“He’s going to prison for this,” my daddy yelled from the hallway.
We were in the hospital. I knew this because I woke up in a white bed in a room with white walls and white floors and there were white tubes stuck into my arm. There were no loud noises, no blood or bodies or biker men around so I knew that everything had calmed down and I was safe.
At least, everything had calmed down except for my daddy. I’d never seen him so mad because Lafayettes weren’t supposed to let anyone else know what they were thinking or feeling.
Everyone in the kids ward of Saint Katherine’s Hospital knew what my daddy was thinking and feeling right now. I woke up to a foggy head, a dull pain in my shoulder and the sound of him saying a lot of really bad words. That was five minutes ago and he still hadn’t stopped.
“Benjamin, you are making a scene,” my mum said.
“I mean it, Phillipa,” he shouted just outside my slightly open door. “That piece of scum is going away for this!”
“I understand your sentiments, Mr. Lafayette, and I can assure you that Zeus Garro will go to jail for his crimes.” The staff sergeant hesitated. “But he has a solid shot at a reduced sentence and early parole for saving your daughter—”
“HE DID NO SUCH THING,” Daddy bellowed. “He is the reason that my daughter is drugged up and lying damaged in a fucking hospital bed. He is the reason that Entrance is known as the hometown to a violent, drug-trafficking motorcycle gang. We are fucking lucky that water real estate is at a premium in the province and our education ranking is so high or else no one would ever live here. And do you know why that is, Harold? Because of fucking Zeus Garro.”
Oh no.
No way.
My daddy was so not going to send my biker man to jail. I didn’t really know what he was talking about except that drugs were bad and so was violence, but I did know that my biker saviour was not a bad man. Bad men just didn’t throw themselves in front of seven-year-old girls to take a bullet for them.
I was young but I wasn’t dumb.
“Daddy,” I cried out, but my voice was weak in my dry throat.
“If you would listen to what I’m telling you, Benjamin,” staff sergeant Danner tried again. “I’m telling you, Garro is going away for this. He killed a man in front of my fucking officers, shot him right in the goddamn head before we could even take stock of the situation. He’s going away. What I’m also telling you is that the man he shot in the head was the man who put a bullet in your daughter, the same bullet that went through Garro’s own chest before it landed in hers. You want to talk about the damage that bullet could’ve done if it hadn’t lost speed going through that barrel of a man first?”
My daddy was silent after that.
“Benjamin,” my mum said in her special soft voice that made him listen to her. “He deserves to go to prison but think of the silver lining. If Louise wasn’t hurt like this we wouldn’t know there was something wrong with her.”
My ears stung to hear it, but I wasn’t surprised. I’d been sick for a long time now even though no one believed me when I said I felt bad because I didn’t have a runny nose or anything.
“We don’t know anything yet, Phillipa,” my daddy told her sternly.
“We do. The doctors are concerned, honey. It took her too long to stop bleeding, she lost consciousness for two days. That is not normal. And then there’s the fact that she has been complaining about pain for a few months now—”
“She’s looking for attention, Phillipa, that’s all.”
“Whether or not that may be the case, the doctors are running tests and it is not looking good.”
“Being stubborn again, are we, son?” The wheezy old voice of my grandpa came through my door and I straightened automatically in my bed. Grandpa was stern, but he was also super nice to me and he always gave me lollipops if I recited Bible passages correctly.
“Even you can’t find absolution for Zeus Garro, Dad,” my daddy said.
“Maybe not, but I can find it for him in this situation. Without this incident, how long would it have taken you to realize that Louise is seriously ill. I’ve said it once, I’ll say it one hundred times, just because someone is not who you want them to be, it does not mean they are incapable of good.”
My daddy snorted. “I will not thank a felon for saving my daughter, not least of all because he did not even save her! She’s laying in a hospital bed with a bullet wound through her shoulder! How am I the only rational person here who sees what a monster that man is? He shouldn’t even be allowed to rest in the same hospital as my daughter after what he and his gang have done.”
“Benjamin, that is enough,” my mum said. “People can hear you. Think what they might say?”
“No, you’re right. We need to spin this just right and I’m too furious to think with a level head right now. We’ll go home and talk about what to tell the press. Harold, I don’t want any of those vultures in here trying to get to my daughter. Lord knows what she’ll say to them.”
“Benjamin.” My grandpa tsked. “She’s just a girl.”
“A girl who needs to grow up. What in the world she was doing running away from her parents and into the fray, is beyond me.”
Their voices faded as they walked down the hall away from my room. I lay stiff even though it hurt my arm, because whenever my parents made me want to cry, I told myself to be still and be calm. Crying was for babies like my little sister, Bea. Not for me. I was a Lafayette and Lafayettes didn’t cry. Not even when they got shot, not even when they got sick and not even when their family left them all alone in the hospital. I lay there for a long time until Nanny came in with Bea to check on me. They both smiled and laughed when they put cartoons on the little TV on the wall but I didn’t feel like smiling. The only thing that made me feel better was the Snickers bar that a super nice nurse named Betsy snuck in for me.
Later, Nanny was somewhere talking to the doctors because they never did that kind of stuff in front of me. Our neighbor, Mrs. Brock, already picked up Bea and took her home. I was alone but I was happy because I was mad at Daddy for hating my guardian monster and Nanny wouldn’t stop touching me and saying stuff in French that was supposed to be nice, but I didn’t understand.
I was supposed to stay in the kid part of the hospital because they were keeping me overnight but I didn’t like it there. There were a lot of kids and a lot of them cried. It was sad and it was even sadder that the nurses and staff tried to cover it up with bright colours and lots of toys. It wasn’t a happy place and it kind of freaked me out.
If I stayed in my room like I was supposed to, it was even scarier and sadder because grandpa said I had a good imagination and I did, so it was easy to picture all the monsters crawling around outside, just waiting for me to fall asleep, so they could eat me.
Besides, Daddy had mentioned that my guardian monster was in the hospital too so maybe I could find him and tell him to run away.
My arm really hurt when I moved but it wasn’t too big a deal because my body had been hurting for a while, like my blood was on fire and I was a volcano about to erupt. I winced when I pulled the needle out of my hand and saw the really purple bruise there. It didn’t scare me though. I bruised really badly really easily.
It wasn’t busy that night so no one noticed me when I walked down the halls and checked out what everyone was doing. People don’t really notice kids unless they’re in the way.
I searched my floor then the one below me and I was super tired by the time I checked the emergency room, but I made myself keep going because the thought of my hero being hurt made me frightened. I didn’t like to see all the blood and chaos in the huge room but I was determined to find my biker man.
I was just pulling back yet another curtain to peek inside when a voice said, “Whatcha doin’, kid?”
I froze.
“Just ’cause you stopped movin’ doesn’t mean I don’t see you anymore,” the same deep voice told me.
It was the voice of a monster, really dark and rumbly like there was something wrong with his throat. He didn’t sound mean though, it kind of sounded like he wanted to laugh.
“I’m not supposed to be down here,” I told him without turning around.
“Figured as much. What’s a little girl doing in the ER all by herself? Not that I’m not stoked to see you walkin’ around after what happened. How’s the shoulder, kid?”
I turned around to look at him through my hair and took a step away because I’d forgotten how much he looked like a monster. He was humungous like a Titan or a giant but in real life. He was lying in a hospital bed, kinda leaning up against the pillow but I thought that if he stood up his head would hit the ceiling. He had a bunch of really long, crazy hair that was blond and brown and his big arms and sides were covered with drawings. There were pictures on his arms that looked like feathers, like those giant arms were really wings like on an angel.
“Are you an angel?” I asked.
I was closer to him than before, but I didn’t remember moving closer to his bed. I reached out to touch his skin because the feathers looked so real and I wanted to know what they felt like.
He made a weird noise like he was choking. “No, kid, I’m no angel.”
“I thought maybe you were a monster because you’re really big, but you have wings and you saved me from all the bad guys,” I explained.
My fingers touched the feather curling over his arm. They didn’t feel like real feathers except his skin was smooth like when you pet a feather just right.
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
“No but it hurt like a bitch to get ’em.”
“A bitch?”
“Damn, sorry, kid. Don’t say that, it’s a bad word.”
“Then why do you use it?” I frowned. Angels didn’t say bad words. My grandpa was the pastor, so I knew these things.
His lips twitched like maybe he wanted to smile. “That’s a good question.”
I crossed my arms. “So, are you going to answer it or what?”
He laughed this time but I didn’t think it was in a mean way so I let him.
“Don’t have a good answer for ya. My dad cursed, my mum cursed, so I curse. Grew up with that shit.”
“My grandpa says that if you do bad stuff like curse, then bad stuff happens to you.” I pointed to the white bandage that covered half his chest. “Maybe that’s why you got hurt.”
“I got hurt savin’ a little girl who needed savin’,” he reminded me gently.
I bit my lip and scuffed my heel against the floor. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you got hurt because of me. Do you want me to kiss it better?”
He choked again, like he was swallowing laughter. “I’m good, kid, but thanks. I’ve had worse, trust me.”
There was a thick rope of weirdly smooth and mangled skin on the right side of his neck. I pointed at it. “Like that?”
“I did something a lot worse than curse to get that,” he told me and then winked.
I giggled.
He had really big eyes like a wolf, really pale and grey.
“What did you do?” I leaned heavily against the side of his bed because I was really tired.
He looked at me for a long time before he said, “I found a guy that did some bad stuff to a friend of mine and I did some bad stuff to him. Before I got ’im, he got me with a blunt machete.”
He made a chopping motion against the junction of his neck and shoulder where the scar was.
“For real?” I breathed.
He nodded.
“Wow. If you got him because he chopped you, what did you do to the bad guy that shot us?”
“Smart girl.” His lips twitched again and he lifted one of his huge hands to show me his bloody knuckles.
I nodded. “You’re definitely big enough to kill someone with your bare hands.”
He tilted his head. “Don’t seem that disturbed about it, kid. You close to death?”
I mimicked his pose and squinted my eyes at him. “You mean do I know him or something?”
“Yeah, somethin’.” He grinned.
“I guess so. I’m dying, probably,” I told him. It was dramatic but I wanted to see what he would do if he thought I was really dying. He was an angel so I figured he would know if that was true or not. Besides, my mum always said it was a lady’s right to be dramatic and it was the only one of her rules I actually liked.
My feet were cold on the plastic floor so I pushed the bedside chair closer to him and climbed onto it.
“Dyin’?” His body got tight. I watched his face screw up and to the left like a twist cap on soda pop.
“Why are you making a funny face?” I asked.
“Don’t think any person finds out a little girl is gonna die is going to smile at it,” he replied.
“That’s a nice thing to say.”
He shook his head, studying me really hard. “I got a son older than you and a little girl ’bout your age. Hope like fuck that they turn out to be as cool as you, kid.”
“Are you sure you aren’t an angel?” I asked him, because he was being really nice and it made me feel like I was standing in the sun.
I wanted him to be an angel. My grandpa told me that God could save a person from death if they were pious and faithful, and I was a good girl so I was both. He was the town pastor so I think he knew what he was talking about but I never really believed him. What did God care about me?
But if this man was a real angel maybe it meant that I didn’t have to die. Maybe this angel man would wrap me up in his winged arms and make my bones stop hurting.
“Nah, kid, I’m no angel.”
“That’s too bad. I was thinking you could be my guardian angel or something cool like that.”
I stared at him while he laughed at me. One of his big hands pressed to his chest just above his heart where the bandage was wrapped, so I could tell laughing hurt him. But he did it anyway, and he wasn’t quiet about it.
“I’d be a shit guardian angel. I’m not a good man, kid.”
I stared at him, squinting as I looked at his messy hair, all the dark and twisting images on his really tanned skin. At first, I’d thought he looked like a monster, all big and dark and scary because I didn’t understand him.
But, “You have nice eyes. My grandpa says that kind eyes don’t lie.”
His face relaxed in a way that made something flutter in my tummy.
“What’s your name, kid?”
“I’m a Lafayette,” I told him because that was the important bit of my name.
He frowned. “Yeah, got that kid. Your dad is one of the guys rootin’ for a life sentence and it’s safe to say he hates my fuck—freakin’ guts. I wanna know what you call yourself.”
I didn’t want to tell him so I bit my lip. My name was stupid and I hated it. Louise was an old person name and I wasn’t old. It was also a boring name and I really, really didn’t want to grow up to be boring like my mum with her parties and my dad with all his work stuff.
So, I said, “Loulou.”
No one had ever called me Loulou before even though I’d tried to make it stick. Mum and Dad said it was a common name, which meant they didn’t like it, which meant I couldn’t have it.
“Cool. I’m Zeus.”
“Zeus,” I squeaked. “For real?”
His mouth twitched. “I got a name my parents gave me but don’t like it much so, yeah, Zeus.”
“That’s the coolest name I ever heard,” I told him, bouncing up and down in my seat. “Do you know who Zeus is? He’s like the king of all the gods on Mt, Olympus. He throws lightning!”
“Smart girl,” Zeus rumbled in his super cool, super god-like voice.
I stared at him, having a moment because mum told me girls are allowed to have moments and I was pretty sure this man was the absolute coolest man on the planet.
“I’m pretty sure you are the absolute coolest man on the planet,” I told him.
His eyes danced at me and got all crinkly in the corners. Suddenly, it was harder to breathe.
“I’m damn sure that you are the absolute coolest girl on the planet too.”
“Cool,” I said, pretending that wasn’t the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me ever.
He smiled again.
After a minute, it faded and he said, “You should probably head back to bed before someone worries about ya.”
He was right but I really didn’t want to go. Zeus was big and strong and I was pretty sure he was half angel, half monster, which meant that all the other monsters in the hospital wouldn’t hurt me if I stayed with him.
“Will you stay here all night and fight the monsters if they come to get me?” I asked him, looking around his little curtained room. “Do you have your lightning bolts with you?”
“I got the bolts. You don’t worry, kid. I’ll stand watch.”
“Promise?” I asked and my voice was stupid and small like a baby.
Zeus held out his pinky. It was four times the size of mine and for some reason, I thought that was really cool. I linked mine onto it.
“Pinky swear,” he swore.
Then he hooked his thumb over our tangled little fingers to shake it against my thumb. I giggled and for the first time in a long time, when I went to sleep, I didn’t dream of monsters, I dreamt of him.
The next morning, I ran down to the ER in my hospital gown, clutching my uneaten green Jell-O from the night before in my hand. I wanted to share it with Zeus because he’d kept the monsters away all night.
“Fuck this, Z, you’re gonna go to prison for this, ya know,” a scary voice growled from behind Zeus’s curtain just as I was going to push it aside.
I froze.
“Maybe.”
“There’s no maybe about it, dipshit. You got kids at home and you’re pullin’ this crazy-ass stunt without your brothers at your back?”
“I don’t know who my brothers are at the fuckin’ moment, Bat, otherwise wouldn’t be in this fuckin’ mess in the first place. You rather Crux put a bullet in you ’fore I put a bullet in him? He killed our brothers and he went through a motherfuckin’ kid to get to me.”
“Gonna lose half the brothers over this and half of ’em are gonna wanna back you as Prez now he’s gone.”
“A Prez in prison isn’t the best call for the club.”
There was a really awkward pause, like when I heard my mum and daddy fight.
“Farrah’s gonna flip, you go to prison and leave her with the kids,” the angry guy said. “She can’t handle that shit on her own.”
“Yeah,” Zeus said, soft sounding like he was sad. “But this is good, Bat. We needed a change in the club and now that rat bastard is gone, we can move forward.”
“Hard to change the norm when the fucking leader of our revolution is goin’ to prison for manslaughter.”
Manslaughter didn’t sound good. It sounded like Zeus had probably killed someone with his bare hands for real. I shivered but I wasn’t actually scared, not of Zeus. I was scared of what kind of monster that man had been that my angel slayer had to kill him. It didn’t occur to me to think it could be a man who shot a little girl in the chest.
“The pigs are sniffing around but I’ll hold ’em off until you get out of this place. I brought the truck, bring it round front and meet you there in ten, yeah? Won’t buy you much time but I figure you can say goodbye to yer kids.”
“Yeah, brother. Thanks,” Zeus said.
I quickly ducked away from the opening just before a tall, scary-looking tattooed man blew past me. Before the curtain could close, I slipped into Zeus’s space.
He was sitting up in his bed, really dark against the white sheets and way too big for such a tiny bed. They hadn’t changed the Band-Aid on his chest because I could see blood on it like a pink flower blooming underneath. His thick brown eyebrows hung low over his eyes as he stared into the distance at something that made him unhappy but as soon as he saw me, he smiled really big.
“Hey there, kid. Come to say goodbye?”
“No,” I told him primly as I walked over to the chair beside his bed and climbed onto it. “I don’t want to say goodbye.”
His lips twisted, and I noticed they were pretty lips, almost like a girl’s. “Don’t have much of a choice here. I’m goin’ away for a while.”
“Because you killed that bad man?”
“Yeah, ’cause I killed that bad man.”
“So…” I twisted my fingers in my lap and thought really hard about it. “I’m the reason that you have to go away, then. Because you had to save my stupid life?”
“Hey,” he barked so suddenly that I jumped a little. His voice softened as he leaned forward to snag my eyes with his. “Don’t want to hear you talk like that, yeah? Innocence is always worth protectin’. If a baby needed your help, are you tellin’ me you wouldn’t help ’em?”
“I’m not a baby,” I told him.
“No.” He smiled at me and it made me forget to be annoyed at his comparison. “But babies are sweet and innocent like you. They haven’t learned about all the bad stuff in the world yet.”
I twisted my fingers in my lap again. “I don’t want to be like a baby. I want to know about the bad stuff. If I don’t know, what am I going to do when it happens to me when I grow up? Wait for some stupid prince to come save me now that my guardian monster is going away?”
Zeus laughed a great big laugh. “No need to grow up too fast, kid. You got lots of time and once you lose that innocence, you can’t get it back. Trust me.”
“I do,” I told him eagerly. “That’s why I don’t want you to go away and never see me again. Can I visit you where you’re going?”
“No, absolutely fuckin’ not.”
I thought about being hurt for a second and then I guessed, “Because bad people go to where you’re going?”
“Exactly.”
“But I want you to be my friend,” I tried to explain, reaching forward to put my little hand on top of his giant one resting on the bed.
He stared at our hands for a moment with gentle eyes and then looked up at me with a nice smile. “We are, kid.”
“Hurrah!” I whispered, because I was excited, but it felt like too important a moment to ruin with a shout.
“What are you doing in here?” Nurse Betsy said in a really high voice like the one my mum used when I was doing something gross or stupid.
She pushed back the curtain that separated Zeus’s bed from the rest of the big room and ran over to me, checking me over with her hands and glaring at my new friend.
“What is she doing in here with you? You’re in enough trouble as it is,” she hissed at him.
I tried to pull away from her, but she pressed me close to her chest, tucking my head into her neck as if that meant I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
Sometimes, adults are so dumb.
“Relax, Bets, she was wandering around down here and decided that I looked like a fuckin’ angel. She took a seat and we shot the shit for a minute. Nothing else.”
He didn’t seem that concerned about how angry Betsy was and it was kind of weird that they seemed to know each other. Betsy was tiny and pretty and soft. She didn’t look like she had it in her to be friends with Zeus.
“You never think,” she continued to hiss. “If someone else had come in here and seen you talking to a cute little girl, what do you think they would have done? You’re already going to freaking prison for manslaughter. Do you need a molestation charge on top of that?”
I couldn’t even see him but the air got weird and heavy and I knew without looking that Zeus was mad.
“Don’t even fuckin’ say that out loud. I’m a father for fuck’s sake, Bets. I’d never hurt a kid.”
Betsy relaxed a little against me and pet my hair. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I’m protective of this one. They think she’s got Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. She’s been in here a lot and she’s curious, likes to roam.”
“Fuck,” Zeus said, soft and angry at the same time.
I wanted to reach out and pat him like I did when my dog growled. My grandpa had always warned my mum that I was attracted to dark and damaged things. I was just a kid but I was a smart one and I knew Zeus was both of those things.
A fallen angel. A monster, but a good one under all the scary.
I didn’t want someone like him to feel sad for me like everyone else.
“Told you I was dying,” I grumbled loudly enough that he could hear me even though my lips were up against Betsy’s boobies.
Her arms went loose and I pulled away to see Zeus staring at me with that soft face that made my tummy strange.
“You’re not gonna die, kid. Let’s stay positive, yeah?”
“You don’t know. You’re not a doctor.”
“No, but I’m Zeus. I throw lightning bolts and I’m king of all the gods. I know you ain’t gonna die and now all you gotta do to get better is believe me. Yeah?”
I stared at him. He had really pretty eyes with lashes thick and dark like a lady.
“I don’t wanna die,” I whispered.
Betsy squeezed me really hard but I didn’t take my eyes off Zeus.
He leaned as close to me as he could. Without meaning to, I reached up and put my hand on his fuzzy cheek. He flinched like I’d hurt him but then he said, “Bad things happen to good people, kid. Sucks that you’re sick at all. Tellin’ you now, you’re gonna get through this and even though I won’t be around to see it, I promise you, I know it. You said you trust me, right?”
I nodded mutely, stuck somewhere in his silver-dollar eyes.
“Then believe me,” he ordered.
“I believe you,” I whispered.
“Mr. Garro, we’ve been told you are healthy enough to be transferred to provincial detention,” a voice said over my shoulder and I jumped around to see three uniformed police officers come into our small curtained space.
My daddy followed.
“Daddy, no,” I cried out as the men came into the room and one of them began to tell Zeus something in police-talk about his rights. “Daddy, NO!”
“Louise, what in the world are you doing out of bed and with this man?” he demanded, jerking forward to grab my arm in a painful grip and tug me toward him. “Jesus, you never listen. Why can’t you do as you’re told?”
“Daddy, he’s my guardian monster,” I tried to explain. “You can’t take him away to a bad place or else no one will look after me.”
“Don’t be a baby, Louise. You have Nanny looking after you. Your mother and I pay her a very fine salary to look after you and Beatrice and teach you French.”
“Je deteste le francais!” I screamed. “And I’ll hate you too if you take Zeus away. He saved my life, Daddy!”
“He put it in danger in the first place,” my daddy yelled right in my face and I was so shocked that I stumbled backward and fell. Only my daddy’s hard grip on my arm kept me hovering over the floor. “I will not hear you defend him. Now, this nurse is going to take you back to your room where you will stay until I say otherwise. Do you understand?”
“Please, Daddy,” I whimpered because he was hurting my bad shoulder by holding me like that, and especially because I didn’t want my guardian monster to go away.
For the first time in my life, I felt like I had a champion.
“You’re hurtin’ her,” Zeus told my daddy from behind me and even though his voice was calm there was something mean in it that made me scared for my daddy.
Daddy sneered at him. “Mind your business. You seem to have more pressing matters at hand. How do those cuffs feel, Garro? You better get used to them.”
I gasped as I turned around to see Zeus’s big arms behind his back locked up in silver handcuffs.
“Daddy,” I cried again. “Please, don’t do this.”
“S’okay, kid. It’s not your dad that’s done anythin’, it’s me. When you do somethin’ bad, you have to pay penance for it, like in church, right?” I nodded. “Right. Well it’s the same with the law only you pay penance by going to prison.”
“Shut your mouth,” Daddy ordered him then turned to Betsy. “Take my daughter to bed and do your fucking job. Make sure she stays there.”
“I won’t forgive you, Daddy,” I told him as Betsy gently ushered me toward the curtain. “Ever.”
“I can live with that,” he said, then he ignored me and stalked right up into Zeus’s face. He was a lot smaller because every man was a lot smaller than Zeus, but he still threatened him. “If I ever see you anywhere near my daughter or this family again, I will personally see to it that your life is ruined beyond all hopes of repair. Understood?”
Zeus looked down at my daddy as if he were a bug that landed on his boot, easily crushed but not worth the bother. “You threaten a man like me, Lafayette, be prepared to reap the fuckin’ consequences.”
Then with his head high and his body at ease despite the handcuffs, Zeus led the officers out of his curtained room and through the emergency room to the waiting police car outside.
Betsy let me watch as they drove away, tucked under her arm and against her breasts so that my tears got caught in her pink scrubs.
That was the last day I called Benjamin Lafayette “Daddy”.
