Page 6 of Marlin's Faith

“Captain called me from out front, I came in and your sister had a hold of you. I’m the only one of our crew that’s had to deal with addiction, even second hand like I did with Danny, so I picked you up and took you out of there.”

“The van…”

“Set you off like a firework,” I nodded in agreement. “But that’s okay. You had a good reason for it, and that’s gonna happen. You been through a lot, Faith. We’re going to get you some help. One step at a time.”

“I still don’t understand, you don’t know me… why are you helping me?”

It was a valid question, but none of the answers I had were real satisfying… because I liked her sister, because my Captain had asked me to, because I was a nice guy, but mostly and most truthfully it was likely to fix past mistakes that could neverbefixed. Because I’d fuckin’ failed and my brother was dead… Then the reality set in, the hard truth: because every time she looked at me with those beautiful eyes, the color of the waters around here that I loved so damn much, I was like a drowning man that didn’twantto come up for air. None of these explanations sounded real good. None of them sounded anything less than what they were, sort of creepy. So I simply pursed my lips and patted the top of the edge of the tub. Resisting the urge I had to give her knee a reassuring squeeze.

She didn’t need me touching her. No matter how much Iwantedto gather her up, hold her close and keep the horrors away from her, I couldn’t do that. I had to fight every instinct I hadtodo just that. It was basic human instinct. You saw someone hurting, you put your arms around them. You held them and soothed them, except what do you do in a case like this? When every touch she’d endured over the last couple of years was for someone else’s gratification?

Her clear, bright eyes roved my face and something flashed in their depths. She closed them and turned away from me, laying her head on top of her knees. It killed me that there wasn’t anything I could do.

She’d been sleeping more, after the initial hell of detox had passed, she’d finally fallen into a deep, exhausted sleep. Over two days she’d been up in one form or another. The doc had left this morning with his crew to go back up north now that she was out of the woods. Not like I’d let him do much. Nothing either, for that matter. He’d been forced to put antibiotics through her IV a time or two when it was clear she couldn’t keep any of the pills he’d brought with him down. The anti-nausea medicine, for whatever reason, didn’t work for shit on her. The pediatric popsicles Doc had me give her to help keep her hydrated only stayed down some of the time. Of course, the red ones were her favorite, and of course, they stained like a motherfucker. Didn’t it figure? As soon as she could keep some broth and crackers in her, maybe some pudding, she’d have to start the antibiotic pills again.

I sat with her while she soaked in her sorely needed bath, and counted the knobs of her spine and every rib, where they stood out prominently against her back. She was sothin… It’d killed me when the doc had said she was lucky, that the sexually transmitted infections she had were all fixable with a course of a couple of weeks’ worth of pills. She had three, apparently… Gonorrhea, Chlamydia and some shit I ain’t never heard of called Trichomoniasis.

She would need regular bloodwork for a while to keep checking for HIV or any of the Hepatitis’, but he said the initial tests had come back clear, which was a real good sign. All I could keep thinking was there weren’t no good here. None at all.

“You cool for a minute?” I asked her softly and she nodded without looking. I pulled myself up, pushing off the edge of the tub to get to my feet and felt like I was getting too old for sitting on the floor like that, which was a bitch seeing as I was only thirty-six. I went out into the main bedroom and stretched for a second before I changed the bedding. It needed it. She’d been sweating hard. That done I went back in to check on her and found her crying quietly. It broke my fucking heart that there wasn’t a damn thing I could do except for what I’d been doing all this time. I sat back down on the floor and just hung around near her. Just there, for whatever she might need.

“I’m sorry,” she uttered and raised her hands from the bath, scrubbing her tears away with her damp fingers. She held her breath and splashed water onto her face and I turned my head away, staring at the glassed in shower, trying hard not to study her reflection and to give her both support and privacy in equal measure. I mean, what else could I fucking do?

“Thank you, Marlin,” she said and I jumped slightly.

“For what?”

“Everything.”

“I ain’t done nothin’ really.”

She finished her bath in silence and I let her, standing and waiting out in the room for her to dry off and get dressed. She was unsteady on her feet when she slipped out into the room and blinked up at me owlishly when I turned around and looked down at her from where I stood sentinel.

Wordlessly she held up that leather wrist band with the old fashioned key plate set into it and I smiled and nodded. She slipped it over her hand and held it in place, turning up the delicate underside of her wrist so that I could tug the laces tight and tie it off for her. Silently we stood while I carefully tied the thin leather cording off in a bow.

“Someday you gonna tell me what it means? Why it’s so important?” I asked quietly.

“Maybe.”

“You ain’t gotta tell me anything you don’t want to, Darlin’, but I sure would like to get to know you.”

She looked thoughtful at that and with a halting step, took one out into the room, but stopped.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t want to sound rude, but I’m sick of it in here… can we go someplace else in the house?” I smiled.

“Yeah, you’re not a prisoner, Baby Girl. You’re a guest, you can go wherever you want. You good to make it downstairs? Sit in the kitchen while I make you something to eat, see if you can keep something down?”

“I think so,” she nodded but wouldn’t look at me. She hugged herself around the middle and looked so wrung out, but at the same time, she was on the mend. Her color better, the dark circles under her eyes still prominent, but her bright eyes, from beneath her pale lashes, were more alert than I’d seen them since I’d met her. Forget lucid, she was back from the hell the drugs had dragged her down into… which meant she was going to have to start clawing her way out of the pit of memory sooner rather than later.

I was wondering how tough this talk was going to be. None of us were fuckin’ equipped for this kind of mental and emotional damage. Faith was gonna need help. Real help, from a professional equipped to deal with this level of trauma to a person’s psyche. I put out a hand and motioned for her to lead the way and she padded gracefully on her bare feet across the light, lush carpet.

Hope had dropped off a few clothes the day before, quiet, pleading with her eyes for me to tell her that Faith had changed her mind and wanted her older sister, but Faith hadn’t said a word about her. At least not until now.

“Do you think Hope will want to see me?” she asked and I cocked my head to the side and pulled out a chair at the dining room table. Faith drifted down into it and I looked her over. She wore soft looking heather gray leggings beneath an oversized white boat neck tee. At least I think that’s what they called the kind that hung artfully off her thin shoulder. She’d swept all that long blonde hair over her shoulder. Both of us thankfully lice free, so it would seem. My jacket and cut were in a plastic garbage sack and tied off in the garage where they had to sit for a few more days yet. Just to make sure.

“Honey, I think I’m gonna have a tough time keeping her away much longer. You want I should call her here now?”

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