Over the last year, I’d spent enough time coming and going at the hospital that the reactions, for the most part, were just that: reactions.My heart pounding in my chest didn’t stop me from finding the elevator.The polo clinging between my shoulder blades didn’t keep me from finding Thomas Wheeler’s floor.I nodded to familiar faces, smiled, pretended not to see when gazes skittered away and then, when they thought I wasn’t looking, came back.
As I made my way down the halls, looking for Thomas Wheeler’s room, the sounds carried me back in time: the beeps of machinery, the echo of footfalls, the voices.A patient tech leaned against a gurney, doing something on his phone, and where his scrubs had ridden up, I could see a tattoo of Yosemite Sam on his ankle.That too, I thought.The little things.You wake up, and you don’t know where you are or what happened or what’s wrong with your eye, and it’s like everything around you means something special.You’re taking it all in, trying to figure it all out.Like everything about this place is a promise that things are going to be all right—the steady fluorescent light, the chrome, the white.You’re safe.Nothing bad can happen here.And that’s the first day.
When I turned the next corner, the timbre of voices—muffled, with that kind of strained, middle-class effort not to make a scene, but still unmistakably angry—plucked me out of my thoughts.I saw them a moment later: a man and a woman at the end of the hall.The man was white, on the early side of middle aged, with stubby sideburns and posture like a cop.The woman had the biggest tits I’d ever seen.That’s a fucking awful thing to think about a woman, but it’s the truth.She had Barbie hair—Barbie blonde, Barbie texture, like nothing that had ever grown on a human head—and she was wearing a leopard-print top with jeans that had been strategically ripped.The man was holding her by the wrists, talking in a low, furious voice as she tried to pull away.
“Because if you’re going to act like you’re insane,” he was saying, “I’m going to treat you like you’re insane.Get a hold of yourself!”
“Let go of me.”
He made a furious noise, but he released her.That was when he noticed me.He did the usual double-take, and then he set his jaw.“Can I help you?”
I showed him my badge.A badge is like a six-inch dick: it gets you in pretty much everywhere.“Everything okay here?”
His expression didn’t change much, but he said, “I thought the sheriff’s department was handling this.”
That gave me a moment’s pause; most civilians didn’t know where the sheriff’s department left off and the police department picked up, and it certainly wasn’t a default response toEverything okay here?
“Handling what?”
The woman answered, “What they did to Tip!What they did to his face!”
“Is that Thomas Wheeler?And who are you?”
“He goes by Tip,” the man said.“We’re his parents.And I still don’t know who you are or why you’re here.”
I settled for another six-inch-dicker: “This is just a routine follow-up.”
It looked like he wanted to argue—not for any particular reason, but because it seemed like his style.But he shook his head, glanced at a door down the hall, and said, “He’s with hisfriend.”
“God, Eddie,” the woman said, “let it go.”But she was massaging her wrist as she did so, looking at me like she was hoping maybe she could get me to start something.
I made my way toward the door the man had glanced at, while behind me, their voices resumed with that low-voltage tension.I gave a quick knock, waited a beat, and pushed open the door.
It was your standard, semi-private hospital room.In the bed closest to the door, a middle-aged man with an oxygen mask was sleeping poorly, twitching and mumbling.The TV above him was playing one of those daytime judge shows, where justice is served with a side of sass.The partition for the second bed was closed, and someone was whispering behind it, but as I stepped closer, the sound died.
“Tip?”I said.“Thomas Wheeler?”
“We’re in here,” a voice answered.And then, a beat too late, “Uh, who is it?”
I slid the partition back, and the rings jangled on the rod.It was different, seeing him now—in the bright hospital light, with sunshine coming through the window, his face bandaged, a special protective cover over his injured eye.But it was the same boy.He wore his blond hair in curtains, and he had honey-colored eyebrows and a generous mouth.The hospital johnnie couldn’t hide the lean build of someone growing out of late adolescence.His good eye was shut, but his chest rose and fell with quick, agitated breaths.
Another boy sat in the chair next to him.They could have been siblings, but, of course, they weren’t.Even if that throwaway comment from Tip’s dad hadn’t been enough of a clue, it was obvious from how the second boy darted glances at Tip that he was deeply—and painfully—in love.Like Tip, he was blond, and like Tip, he had curtains.He had pink lips and perfect skin and eyes red from crying.I wondered how long it had taken him to put together the slouchily sexy outfit, complete with gold chain, that would look perfect for a hospital visit.
“Who are you?”the second boy said.Then he must have seen me—the blood-streaked eye, the scars—and his gaze ricocheted away, only to land on Tip and ricochet again.This time it landed safely on a taupe-colored wall.
Tip still hadn’t opened his eye.
“Detective Dulac,” I said.“Wahredua PD.”I gestured to the open chair and took it before anybody could say no.“Who are you?”
“Jordan Hodge.”He glanced at Tip.“This is Tip.”And then, squaring his shoulders like it might be a fight, he said, “He’s resting.”
“I can see that.”
One of the things you learn if you’re a cop is that people don’t like silence.As Emery put it one time,Nature abhors a vacuum,which was just proof, that he hadn’t got laid that week.But he wasn’t wrong.People don’t like silence.Hell, I don’t like silence.If you’d asked me a year ago, I probably would have said one of my strong suits was shooting the shit.But a lot changes in a year.
After about fifteen seconds of background noise—the lady judge on the television wanted to know if anybody had any receipts, so, you know the wheels of justice were grinding the shit out of crime once again—Jordan grabbed Tip’s hand and said, “I’m allowed to be here.I’m his boyfriend.”
I nodded.
