by Blake Crouch
“Blessed Crucifixion Hospital. They found you in a ravine, air-evacced you in. I’m performing your first skin graft later today. Doesn’t seem to be much of a reason for it, seeing how the state is going to execute you.”
“Your bedside manner sucks, Doc.”
Lanz whipped out a penlight, then roughly pried open Donaldson’s right eyelid with a latex-gloved hand. The bright beam was like being speared in the retina with a knife. After a few seconds, Lanz pulled away and scrawled something onto a clipboard.
“Was there a girl brought in with me?” Donaldson asked, keeping his voice neutral.
“I’m not supposed to talk to you about anything other than your injuries.”
“You don’t strike me as the kind of man who takes orders from lowly cops, Doc.”
Lanz seemed to consider it. “Yeah, she was brought in.”
“Alive?”
“If you could call it that.”
“Any chance of me seeing her?”
Lanz offered a sour smile. “Buddy, the only things you’ll be seeing are prison cells and courthouses, right up until they punch your clock.”
Donaldson narrowed his eyes. “I did a doctor, once.”
“Excuse me?”
“I had him strapped down on a table…” Donaldson lowered his voice to just above a whisper. “Then I used his own scalpel to cut off small parts of his body. A bit of skin here and there. A finger. An ear. His lips. His penis, in five separate pieces. I used a clotting powder to stop the bleeding so he didn’t die right away. Then I fed the bits to him. One at a time. If he threw up, I made him swallow the parts again. By the time he finally died, he must have eaten almost a quarter of his own body.”
Lanz didn’t flinch. “I’m going to tell the nursing staff to cut you off morphine. We wouldn’t want a charmer like you accidentally dying during the procedure later.”
Dr. Lanz shoved the clipboard back into its slot at the foot of the bed, and then turned to leave.
“See you later, Doc.”
Donaldson closed his eyes and imagined Lanz tied to a gurney, screaming and begging and choking on his own flesh.
But the image didn’t last. Just as it was getting good, his thoughts were interrupted by an image of Lucy. Small. Young. Innocent-looking. With her guitar case and her pink Crocs, her hip cocked out as she thumbed a ride.
In his head, Lucy smiled at Donaldson. The smile quickly escalated into giggling, and then full blown laughter.
The little bitch was laughing at the pain she had caused him.
You think you know pain, little girl?
I’ll show you pain.
“Do you understand these rights that I just explained to you?”
The sheriff was pure hick, soft around the middle, neck flab baked lobster red, prone to using the word ain’t. All he needed to complete the stereotype was a stalk of hayseed hanging out of his mouth.
“Don’t matter,” the lawman continued when Donaldson didn’t answer. “Looks like you’ll have several states fightin’ for custody of you. Likely you’ll be read your rights a few more times.”
Donaldson closed his eyes, wishing Barney Fife would leave him alone. The sheriff didn’t take the hint.
“You know, we don’t get too many high-profile crimes around these parts,” he continued. “Truth is, most we ever have to handle is the ‘casional drunk and disorderly. But we’ve taken some precautions with a worldly feller such as yourself. Up to me, you’d be handcuffed to that bed right now, but Doc Lanz says it ain’t needed on account of your serious injuries. I ain’t so sure. See, you remind me of this dog ole Roscoe Sanderson got over at his junkyard. Some mutt, got some St. Bernard in it, some Rot, some Dobie. Damn near the size of a brown bear. Now, the dog seems tame enough. Don’t bark. Don’t leap at you when you get near. But Roscoe keeps it on a big, thick chain. Some things may look harmless, but they need to be chained up just the same. Cuz once they’re unchained, they ain’t harmless no more.”
Donaldson peeked open his eyes. “Is this how you interrogate suspects ‘round these parts?” Donaldson purposely drawled the last part of his sentence. “Bore them to death with your chatter?”
The sheriff hitched up his gun belt. “We got a guard on you twenty-four hours a day, Mr. Donaldson. We’ve gone through your room and removed everything that could possibly be used as a weapon. That window over there don’t open, and even if it did, you’re on the fourth floor. You got a problem with my chatter, ain’t a damn thing you can do about it.”
“We need to prep him for surgery, sheriff.”
The sheriff nodded at the nurse who had just entered. “Just make sure you count your scalpels when you’re finished,” he said before he left.
“The procedure went well.” Lanz again, standing over Donaldson with that sanctimonious frown. “It’ll be a few days before we know if the skin grafts take. You need to stay still, or they’ll slough off. I’ve given permission for the authorities to question you.”
Donaldson glanced at the other side of the bed. Two men in suits. Feds.
“I have nothing to say until I talk to a lawyer,” Donaldson said. His words were heavy, his entire body delightfully numb.
“We found the pictures hidden in your car, Mr. Donaldson.” The taller of the two had a voice like a radio jock. “In several of them you even posed with your victims.”
“Alleged victims,” Donaldson said, cracking a small, private smile.
“We want to close these cases, Mr. Donaldson.” The shorter one. “If you cooperate, we can talk about reducing your sentence. Maybe you can even get life, instead of the death penalty.”
Donaldson closed his eyes. They tried to talk to him for a few more minutes, and when he didn’t reply, they left.
Donaldson didn’t sleep well.
He dreamt of being dragged behind the car, reliving all of the pain and the horror and the fear in slow-motion. His arm breaking, then breaking again, and again, and again, each new snap loud as a gunshot. His legs and ass being stripped of skin as the pavement ate through his pants. Lucy giggling at him, holding a squirt bottle of lemon juice, gleefully spritzing his open wounds. Donaldson’s father watching the scene, standing over him with that constant look of disgust.
“I always knew you were a bad seed, boy.” Dad took off his belt, bounced the heavy, brass buckle off his palm. “Let’s see if I can’t whup the fear of God into you.”
Donaldson woke up, woozy from the pain meds, convinced his father was standing next to the bed. But it couldn’t have been his father, because he was too pale, his hair too long and dark.
“Who’s there?” Donaldson whispered into his dark room.
No one answered.
But Donaldson felt eyes on him. He sat up, wondering if Lucy had somehow gotten to him, feeling a sick spike of fear jab right into his heart.
Donaldson fumbled for the light switch.
Squinted as it came on.
He was alone in the room.
“Serves you right, having nightmares.” The guard outside the door nodded at Donaldson all-knowingly. “Things you done, you should be haunted forever.”
Donaldson flipped off the light. He closed his eyes.
You got it wrong, pig. I’m not haunted.
I’m the one that does the haunting.
But when Donaldson fell asleep, the nightmare started all over.
It was two in the morning. Donaldson was in pain.
He knew there was more pain to come. Much more.
While they didn’t handcuff him to his bed, the authorities had been very careful with him, just like the hick sheriff promised. Donaldson ate with a plastic spoon on paper plates. The metal bedpan was taken away as soon as he finished. Anything in his room that could be considered a weapon—even the TV and the drawers from the dresser—had been removed. That prick Lanz and those goddamn Feds had even taken away his IV. Cruel and unusual punishment, no doubt. If Donaldson went to trial, it would be something for his lawyer to prot
est.
But Donaldson wasn’t going to trial. He was getting the hell out of there.
He glanced at the cop outside the door, his ass molded to a chair, his back to Donaldson. There was a TV in the nurse’s station that the cop had been watching, but he hadn’t moved in over twenty minutes. Donaldson guessed he was asleep.
The nurse on duty made her rounds every half an hour. She was a painfully thin woman named Winslow, and she wasn’t due back until two-thirty.
Donaldson closed his eyes, focusing on his remaining ear, trying to tune into the sounds around him. The ward was quiet. Best as Donaldson could tell, about half the rooms on this wing were empty.
Slow week at the country hospital.
That would change in just a few minutes.
Donaldson eyed the brace holding his shattered arm together. Winslow had called the contraption an external fixation. Made of heavy gauge surgical steel, it ran from his shoulder to his wrist, four metal rods surrounding the limb. They were attached to four large squares that encircled his arm. In each square were several screws. These screws pierced Donaldson’s skin and held his bones in place as they healed.
He counted nine screws in all. Each had a tiny, flat knob on the end to manually adjust the tension. It sort of looked like the scaffolding employed to hold dinosaur bones together in museums. But shinier.
Shinier, and very heavy.
Okay. Here we go…
Donaldson wadded up a corner of his blanket and shoved it into his mouth, tasting fabric softener. Biting down hard, he tentatively reached for the first screw.
Touching it brought a spark of agony, and he immediately withdrew his hand. Sweat popped out in fat beads on Donaldson’s forehead. He let out a deep breath through his nostrils, blowing snot like a horse.
Do it.
Just do it.
It’s the only way.
Donaldson pinched the screw head again.
Then he twisted.
The pain was akin to having a tooth drilled. Deep nerve pain. Bone pain. A pointed, foreign object, sticking deep in the marrow, prompting a guttural moan that the blanket didn’t entirely muffle.
Donaldson glanced frantically over at the cop, hoping his outburst hadn’t woken him.
The cop didn’t budge.
Blinking away tears, Donaldson twisted the screw again, and this time the burst of pain was so acute, so otherworldly, his whole body began to shake.
Withdrawing his quivering hand, Donaldson immediately realized what had happened.
Damn it, you idiot!
It’s supposed to be righty-tighty, lefty-loosey!
He’d been inadvertently driving the screw in deeper.
Screaming curses in his head, he forced himself to grip the screw once again, turning it the correct direction this time, not stopping until the pointed barb tugged free of his skin. The hole it had been nestled in oozed dark blood, the pinpoint of suffering replaced by a duller, but equally unbearable throb.
Done.
Only eight screws to go.
The next two were hell.
The one after that made him redefine what hell actually was. Tears streaking down his cheeks, biting the blanket so hard his jaw ached and his gums bled, Donaldson fumbled with the screw holding the top bit of his shattered ulna in place. But the screw was lodged in the bone so tightly that Donaldson felt his ulna twist as he turned it. He could even see the bone wiggle underneath the skin, as if a mouse had burrowed into his flesh and was trying to escape.
Donaldson’s hand shook so badly he couldn’t get a firm grip. His face felt cold and clammy, and he recognized he was going into shock—something he’d witnessed many times in his victims.
Fight it. This is your only chance.
Donaldson turned the screw.
The broken bit of ulna turned sideways, almost perpendicular to his forearm.
He shuddered in agony, and then passed out.
Donaldson awoke trembling and confused, his face so drenched with sweat he looked like he’d just stepped out of the shower. He cast a frantic glance at the cop—still sleeping—and then the clock.
2:20.
Only ten minutes until Nurse Winslow made her rounds.
He had to hurry. There were still five screws remaining.
Donaldson hadn’t cried since he was a child. He remembered being ten years old, his father’s belt drawing blood on his ass, his thighs, his back; whipping him for killing a neighbor’s dog, whipping him so hard and for so long that Donaldson missed an entire week of school.
That was the last time he’d ever cried. His father had whipped him many times since, but Donaldson had vowed to himself he’d never show weakness again. He’d internalize the pain. Keep it inside.
It was a vow he’d kept for over forty years. A vow he now broke as sobs shook his body and mucus streamed down over his blubbering lips.
The screw seemed to twitch with his pulse, vibrating just a bit, the bone beneath the skin so obviously out of place it was almost funny.
Donaldson tried not to hesitate. But twisting was unbearable. It would cause him to pass out again.
So he took a deep, stuttering breath, gripped the screw head, and yanked.
The screw popped free, tearing out a thread of flesh, the blood spurting rather than oozing.
Wailing like a baby now, Donaldson attacked the next screw. The pain became the only thing he knew. His entire world. He twisted and pulled and pried at his tortured arm, blinded by tears, thrashing his legs and feeling the skin grafts tear, shaking his head side to side and actually bending the metal brace that held his neck immobile.
It was coming…coming…
Did it!
Donaldson wiped his blurry eyes.
Three screws left.
It was worse than a tooth ache. Worse than being kicked in the balls. Worse than his father’s belt. Worse than being dragged behind the car.
Just two more.
Both arms shook so badly now that Donaldson couldn’t get a grip on the screw head. He had to keep wiping his slippery, blood-soaked fingers on the blanket. When they finally locked on, he got confused and twisted the wrong way once again, tightening the screw, ratcheting up his suffering to the nth degree, causing his eyes to roll up into his head. He used the pain, knowing it couldn’t get any worse, turning it quickly and spitting out the blanket and vomiting bile as the screw mercifully pulled free.
Okay…
Just one more…
The last one…
This was the longest of them all, pinned into his wrist.
Deep.
So deep.
Too deep.
Can’t do it.
Can’t fucking do it.
The very thought of touching that final screw, let alone manipulating it, made Donaldson gag again. He needed morphine. He needed it more than he ever needed anything in his life. He could call the nurse, and she’d give him a shot. It would knock him out. He wouldn’t hurt anymore.
But then they’d reset the screws.
Donaldson knew he couldn’t bear that.
He closed his eyes, lips pursed together as he sobbed, and in his pain-delirium he was visited by an angel.
In Donaldson’s mind, the angel had big, white wings. A glowing halo. A beatific smile.
And pink Crocs.
“Looks like I win, old man,” said the Lucy Angel.
Donaldson’s eyes flipped open.
No. You’re not going to win, little girl.
He attacked the last screw with a hatred so fierce he could handle the agony.
It took twelve complete turns to get the son of a bitch out.
And then Donaldson was done.
His arm no longer looked human. More like a giant, pulsing earthworm, gooey with blood, the skin purple with hematomas. He carefully pulled off the brace, threading his ruined appendage through it, laughing as he hefted its weight. Solid surgical steel, at least five pounds of metal, screws protruding out like spikes on a medieval war ma
ce.
Hysterical, Donaldson’s tears turned into hoarse laughter.
You fuckers made sure there were no weapons in my room.
But you forgot one.
He focused on the cop.
Still asleep.
The clock.