“That’s not why you’re here.”
My heart started beating funny.
“Okay…”
She continued, “This isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation, but the drugs keep making you forget.”
I was seriously freaking out, but holding it in.
“Okay…”
“I’ll let the doctors explain the details, but basically, your immune system was compromised from your... other condition, and your leg got infected under the cast. Apparently, you’d been living with it for days without realizing the tissue was necrotic. Thankfully, they caught it before it reached your bloodstream. I know it doesn’t seem that way now, but you were very lucky.”
“Okay…” I waited for the punchline, but neither of them spoke. Finally, I asked, “What does that mean?”
“It was the only option,” O’Brien explained. “You were going to die.”
“Okay...”
I realized then that my broken leg didn’t itch anymore.
Oh.
Ohhhhhhhh.
I sat up and pulled back the bed sheet to see that the cast was gone, along with a decent section of my leg below the right knee. What was left was covered in a bowling-ball sized wad of gauze bandages, wrapped around the stump, soaked red and overdue for a redressing.
Suddenly, I was sober enough to drive a school bus in a rainstorm. With lucidity came waves of horror and realization. I kept it inside for now and slowly leaned back in the bed, all the while staring down my nose at the space where my right foot should have been. When O’Brien spoke, I forced myself to look away from it.
“It’s not that bad. You’re still alive, and this sort of thing is extremely manageable. In a couple years, you won’t even notice that anything is different.”
I couldn’t argue with that. She must not have realized that I was living with a terminal illness, and in a couple years, I would be dead. Or maybe that was what she meant, but that would be a pretty messed up thing to say.
I took a deep breath and tried to center myself. Yeah, this sucked, but at the end of the day, it was fitting. Some people like to dive into a pool all at once. I always dip my toes in the water first, then slowly work my way into it in stages, starting at the shallow end. Now, I was going into death the same way. One piece at a time.
I opened my eyes with no memory of ever having closed them, then smiled at O’Brien and Jerry and said, “This… This is okay.”
Another piece of my memory fell into place, and O’Brien asked why I was laughing.
“I just got that joke. ‘Insufficient staff.’ Very clever, I nearly missed it.”
“Wow,” Jerry said, “You didn’t take the news nearly this well the last couple times we told you. Maybe now you can try to remember it so we don’t have to—”
Right then I threw up all over the bed.
***
After my visitors left, I flipped through my journal to see if I’d written anything useful, but this time around there were no grand epiphanies waiting to be learned. Instead, I found that all of my unremembered entries had been made post-surgery and under the influence of mind-altering substances. This explained why, for six straight pages, I had decorated every square inch of free space with drawings of eyes.
The pages were filled, front and back, with thousands—if not tens of thousands—of eyes. Not all human. Some were round, some oval. Some had horizontal slits for pupils like the eyes of a goat. Some were feline. Some reptilian. Some large and blacked out, and some clustered tightly together like the pebbling of a basketball.
Details varied. A few had eyelashes attached. Some even included the brow and bridge of a nose. Most were simply the eyeball itself.
The pupils were the color of the ink, which, around page three, turned from black to blue. I’d apparently killed an entire pen in the process and started over with a new one.
The eyes were frozen, confined inescapably to the pages, mere illustrations (and not very good ones at that), but somehow they triggered a tingling in the back of my mind. A sixth sense. A strange sensation that as I stared at the images in the journal, someone or something was looking back at me.
As I turned the sheets, I struggled to remember what had possessed me to draw these things. Maybe there was no reason. With my inhibitions suffocated beneath the weight of first-class drugs, maybe the simplest version of my mind finally got a chance to steer the ship, and this was what came of it. Maybe it was the same subconscious motivation that drives dogs to pee on mailboxes or high schoolers to graffiti dicks onto their drunk friends’ faces.
Or maybe I had temporarily become a conduit for something impossibly dark and powerful as it shifted ever closer to our universe. Maybe this was a warning I was too dumb to understand.
The next few pages were filled with finished tic-tac-toe games, like I’d been playing against myself until the second pen died as well.
I noticed that at least one page was missing, carefully ripped out at the seam. When a cursory search around my hospital bed didn’t turn up anything, I was left to assume I’d probably eaten it.
***
I killed time reading a new book—a young adult urban fantasy about a female teenage hacker who was also a vampire. Jerry stole it for me from the hospital gift shop before he left because, as he put it, the cover looked like my kind of kink.
It was an okay read, but it took some time for me to sort everything out because it was part three in a series, and I hadn’t read the first couple, and I was still pretty high from the surgery.
I must have been extra distracted trying to figure out what was happening in the book, because I didn’t even notice I had another visitor until she sat down in the same seat Jerry had pulled up a few hours earlier.
I put the book down and apologized. She smiled and waited for me to realize what was going on. When it finally clicked, the look of surprise on my face made her laugh out loud.
“Hi, Jack.”
I couldn’t believe it.
She came back… for this?
It took me a few tries to find my breath and say her name.
She stood up, moved closer, and sat down on the bed with me, placing her hand on top of mine as she said, “It’s been a long time, huh?”
“Why are you here?”
“I heard what happened. How could I stay away?”
“But... you’re not supposed to be here.”
She was every bit as beautiful as I remembered, except her smile wasn’t as carefree and her green eyes weren’t as full of joy. That was to be expected, though. She knew I was right. She wasn’t supposed to be here, but I was happy to have her, even if it was just for a fleeting moment.
She studied my face, and I wondered what she thought of what I’d become. We were the same age, but she was young and I was old. Her smile faded as she traced the bruise on my jaw with her fingertips and said, “You’re not supposed to be here either, Jack.”
“You’re right. I’m supposed to be at work.”
I moved over on the mattress to make enough room for her. She kicked off her shoes, pulled herself onto the bed, and sat cross legged on top of the covers where my right leg should have been.
“Well,” she said, “we’ve got some catching up to do.”
For the rest of the night, we talked. After the surprise wore off, I quickly forgot how strange it was to finally be in her company again after all this time. Eventually, our conversation veered towards the inevitable topic of the gas station.
I asked, “Did you know we had a giant god living under the building?”
She laughed and said, “No, but that would explain a lot. Is Rocco still the alpha trash-panda?”
“Yes, but he might have some competition if Rita ever comes back. There was this whole thing with a glowing chrysalis, and she might be a werewolf now.”
“Is the bathroom cowboy still around?”
“As far as I know, but he’s been quiet lately.”
“What about the fox
lady?”
“She got another one of our part-timers a month or two back.”
“How’s Tom?”
“Dead, I’m afraid.”
“Sorry to hear that. I always liked him. I guess I missed his funeral.”
“So did I. But I’ve never really been one for funerals.”
“I’ll be at yours, you know.”
“I know.”
She sighed and turned away from me to look at the door. “I miss you, Jack.”
I sat up straight. “I missed you, too, Sabine.”
That was all I could remember before time jumped forward again. The next thing I knew, I was alone, staring at The Price is Right on the television in the corner of the room with no idea how time had slipped through my fingers again. My door opened, and the not-butler nurse came in to let me know that the hospital was giving my room to a patient with better (as in, any) health insurance, and now it was time for me to pack up my things and go home.
Chapter Ten
Typically, an amputation surgery like mine takes about a month before the physical aspect can be considered “fully healed.” My staples could come out after a week. The doctor recommended I spend at least two whole months taking it easy, without any stress or physical exertion. No heavy lifting in the foreseeable future, and certainly no dancing. They informed me that my physical therapy plan could begin in as little as six weeks, and I was a perfect candidate for prosthesis, although it would take a little patience and a lot of money.
Of course, with no insurance, savings, or disability benefits to speak of, none of that was anything more than fancy doctor words. Besides, even if I could have afforded a replacement part, six weeks was a long time for someone like me to have to wait.
I was discharged from the hospital wearing the same dirty blood-stained clothes they brought me in. Less than three hours later, I was back at work.
***
One of the first things I did after O’Brien dropped me off at my house was plug in my dead cell phone. After it had time to recharge, I turned it on to see if anyone important had called while I was under sedation. Twenty voicemails were waiting. I took them in order.
“Hey Jack! It’s me!” Already off to a bad start. Calvin Ambrose’s shrill voice sent a shiver down my spine. “I wanted to call and let you know we still need to have that managers meeting. Give me a call back when you get this. My cell number is—”
Delete. Next.
“Hey Jack! It’s me!” Him again. “I’ve been working on the rules list, and I have to say, I didn’t realize how intricate this place is. Did you know there’s a half-second delay on the reflection in the bathroom mirror? Call me back! We need to discuss this. My number is—”
Delete. Next.
“Hey Jack! It’s me! We have a problem. Jerry still thinks he works here. I’ve threatened to have him removed from the premises. Let me know if he tries to contact you. I don’t—”
Delete. Next.
“Hey Jack! It’s me! That manager meeting is going to be a lot more complicated than I thought. You need to call me so we can discuss—”
Delete. Next.
“Hey Jack! It’s me! What would you say if I told you—” Delete. “Hey Jack! It’s me!” Delete. “Hey Jack! The hobo! He’s back!” Delete. “Hey Jack! I figured it out. You’re one of them. Aren’t you?” Delete. “Hey Jack. I know you’re ignoring my messages.” Delete. “Jack. I was wrong about you. You’re just not management material. I’m sorry to do this, but you didn’t leave me any choice. You’re fired!” Delete. “Hey Jack! It’s me. I just wanted to make sure you got my last message where I said you were fired. Call me back and let me know, would ya?” Delete.
The remaining messages all started out with high-pitched laughter. I deleted them all before I could hear any other words. Not that they would have been important anyway.
***
I’d just finished showering and redressing my leg wound when the phone rang again. I picked it up expecting to see Calvin’s number on the caller ID, but once I saw it was the owners, I answered right away. Mammaw described some vague “emergency” that required my immediate attention. I informed her that I’d been fired by Calvin. She told me I wasn’t getting away that easily. I informed her that my leg had just been hacked off, and she told me that it was okay; I wouldn’t need it.
O’Brien was almost as salty as I was.
“You know you shouldn’t be going in to work today,” she said as I buckled myself into the passenger seat of her cruiser.
“I know.”
She peeled out into the street the same way she always did—unnecessarily fast and aggressively furious.
“It’s still not safe. Spencer Middleton is out there somewhere.”
The mention of his name gave my mind a temporary reprieve from all the other horrible things taking up real estate. Somehow, I had forgotten all about him.
“I know you’re taking this manhunt seriously. Don’t get me wrong, I really do appreciate everything, but I’m starting to think Spencer is hardly the worst of my problems. Those guys who came out to the gas station—”
“I took care of it.”
“Did you arrest them? Did you arrest anyone?”
“I told you. I took care of it.” Judging from her tone, this was her final answer, and I would be wise to leave it alone. But if there’s one thing I’m not, it’s wise.
“That guy Leon, it sounded like you knew him from somewhere. He a friend of yours?”
“You really want to open this can of worms?”
“I just want to know what I’m up against. That’s fair, isn’t it?”
She nodded. I must have guessed the right thing to say for once, because she opened up and told me everything.
“Leon is the sheriff’s half-brother. And it wasn’t pure luck that I showed up when I did. Apparently, there’s someone going around town harassing young girls and breaking into the nicer homes. They say he’s a big guy, wears a clown mask and jumpsuit, somehow never gets seen by any of the security cameras.”
I knew she wasn’t one for non sequiturs, but I couldn’t see the connection.
“Yeah, this town is full of bored weirdos.”
“Sheriff issued the decree that any clown sightings require all hands on deck until we catch the SOB. Only problem is, I’m not even sure he’s real. The last couple times the hillbilly mafia hit your store, it was within a quarter hour of a clown sighting all the way on the other side of town. Doesn’t take a genius to see the pattern.”
An uneasy feeling started to grow in the pit of my stomach.
“The night they came for Jerry—”
She finished my thought. “Station got an anonymous tip about a supposed ‘clown breakin’ down at the church. I heard the call for all available units to report straight there.”
“But instead, you went to check on us.”
“It could be that Leon was using a police scanner, waiting for his chance to strike while everyone was distracted. Or maybe the clown is one of them. Or maybe, there is no clown and the sheriff is in on it. Doesn’t matter. I’m on the shit list now. But if I’d gone to the church when he ordered me to...”
She let that thought drift into silence.
We spent the next minute in quiet contemplation before her words snapped me out of it.
“He’ll get his. They all will. I promise.”
She was staring forward with singular focus on the job at hand. As much as I tried, I couldn’t get a read. You know what they say about still waters.
“What did you mean by that?” I asked.
“What did I mean by what?”
“What you just said.”
She shook her head.
“I didn’t say anything.”
***
As she pulled in, I noticed Calvin Ambrose’s Mercedes parked at the edge of the lot, and made an educated guess that he was also here to help out with Mammaw’s “emergency.”
O’Brien parked in front of the en
trance and took off her seatbelt.
“I got this,” I said. “You don’t have to come inside. I mean, unless you’re just crazy about the free coffee.”
“What, you embarrassed?”
“The doctors said it’s important that I try and do things for myself. You know, to retain my independence and sense of normalcy.”
The doctors had said no such thing. The sad truth was that she was right. I was embarrassed. I didn’t want O’Brien holding the door for me or acting like I was somehow weaker than before. I needed to know she wouldn’t start treating me any differently now. More than anything, I needed to know that she didn’t feel sorry for me.
“You sure you don’t want me to come in and take a look around first? Make sure there aren’t any murderers lying in wait?”
“Nah, it looks like Calvin is already here. If there are any murderers around, I’m sure he can help me fend them off.”
She laughed. It was unexpected, but genuine and welcome, and as she did so I wondered how she ended up so far from home. What did she do to deserve this punishment? Maybe I’d ask her one day. But this wasn’t the day.
As I opened the door, the greedy December air sucked every bit of warmth from the car. I tried not to let her see me shiver while I put my crutches into position and pulled myself out of the cruiser on the first try. Ironically, my mobility was a lot better now without the broken leg constantly getting in the way. As I started into the building, O’Brien rolled down the passenger side window and yelled out, “Hey, Tripod!”
Great. A new nickname.
I turned to see her smiling at me.
“Yeah?”
“Be careful.” With those parting words, she sped off.
***
I looked around the gas station, but if there was a grand emergency like the one Mammaw insisted I come and fix, it wasn’t immediately apparent.
Everything seemed to be in order. The aisles were mostly stocked and straightened. The pot of coffee in the corner was full and hot. Nothing out of place. Nothing missing. Just a normal, empty gas station like the one I was used to.
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