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“Shh, don’t try to speak, whoever you are. Can you hear how sore his throat sounds? Is the pain relief not helping with that?” I groaned, and tried to tell her my road name, which was easier than my real name, and probably safer, or maybe that was even dumber. I got as far as Mic, which she took to mean Mike, so apparently I was Mike now.
“Mike? Okay, that’s progress, why don’t you just rest, while I find out what I need to do, to look after you.”
I couldn’t speak again so I tried nodding, which was no less painful than any other movement. Their voices dropped low, but I could just about hear them. At least my ears weren’t broken.
“How do you know him again? You didn’t know his name?”
The woman, my saviour,my angel, made a huffy sound.
“Is that any of your business? You offered to help me, so help.”
The guy chuckled, and that sound made the hairs stand on the back of my neck, so at least some part of me could still stand. There was something wrong about that chuckle, and I should know what bad people sounded like, right?
“Nothing comes for free. You know what I want.” What the fuck?
“Fine. Not here though, and not right now. Show me what I need to do to help him, and what to give him for the pain.”
“Why are you helping him again?”
“Still none of your business.”
The man laughed again. “Very well, but if you want my ongoing help, my price will go up. Sure you wanna go all in for him? You saw what I saw. Fucker’s been juicing, and those testosterone levels are off the charts.”
Silence followed, and I tried to track their movements with my one good eye, but not being able to move left me really fucking useless. It wasn’t a feeling I was used to. I had been strong. I’d been fucking dangerous, and now I was weak as a kitten, broken, and cast out, and wishing once more that I’d died when that van went over. Why the fuck did I wimp out at the last second, and try jumping out?
They left the room, and once more I was alone with my thoughts, and, when I fell asleep, my nightmares.
“Doit,Torch,burnthe fucker,” Reacher demanded, and my closest friend stepped forward with a brutal look on his face. He lifted the blowtorch, and brandished it threateningly at me.
“You deserve this, you twisted shithead. You fucked with our women, and now you burn for it.”
The first lick of the flames tore agonised screams from me, and that was only the beginning.
“You’reawakeagain?It’slike you’re fighting whatever we’re giving you. You need to rest, Mike, that’s how you’ll heal,” my saviour whispered, a cool hand sliding over my cheek soothingly. How had I come to deserve an angel to heal me, when I’d done such despicable things? I deserved the horrors I was living in my nightmares, but instead I’d been the coward my father had always declared me to be.
Two
Threeandahalfmonths ago, I found a broken man, literally. He’d fallen from a vehicle, I think, and was in a terrible state, but somehow I’d saved him. I saw him crawling, moaning with pain, and I couldn’t help myself. I'd dropped to my knees beside him, and something about the state he was in left me unable to leave him behind.
I struggled to get him to my van, but it was like those moments, when people have a burst of adrenaline that helps them do the impossible. He found a last well of strength, and helped me lift him into the back of my van, and I got the hell out of there. Later, I realised that the heavy police presence there had been because of him, and that there had been an accident, but I’d been on my way back to the town where I lived, so I knew very little. What I did know was all that mattered.
He was a man who’d been beaten badly before that accident, and he needed my help. Maybe this was my chance to atone for my own actions, maybe I could redeem myself after the bad things I’d done in my life. Whatever he’d been through, if I could save a good man, then I could see myself as a good person, right?
He was starting to become more mobile, and now that he was feeling more capable, he was starting to reject my care. Why couldn’t he just take what I was offering, and let himself heal?
“Jesus, woman, will you get off me? I can do it.”
“You can barely stand, Mike, can you just let me help you?” He really objected to being helped in the bathroom, and sure, it had been weird for me at first, but his almost shyness, over being helped with things so intimate, had really endeared him to me. There was something so lost, and almost defeated, about him. Whoever had attacked him had clearly meant to kill him, but at least he’d managed to escape.
“If you touch my dick, woman, I swear to god, I’m gonna lose my mind,” Mike snapped, pushing me away, as he lifted the toilet seat. I backed up, and allowed him the space to do what he needed to, watching him struggle to wash his hands after, and then he leaned heavily on the sink and groaned.
I’d noticed he wouldn’t look at himself in the mirror above the sink, keeping his eyes down at all times. I noticed, because we could never meet eyes in the mirror, and I’d tried. Why wouldn’t he look himself in the eye? It was the only reason I could assume for why he avoided his image in any reflective surfaces, like he was hiding from himself.
“Mike, please-”
“Will you stop calling me that?!” He sagged even further against the sink and sighed. “Sorry, Soph, I’m just… I hate being this fucking weak and needy.”
I rested a hand on his shoulder, and rubbed it gently.
