In Seconds

“Fuck this,” he muttered, and got up.

“Are you leaving?” The woman who’d sat next to him for the past two hours acted like he was committing a cardinal sin. She’d been staring at him as though there wasn’t a TV to entertain her five feet away. She creeped him out. Maybe she recognized him as a fellow addict, thought they could become friends or allies or share needles or some shit. She didn’t know he wasn’t going in the same direction anymore. No one did, because he looked and felt worse than he ever had in his life.

“Hey!” She tried again to get him to respond. He didn’t bother, but she’d spoken loudly enough to draw the attention of someone in authority.

“Sir? Excuse me, sir?” It was the nurse Peyton had spoken to when they first arrived. He didn’t want to acknowledge her, either, but she caught up with him before he could reach the doors.

“Would you give me the respect of an answer, please?” She sounded pissed, but she had no idea how hard it was just to walk. His head felt as if it’d been cleaved in two.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, marshaling all his strength to be polite.

“You could take a seat. I don’t think it’ll be much longer.”

He hung his head, took a few measured breaths. “What’d Peyton say to you?”

“Peyton who?”

She was playing dumb. He could read it on her face. “The woman I came in with. You remember her. Had a belly out to here?” He held his hand in front of his own stomach.

Her mouth flattened, became a mere slash in her face. “She said you probably wouldn’t stay. She was worried about it when she saw how crowded the waiting room was. She cares about you, so I’m doing my best to help her out.”

The nurse thought Peyton’s baby was his, that Peyton had to deal with an addict—that is, loser—for a husband.

“Come on, sit down,” she coaxed. “I’ll go see if I can get you in any sooner.”

Before all the kids who needed to be treated? No way. He wasn’t going to jump the line. He was a full-grown man who felt guilty for wasting resources that should go to other people, people who weren’t stupid enough to get themselves into such an unenviable position. He could buy a few pills on the street—any kind of painkiller if he couldn’t get OxyContin—enough so that he could be useful again. Then, after everything was over, he’d go clean.

“I’m okay,” he said.

She grasped his arm. “Please? That woman you were with. She just about begged me.”

Staring down at her hand, he took a deep breath and nodded. “Fine.” He started back toward his seat, but as soon as she disappeared down the hall, he strode out and used his cell phone to call his street pharmacist.

The fury that seethed inside Ink felt like a separate living and breathing entity, one he couldn’t control. No matter what he did, Virgil and his sister always remained just out of reach. Now L.J. was shot and looking as if he had one foot in the grave as he slouched against the door of the truck, and Ink couldn’t even get him some help.

Why he was suddenly so set on saving L.J., Ink didn’t know. For a few minutes in the forest, he’d believed that L.J. was going to abandon him. That deserved no loyalty. Just yesterday, he’d been planning on killing L.J., anyway. But not yet. He wasn’t finished with him. Losing L.J. created another wrinkle in his plans and narrowed his chances of success. It was a victory for the other side.

“You okay?” He’d been barking this question every few minutes, and L.J. would grunt, but this time Ink got no response. L.J. had even quit wincing when the truck’s tires hit various ruts and grooves as they bounced up the dirt road to the cabin.

“Hey!” When Ink shook him, L.J.’s eyelids fluttered open, revealing glassy eyes. Quite a bit of blood soaked his shirt. Was he dying?

“Shit!” Ink slammed his fist into the dash. What was he going to do? He’d always fancied himself as resourceful, capable of doing whatever needed to be done in a pinch. If that meant sewing up a gash in his arm or one of his comrades’, he’d do it. If it meant digging out a bullet, he’d do that, too. He’d removed a slug from his own shin once. It’d been a grisly affair—he’d nearly passed out—but he’d been successful, and it’d made him quite famous among The Crew. They still asked to see the scar, and talked about the balls it took to do something like that.

He had the balls to do this, too. But as far as he knew, he didn’t even have a first aid kit to work with. He hadn’t seen one, anyway. It wasn’t something the men who’d rented the place had thought to bring. Probably because they’d only been planning to do a little hiking and fishing, and take a few pictures, and couldn’t imagine getting hurt. Or they couldn’t imagine getting hurt and being unable to seek help in town. They’d had a vehicle, after all, and there’d been a group of them.