Rivals

The security guards were checking IDs at the front door of the hospital, so Maggie went around to the back and jumped up to the second floor and crawled in through an open window. Then she had to wait near the nurse's station until no one was around, which felt like it took hours. Once she had access to a computer it was easy enough to look up what room Fred Wallace was in. She'd gotten his name from the news broadcast she'd seen in her hotel room. He was the cop who had shot her in front of the bank while Brent distracted her. He was the cop she'd then picked up and thrown, hard enough to fracture half the bones in his body.

He was a twelve-year veteran of the police force. He had a wife and two kids. She had swatted him away from her like a pesky fly. It was true, he had shot her. In the face. But she had shrugged off the pain of that in a second. His pain was going to last a whole lot longer.

No one noticed when Maggie slipped past a nurse's station on the fifth floor and worked her way down a semi-darkened hallway. It was late and the hospital felt all but deserted. Visiting hours were long over but in some of the rooms she passed people were still sitting next to quiet beds, holding pale, battered hands or reading magazines or just staring into space. Machines kept beeping softly to themselves and the soda machine at the end of the hallway rumbled and buzzed for no one.

She found the room she wanted. The door was open and she could see Wallace lying in the bed. There were bandages wrapped around most of his head and on both of his hands. He was asleep. Maybe that was for the best. Maggie slipped into the room and stood at the foot of his bed.

It was amazing how fragile human bodies could be. The ones without superpowers, anyway. She hadn't thought about what she was doing. As usual, she had just reacted - to her anger, to the darkness inside of her. When he shot her, she'd figured that made it alright to strike back. No, even that was giving her too much credit. She hadn't figured anything. Everything had looked red, and she had just lashed out like a wounded animal.

She didn't think she should wake him. He probably needed his rest, and, anyway, what was she going to say to him? I'm sorry I nearly killed you? The newscast had said he was in serious but stable condition. That meant he wasn't going to die. But what if he had? It could have happened easily enough. If he'd hit his head instead of his back, if she'd thrown him slightly differently... there were so many ways.

All she could do, she decided, was leave the money and go. She slipped off her backpack and looked for a place to set it down. She was giving him half the money she'd stolen from the bank. It might cover his medical expenses, though she doubted it. She'd started to count it earlier and realized that there just wasn't that much of it. After paying for her ridiculously expensive hotel room and a cheap car, she might not even half enough left to pay for gas and food on her trip out of town. It didn't matter, though. She would give Wallace and his family as much as she could spare.

She was about to put the backpack on a chair by the bed when she heard a toilet flush. All the hair on her arms stood up and she slowly turned around to see someone coming out of the room's private bathroom. A middle-aged woman with short, frizzy hair. Her face was red and worn as if she'd been crying for a long time. It must be Wallace's wife, Maggie decided.

"I don't want you here," she said, her voice firm. Not, what are you doing here? Not, did you come to finish the job? That was what Maggie had expected.

"I only came to say I'm sorry. And to try to help," Maggie told her.

"Don't. Don't try. You can only make things worse. I know about you. I went back and read all the things they said in the newspaper. You hurt people, and then your brother comes in and saves the day. Except he doesn't save anything. He just cleans up. He's like your janitor."

Maggie looked down at her shoes. "I have some money, here, I thought it could help pay for the hospital room, and - "

The woman grabbed the backpack out of Maggie's hands. She rummaged around in the twenty dollar bills crammed inside. "Where'd you get this?" she asked, holding up a handful of twenties.

"From the bank."

"It's stolen? Do you even understand what you're doing? He's a cop. I'm a cop's wife. I can't take this. It would be my duty to turn it in." She threw the bills at Maggie and they fluttered across the floor. "Here. I don't want it," she said, and handed the backpack to Maggie. "Stupid little twit. Bringing stolen money here."

"I was only trying to say I'm sorry!" Maggie protested.

"Help? Do you even know what you did? It'll be months before he walks again. Fred will probably never be able to go back to active duty - they'll have to give him a desk job. He's going to hate that."

Tears were crowding in the corners of Maggie's eyes. "Please. Let me help, somehow. Just tell me what you want. Because I don't know what else to do."

The woman grabbed Maggie's face in her hand and stared into her eyes. "Just go away. Just go somewhere and die."

Maggie fled the room, then. At the nurse's station someone shouted for her to stop, but she ignored them and kept running. Eventually she was outside again and still running and she didn't stop for a long time.