Page 47 of So Far Gone

“You got messages and calls on your phone, too,” Kinnick said. “It’s been buzzing nonstop. Seems like a lot of people care about you.”

Chuck made no effort to reach for the phone. Instead, he looked away and swallowed. Lucy reached over and took the phone, too.

The curtain was pulled open again, and a tall woman in white scrubs entered.

“Mr. Littlefield, I’m Dr. Eltman, your anesthesiologist. I understand we’re taking a little souvenir out of your hip today?”

“Okay,” Chuck said, his energy totally sapped now.

“I should go,” Kinnick said. “But I’ll be back to check on you in a couple of days, hopefully with my daughter.”

He’d planned to bring Chuck up to speed on the latest development—Leah telling him where he might find Bethany—but the wounded old cop had lost interest, or perhaps the drugs had just kicked in. He leaned back again and closed his eyes.

Kinnick had just started to edge out when Chuck spoke again. “Watch out for those guys, yeah?”

Rhys turned back. “I will.” But Chuck’s eyes were still closed.

On his way out, Kinnick saw two uniformed police officers, a man and a woman, standing in the hallway. He stiffened, but as he got closer, he could see they weren’t waiting for him. They were talking to the young mother who had brought the screaming toddler in.

“How did the baby get burned?” one of them asked her.

The girl shrugged.

“These look like chemical burns, Lisa,” the male cop said.

She shrugged again.

“Is someone making meth at your house, Lisa?”

The boy’s mother met Kinnick’s eyes as he passed, and the regret he saw in that brief look crushed him. How could life be so hard?

As he walked away, Kinnick could still hear the female officer’s voice. “I don’t want you to lose your baby over this, Lisa. That’s all.”

That’s all. That’s all.

Kinnick was crying by the time he stepped out into the dark evening.

Lisa was going to lose her baby. That’s all.

Bethany, too. And him, he’d lost his baby a long time ago. Oh, this world.

He was still teary as he walked through the parking lot, to where he’d left Brian, sitting alertly in the driver’s seat of his Ford Bronco, scoped .30-06 hunting rifle across his lap.

Kinnick climbed in the passenger seat. “Would you put that thing away.” He wiped at his eyes. “What do you think, an elk’s gonna walk by?”

“Elk season is not until fall.” Brian got the leather rifle case from the backseat. “Spring is protect-your-friend-from-racist-assholes season.”

“I just don’t want you accidentally shootingme.”

Brian showed Kinnick a ribbon pinned to the leather case. “You know what that is?” It was small, black in the middle, gray on either end, with two beige stripes.

“Boy Scout badge for stubbornness?”

“Marksmanship ribbon. Lackland Air Force Base, 1982. Second in my training class. Hit sixty-eight of eighty targets. You know what my instructor said... Nice shooting, Cochise.”

Kinnick winced. He often had the urge to apologize to Brian for things other white people said.

Brian carefully placed the gun back in the case. “Your cop friend gonna be okay?”

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