The water had been running in the bathroom sink for more than 10 minutes. He could hear the occasional pump of the hand soap, and her quickened breathing as it continued. Goddamn, Doc.
He walked over to the threshold of the bathroom next to their bedroom, leaning against the doorjamb, where he observed as she stood at the sink wearing only the bright purple blouse she had been wearing during the standoff with Orpheus. Marlena had kicked off her shoes and shrugged out of her black suit as soon as she had gotten in the door of the townhouse. It was when she was unbuttoning the blouse as they both were preparing their exhausted bodies for a well-deserved night of sleep that she saw it.
The dried blood caked on her engagement ring – it set her off.
When he had first seen her at the precinct after he brought Orpheus in, he had seen the spot of blood on her jawline – and he could still recall his instant panic, thinking she had been hurt. There were fine splatters of it all over her once he looked closer – on her suit, her shoes, and all over her hands.
Marlena was a doctor first. Always. That damned Hippocratic Oath was as important to her as her marriage vows. He didn’t know a lot of the details, but from what he saw when she first arrived, he knew it must have been bad. The M.D. on the end of her name said it all – she was a doctor whose specialty was treating the mind. And she was a damned good one. She had done it all – taken care of people having heart attacks, head injuries, broken bones and had even delivered a baby or two over the years.
“Baby, I think you got it all,” he said softly. Her dark blonde head that was littered with platinum highlights nodded, and she finally rested her hips against the vanity as she pushed the handle to shut off the steady stream of water. John stood behind her and handed her a towel before reaching around to put his hands around her middle as he rested his chin on her shoulder. He looked into the mirror, seeing her tear-streaked face. “What happened?” he asked quietly.
She sighed in his arms, her head still bowed, not looking at him in the mirror that he was gazing into.
“I told you, I was looking for you and I came across J.J. in the square . . .” she said, her voice catching. “He had a gunshot wound to the abdomen.” He felt her ribcage expand as she took a deep breath. “We almost lost him.”
He took her hands in his and held them out in front of him. “See? Your hands are clean. You’re okay.”
“He was a bloody mess,” she whispered. “He couldn’t breathe . . . he had diminished breath sounds on the left side.” She shuddered. “I had to . . . I had to do a procedure kind of like doing a chest tube, but instead it was a lung aspiration. I haven’t done that since my emergency room rotation in med school.”
He watched her close her eyes at the recollection. “I was so scared. One flinch and I could have killed him.”
“But you didn’t,” he said. “You saved his life, sweetheart.”
“It didn’t make it any less scary.”
He turned her around and leaned her against the vanity. The purple blouse was completely unbuttoned, and he could see a glimpse of her ivory satin and lace bra and matching panties underneath it. He skimmed his hands down her sides to rest on her hips. “It’s over. You’re okay. J.J. is going to be okay.”
Tears filled her hazel eyes, which were now glittering at him like shimmering emeralds. She placed her hands on his chest, and her eyes looked at her engagement ring glittering on her left hand. It was the same one he had given her years ago, before their lives and their marriage was torn apart by Kristen.
John took her hand in his and kissed her finger where the ring encircled it. “See? No more blood.”
“It’s not J.J.’s blood I’m worried about . . .” she whispered to him. And then it dawned on him.
“Orpheus?”
She nodded her head. “I should have had the cop bring me some gloves. I didn’t have any in my bag, but I just wanted to fix his arm and get the hell out of there . . . his blood got on my hands.”
He took a deep breath and sighed. “Marlena, why on earth did you go in there with him?” He pushed her against the vanity and stepped away, putting his hands on his hips. “He was a piece of shit who tried to kill you. You should have just let him suffer.”
“He asked for medical attention. I was the only one there able to give it to him . . .”
“I don’t give a fuck,” he said, his voice now loud with frustration. She winced at his cursing. “You were under no obligation . . .”
“Yes I was,” she said defiantly. She knew he wouldn’t understand. He never did. “He was bleeding through the bandage and . . . I’m a doctor. He asked for medical attention, and he was in pain. That’s what I do. You know that about me.”
“Yes, I do.” He paused for a moment, and then softened his voice. “You haven’t told me. How in the hell did he get the gun?”
She bowed her head, and then walked past him into the bedroom. He followed, watching her pull a short, silky nightgown out of her bureau. Her back to him, she shrugged her blouse off of her slender shoulders and threw it in to the hamper, and then removed her bra before she quickly pulled the nightgown over her head.
She sat on the edge of the bed and then looked at him. “I told the cop to unlatch him from the chair so I could get better access to his arm,” she explained. “You weren’t kidding when you said Steve took a chunk out of it. It was a huge gash – almost to the bone — and while I was cleaning it to prep the area for stitches, I . . . I pissed him off.”
John raised his eyebrows as he tweaked his chin. “How?”
“I was . . . I was a little rough with him. I shouldn’t have done that.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Roughwith him? How on earth could you be rough with him?”
“I just . . . wasn’t very gentle,” she said quietly, remembering how she yanked the bandage from around his arm and then poured straight rubbing alcohol over the wound. Her eyes lowered. “And I told him that he deserved his pain after all of the hell he put everyone in Salem through.” And then she took a shuddering breath. “And then he . . .” she began.
“He what?” John asked, going closer to her, taking her hands into his.
“He said I would know all about hell, and that he had been checking up on me all of these years. He knew . . . he knew about what happened to me . . . in ’95 . . .” she said, her voice choking. He felt a tear drip onto his hand where he was holding hers. He tilted her chin up and looked at her as tears streamed down her cheeks. “That sonofabitch,” he said, bending down to kiss her forehead.
“That’s not all,” she said as she sniffled. “He told me that I was the biggest hypocrite in Salem . . . and I am an even bigger whore.”
He crushed her to him, her head resting against him as she sobbed. “You are none of those things, sweetheart, you know that. Don’t let what he said get to you, baby.”
“When he called me that, I just lost it, and I pushed him,” she said, her body shuddering again. “He uh, he pushed me against the wall and grabbed the gun out of the cop’s holster, and then he told him to either leave or stay and die. I told the cop to leave. I thought I could try to talk some sense into him. That was when he took that sedative from my bag. I watched him kill himself.” Her body shuddered again. “I warned him. I tried to tell him not to swallow it. And when he fell, he had the gun pointed at me . . . he told me he would be one more death on my conscience, and he was going to kill me and be the final death on his own.”
“Shhhhhh,” he soothed her. “You’re okay, baby.” He held her face in the palms of his hands and forced her to look up at him. He wiped her tears with his thumbs and kissed her forehead. “He was a madman. A sociopath. And I know you don’t like this term, but he was fucking crazy. You can’t listen to anything he said and take it to heart.”
“He knew everything about me,” she whispered. “About us. Our affair.”
“That was a lifetime ago, sweetheart,” he responded. He saw her eyes darken with remorse. “What? Are you ashamed of it?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “When he called me that . . . it made me feel . . . dirty.”
“Marlena, you know how we felt about each other. It wasn’t anything torrid, it wasn’t just casual sex. We loved each other, and we still do,” he told her. “We made Belle, honey. That beautiful soul came from our love, that was decent and pure.”
“I know, I know that,” she said quickly, giving him a brave smile. “But when he said it the way he did, I realized he knew everything about our life.” She shuddered against him. “I . . . I have a bad feeling about this.”
John pulled the covers down and took her hand, guiding her in between the sheets. She watched him remove his shirt and pants, and as soon as he crawled in next to her, she curled into the safety of his arms. He could still feel her trembling.
“What has you so worked up, honey?” he asked quietly, kissing the top of her head. “We should be celebrating. Orpheus is dead. Xander is dead. Clyde is in lockup. And it’s all because of you, and your brilliant mind that developed that master plan to take them all down.”
She shivered against him. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I just feel like . . . like it’s not over yet.” She breathed a heavy sigh. “Maybe it’s my own sense of the unknown, or a lack of closure. I watched him take that drug. I watched him fall over and die from it. I gave him CPR,” she whispered. And then she lifted her head and braced herself on her elbow, looking at John.
“I never pronounced him dead, John.”
The Jarlena Journal 