Lost in La La Land(61)

“She was a meddlesome bitch. She was cutting me off, Em. She was limiting me, giving me less and less and fucking with the clocks so I thought I had more time than I did. Stealing time from my kids. She tried to give me a sedative.” She leaned in the doorway, rubbing her hands over her face, smearing blood and wheezing from the stairs. Her voice changed back to wimpy and whiny, trying to manipulate me, “She tried to trick me into regular sleep.” Her eyes darted to the needle sticking out of Gilda’s old arm.

My phone call was picked up and someone spoke.

I hid the phone next to Gilda and shouted, hoping my cries would be heard, “You killed her, Lana. You killed Gilda.”

“She deserved it. It was an accident,” she whined and then shouted, “She tried to cut me off!”

Someone shouted my name from the phone but I hung up, hoping it was enough.

“Lana, we need to call the police.” My voice broke as my hands touched the warm body of my deceased friend. I gripped her, hoping for some of her strength. “We need to call 911. We need an ambulance. She might not be dead.” I glanced at the scissors lodged in her neck and knew she was.

“Don’t touch her, Em. We can leave her here and get the machines and leave. We can call and say we were on vacation and someone must have broken in.” Her eyes widened, showing the bloodshot whites. “They were trying to steal the machines. It was Marshall I bet.”

Her ability to lie was uncanny. She was already starting to believe the lies she spun.

“Okay.” I nodded, terrified and yet never clearer. “You need to get cleaned up. Wash your hands. I’ll go and pack a bag and you pack a bag. And it’ll look like we were on vacation.”

“Yeah, and then we’ll call and tell them the alarms went off or something. Say our housekeeper didn’t check in today, which is weird. She always calls us on vacations.” She spun so fast even I could see the details stitching together in the air around us.

Hot tears leaked from my eyes but I nodded and tried to sound normal, “Okay, so let’s clean you up. You need to wash your hands first. I’ll wait here with Gilda—”

“Don’t say her name!” she shouted, sinking into the doorway. “Don’t say her name, say housekeeper. She was a housekeeper.” Tears flooded her eyes too as the predicament she’d put us both in began to build around her, walling her in.

It was strange to watch it happen. She’d been so big and loud and terrifying a moment ago and then it changed. She shrunk, sinking into the doorframe and falling to her knees. She pulled in her shoulders, getting smaller and smaller, hugging herself and rocking. “Say housekeeper. Em, say housekeeper. Okay? Say housekeeper. Don’t say her name.”

“Okay.”

“Emma!” she shouted at me. “Help me!” She clawed at her head, smacking it over and over. “You have to help me!”

I glanced back at the syringe on the counter filled with the blue liquid, the carrier for the nanobots and then to the scissors in Gilda’s neck. I didn’t know which one was a crueler fate, but I knew which one I was capable of. I grabbed the blue syringe, holding it up. “You need this. You need Danny,” I spoke softly, walking slowly to her. I didn’t need to get her worked up.

“I need Danny.” She nodded, her eyes wide, lost in the beauty of the incandescent blue light.

I tried not to shake when I took her thin arm and stabbed the needle in, pushing the liquid into her. “It’ll be okay.”

As I sent the nanobots, the tension in her arms and legs lessened.

She smiled as she relaxed. “Thank you.” She gave me a last look. Her eyes were filled with knowledge, some of it gratitude and some of it fear.

I dosed Lana Delacroix for the last time.

She was drifting off, completely gone, only not.

It was over.

“I have to call the police, Lana,” I whispered, my voice now filled with everything I was trying to hold back.

“I know.” She blinked a tear down her cheek. “Let me die in here.”

A shadow crossed the floor of the hallway behind her, and for one second I wondered if it was Gilda, already haunting the house. But the face of the man I’d called, rounding the corner, lifting a finger to his lips, made more tears fall from my eyes. I nodded, losing the control I had on myself. I exhaled as he crept up behind her, holding her as she fell—succumbing to the nanobots.

I collapsed too, falling to the floor, sobbing.

The tears and sobs weren’t just for this moment. Most of them belonged to a woman standing in the yard as her husband was carried away. She never cried then—I never cried then. I never sobbed like this, the purifying tears one needed to grieve properly.

Mike laid Lana down carefully and lifted me up even more so. He held me to his chest, whispering into my ear all the lies I needed to hear.

He held me through it all: the police, the ambulance, and the psych ward attendants who came and took Lana.

She was as still as could be when they strapped her into the gurney, restraining her hands and feet and administering an antipsychotic.

She wouldn’t need it. Ever.

She would never have an episode for them.

She wouldn't come back for them, and they wouldn't know what was wrong with her.

The needle marks and the dying body would suggest enough.