Page 11 of Whiskey Shivers

Collapsed lungfrom a stab wound that was written in a bunch of fancy ass medical terminology that meant her side, sort of toward the back, under her arm. I had to guess her arms were up to ward him off when that one fell. It wouldn’t have stopped her from screaming but the blow to her head that was listed would. The major scary stab wound was up top, in front where he’d stabbed down at her shoulder with the pair of scissors that’d been found on the bathroom floor. That one had nicked her subclavian artery, or the one that ran up under or around her collarbone – which had snapped under the blow that’d been dealt by that weasley little fuck.

Still, back to the whole artery thing. That’d been the bastard that’d kept her in surgery for so long. Repairing that had been a bitch, probably. I don’t know. I was used to putting people full of holes; not the business of patching them up.

All in all, she’d bled,a lot. They’d had to put it back in by even more, and she’d almost died on the operating table not once, but a couple of times.

It was a miracle she was still here if you believed in that sort of thing.

I didn’t. There was no god as far as I was concerned. Not one that’d let her miss all the things she’d been up against only to take her down with this now…fuck.

I put the chart aside and resumed doing my best to clean her up, talking to her softly, making every promise I could that this would be the last fucked-up thing to happen to her if I could help it. That no one would touch her without asking first ever again, or I’d break every fucking bone in their damn hand – no, theirwhole fuckin’ body.

I didn’t know if she could hear me, but I’d like to think for the sake of my own sanity that she could.

* * *

“Yo, man, you good?”Saint called when I walked into the club that night.

“Why?” I asked. “What you hear?” I scowled. I hadn’t called anyone or said anything to La Croix or none of them.

“Shit, man… it’s all over the news – your high school,custodian– that’s fuckin’ you. You wanna tell us what the fuck is going on?” La Croix looked pissed and I couldn’t say I blamed him.

“Who all is missing?” I asked tiredly.

“None of us,” Bennie answered.

“We’re all here,” Axe echoed, sliding a whiskey down the bar. I picked it up and downed it, nodding.

“Church,” I said, and everyone wordlessly ditched their phones on the bar and filed toward the back while Axe gathered them up and dumped them into the mylar signal blocking bag we kept them in, zipping it closed.

Smart man, he dragged the bottle of my favorite off the shelf and thrust his chin at me to silently tell me to keep my glass.

I nodded tiredly and we filed back into the chapel.

“So, what the fuck is going on?” La Croix demanded sternly.

I told them. Everything. About how I’d gone up to fix the fuckin’ toilets, about how I’d found her bleeding out on the bathroom floor, that kid… the kid raping her.

Stone silence rippled around the table.

“I’m honestly surprised this shit made the news,” I said. “Shit like this happens every fuckin’ day in our schools and it never hits the media...” I ran a hand over my face. “I mean, maybe not quite this bad, butfuck… the news? Already?” I worried about Corliss. I scooted my glass over to Axe who had the bottle poised and ready to pour.

“That’swhyit’s on the fuckin’ news, though, bro,” Bennie said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.

“The kid ain’t a kid,” Axe said as soon as I finished swallowing.

“What?” I demanded.

“He’s some twenty-three-year-old dudeposingas a kid,” Collier declared.

“That’s why it’s all up on the news,” Bennie practically repeated himself. “Nobody knows what to do with any of this.”

“What the fuck?” I demanded softly, incredulously.

“They say you put him in ICU,” Saint said.

I caught his eye and gave a curt nod. “Goddamn right I did,” I said, and there were nods of respect going around the table.

La Croix grunted at the head of it and I caught his creepy inked-out eyes. Something passed between us. A… a tiredness almost.

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