Without another word, I turned and led him up the stairs and into the bedroom.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and began to pull things out of his bag. I looked at Silas and he was still asleep, sweat covering his whole body. Not knowing what to do, I went into the bathroom and got a wet washcloth. When I came back into the room, the man looked like he was ready to get to work.
“Are you a doctor?” I asked though I had a feeling he wasn’t.
He didn’t answer verbally but the look on his face told me not to ask questions. I knew how to do that well enough by now.
So I sat on the bed beside Silas, despite the fact that this man seemed like he wanted to be alone. I pulled Silas’ hand into my lap and held it.
Silas opened his eyes a moment after the man started to poke and prod at the wound on his shoulder. He looked like he was ready to jump off the bed and attack.
“Dalton,” he said and relaxed back into the bed. “Thanks for coming. I owe you one.” He tried to smile but it looked a little pained.
“You owe me more than one, but who’s keeping count?” Dalton replied back with a hint of humor in his voice. But only a hint. I wasn’t quite sure if I’d heard it or simply wanted it to be there.
“How bad is it?”
“If you’d shut your damn mouth and let me look at it I might be able to tell you something.”
“Fine,” Silas said and his eyes slid over to mine.
I gave his hand a squeeze and he tried to smile again.
“I had much cooler visions of how this whole reunion thing would go down,” he whispered and then his eyes fell closed again.
I laughed even though it wasn’t all that appropriate to do at a time like this.
“I think I’ve missed your humor the most,” I told him as I dotted his brow with the damp cloth. “I always loved the way you tried to get me to smile.”
The room was quiet as Dalton flushed out the wound and got up close and personal with it. I had no clue what he was doing but if Silas trusted him, then I did too. I guess I didn’t really have much of a choice. I would have preferred to take him to the hospital but that wasn’t an option.
What a big fucking mess.
Story of my life, it seemed.
I wondered how we were going to straighten this whole thing out. I had been fake kidnapped. I understood the reasons behind it but that didn’t mean that they weren’t looking for me. The cops suspected me of murder. Okay, more like they thought I knew who had actually pulled the trigger. But I also knew that wouldn’t stop them from trying to pin it on me if they couldn’t come up with anything that pointed to someone else.
I almost wished that I had done it. I wasn’t the least bit sad that Ray was dead. But now what was I supposed to do? I’d kind of lost my life with this whole thing.
I could get a new identity. I knew people that could help me with that.
Yes, people that I had dropped like it was nothing.
I wished more than anything that I’d done everything so differently.
Then again, things could have turned out worse than they had.
You just never really knew that sort of thing.
Life was unpredictable, that was for sure.
I think at one point during that whole thought process I’d started to cry.
I was so fucking tired of crying.
And feeling like I screwed up my life at every turn.
“He’s going to be fine, you don’t need to cry,” Dalton said.
