Chapter 3 - Signs someone is about to die in your bed

Madeleine

𓎢𓎠𑄻𑄾𓎠𓎡

Jason. Jason should be home by now.

I tore off the gloves, wiped my hands on a towel that already looked like a crime scene, and sprinted out the door in socks, no coat, no keys, just nerves and adrenaline.

I banged on Jason's door, looking around to see if the bad people were still here, looking to kill him and now... me.

“Jason!” I pounded on his door again, “Jason, please be home, please be home, please—”

The lock clicked.

His tired, just-got-off-a-26-hour-shift face peeked out, “Maddie? What—”

“Oh thank God, you’re here.” I barreled into his apartment without permission and turned around to grab his arm. “You have to come with me. Now. Please. It’s an emergency. A man. Bleeding. A lot of bleeding. My floor is ruined. His lung might be too. Maybe even his spleen. Can spleens bleed? I think they can.”

He blinked, “Wait, what? What man? Are you okay? Did someone hurt you—?”

“No, no, not me, I’m fine! I mean, I’m not fine, I think I’ve been in shock for the past hour, but I’m not the one dying on my rug, okay?” I tugged harder. “He broke in and locked the door. He was already bleeding and then he just collapsed. I patched him up but I don’t know what I’m doing! Well, I do know some things, because of Mamãe and Papai but this is—this is way above me.”

Jason had already grabbed his emergency bag because he’s the kind of person who has an emergency bag and was slipping on shoes.

“You let a bleeding man stay in your apartment?” he asked, jogging beside me as we stepped out of his apartment and ran to mine.

“He passed out on my floor, Jason! What was I supposed to do? Say, ‘Sorry, Mr. Mysterious Blood Loss Man, please die elsewhere’? I’m vegan. I can’t even kill a mosquito on purpose!”

We reached my door and I flung it open, “Please just fix him, okay? He’s still breathing. And I think I traumatized him trying to clean the wound because—”

He was dead?

I froze.

Jason stopped behind me.

The man still lay just where I left him. My makeshift bandages were still wrapped. There was a faint rise and fall of his chest. He was alive.

I let out a breath and whispered, “See? I told you.”

Jason blinked at the blood everywhere. “Jesus Christ, Maddie.”

I bit my lip, voice wobbling as I knelt back beside the stranger. “Can you help him? Please, Jason. Just… don’t ask questions right now. Just help him.”

Jason didn’t ask another word. He was already snapping on gloves. The moment he peeled back my last bandage, a fresh rush of red bubbled up.

“Oh my God, oh my God, he’s still bleeding. I thought I tied it right, I swear I tied it right. I mean, I double-knotted it like shoelaces and everything, does blood not listen to knots?”

Jason grunted, “You did okay. You slowed it. But the cut’s deep. He’s lucky he didn’t nick the lung.”

“I knew it looked lung-ish!” I clutched the hem of my bloodied pajama shirt, “Do lungs grow back? I mean, I know liver does but I don’t think—oh God. He’s gonna die and it’s gonna be my fault and he didn’t even ask to be here and what if—”

“Maddie.” Jason looked up for half a second, “Inhale. Exhale. Sit down or you’re going to faint on me.”

I obeyed so fast I landed on the floor with a thump. My knees hit the rug and I curled them to my chest like a human stress ball, “I didn’t even ask his name. He could be a Bob. Or a Kevin. He doesn’t look like a Kevin, though. He looks more like... I don't know, someone handsome. With cheekbones.”

Jason didn’t respond. He was focused on stitching. The kind of stitching I couldn’t do. Not on someone’s chest.

My heart twisted again when I saw the way the man’s face flinched in his sleep. Aw, he was in pain.

I didn’t know why, but something in me whispered he was a good guy.

Jason looked up at me, “Maddie. Is this guy in trouble?”

“I don’t know!” I wailed. “He just showed up in my apartment! Bleeding! Dying! And now he’s saying things that sound like he has enemies who—who kill people who go to the hospital, and oh my God, I knew this was going to be one of those days where I should’ve stayed in bed!”

Jason didn’t say anything for a full three seconds. His eyes flicked from the half-conscious man on the rug to me and back again.

“I know, I know what you’re gonna say,” I rushed out, waving my arms around, “Call the police, Maddie. Call an ambulance, Maddie. But no! Because—because he said no hospitals and I know it was mumbly and delirious but it was also really intense and you should’ve seen his face. He was serious and scary. Like, the kind of scary you don’t fake unless you’re a really good actor.”

Jason sighed. “Maddie…”

“No, listen!” I clutched his arm, “What if—what if he’s not a bad guy? What if he’s one of the good guys? Like—like a spy. Or—or a secret agent. Or someone running from, I don’t know, dangerous people with helicopters. You know I have an overactive imagination, but what if it’s right this time?”

“He had a bullet in him, Maddie.”

“Well, that doesn’t mean he shot anyone!” I countered, “That proves that he was the one being chased. Maybe he saved someone. Maybe he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Jason rubbed his face.

“Okay. So. I have a plan.” I clapped once. “We move him to the bed. I’ll make chamomile compresses. You already did the stitching, you’re amazing. I’ll give him some painkillers—nothing super strong, just the kind I use when I drop kettlebells on my toes. You can handle the prescriptions for infection and whatever else. And I’ll watch him! No one will know. No cops. No questions. Just quiet, peaceful, low-crime-zone healing.”

He looked at me for a long moment. “You’re going to drag a bullet-ridden stranger into your bed and pretend everything’s normal.”

“Obviously. New sheets. Clean pillowcases. He needs it more than me right now, Jay.”

Jason shook his head in disbelief but stood, “You are crazy, Maddie.”

“Crazy and helpful,” I chirped, already flinging open the linen closet for towels. “Now help me carry him.”

Between the two of us, we managed to lift the man onto the bed. He was heavy because he had strong, solid, muscle-everywhere. He groaned once when Jason shifted his shoulder, and I immediately apologized like I’d stepped on his foot.

“Sorry! Sorry! You’re doing great. So brave. So unconscious. We love that for you.”

We got him on the bed, propped up his torso with a pillow, and Jason adjusted the bandages again.

“I’ll give him some acetaminophen,” I said. “And maybe some valerian root, because that’s good for calming nerves and I’m pretty sure he has some.”

Jason arched an eyebrow. “And you?”

“Oh, I already had two lavender capsules,” I said, “And some Rescue Remedy while I was waiting for you to come home. I might also start crying in the next ten minutes, but I’m emotionally versatile.”

When Jason was done, he stood and started packing up, “I’m trusting you, Maddie.”

“You can always trust me. I babysit kittens.”

“Call me if anything goes sideways, alright?”

“Will do!” I chirped, way too peppy for someone standing in blood-soaked socks.

Jason gave me one last warning look, before stepping out, “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Too late,” I muttered to the door after it clicked shut behind him. “I already let a bleeding, beautiful man with murder-eyes and a bullet hole into my living room. I’m doomed. I’m so doomed.”

I turned around slowly, taking it all in: blood smeared across the floor, the couch, me. My favorite yellow throw pillow was soaked. The coffee table looked like the surgeon's table.

My apartment looked like I sacrificed a goat in the name of Satan.

And then I got to work because if I didn’t, I was pretty sure I’d just sit down and cry.

I tossed anything soaked in his blood straight into garbage bags, trying not to think about how incredibly suspicious it all looked. Like, if anyone decided to peek inside, I'd be screwed.

Once the floors were scrubbed, the couch wiped down, and the throw pillows mourned and replaced, I stumbled to the bathroom. I peeled off my ruined clothes, dumped them straight into a plastic bag, and stepped into the shower.

The water hit me and for a second, I just stood there, forehead against the tile. I watched his blood swirl down the drain off my body.

When I was clean, I pulled on a fresh pair of shorts and an oversized t-shirt, I walked back to my bedroom.

I peeked at the stranger, his long lashes, his chest rising and falling. I sat on the floor beside the bed and tucked the covers up around him.

“No hospitals,” I whispered. “No cops. No questions.”

Then because I couldn't help myself, I added, “But if you are an assassin or something, please don’t kill me when you wake up. I make really good pancakes. Vegan. Banana oat. I'll make them for you.”

I couldn’t sleep.

Of course I couldn’t sleep. There was a strange, injured, unconscious, bleeding man in my bed.

Well, not bleeding now, exactly. More like... healing. His breathing was more even. Less rattly. He hadn’t made a sound in the past hour, which was either a really good thing or a really, really bad one, but I decided not to spiral about that.

I’d already used up my spiral quota when I googled “signs someone is about to die in your bed” and then had to delete my search history just in case the FBI thought I was planning something.

Which I wasn’t, obviously.

Anyway.

I sat in my armchair with my knees pulled up to my chest, a mug of chamomile tea clutched in my hands, and a blanket wrapped around my shoulders.

I couldn’t help but whisper to him now and then. It was silly, I know. He couldn’t hear me but I had a habit of talking too much.

“I don’t like the idea of someone dying alone. Especially not on a cold night. Especially not when I could do something, even if it’s just... wrapping towels around them and staying by their side.”

I set the mug down and stood slowly, creeping toward him. The bandages were still secure, there was no new blood. His lips weren’t as pale anymore, and his forehead wasn’t as clammy as before. I pressed the back of my hand gently to his cheek, it was warm. Not feverish, just warm.

“You’re going to be okay,” I whispered, even though I wasn’t sure. “You’re in a safe place. No one’s going to hurt you here.”

I stood there for a while, watching him breathe.

I bit my lip, then reached over and gently adjusted the blanket on his chest and sat down on the floor beside the bed.

“If you wake up and try to kill me, I hope you at least feel a little bad about it,” I whispered.

I was only going to rest my eyes. Just for a second.

I swear, I really did mean to stay awake but there I was, slouched sideways by my bed, head lolling dangerously close to my shoulder, still wrapped up in my favorite yellow throw blanket, the one with the tiny embroidered suns.

The last thing I remember was trying to tell him a story about how my neighbor’s cat broke into my pantry and ate all my cereal, and how I cried for three days because it was the good kind with the cinnamon clusters and I didn't have any money to buy new ones but halfway through explaining, my head dipped forward.

My cheek landed on the mattress near his arm.

I was too tired to move.

The sheets still smelled faintly of antiseptic and chamomile. The soft hush of his breathing rose and fell beside me. I couldn’t even open my eyes again. I think I mumbled something—I don’t know what. Maybe “don’t die.” Maybe “I put your blood-stained shirt in with my good towels.”

Either way, I was out cold in seconds.

Curled up beside a man I should probably be terrified of.

Wrapped in yellow cotton sunshine.

- Akhir Chapter -