Glamorous - A Grace Bishop Novel - Chapter 1 © Denise Bossarte

Glamorous - A Grace Bishop Novel - Chapter 1

© Denise Bossarte

 

DL grabbed the cell phone off the bedside table on the second vibration, dashing into the attached bathroom to avoid waking Jennifer. It was too late at night for his eyes to take the vanity lights. Instead he relied on light from the phone. The glow caught the multiple colors of the tattoos on his arms as he held the phone up to his face and waited for his eyes to focus on the number.

Only one of his kids would call at this time of night. But when he recognized Chris’s number he almost didn’t answer; nothing was ever good when it came to Chris. Sighing, DL answered the phone. He ran his hand through his dark shoulder-length hair, and then roughly scrubbed at his face, trying to get his brain functioning. 

“Hello, Chris…”

Before DL finished his sentence, Chris’s desperate voice interrupted him. 

“DL! Shit, oh, shit!”

“Chris, slow down a minute. What’s going on?”

“She’s cut up; her face, her arms. Oh God, there’s so much blood… Whata I do? Whata I do?!”

“Who’s hurt, Chris? Is it Beth? Did something happen to Beth?” DL dreaded the thought something awful had happened to Beth tonight.

“Wha’…? Yeah, it’s Beth. She’s hurt bad, she’s bleeding real bad. I don’t know what to do!”

“Chris, where are you? Are you at the apartment? Is she somewhere safe?”

“Yeah, yeah, my place… we’re at my place. But what do I do? I can’t get the bleeding to stop!”

DL realized Chris wouldn’t call an ambulance for Beth. He’d be afraid of the police finding the drugs he was dealing from their apartment. DL needed to go over there himself to try to help Beth. He needed to have Chris calmed down to give the emergency response professionals a chance to get to Beth and take care of her.

“Chris, listen to me. You need to get some towels - bath towels, kitchen towels, it doesn’t matter. Get all you have and use them to put pressure on Beth’s wounds. The pressure will help to stop the bleeding.”

DL suspected Chris had dealt with injuries before and should be taking care of Beth on his own without calling him. Something had spooked Chris enough he was freaking out and wasn’t thinking straight to help Beth. Whatever had happened, there was a strong chance Chris was also high and not acting in a rational manner.

“Towels? Yeah, yeah. We got some in the bathroom.”

“Then go do what I said. Put them on the wounds and apply pressure. I’m coming right now to help Beth. I’m going to hang up. You go take care of Beth and I’ll be right there.”

“Yeah, yeah… sure…” The line went dead.

 “Who was on the phone?” Jennifer asked in a sleepy voice from the bed as DL slipped back into the bedroom. Her bright auburn hair tumbled across her freckled face as she shifted toward him. “One of the Center kids?”

“Yes,” DL responded keeping his voice soft while working to pull on his jeans and socks before sitting on the bed next to Jennifer. 

 “Chris and Beth ran into some trouble and I’m going over to see what I can do to help. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” 

DL hated to minimize the situation, but he wanted to avoid waking Jennifer fully or she would insist on coming with him. He would explain it all in detail later. She would be upset tomorrow about his over-protectiveness. But better to have her safe in bed than rushing into God knew what at Chris’s.

He leaned in and moved the downy wisps of her hair to expose a soft cheek, and gently kissed her goodbye. Then he jumped up to snatch a shirt from the hamper, satisfied to hear her rolling over and settling back to sleep. A quick trip through the kitchen to grab his keys and he was out the door.

He ran to his truck and was happy it started without needing special treatment. It wasn’t the most reliable vehicle he owned, but once it got started it was fine. It looked like a piece of crap and there was less of a chance it would be stolen when he got to Chris’s place.

  He called 911 when he was half-way to the apartment. It was a risk to wait that long, but he was afraid if the ambulance got there too soon Chris might do something irrational. He would have time to deal with Chris and help Beth before they arrived. It would increase the chance of Beth getting to the hospital with no one else getting hurt tonight, especially the paramedics coming to help. 

After racing to the address, he took the stairs two at a time to the third floor. He was forced to jump over the garbage littering the steps and climb over a few people passed out in the hallway to get to Chris’s apartment. He tried opening the door, but it was locked. He pounded on it instead.

 “Chris,” he yelled. “It’s me, DL. Open the door!”  

There was no answer. He pounded harder and longer. Turning his frustration and anger on the door, he bounced his fist off the thin imitation wood that was ready to dent under his assault.

 “Chris,” he bellowed. “Come here and open the damn door!” 

DL paused to listen and was relieved to hear footsteps moving toward him from deeper inside the apartment.  

“Who’s there?” Chris asked through the closed door.

“Chris, it’s me, DL. You called me, remember?”

“DL? Shit, oh, shit!” Chris cried, fumbling to unlock the dead bolt and open the door as wide as the security chain would allow.  

DL was about to push through the door, screw the chain, when he saw a flash of light.  Chris was holding a gun along his right leg and the gun was shaking. But right now it was pointed down at the ground and not at DL.

“Who else is there?” Chris asked his eyes wide and bloodshot, his pupils large.

DL slowly raised his hands and motioned for Chris to stay calm. 

“It’s only me, Chris. Nobody else,” DL said. His guess was right. Chris was high. He had to make sure to not do anything to give Chris an excuse to act stupid.

Chris looked back and forth through the crack in the doorway then he clumsily undid the chain. He opened the door enough to let DL in, closing it fast enough that he almost caught DL with the edge.

“Where’s Beth?” DL asked looking around the disheveled apartment, taking in the piles of fast food containers and drug paraphernalia littering the room. The place smelled liked a combination of moldy carpet and sour garbage.

“In the bathroom,” Chris said heading that way after re-bolting the door. It shocked DL that the entire front of Chris’s shirt and the thighs of his jeans were slick with blood and it was covering the length of his arms.

Dammit! DL thought clenching his hands fists as he followed Chris to the bathroom. He had convinced himself on the drive over Chris had exaggerated about all the blood on the phone. But it was obvious something had gone wrong tonight. 

DL steeled himself as he came to the doorway of the bathroom. Chris hovered at the edge of the door. He was crowding it and DL had to push past him to get inside the cramped and dirty room.

DL’s stomach clinched as he saw Beth’s tiny limp form splayed out on the cracked linoleum. Mismatched towels of various sizes and colors layered her face and arms. Blood was spreading out into a large pool by her head tinting her pale blond hair red. Her legs appeared untouched and un-bloodied, but so many towels covered the rest of her DL could not tell how badly she was hurt.

“Is she dead?” Chris asked, running a hand through his hair, creating bloody spikes in it.

DL looked up at him before turning back to Beth. “Haven’t you been applying pressure to her wounds to stop the bleeding?” he asked, kneeling beside Beth’s body and reaching for her neck to feel for a pulse.

“I got the towels, just like you said,” Chris said, jerking the gun toward Beth. “But the bleeding didn’t stop.”

DL shook his head at Chris’s half-assed attempts at following his instructions and focused his attention on Beth. At his touch, Beth moaned and DL felt a rush of relief she was still alive.

“It’s ok, Beth,” he crooned. “It’s DL, kiddo, I’m here to help.”  

He breathed through his mouth, trying to keep his breath steady even as the sweet but acrid smell of blood rose to meet him. He could almost taste the blood; it was that thick in the room. But at least this way he lessoned the threat of nausea. To his disgust, his knee slipped a bit in the blood near her head and his pants immediately became soaked in red.

DL checked the towels Chris had placed on Beth’s cuts, and saw that the ones on her arms were already starting to stick to the drying blood. Beth whimpered when he tried to lift the towels there. He left them alone and moved on to check her face and shoulders. She might have wounds anywhere on her arms and back and he did not want to miss major injuries. He worked to be as gentle as possible with her, but Beth continued to whimper at his touch.

Luckily, there were no cuts on her shoulders, but the gashes on her face were deep and bleeding heavily. He made sure there was enough space for her to breathe then he applied firm but steady pressure to the towels covering her head. They soaked in her blood immediately, becoming saturated until the redness formed a thin glove over his hands as the blood penetrated the material. He fought a wave of nausea at the thought of the damage to her small, delicate face. 

“What are you doing?” Chris asked, stepping through the door frame and looming over DL’s shoulder.  

“I’m trying to keep her from bleeding to death,” DL said. He attempted to keep the frustration out of his voice, aware of the gun in Chris’s hand hovering near the back of his head.

“Man, this is so fucked up! So fucked up!” Chris shouted as he left the cramped room and started pacing outside the door.

“Chris,” DL said as calmly as he could while compressing the towels. “I need you to focus, here. Tell me what happened to Beth tonight. Who did this to her?”

“It was some dude, some whacked out dude! Beth was out trickin’. I needed her help making a few deliveries, so I went to pick her up.” Chris looked pointedly at DL when he said “deliveries,” daring DL to call him on it.  

“She ignored me when I yelled at her to get her ass in the car and I went to get her. I was right next to her and she kept ignoring me, the dumb bitch. I grabbed her arm and was about to smack some sense into her stupid head. Then this guy came out of nowhere and just went after her with a knife.  

I pulled my gun on him and tried shooting him, but it wouldn’t fire. That’s never happened before. I was right next to the guy but couldn’t nail the mother fucker. 

And the whole time Beth is screaming and he keeps cutting her. Finally, I went after him to club him with the gun and he turned and jumped into a car and took off. 

Beth was a mess, so I got her to my car and drove back here as fast as I could. I didn’t know what to do, so I called you.”

The sound of the approaching sirens grew louder as Chris finished his story. Slow realization dawned on his face, and his head whipped back and forth between the source of the sound and DL crouched over Beth.

“You called the cops?!” Chris yelled, turning to aim the gun at DL’s face. “Shit, I said no cops!”

DL looked at Chris over his shoulder and stared at the shaky end of the gun barrel. His heart started racing as he met Chris’s angry eyes. DL allowed himself a second to gain his composure before speaking in a neutral but unsteady voice.

“An ambulance, Chris. An ambulance for Beth.” He nodded to the prone figure on the floor to make his point this was about and for the injured girl.

DL watched the battle warring in Chris’s eyes, as they flicked between DL and Beth, anger then fear flashing over his face. DL steeled himself as Chris’s face settled into anger. He forced himself to keep his eyes steady and looking at Chris, even as he prepared for Chris to pull the trigger. He was aware his death was coming eventually, but he had not envisioned it happening in a dirty bathroom, blood soaked, and trying to save a girl from dying.

Chris took one more look at Beth sprawled under DL’s blood coated hands and then took off into the other room. 

DL released the breath he was holding, exhaling shakily in relief but maintaining enough presence of mind to continue applying pressure to the towels on Beth’s face. He could make out Chris ransacking the apartment, rushing from room to room, presumably gathering up all his stash. Then finally the front door slammed against the wall as Chris bolted through it and stumbled down the steps.

Not long after Chris made his escape, DL heard the ambulance pull up outside the apartment building. Right afterward a voice was calling out from the bottom of the stairs. 

“Who called the ambulance? Who needs help?”

“Up here on the third floor, the door’s open!” DL shouted. He continued to call out until the 
paramedics made it to the apartment and found him in the bathroom where he huddled over Beth. 

They quickly took over and got her out of the building and into the ambulance. DL ran to his own truck, heedless of the blood on his clothes and hands. Jumping in to follow them to the hospital, he was dialing Grace’s number as soon as he pulled away from the curb.

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