Chapter 45
Someone was driving a nail into his arm.
Sam tried to pull it away, but he was tied down to the table.
Why had Ian tied him to the table? It was uncomfortable as hell.
He tried to move his head, but even his forehead was strapped down.
“Ian,” he complained, but his voice wasn’t strong enough to express his annoyance.
“Grapefruit,” he said. That came out a little louder.
“Ohthankgod,” Ian babbled.
Garlic breath. “Uh,” Sam complained. God, Ian was just a torture fiend tonight, wasn’t he?
“Sam?” Nik’s voice shouted. “Sam, can you hear me?”
What was Nik doing here? How did he make his voice echo like that? “Wha . . .?”
“Sam?”
Sam swallowed. What was the thing around his neck? Nothing made sense. “Where’s Ian?”
“He’s coming, Sam. He’s coming, I swear.”
“He usually waits for me to come first.” Sam tried to screw up his face in confusion, but it hurt like hell. “What are you doing here?”
“Sam, can you open your eyes?”
It took a few tries, but he got them open. The world burst on him in painful detail. Lights and people and footsteps and Nik hovering anxiously over him, Jurgen standing nearby looking hellaciously pissed. For a second, Sam had a flicker of memory about Jurgen, but then it was gone. “Where’s Ian?”
A woman in a blue shirt moved Nik out of the way, her fingers running across Sam’s scalp and behind his neck. Was this a massage? She needed to rub a lot harder.
“Hi Sam, I’m Lydia. Do you remember what happened?”
“What happened when? Who are you?”
“My name’s Lydia. I’m a paramedic. You were hit in the head by a bat—”
“You got bashed,” Nik interrupted, voice strident. Lydia smiled at him soothingly.
“What? I what? Why would I get hit by a bat?” Sam asked her, frowning. His brows rubbed against the thing across the forehead. “Why am I tied down?”
“We had to make sure you didn’t move.”
Sam closed one eye to focus on her. “What is going on?”
“I’m just making sure you’re all right. I’m going to check your pupils now.” She was flicking a light on and off in his peripheral vision.
“What are you going to—gah!” She stabbed him in the eye with the laser light thingy, then did the other one. “Nik! Jurgen! Help!”
“It’s okay, it’s okay, she’s a paramedic.” He felt Nik petting his hand.
“I’m all done,” she soothed.
“Fuck,” Sam muttered. Something about the laser dagger had set off a pounding in his head. It got worse with each beat. “Warn a guy before you stab him in the eye.” A bluish-black blob filled his sight. “Are my eyes open?”
“Your vision will come back in a few seconds.”
Somehow, Sam thought someone who’d just blinded him would be more sympathetic. He didn’t like her much. He tried to throw her a dirty look, but since he couldn’t see her he didn’t know if it hit its mark.
She followed up the maiming of his eyes by poking around his head some more, meanwhile asking him questions.
“Do you know your name?”
She’d just used it, could she really not remember? “It’s Sam,” he said clearly. He tried to lift his head and his headache ratcheted up another notch when the thing around his forehead pulled him back.
“Good job.” What was this, kindergarten? “Do you know what year it is?”
Oh for God’s sake, was this necessary right now? “Yes, it’s, um . . . Nik, what’s the date?”
Nik didn’t answer, but the woman didn’t ask him any more questions, so Sam dropped it. “Fuck, my head hurts,” he moaned.
“I’m going to give you something for that,” the woman said. She started fiddling with the nail in his arm.
“I don’t think aspirin will be enough,” Sam told her.
“Oh, it’s going to be a little stronger than aspirin. You enjoy your trip in la-la-land.”
“Wait!” Nik screeched. “You’re giving him drugs? I thought you weren’t supposed to do that with head injuries.”
She was giving him drugs? He didn’t know drug dealers made deliveries. Was it an extra charge?
“Nikky, let her do her job,” Jurgen said.
“That’s a common misconception. In most East Coast protocols you can’t, but on the West Coast we’re much more aggressive with drugs.”
“Yeah, the voting public makes that obvious,” Jurgen interjected, sounding almost normal.
“At the hospital they’ll give him a CT scan to check him for head trauma.”
Hospital? What? “Where’m I going?” Sam asked her, but she didn’t answer. Instead Nik was back, hanging over his face.
“You don’t remember what happened? You got hit in the head with a baseball bat.”
Sam’s body felt weird, a little bit like he was on a carnival ride. “Are we in an airplane?”
“No,” Nik snapped. “The paramedics are moving you to the ambulance. You got bashed by a bunch of rednecks! You and Miller.”
“Miller’s here, too? Oooh, head rush!” Sam giggled.
“Did I have something to drink at the bashing?” If he had, he needed to remember what it was, because it was making the headache recede.
Not really go away, more like it was sitting in the corner and watching him rather than jumping up and down on his brain stem.
Oh, the airplane was flying over gravel, he could hear it.
“Nikky,” Jurgen’s voice said from somewhere down a tunnel. “You need to take it easy on him.” Sam couldn’t see Jurgen, though. Dammit, that woman had blinded him!
Oh, wait, he’d shut his eyes again. “Nik, I think this’s my Dark Moment. D’you think my prince’ll come?”
Nik gulped and gasped. Sam felt shaking fingers on his cheek. “You’re not ’im,” he mumbled. He didn’t want Nik to get the wrong idea.
Nik sounded like he’d swallowed a cough. “I know.” He paused, then took a deep breath and spoke in a calmer voice. “Sam, you were beaten up and so was Miller. Do you remember that?”
“I might, actually . . .” Sam tried to grasp the elusive memory, but it slipped away on the back of a bubble, except it left a few scraps behind. He gasped, eyes flying open. “I got beat up by rednecks, ’s tragic.”
“Why didn’t you run!”
“Shhh, there’s no need to yell.” Sam focused on Nik.
He was sort of bobbing up and down. “I didn’t run ’cause I’m Too Stupid to Live,” Sam answered, watching red and blue lights twirl slowly by behind Nik’s head.
“I suffered from the foolhardy notion that I could help, like any good romance character should.”
Someone grasped his hand, holding it too tightly. “What the fuck are you talking about?” they shouted in his face, and it sounded like Ian. Sam blinked a few times, trying to focus on the head bobbing and weaving on the other side of him.
It was Ian.
“Oh, you’re here, thank God,” Sam said with a sigh.
“But your voice is too loud,” he whispered, trying to encourage Ian to do the same.
Having Ian here was a relief, but he was just so tired .
. . The airplane came to a halt. Could they do that in midair?
Wouldn’t they plummet to the earth? Oh, there it was jerking, but then flying again.
This time when he came to a stop, there was a click.
The airplane had been tethered, now. No more flying for it. Poor airplane was trapped.
“Sam, please, just . . . be all right, okay? I’ll come with you to the hospital and—” Ian interrupted himself with a weird, gulping noise, and something wet hit Sam’s forehead.
“We’re going to the hospital? Why?” He opened his eyes. Ian was blurry, now. “Can’t really see you,” Sam mumbled.
Ian turned his head and Sam heard Nik repeat what he’d said in a frantic voice. Another voice answered, a woman’s. Was there a woman here? “It’s okay. We’re leaving in a minute. Do you have a ride to the hospital?”
“Yes!” Ian yelled.
“Shhh,” Sam encouraged. He couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought Ian turned back to him. Sam tried to smile, but he couldn’t concentrate enough to be sure he managed it.
He felt something next to his ear, then Ian’s voice whispered, “I’ll be there for you, kiddo.”