by A. J. Thomas
“I’m beginning to wish I had let you knock me out.”
“Too late now. You’re lucky the bullet didn’t fragment or explode. Hollow-point rounds are designed to break apart as soon as they hit something soft, so they can’t go straight through you. All of that kinetic energy coming to a stop in your arm would have made a shockwave that would have shattered the bone and crushed all of the tissue around it. I’d be doing a lot more than realigning your muscle and stitching the wound closed if it had.”
“Armor-piercing rounds.” Doug grimaced. “Yeah, I get it. I got lucky. Can I go home now?”
The surgeon laughed at him and pulled another stitch tight. “I’ve seen you come in with the search-and-rescue guys, so I know you’ve been through the EMT certification classes. Do you think I can let you go home tonight?”
“It’s basically just a big cut,” Doug argued, even though he knew it was pointless. “I’m totally coherent, and I know the symptoms of shock.”
The surgeon smirked and shook his head. “Not good enough. You were bleeding heavily when you got here, and your blood pressure hasn’t recovered yet. Besides, the strongest painkiller I can give you if I send you home is Vicodin. You’re going to want to stay.”
“I’m fine with Tylenol.”
“You won’t be when your entire arm begins to swell over the next few hours. It’s better if you stay. I can release you tomorrow, if your fiancée can keep an eye on you for a few days.”
Doug sat up so fast the surgeon nearly stabbed him in the arm. “I have a fiancée?” he rasped. In one very long second, the world spun and seemed to slip out from under him. When his head stopped spinning, he was flat on the bed again. Beside him, the heart-rate monitor was blaring. A nurse turned off the alarm and reset the monitor.
“She said she was. Your boss told us to call her. He said she was the only emergency contact you’ve got.”
Doug groaned. How had he forgotten to scratch out Brittney’s name as his emergency contact? Of course, he didn’t have any other name to scribble into that blank, so it didn’t really matter. But why the hell had Brittney called herself his fiancée?
“And since she’s a doctor, I figured I could release you tomorrow, provided she’s around to help you out for a few days.”
“I’d rather be admitted.”
The young surgeon began to stitch his skin back together. “I’ll have someone tell her you’re too drugged up to receive visitors tonight, if that would help.”
“Please.” After a few more tugging stitches, Doug took a deep breath. He had asked the ambulance staff and the nurses without any luck, but he had to know. “Any word on the kid? I know he wasn’t brought here, but I know the EMTs gossip as much as cops do. Is he okay?”
The doctor stopped moving for a moment, then focused on Doug’s arms. “I haven’t heard anything definite,” he said quietly.
Doug sat back and shut his eyes, trying to block out the pain from his arm and the train wreck of images that kept flashing through his mind. The damn kid had a gun. He looked like shit, with greasy hair and red-rimmed eyes, wearing that filthy leather biker vest over a stained white undershirt. He had also looked terrified. He’d stumbled out of his truck, falling backward and holding a small pistol in both hands. His entire body had been trembling, and Doug suspected that the kid had been too frightened to hear his warning to put the gun down. He had been calm, quiet, and tried to soothe the kid. When he saw the gun discharge, he fired. It hadn’t been a conscious decision, just a reaction as the bullet from Micah Donovan’s gun bit into his upper arm. The pain had been so overwhelming he hadn’t been able to focus on anything else.
He had been hoping they had taken him and Micah to the same emergency room, but that would have been a major policy violation. Still, there was no policy saying that he couldn’t find out how seriously the boy was hurt.
“Do you have any other family we could call for you?” the doctor asked after he finished the stitches.
Doug shut his mouth. He didn’t like to say he didn’t have anybody, but it was true. “Not right now.”
“Then we’ll get you admitted and let you get some rest.” The doctor got up to leave.
“Wait,” Doug called. “Is my boss here? Do you know if any other officers from Elkin are here?”
“The triage nurse would know. I’ll have her pop back while we’re getting a room for you.”
It took another hour before the ER staff managed to get him admitted and into a regular room. Then another hour before a nurse knocked on his door. “You’ve got a visitor.”
Doug tried to sit up, fully expecting to see Greg Brubaker, or at least another deputy. Instead, Brittney walked in with a timid smile. Doug managed a polite smile, despite the fact the morphine made him want to kick her out. She might not be a member of the sheriff’s office staff, but she was the county medical examiner, so she might be able to tell him something about Micah Donovan’s condition too.
Her eyes were red and her mascara was a smeared mess. “Hi,” she said, sniffling.
“That’s two Mondays in a row now I’ve taken up a big chunk of your day. I think I probably owe you an apology.”
She shook her head. She made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob, followed by another sniffle. “More than an apology. The last time we spoke, I left after acting like a raging bitch, and you have the nerve to go and get shot. That’s about as tacky as it gets, you know. How are you feeling?”
“Sore. Worried. No one has been able to tell me anything about the kid. I know he went to a different hospital, but somebody has to know how he’s doing. Have you heard anything? Do you know which hospital they took him to?”
She closed her eyes and her entire body began to tremble. “Oh, Doug,” she whispered. “Didn’t the sheriff tell you?”
“Tell me what?” he asked, his stomach twisting. She shook her head, but he had to know. “Tell me, Brittney. He’s a kid.”
“He died as they were waiting for the helicopter from Kalispell. I’m sorry, Doug, I thought you knew….”
“I shot him in the leg,” Doug insisted, as if he could somehow argue the boy back to life. “I’m sure I shot him in the leg.”
“Femoral artery,” she said simply. “Sheriff Brubaker shot him too, in the chest.”
If Doug had been more in control of himself, he could have kept it together. That was what he told himself, anyway. The knot in his stomach twisted and Doug instinctively bent in half. He felt the bile rise in his throat before he could stop it. He was vaguely aware that Brittney was rubbing the back of his neck and holding a plastic bin under his mouth. Somewhere beside him, an alarm was blaring. The world was still spinning, and his stomach reacted the way it always did to stress. He felt more hands on him as he gagged on the bile in his throat, and then the entire world went black.
As Doug drifted into the darkness, he wondered if the kid had used him and Brubaker as his own noose. They had identified themselves as officers, they had warned him that they were armed—they’d warned him to put his gun down. They hadn’t fired until the gun Micah Donovan was holding discharged. The kid had been wearing the same vest his lover had died in, and he was in the same place where his lover had killed himself. It was too much of a coincidence. Soon, the sedative they gave him drove even the most basic thoughts from his mind. In a stupor, his brain mixed up his memories of Peter Hayes’s corpse and the boy’s terrified face, until dead purple eyes and blond hair consumed him.
When he woke up, the hospital room was empty. Sunlight filtered through the tightly shut mini-blinds, and a dozen LEDs glowed from the monitor beside his bed. His arm felt like it was on fire.
As soon as he was awake, his day became an endless series of visits from doctors, nurses, psychologists, reporters, and his fellow officers. And Brittney. The doctors and nurses passed through quickly, measuring his vital signs, asking a few questions, and then moving on. The psychologists took turns asking if he had any concerns about the shooting and if
he was ready to talk about it yet. His fellow deputies, at least, understood. They were willing to pretend that they came to make jokes about baseball and politics. Brittney came in four times. Each time, she struggled to make small talk, got nervous when her attempts at small talk fizzled, then left again.
Doug honestly didn’t care. He was being rude by ignoring her, but he had no intention of apologizing for his behavior. He just couldn’t focus enough, through the morphine, to deal with being polite to Brittney and process the knowledge that he had shot and killed the young man he had spent the past two days trying to save. The other deputies didn’t get offended, but Brittney just didn’t seem to get it. He was too caught up in his own thoughts to even notice when Christopher followed Agent Belkamp into the room, along with Brubaker and, once again, Brittney.
“Hey, Dougie,” Brubaker greeted him with a wave. “Thought we’d come see how you were doing. Maybe see if you felt like you were up to giving a statement.”
“You were there. You saw what happened.”
“Come on, Dougie. Everything’s got to correlate.”
“A verbal statement is fine,” Belkamp said gently. “I can take notes, and then just have you sign them.”
Doug adjusted the bed so he was sitting up. “Does everybody in the world have to be here for this?” he asked, staring at Brittney. Christopher and Brubaker both shuffled toward the door. Brittney stubbornly stayed put. Christopher stopped at the door and held it open for her. “Ma’am?” He inclined his head toward the door.
Any other day, and in any other situation, seeing the look of outraged indignation on Brittney’s face would have made Doug smile. Now he was just too overwhelmed. “Get out, Brittney.”
“You can’t be serious!” She folded her arms and glared at Christopher.
“Ma’am, this is a serious matter.” Belkamp echoed Christopher’s tone perfectly. Doug noticed that their posture seemed similar too, as if they were partners who’d had spent years working side by side. He turned his head away, feeling like a complete bastard because he felt jealous. Micah Donovan was dead and he was acting like a lovesick idiot.
He looked at Christopher, silhouetted against the florescent light from the hallway, and realized just how accurate that assessment was. He had spent the entire day searching campgrounds with Christopher on his mind. When he saw the gun in Micah Donovan’s hand snap backward, all his thoughts had been focused on Christopher. Christopher was the one he wanted to be sitting there beside him. Lovesick summed it up.
“Fine.” Brittney stalked out, glaring at Belkamp and Christopher as she went.
Belkamp closed the door behind them and pulled a chair over to Doug’s bed. “She’s charming,” he said levelly.
“Please don’t rub it in,” Doug begged. He waited until Belkamp had a notebook and pen ready, then told him everything he could remember. He started with the shift briefing yesterday morning, and he stopped when the paramedics carried him away. He left Christopher out. Christopher had arrived on the scene with Belkamp, so the FBI agent obviously knew that he’d been there. Everything that happened to him after he left the scene, everything that happened in his head after he shot Micah Donovan, was irrelevant. Belkamp took notes quietly, and then he handed the notes to Doug. Doug read them and signed his name on the bottom.
Belkamp folded up the notebook and tucked it under his arm. “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I know you probably don’t want to talk about it, but you should.”
“Thanks for the advice, but I think I’ll manage just fine.”
“Whatever. You want me to send Hayes back in? I can probably buy you guys a few minutes without your fiancée barging in.”
Doug shook his head fast. The last thing he wanted was to be alone with Christopher. He couldn’t imagine Christopher seeing him like this. He could face the rest of the world easily, because he didn’t give a damn what they thought about him. He had promised Christopher he would find Micah and make sure he was safe. He had utterly failed. He felt like he’d be sick again just from thinking about Christopher looking at him as if he was some kind of murderer.
“Are you sure? He’s just going to go back to moping in the hall if you don’t talk to him.”
“Moping?” Doug smiled at that. He could picture Christopher outside his room, leaning against the wall and trying his best not to fidget. “I… I can’t be around him until I’ve got my head straight, you know?”
Belkamp nodded. “You mind telling him that yourself? I might be able to persuade him to go back to his hotel to get some sleep, if he hears that firsthand.”
“I guess.”
Belkamp smirked and headed for the door. He opened it a few inches and slipped out. The two men traded places—Christopher slipped in sideways, then Belkamp shut the door fast. Doug stared at Christopher and the closed door, wondering if they had planned that little maneuver. Behind the door, Doug could hear Brittney’s muffled complaints already.
Christopher, his smile gone, stood nervously near the door. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“How’s the arm?”
Doug tried to shrug, but the movement sent a lightning bolt of pain through his body, piercing the happy fog of the morphine. Doug tried not to wince, but he couldn’t help it. Christopher was by his side instantly.
“Are words that much harder?” he asked, carefully pushing Doug’s shoulders back down. He ran his thumb over the stubble on Doug’s cheek.
Doug didn’t mean to shut his eyes, but the warmth from Christopher cut through the pain as though it wasn’t there. At that moment, all Doug wanted in the world was to enjoy Christopher’s touch, to sink into Christopher’s arms and forget everything. Forget both of their pasts, forget how trapped he felt being tied to his family’s empty ranch, and forget that he had just killed Micah Donovan.
But it wouldn’t do any good. Even if Christopher could make him forget for a little while, it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t last. When Christopher left, Doug would have to face it all over again, and he would have to face losing Christopher too.
The pain that bloomed in his chest at that thought caught him off guard. He’d known losing Christopher would hurt, but he hadn’t expected the sheer agony the thought of losing him now evoked. It shouldn’t hurt so much, especially when he was so drugged he felt drunk. “I can’t do this,” he whispered, without opening his eyes. “I just can’t do this now.”
Doug felt Christopher’s fingertips pause and then withdraw. Doug turned his head away. He couldn’t look at him. He knew he couldn’t stop himself from doing or saying something ridiculous. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I just can’t.”
“If that’s what you need,” said Christopher. The cold, passive tone in his voice made Doug wince again. There was no point in avoiding Christopher’s gaze now. Doug knew his mask would be back in place again. “I’ll let you get some rest.”
The voices outside the door had gotten louder, and now Brittney was shouting. The door swung open so fast it hit the doorstop with a thud. “I said no!” Brittney shouted. “I don’t care if you’re with the FBI, the CIA, or even if you’re the president! Doug’s suffered enough because of him!”
“Brittney,” Doug sighed, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Him!” She pointed at Christopher.
“Me?”
“As if your monster of a brother didn’t cause enough harm in our town! You’ve got some nerve, coming here after everything you’ve done!”
“Everything I’ve done?”
“You put our firemen in danger trying to cover up just how evil your faggot brother was, and then you get Doug shot! You had the audacity to try to convince him your brother’s accomplice was actually his victim, just so you could force Doug to shut him up for you! You knew he was a dangerous criminal and you sent Doug after him anyway! It’s bad enough that Doug has to deal with having that innocent boy’s blood on his hands, I am not going to just stand by and let you wreak more havoc!”
Doug gaped at her, hoping that this was all some drug-induced hallucination.
“I’m sorry,” Belkamp said with a smirk. “Was he an innocent boy or was he a dangerous accomplice? I thought there was only one other person involved in yesterday’s shooting, so I’m confused.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Christopher, more to Belkamp than to Brittney. He stood up straight and turned towards the door. “We all get carried away when we’re stressed. I was just leaving anyway.” Doug could hear the fake smile in Christopher’s voice, even if he couldn’t see it on his face.
“Do us all a favor,” Brittney said, glaring at him, “go back to California before you get any more of our kids or police officers killed.”
Doug saw the muscles beneath Christopher’s clothes move, the hard knot of muscle over the man’s shoulder twitching. For one agonizing moment, when the world seemed to move in slow motion, Doug was worried that Christopher might hit her. But that, he realized, was what he wanted to do. Luckily, he and Christopher were very different men.
Then Christopher was gone.
“Chris!” he tried to shout. The choked shout he managed didn’t carry past the room.
Doug flung himself out of bed and toward the open door, pulling against the wires and tubes still attached to his body. He stopped for a moment and fumbled with the IV in his right arm. As soon as he moved his left hand to pry the tape up, pain exploded through his arm. It hit him like a sledgehammer and it dropped him just as fast.
The world moved on, even if Christopher wasn’t quite sure how. He found himself back in his hotel room, flipping through channels but not really watching anything on television. He had caught enough of the local news while he was camping out in the hospital waiting room to know Doug was the town’s newest hero. “… the type of officer everyone in the department aspires to be…,” Sheriff Brubaker said every time the news ran the clip again. They also ran clips of Brittney McAllister, identifying her as his fiancée. All she managed for a sound bite was a muffled sob, lots of tears, and a quiet, “He’s my hero.”