.

Her father, a young man. A handsome man. Who played with Rune and her sister all the time, taught them to ride bicycles, who read them stories, who took them to plays as readily as to ball games. A man who always had time to talk to them, listen to their problems.

No, fairy stories didn't always have happy endings. But they always had endings that were just. People died and lost their fortunes in them because they were dishonest or careless or greedy. There was no justice in her father's death though. He'd lived a good life and he'd still died badly, slow and messy, in the Shaker Heights Garden Hospice.

No justice in Mr. Kelly's death.

No justice in Stephanie's getting hurt. None if she died.

Please ...

Speaking out loud now. "With this thy servant Stephanie that her weakness may be banished and her strength recalled."

Her voice fell to a whisper and then she stopped praying.

Staring at the ugly river in front of her, Rune took off her silver bracelets one by one and tossed them into the water. They disappeared without any sound that she could hear and she took that as a good sign that the gods who oversaw this wonderful and terrible city were happy with her sacrifice.

Though when she got to last bracelet, the one that she'd bought for Richard, she paused, looking at the silver hands clasped together. She heard his voice again.

You're going to find out I'm not a knight and that, okay, maybe there was some bank robbery money--which I think is the craziest frigging thing I've ever heard--but that it's spent or stolen or lost somewhere years ago and you'll never find it...

She gripped the bracelet firmly, ready to throw it after the others. But then decided, no, she'd save this one--as a reminder to herself. About how adventures can get friends and family hurt and killed. How quests work only in books and in movies.

And here you are pissing your life away in a video store, jumping from fantasy to fantasy, waiting for something you don't even know what it is.

She slipped the last bracelet back on her wrist and slowly returned to the hospital.

Upstairs, the nurses had changed shifts and no one could find Stephanie. Rune had a terrible moment of panic as one nurse looked at a sheet of paper and found a black space where there should have been a list of patients from Adult Emergency Services who'd gone to Radiology. She felt her hands trembling. Then the nurse found an entry that said Stephanie was still upstairs.

"I'll let you know," the nurse promised.

Rune stood at the window for a long time again, then heard a voice asking for her.

She turned. Froze. The doctor was very young and he had a mournful expression on his face. It seemed that he hadn't slept in a week. Rune wondered if he'd ever told anyone before that a patient had died. Her breath came fast. She gripped the bracelet maniacally.