Chapter 2

“No. I have no one,” I told Brenda.

I lived alone. I ran alone, always before dawn, the middle of the night to normal people. It was common practice, that and avoiding those normal people even during daylight hours, all people, really, normal or otherwise. My shift at the supermarket started at six. A one-hour run, thirty minutes with weights, and then a shower and breakfast before walking over to the bus depot where I caught a ride to work to stock produce. That was my routine.

“No family?” Brenda did most of the talking. “No significant other still snuggled under the covers?”

My family was a few hundred miles away, my significant other nonexistent. “Nope.” I was going to have to call my boss at the supermarket. He was cool. “Will I be able to go to work later?” I realized I was asking the wrong person.

“That’s up to the doctors.” Mark confirmed it.

“It looks like you take good care of yourself.”

“Yeah.” I turned away from Brenda’s smile. She wasn’t flirting. Despite my body—my muscles, my obsessive workouts and counting every calorie I took in—I wasn’t the kind of guy people flirted with.

“That’ll help in your recovery.”

It already had once.

* * * *

The breeze created as I was rushed in from outside Mercy Hospital and through their Emergency Department to a cubicle chilled me to my bruised and broken bones.

“Hey, there.” My teeth literally chattered as the nurse—”I’m Carlton”—pulled back the four blankets Brenda and Mark had put on as soon as they departed. “Let’s get you out of these wet clothes.”

“Hey, Carlton. I’m Russel.”

“We’re gonna get you in a dry gown, Russel, okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Russel…Russ…Rusty?” He took my glasses off, dried them with a tissue from the box on a nearby tray table, and then put them back on me. “Wet, foggy glasses would drive me nuts.”

“Thank you. It was, and most people go with Russel.”

“Then Russel it is.”

Now that I could see Carlton, I was careful not to make eye contact. My left foot already bare, he removed my right Nike.

“We’ll put this with the other one.” He held up a large plastic bag to show me where its mate had ended up.

“Good deal.”

“So, I’m going to get rather intimate with you here, Russel. We have to strip you down to warm you up, okay?”

I looked at the wall, the ceiling, Carlton’s crotch, the ceiling again. “Okay.”

“I’ll try not to hurt you, but it’s gonna.”

“Yeah.”

It did, every yank of my jacket and tug of my shirt, both of which wanted to cling to me and my goosebumps. Even the snip of the scissors up the leg of my pants made me grimace.

“There’s no other way to get these off. Do you sew?”

I smiled, though I aimed it at the wall, not Carlton. “I do not. Maybe duct tape or Velcro.”

“Magic Mike these suckers.” He draped the blanket back over my lower extremities after gently tugging the second half of my Champion brand athletic wear from under my damp butt. The way they tore away in two did remind me of male strippers. I hummed a little “Pony,” though I couldn’t recall if any of the guys in that movie yanked off tear-away pants when dancing to that song. Either way, it made Carlton chuckle.

Scissors back in hand, he went at my Fruit of the Looms. Despite the throbbing above and below the knee and in my lower back, I had a momentary fantasy that Carlton was undressing me for pleasure, not just work. It had been a while. Still, I felt rather pathetic for going there and reminded myself Carlton likely saw dozens of bodies a day. Mine would mean nothing to him. He probably saw hundreds of faces, too, and would no doubt do his best to quickly forget the one still turned away from his.

“Doing okay, Russel?”

“As good as a wet, naked guy with a busted leg can, I suppose.”

“We’ll deal with naked first.”

The quick burst of clean laundry smell that came wafting my way when Carlton shook open a neatly folded gown was nice, too.

“I’m gonna have to undo some of these snaps at the shoulder, here,” he said. “You’re pretty swole, dude.”

I smiled again but quickly covered it with my hand, my gaze drawn to his friendly face, despite my self-consciousness. “Ow.”

“Something’s coming for the pain. Ibuprofen, until we get you all checked out.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.” Despite my muscles, Carlton got the gown around me quite easily. He swapped out the EMTs’ blankets for new ones and tucked them around me. “Better?”

“Better. You’re an angel. Thank you.”

Carlton shimmied. “On a busy night, it’s compliments like that that make me wanna shake my wing feathers.” He headed for the doorway, where no actual door existed. “The doctor will be in shortly. Try to relax. We can get you something for that, too, maybe. Holler if you need anything.”

Relaxation wasn’t in the cards. The mention of something to help me achieve it actually made things worse.