Chapter Six Razor
Chapter six
Razor
Ghost was hurt worse.
I could have taken some satisfaction in that. Couldn’t though. Cause it meant I waited longer to be seen to.
And so there I fucking was, sat cuffed in a holding room while they patched him up first, him getting priority treatment for being the bigger spectacle, while I had a guard on the door.
It wasn’t exactly a win. Cause I had nothing to do but sit, letting the pain settle in layers and the realisation of what that had all cost me rushing over me in waves.
Eventually the door opened, and I was hauled to my feet, walked down to medical, cuffs still on, chain drawn short so my shoulders were forced forwards. Every step sent a sharp, needling reminder through my ribs. I kept my breathing shallow. Counted it.
In. Out.
Pain was information. Noise was weakness.
Medical smelt of disinfectant and trapped heat.
“Sit.” The nurse pointed at a plastic chair. No back. No give.
I lowered myself down on it anyway, locking my jaw as pain flared bright and vicious along my side. I didn’t make a sound, though. No need for that to travel back to the wing.
The nurse flipped through a clipboard, tapping her pen on it. Middle-aged. Worn thin. Then she glanced up. “Name and number.”
I gave them.
“What happened?”
“Altercation.”
She took inventory. Swollen eye. Split lip. Blood drying dark over my knuckles. And how my right shoulder sat a fraction wrong. “Hit your head?”
“Only on the other bloke’s.”
“Lose consciousness?”
“No.”
She gave a hum of disbelief, but she pulled on gloves anyway and pressed her fingers into my ribs. The breath punched out of me before I could stop it.
“Bruised,” she decided. “Maybe cracked. We don’t X-ray unless you’re struggling to breathe.”
“I’m not.”
She cleaned the cut above my brow with saline. Steri-strips slapped on as if sealing a parcel, not a face.
“And the shoulder?”
I rolled it. Once. Something slipped and pain spiked, sharp and ugly.
“Strain,” she said. “Don’t aggravate it.”
I nearly laughed. As if I controlled that. Concrete bed. Narrow corridors. Men who tested boundaries for sport. But she didn’t care. She wrapped a thin bandage around my torso, tight enough to irritate, useless for anything else, then dropped two tablets into a paper cup.
“Paracetamol. That’s all.”
I swallowed them dry.
“Back to the wing.” She turned away. “Buzz if you vomit or can’t breathe.”
They uncuffed me long enough to cuff me again.
That was medical.
Alive. And very clearly not their problem.
I’d had my share of patch-ups on the outside.
Back when I was a mouthy little shit getting into fights for fun and Mum would clean me up at the kitchen sink, muttering under her breath.
Then Keeley learnt how to do it properly, hands steadier than Mum’s, so she took over.
After that, I did it myself. I learnt quick cause I had to.
Then when I started rolling harder, Tyler’s bird would help.
Shanice, once or twice. Always with that look that said I’d earned it.
I’d thank her. Fuck her. Transaction closed.
None of them were gentle. None of them needed to be.
Then there’d been Tristan.
When I’d turned up at his place with a knife wound, his hands had been warm. Careful. As if he cared. The only ones that ever did.
Fuck.
I hated how I kept thinking about him. In here. This place of concrete and teeth and rules carved into flesh. Even the memory of him didn’t belong behind these doors.
He was long gone and better for it.
They walked me back to the wing. Lockdown again. My fault this time. As I passed the cells, I caught the looks. The muttered jeers. The resentment. I was almost grateful when my door came up, because all of that was waiting for me the moment we were let loose again.
Dent unlocked the cell. “You need to learn when to walk away.”
I snorted. “Bit hard that, in a crowded stairwell.”
Dent didn’t answer. What could he say? Ghost had been waiting for me to be boxed in with the screws far enough off to let it turn ugly before they came running and called it mutual.
The door shut.
And I was back in my six-by-six.
Colin shot up from his bunk. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
The lie came easily. Automatic. But when I shrugged, pain bit hard enough to spark white at the edges of my vision.
Colin saw it. “Sit.” He gestured to his bunk.
I sat. More collapsed really. Let it take my weight. The adrenaline had gone, leaving everything louder. Every breath rubbed wrong.
Colin hovered, shifting from one foot to the other as if he didn’t know where to put himself. Hands useless. Eyes darting to me, then away. Then he grabbed a cup from the sink, filled it with water, and held it out. “I got you a new one.”
I took the cheap plastic, prison issue mug.
One that had come in the induction pack for those with no money on their books.
They had to give you the basics, no matter your status.
A cup was one of them. If you lost it, that was on you.
And no one touched another man’s cup. That was a rule.
One of the few that held. I’d lost mine on the stairwell. Fuck knew how he’d got another.
Right then, the gratitude hit like oxygen.
I drank. Long pulls. Water slopping down my chin, hands shaking just enough to piss me off. “Thanks.”
He nodded, then glanced at my chest. “Your ribs. They wrap you?”
“Barely.”
He crouched, reached under his mattress and pulled out a spare vest. Worn thin. Clean enough. He tore it straight down the side. “Lift your arms.”
I narrowed my eyes. “How do you know what you’re doing?”
He huffed, almost embarrassed. “First aid course. Years ago. Accounting firms like boxes ticked.” He shrugged. “And I’ve got daughters. One who rollerblades.”
I let out something close to a laugh. Then lifted my arms. Pain flared as the fabric slid around my torso but I bit down hard, refusing the sound. Then Colin pulled it snug, careful where he tightened.
“That help?” He peered up.
“Yeah.”
It did. Enough to breathe at least.
He stepped back. “You shouldn’t have retaliated.”
I hauled myself up, climbed to the top bunk, and lay back, pinning one arm across my ribs. I stared at the ceiling.
“There are a lot of things I shouldn’t’ve done.” I spoke mostly to myself, though it answered his question well enough.
“Are they watching you now?” Colin asked after a while.
“Always were.” I turned my head to look at him. “What you should be worried about is that they’ll be watching you now, too.”
His face drained. “Because I called for help?”
“Yeah.” I looked back up. “Don’t do that again.”
Silence settled. I closed my eyes. Tried not to see Tristan behind them.
“Why did they attack you?” Colin asked eventually.
“To prove they can.”
A beat.
“Will they again?”
“Probably.”
“Aren’t you scared?”
I opened my eyes and looked down at him. “This has been my life since before I could spell fear. There’re just walls around it now.”
He swallowed. Then, as if he needed to justify his existence beside me, he started the cell confession. The chats we weren’t supposed to have.
“I’m in for fraud.” He rubbed his forehead. “I’m just an accountant. Was.” A pause. “I moved money I shouldn’t have. Client funds. Not millions. Just… enough. School fees went up. Lost my job. Couldn’t tell my wife.”
I said nothing.
“I’m guilty.” He peered up, and I saw the grief, the sickness of regret, the wish he could rewind time and choose differently. I knew that look. Saw it in the mirror more often than I liked. “I know I am. But I’m not…” He gestured weakly at me. “This.”
“No shit.” I turned back to the ceiling.
“Do you have any advice for me? To get through this?”
“Keep to yourself. Don’t engage. Buy nothing from no one. Don’t even take anything they say they’ll lend you…phones, tobacco, definitely not spice.”
“I don’t smoke.” Course he didn’t. But he might by the end of his sentence. “I didn’t think we were allowed phones in here?”
I snorted. “Not allowed a lot of stuff in here that makes it in anyway. If you can get it on the streets outside, you can get it in here.”
“Right.” He chewed his lip. “And what’s spice?”
“A drug. Looks like weed, wrecks you quicker.”
“Ah.”
“And don’t drink the hooch.”
“Hooch?”
“Homemade alcohol.”
“You really can get anything in here then?”
“If you got the cash, you can get whatever helps you pass the time.” I glanced at him. “If the cells have kettles, they can make anything. Nothing’s off-limits. Not even blowjobs.”
“I see.” He went still. Then nodded, filing that under things I was not prepared to know. Then, “What are you in for?”
“Remand.”
“You haven’t been tried yet, right?”
“Mm.”
“So what did you do?”
I looked down at him again. “Not what they say I did.”
His shoulders slumped.
I stared back at the ceiling. “But whatever…I ain’t a good man. And I deserve everything I get. Best you remember that.”
“Is that what you told… whoever you’ve got on the outside? The one you don’t want thinking about you?”
I closed my eyes. “Yeah.”
“Will the fights affect your case?”
“Probably.”
“So you should stay away, right? Keep your head down. For your chance of getting out.”
I laughed. It hurt.
“I ain’t getting out.” I balled my hands into fists. “That’s the point. I’m in here to rot or die. Maybe both. My defence stepped back. I’m in limbo. No one wants my case because it’s trouble. Complex.” I spat out the word the lawyers had given me as an excuse to throw me away.
I shut my eyes.
Of course I’d thought about the alternatives to dealing with this.
Anyone would. Grass. Ask for protection.
Say the right names, trade a version of the truth for a locked door and a plastic mattress.
Except protection didn’t reach outside these walls.
It didn’t follow phone calls, or school runs, or my sister’s front door.
I didn’t get to un-say things once they were written down.
And men like Cormac didn’t need me breathing to make a point.