Chapter Thirteen
Chapter
Thirteen
Lucas took a cab from the hospital. He hadn’t
wanted to, since he was running low on cash and had no job
prospects in sight. But he could barely stand, even after spending
the night in the hospital. Which meant, of course, that he was a
good ways away from being in shape to start looking for work
again.
He sighed and leaned his head against the
cool glass of the cab’s window, just in time for the car to bounce
over the low curb at the end of the halfway house driveway. The
bruise on his temple complained as it thudded into the glass, but
the pain wasn’t a problem. It was kind of nice, really—a way to
remind him that he wasn’t completely numb, not all over.
“Twelve fifty,” the driver said, the only
words since the ride had started. Lucas had no idea if the man was
naturally quiet or if he was one of the many folks carrying some
sort of grudge, and he was pretty sure he didn’t care.
He passed fifteen dollars over the front seat
and climbed out of the car. He had no bag. The hospital had
provided him with a toothbrush and toothpaste and some mismatched
clothes from the lost-and-found to replace the ones they’d cut from
his body, but that was all. The few belongings Lucas had in the
world were behind the doors of the house he was staring at, and he
really had no idea whether he was here to join them inside or just
to claim them before leaving to find somewhere else to lay his
battered head.
He might as well find out, he decided, and
headed for the front door. Residents were expected to let
themselves in, but Lucas knocked. An unfamiliar man wearing a
priest’s collar answered, and Lucas wasn’t sure quite what to
say.
“Lucas?” the man said after a moment. “Are
you Lucas Cain? I’m Terry Groban. I’m the Rector of Saint
Gabriel’s, the church that manages this facility. I’m sorry I
didn’t make it in to see you while you were in the hospital.
Welcome home.”
“I’m not Catholic.” Lucas wasn’t quite sure
why he said that.
And the priest seemed just as confused. “I’m
not Catholic either, Lucas. This is an Anglican facility.”
“Oh.” He probably should have known that.
“Well, I’m not Anglican either. I mean, there’s no reason you
should have come to see me in the hospital. That’s all I
meant.”
“Ah. I see.” The priest stepped back from the
doorway. “Well, come on in. You look like you might want your bed?
Or are you hungry?”
“Just bed, thanks. But…” There was a part of
Lucas that was telling him to keep his mouth shut. This priest
seemed to be willing to let him in, and he really, really wanted to
lie down. And the cop had said Lucas could come back here. But…
“The other guy. The other priest. He said I was out. He said
fighting was against the rules, and I wasn’t allowed to live here.
Then the cop said it was okay to come back. I don’t…am I supposed
to be here?”
The priest nodded slowly. “Fighting is
against the rules. But it’s my understanding that this wasn’t a
fight. That is, it’s not something to which you consented? Not
something in which you were an active participant?”
A pretty fancy way of saying that Lucas
hadn’t even landed a punch. “I guess not. It wasn’t really a
fight.”
“Well, we don’t have rules against our
residents being assaulted.” The priest smiled wryly. “Not that we
want it to happen. But we certainly won’t ask you to find other
accommodations just because someone else broke the rules.”
This priest seemed a lot nicer than the other
one, and Lucas let himself relax, at least a little. But he still
might as well get all the bad out of the way before he got too
comfortable. “And I didn’t find a job.” I screwed everything up.
I’m a failure. I can’t take care of myself. Lucas managed to
not say it out loud, but he was pretty sure it was obvious to
anyone who looked at him anyway.
“There’s time to worry about that later,” the
priest said gently. “We’ll sort something out. In the meantime, go
on upstairs and lie down. I’ll bring lunch up for you in a while,
and you can see if you’re ready to come sit down with us by dinner
time.” He barely touched Lucas’s shoulder, guiding him toward the
stairs with the least pressure possible.
“I don’t need lunch,” Lucas protested. “Or if
I do, I can come downstairs.”
“Nonsense. You need to rest and heal. Give
yourself a few days, Lucas. There’s no need to rush anything.”
Lucas was pretty sure the other priest wasn’t
going to agree with that approach, but this guy was older; maybe he
was the other one’s boss. That would be nice. And whatever energy
he’d managed to find in order to have this conversation had been
drained out of him, so he wasn’t going to push any further. He
started for the stairs, paused halfway up to wonder if he was going
to make it, and then forced himself onward. He was dimly aware of
the priest hovering behind him, ready to catch him if he fell, and
it was more comforting than he’d thought it would be.
He was staggering by the time he reached his
assigned room and he collapsed onto the bed without even thinking
about shedding clothes or boots.
When Lucas woke up, there was a blanket
spread on top of him. He pushed it to the side and experimentally
moved his body. Stiff and sore, but not unbearable. He lay there
for a while, giving in to the luxury of warmth, safety and privacy,
then forced himself to sit up and swing his feet over the side of
the bed. His boots were sitting on the floor. Either he’d woken up
at some point and dragged them off, or the priest had taken care of
him.
He stumbled to the bathroom, and after he
flushed the toilet he took a long look at himself in the mirror.
His face was a mess. Bruises, stitches, and dark-blond stubble. He
could cover up the rest of the damage, but no one was going to hire
him with a face like that. Hell, no one had wanted to hire him
before he turned into Frankenstein’s monster. He was screwed.
He headed back to the bedroom because he had
no other options, and when he arrived, the older priest was
standing outside the door, waiting for him. He was holding a tray
with a bowl of some sort of creamy soup on it, and Lucas’s stomach
gave an unexpected growl of enthusiasm, clearly loud enough to be
heard.
The priest’s laugh was gentle. “I guess you’d
be willing to try a little lunch?”
Sean had always said that soup was a drink,
not a food, but Sean wasn’t around anymore. “I guess so. Thank
you.” Lucas looked inside the bedroom, then back at the priest.
“But I shouldn’t eat in bed, should I? I think that’s one of the
rules. No food in the rooms at all, I thought.” Was this a
trap?
But the priest didn’t seem like the sort to
set traps. The other one, maybe, but not this one. “Exceptions are
made for illness. After all, the rule is that residents are
supposed to be out of the building during the day, so you’re
already breaking that one.”
“Shit,” Lucas said. He’d forgotten that rule.
And he’d just sworn in front of a priest. “I mean—shoot? But if you
want me to get out for the day, I can find somewhere…”
“The hospital said you needed a couple days
of bed rest and several more days of taking it easy. We can
accommodate that, Lucas. There’s no need for you to be a hero.” The
priest was watching him with a critical eye. “And judging by the
angle you’re leaning at, I think you should be following doctor’s
orders. Get back in bed, eat some soup, and take it easy.”
Lucas was too tired to think of reasons to
resist. “You’re the nice priest, huh? The other one’s the hard
ass?” The look on the priest’s face made it clear that Lucas’s
comment was out of line. He had no idea what had possessed him to
say it in the first place. Of course the priests would stick
together, and of course it wasn’t Lucas’s place to start making
smart comments about the people who were rescuing him from
homelessness. “I mean, I’m sure he’s nice too. Sorry.”
“Was there a problem between you?” The priest
didn’t seem angry, exactly, but there was definitely more than
random curiosity in his tone. It didn’t make sense, but if Lucas
had been forced to describe it, he’d have said the priest seemed
cautious. Which was a hell of a lot better than the serious case of
nerves Lucas currently suffered.
“No, no problems. I appreciate his efforts.
Yours too. Everybody’s.” Jesus, Lucas needed to stop talking. He
wasn’t any good at this stuff when he wasn’t all beat up and
confused. “Thank you.”
“I’d like to talk to you about all that, at
some point,” the priest said. Lucas had no idea what he was talking
about but he didn’t sound mad, at least. “But you should probably
focus on getting your health back, for now. There’s time for other
issues later, right?”
“I guess?” It wasn’t like Lucas knew what he
was agreeing to, but putting off a conversation seemed like a good
idea.
“I think so,” the priest said, and he waited
while Lucas climbed into bed and pulled the covers up over his lap.
“Now, soup. It’s just from a can—sorry. My wife makes wonderful
homemade soup, and if your bruising keeps you from eating solids,
I’ll ask her to send some over, but for now, it’s canned.”
“Your wife? I thought priests couldn’t get
married.”
“Catholic priests can’t. I’m Anglican,
remember?”
“Oh.” Lucas should probably get that figured
out at some point, but he didn’t think he wanted to do it right
then. He watched, feeling useless, as the priest flipped a set of
legs out from the base of the tray and turned it into a low table,
just the right height to fit over Lucas’s legs. Apparently the
place was set up for in-bed eating, so probably the priest was
right that the no-food-in-rooms rule wasn’t absolute. That was
reassuring.
The priest pulled up a wooden chair and sat
in silence while Lucas worked his way through the soup. If he’d
been alone, he’d have lifted the bowl to his mouth and taken care
of it in a few gulps, but he was pretty sure the priest wouldn’t