Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Friday afternoon, Cody was still smiling about the night before.
Demmy had surprised him with filet mignon, and afterwards they’d exchanged long, slow blowjobs on the couch.
He kept smiling as he pulled into the parking structure attached to the side of Memorial Hospital.
Jugs muttered and sighed in the seat beside him, tugging at the cervical collar as Cody wound up and up, searching for a spot.
“Thanks for doing this,” Jugs said. “I appreciate it.”
“No problem. I’m looking forward to all the new things you’ll be bitching about now that you’re losing that collar.”
“Gonna start with my employer.”
“How dare you bad mouth Demmy. He’s a saint.”
He found a space not too far from the skywalk, and they crossed the bridge and entered the hospital.
Cool air tinged with cleaning products washed over them, and Cody shivered slightly as the air touched his sweat-damp skin.
After all these years, and so many monsters, they both knew the way to Emergency without needing to follow signs.
Once they’d passed through the metal detector, Cody grabbed two face masks from the box.
He put one on and handed the other to Jugs who frowned at him.
“You saying something about my breath?”
Three people sat in chairs around the small waiting area, and, in a miracle of perfect timing, one let loose with a salvo of deep, wet coughs.
Jugs quickly put on the mask. Cody remained standing close to the wall, far away from the coughers, as Jugs approached the check-in desk.
Before Jugs had taken more than a few steps back to Cody, the doors to the interior of the ED swung open.
Zenona waited for them, tan slacks and a high-necked, long-sleeved black shirt beneath her white coat.
She raised her eyebrows at the sight of Cody following Jugs inside.
“Are you his bodyguard?”
“He should be so lucky,” Cody replied.
Jugs snorted.
Zenona led them down the hall of curtained-off triage spaces. “More coughing out there today?”
“Yeah,” Cody said, removing his mask. “But there’s only three of them now. The virus must have taken out the rest.”
Jugs also removed his mask. “You’re dark as hell, Bonker.”
Cody’s usual scowl at Jugs’s nickname deepened when he heard Zenona whisper, “Bonker.” She pulled back a curtain and directed Jugs to the bed inside.
Jugs sat on the gurney, the paper sheet crackling beneath him.
With his big hands on the cushion, fingers splayed out, and his eyes wide, Cody thought Jugs looked like a kid who had maybe gotten into a batch of growth hormones.
Zenona pulled on a pair of gloves as she approached Jugs. “I’m going to remove the cervical collar and conduct a quick examination. Then I’ll have you do some slow and careful movements for me, all right?”
The staticky sounds of the Velcro being loosened were loud inside the white curtained space. Zenona eased the brace from around Jugs’s neck and placed it on a metal table nearby. Sweat darkened the inside of it.
“Probably going to have to incinerate that thing,” Cody said.
“Ignore him.” Zenona’s voice was calm as she gently pressed fingers into the muscles along the sides of his neck. “Any pain?”
“Nope. Nothing.”
As Zenona worked with Jugs, Cody took the opportunity to study her more closely.
She looked even better than she had two days before when he’d come in.
The skin of her face was smooth and flawless.
Her dark hair, flat and limp for the past year, was full and shining, today gathered into a single braid that reached halfway down her back.
Her dark eyes were sharp, and the tiny lines at the corners appeared to have lessened.
He really wanted to know the brand of vitamins she was taking.
“Any pain at all?” Zenona asked as she observed his movements.
“None. I feel good as new.” Jugs’s smile was big and bright.
“Well, don’t push it, but you no longer need the cervical collar.” She pulled off the gloves and dropped them into the trash.
“So, don’t get carried away and play naked Twister with Agatha,” Cody said.
“Dude!” Jugs’s eyes bugged out.
Cody held his hands up, palms out. “I’m trying to help you keep from injuring yourself again.”
Jugs said, “We like naked Candyland, anyway.”
“Okay.” Zenona pulled back the curtain. “You both need to go, right now.” She gathered a palmful of sanitizer and stepped out of the exam area, rubbing it into her skin and nodding toward the exit. “Goodbye.”
“He’s the one who made it weird,” Cody protested as he started moving. “Candyland?”
“Do you see what I work with day in and day out?” Jugs said as he passed Zenona.
“Oh, I’m very aware of what you both work with day in and day out.”
“That sounds like you’re blaming me.” Jugs’s voice held a touch of suspicion.
“Welcome to my world,” Cody said. “All the blame, none of the glory.”
He ambled down the hall, glancing into open triage spaces. In one, an elderly woman lay on a gurney, two younger women standing by the bed. The next bed held a middle-aged man looking annoyed as his wife fussed over him.
As he passed another triage space, Cody’s steps slowed. The conversation between Jugs and Zenona behind him faded out, replaced by the white noise of his blood rushing in his ears.
A woman was on the gurney inside the exam area, pale even against the crisp white of the sheets.
Two bags hung from an IV stand on her left, one a clear saline solution and the other the thick dark red of blood.
The line trailing from the bag of blood was red all the way to where the needle had been securely taped in place in the crook of her right elbow.
Cody’s breath grew shallow. The nurses’ station, tiled floor and white curtains of the triage spaces all blurred at the edge of his vision. He could almost smell the concrete dust and dirt, and caught himself touching the tiny scars on his neck.
Zenona snapped the curtains shut, the sound interrupting his memories. He swayed on his feet. A chill lingered along his skin, and he shivered.
“Let’s give our patients the privacy we’d all appreciate,” she said.
The sounds of the ED rushed back in. The buzz of the lights overhead now seemed too loud, the ringing phones piercing.
“Are you creeping on other patients?” Jugs said quietly, then rubbed his index fingers toward him. “Shame, Bonker. For shame.”
Cody knocked his hands away and stalked past. “Knock it off.”
At the exit, Cody palmed the button to trigger the pneumatic doors and stepped into the waiting area.
Two more people, a man and a woman, had joined the previous trio.
The new arrivals were ashen, slumped in chairs beside each other.
A bruise darkened the skin along one side of the woman’s neck.
The man had a white bandage taped over one wrist, with spots of blood providing a striking contrast. Cody held the mask over his face as he crossed the waiting area quickly into the hallway.
“You trying to set a land speed record?” Jugs asked from behind.
“No. I just…I wanted to get out of there. All that coughing and germs and stuff.” When they reached the atrium lobby, Cody snapped the strings of his mask and dropped it in a trashcan.
“Uh huh.”
Jugs sounded farther behind, and Cody turned around. An art piece constructed from aluminum hung above the trashcan, and Jugs was turning his head back and forth, checking out his wavy reflection in its surface.
“For the love of… You look great, okay? A-plus for neck reconstruction. Can we get out of here?”
Jugs squinted at him. “What’s got into you all of a sudden?”
“It’s a hospital, man. It’s full of sick people.”
Jugs didn’t look convinced, but he fell in step with him to the elevator. Cody could feel Jugs’s eyes on him as they waited for the slowest elevator on the planet. Cody’s face was tight: brows drawn down, lips pressed together. He couldn’t seem to stand still and kept shifting his weight.
The bag of blood suspended above the woman who was white as a sheet.
Two people in the waiting area, washed out and exhausted.
The bruise on the woman’s neck; the spots of blood on the man’s bandage.
Zenona managing the care of all of them.
The elevator arrived, and the doors opened. Several people stepped off, slower than a herd of sloths. They were the only ones riding up to the skywalk, and once the doors slid closed, Cody glanced over to find Jugs watching him.
”Stop giving me that look. I’m not getting you ice cream.”
“Was it the blood?”
Cold lanced through him, as if an icicle had pierced his skull, skewering him from the top down.
“What?” he said, even though his tongue suddenly felt too thick for his mouth.
“I saw your expression when you caught sight of that woman getting blood. Was it that?”
“No, I don’t know, I…” But the denial died in his throat. He drew in a breath, aware of the slight whistle and the fact that the air didn’t seem to reach his lungs. This was Jugs. He could talk to him.
The elevator doors opened and they entered the skywalk. A delivery truck rumbled by underneath as they crossed to the parking structure, sending vibrations along the concrete underfoot.
When they entered the garage, Cody said, “Yeah, the blood sort of, I don’t know, shocked me, I guess.” He wiped his forehead as he unlocked the truck. “We should be used to seeing blood in our line of work.”
“Secondary line of work.”
“Yeah, right.” They got into the truck and Cody started the engine but kept it in park.
The AC from the vents was stale compared to the air inside.
He gripped the steering wheel and stared at his hands.
“Seeing blood like that, the dark color of it, and how pale that woman was…” His voice sounded scratchy and wounded.
“Those two in the waiting area.” Jugs’s deep voice was surprisingly gentle.