I get dry and I get dressed. I wasn’t going to see her, but it doesn’t look like she’s giving me much choice now. And if this is the last chance I’ll ever get to tell her how much I despise her, then I will take it. I’ll be damned if I let her pass from this life under some illusion that she has anything in common with the martyred saints on my right arm.
8
PAX
* * *
“Dude. I don’t know how else to say it. Visiting hours are from one to five.” The male nurse who greeted me when I walked in through the tiny hospital’s emergency room entrance throws his hands up in exasperation. He’s still being patient, but the guy has an edge to him. I suspect he knows how to throw his fists. There’s a little voice in the back of my head, urging me to push him just a little bit further. To see how well he does it.
I point my index finger at the clock on the wall behind his head. “It’s three-thirty, motherfucker. Now tell me where I can find Meredith Davis.”
The nurse’s head jerks back. He raises his eyebrows. “Rethink the tone. I don’t get paid enough to take shit from the likes of you. Listen up and listen good. Come back tomorrow and visit your mother between the hours of one pm and five pm, and I’ll take you to her with a smile on my face. Curse at me one more time and I’ll cut out your tongue, and no one here will sew it back on for you. You feel me?”
“Oh, I feel you.” My blood is acid, eating away at my veins; my insides are being corroded away into nothing. If I can bully this fucker into hitting me hard enough, it might stop the burn long enough for me to get a handle on this delightful mood that’s taken hold of me. I’m not sure if that’s what I want, though. I kind of want him to keep hitting me until the burn is the least of my worries. The nurse narrows his eyes when I take a step forward.
“Think, man,” he growls. “I don’t normally hand out second warnings, but you look like you’re having a rough night. It’ll get infinitely worse if you don’t back the fuck up.”
This guy doesn’t understand anything about the night I’m having. If he did, he’d stop trying to calm my ass down and put me on it as quick as humanly possible. I’m concocting something truly egregious to spit at him when he jerks his head at someone over my shoulder, to his left, and I get the feeling that someone’s creeping up on me. I turn just in time to see a swathe of black material and flash of gold. Then there’s an ancient security guard pulling a Taser out of its holster, and he’s aiming the business end of it at my chest.
“That’s enough for tonight, kid,” he says. “I saw Meredith earlier. I know for a fact that she’s asleep. Go on back home and then come back in the morning once you’ve slept it off.”
Slept it off? What about me makes this fool think I’m drunk? Am I slurring my words? No. Am I stumbling around all over the place? Nope. Am I behaving belligerently? Hell yeah, but that’s my natural operating mode. I don’t have another setting. I give the fucker my full attention. I’ve been hit with a Taser before and it’s no walk in the park. Not like a good old-fashioned beating. There’s something respectable about getting hit in the face a bunch of times. Being Tased is like getting struck by lightning—and it’s a fifty/fifty whether you piss yourself or not. Fuck it, though, right? You only live once.
“Ooh, ho, ho, pops. Don’t threaten me with a good time. Come on. If you’re planning on pulling the trigger, best just get it out of the wa—”
The blow comes from behind; I don’t see it coming. A sharp, lancing pain spears me through the side, and I can’t help but lean into it, trying to make it stop. It fucking hurts. A hand clamps around the back of my neck, and the next thing I know both of them are on me, the nurse and the security guard, and they’re bodily carrying me out of the hospital.
They get me just outside the sliding doors before the nurse loses whatever weird Vulcan nerve grip he had me in and the blinding pain shuts off. I have him on the ground in a heartbeat, and then I’m laying into him with both fists. The whole thing gets messy from there. The security guard thumps me on the side of the head—not the most finessed blow in the history of brawling—but the force behind it takes me by surprise. I spin on him, snarling, and the nurse unseats me. I hit the ground hard, head spinning, and both men pull back, swearing like sailors.
“Fucking psycho.” The nurse spits blood onto the ground. He bends over, bracing against his knees, catching his breath, while the guard posts up by the wall, clutching at his chest like he’s about to have a heart attack. “You okay, Pete?”
“Yeah,” the guard wheezes. “Just…not had that much excitement in a while.”
I start to laugh. At the stupidity of it all. At the fact that I was taken to the ground by these two idiots. That I fucking let them lay hands on me. That I actually feel much better than I did five minutes ago.
“Leave him, Remy. He’s not worth it,” Pete, the guard says. I open my eyes and Remy is standing over me, scowling deeply.
“Are you under someone’s care, man. You off your meds or something?” he asks. “’Cause this is straight up crazy behavior.”
I stop laughing and let out a weary sigh. “What if I was crazy? You could have just really hurt my feelings.”
“He’s fine,” Pete growls. “Come on. Let’s get back inside before someone notices. I don’t wanna have to spend three hours writing this shit up. My shift ends in thirty minutes.”
Remy assesses me, looking me over. Once he’s decided there’s nothing wrong with me, he shakes his head and heads for the entrance. “Don’t try and come back in here tonight,” he commands. “You do and I’m calling the cops. Understand?”
“Ohhhh, don’t you worry. I understand.”
The sliding door shushes closed behind them, and then I’m alone in the bleak night. July in Mountain Lakes is a sticky affair. Humid. The air reeks of petrichor, even though there’s no chance it’ll rain. The town is deathly quiet. Still, like it’s waiting, holding its breath. I imagine this is what hell must be like. Not the very center of hell. An outer circle, perhaps. I fucking hate this place.
Sitting up, I take a minute to inspect the damage to my elbows, palms and knuckles, surprised to see the crude ooze of blood leaking from the minor scrapes I’ve acquired. Honestly, I forget that I’m still human sometimes. Seems the yawning pit of nothingness that exists right beneath my solar plexus should have consumed any biological, functional part of me and rendered me null by now. But no. The marrow of my bones still produces platelets. My lungs still load those platelets up with oxygen. I’m genuinely surprised.
Fuck, if only those fan girls from the airport could see me now. Would they still want to grab a photo with the notorious Pax Davis? Or would they be snapping off shots of me, sulking in my shame, to sell to some low-rent tabloid?
I laugh darkly under my breath as I drag myself to my feet and perch on the edge of the low brick wall beside the hospital’s emergency entrance, patting myself down for my smokes.
Back pocket.
Great.