Page 22 of Riot Act
“Fucking psycho.” The nurse spits blood onto the ground. He bends over, bracing against his knees, catching his breath, while the guard posts up by the wall, clutching at his chest like he’s about to have a heart attack. “You okay, Pete?”
“Yeah,” the guard wheezes. “Just…not had that much excitement in a while.”
I start to laugh. At the stupidity of it all. At the fact that I was taken to the ground by these two idiots. That I fucking let them lay hands on me. That I actually feel much better than I did five minutes ago.
“Leave him, Remy. He’s not worth it,” Pete, the guard says. I open my eyes and Remy is standing over me, scowling deeply.
“Are you under someone’s care, man. You off your meds or something?” he asks. “’Cause this is straight up crazy behavior.”
I stop laughing and let out a weary sigh. “What if Iwascrazy? You could have just really hurt my feelings.”
“He’s fine,” Pete growls. “Come on. Let’s get back inside before someone notices. I don’t wanna have to spend three hours writing this shit up. My shift ends in thirty minutes.”
Remy assesses me, looking me over. Once he’s decided there’s nothing wrong with me, he shakes his head and heads for the entrance. “Don’t try and come back in here tonight,” he commands. “You do and I’m calling the cops. Understand?”
“Ohhhh, don’t you worry. I understand.”
The sliding doorshushes closed behind them, and then I’m alone in the bleak night. July in Mountain Lakes is a sticky affair. Humid. The air reeks of petrichor, even though there’s no chance it’ll rain. The town is deathly quiet. Still, like it’s waiting, holding its breath. I imagine this is what hell must be like. Not the very center of hell. An outer circle, perhaps. I fucking hate this place.
Sitting up, I take a minute to inspect the damage to my elbows, palms and knuckles, surprised to see the crude ooze of blood leaking from the minor scrapes I’ve acquired. Honestly, I forget that I’m still human sometimes. Seems the yawning pit of nothingness that exists right beneath my solar plexus should have consumed any biological, functional part of me and rendered me null by now. But no. The marrow of my bones still produces platelets. My lungs still load those platelets up with oxygen. I’m genuinely surprised.
Fuck, if only those fan girls from the airport could see me now. Would they still want to grab a photo with the notorious Pax Davis? Or would they be snapping off shots of me, sulking in my shame, to sell to some low-rent tabloid?
I laugh darkly under my breath as I drag myself to my feet and perch on the edge of the low brick wall beside the hospital’s emergency entrance, patting myself down for my smokes.
Back pocket.
Great.
The pack’s crushed.
Opening it, I find that only two of the cigarettes are ruined. The rest are flatter than they should be but with a little roll, the one I draw from the pack is good as new.
The smoke hits my lungs and bleak satisfaction curls arounds my bones. The irony isn’t lost on me—that the only thing that can make me feel alive most of the time is the thing that will kill me if I don’t quit at some point.
I started smoking because the old man hated it. He was an advocate of the Wim Hoff method. He believed that the body was a temple and expounded at great length on all of the wonderful things he did to honor his on a daily basis: the workouts; the meditation; the fasting; the endless salads and fucking smoothies. And then the fucker went and had an embolism and died for no good reason, right there at the table in the middle of dinner.
Just goes to show. No good deed goes unpunished. The things the man missed out on are too numerous to tally. He never knew just how fucking satisfying smoking a cigarette could be. Never got high and felt himself float out of his body. Never experienced the climbing rush of MDMA as it carried him off on a euphoric rollercoaster. Christ, the man didn’t even eat red meat, for fuck’s sake. Pretty sure the last time he enjoyed a steak was sometime around nineteen-eighty-five. He did everything right and look where it got him.
I drink.Heavily. I smoke.Heavily. I’ll throw whatever nondescript pill I find in my sock drawer down my throat and wash it down with some Jack without batting an eyelid. I enjoy a good ol’ morning game of Russian roulette. Upper. Downer. Who the fuck knows what I’m gonna get; every day’s an adventure when you have no fucking clue what kind of chemicals are about to hit your blood stream.
Somewhere close by, the plaintive wail of a siren cuts through the night. I wait—draw on the cigarette. Hold the smoke in my lungs—to see if an ambulance rips around the corner and screeches up the St. August’s emergency entrance, but it doesn’t. Must have been a firetruck. Definitely not a cop car.
My t-shirt sticks to my back, my skin itchy with half-dried sweat. I finish the smoke and light another one off its dying ember, not quite ready to head back toward the Charger. It’s… I check my cell phone. Nearly five in the morning. If I were in New York right now, I’d be able to find myself some trouble to get into, but I’m shit out of luck in Mountain Lakes. Even the diner, Screamin’ Beans, doesn’t open until six, and all I could hope to get there is some shitty coffee anyway. If Ireallywanted to find trouble, I could. I could find trouble in a backwater Podunk one horse town in the middle of fucking Tibet if I reallywantedto, but my anger over the black box Meredith left for me has whittled my bones down to points and is using them as toothpicks.
I’m pissed. I want to be level-headed when I confront my mother about the shit she’s currently in the middle of pulling, and I, contrary to popular belief,amcapable of showing a little restraint when required.
Remy and his asshole buddy Pete are bound to tell whoever comes on shift all about me before they hand off, and I won’t be allowed into the building if I don’t seem sober and calm. So fine. I’ll sit here all fucking night and all morning until official visiting hours roll around, mostly out of spite, and I’ll be nice as pie as I make my way to Meredith’s room. And once I’m standing in front of the witch, I willimplode. Wait and see if I don’t. They can call the cops all they want, then. If I’ve said my piece and told the woman how utterly wretched I think she is, then it won’t matter. I’ll have won.
I’m content sitting on the wall, chain-smoking and planning all of the things I’ll say to eviscerate Meredith. Things are going really well, too—I have a list of vile things I want to say to my mother committed to memory after about forty minutes—but the sound of tires screeching down the block ruins my flow.
This hasgotto be an ambulance; a high-pitched mechanical shriek approaches, drawing near at a frightening velocity, and then there it is, the vehicle, swerving into the parking lot, heading straight for the emergency entrance…and the low brick wall I’m sitting on. It isn’t an ambulance. It’s a murdered-out Mitsubishi Evo. And it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop.
I’m against panicked leaps on principle—so undignified—but the situation demands one as the car careens right for me. I drop my smoke, tripping over my own feet as I hurl myself out of the way.
The Evo’s driver applies the brakes way, way,waytoo late. The street racer collides with the brickwork, right where I was sitting a split second ago, the nose of the hood crumpling horribly as it meets resistance. A part of me weeps to see such a beautiful car destroyed. The rest of me is planning how I’ll demolish what remains of it, as I rush for the driver’s side door.
I grab the door handle and yank on it. “Fucking asshole!”The door doesn’t budge. The windows are heavily tinted, so I can’t make eye contact with the person who just nearly fucking killed me, but I canfeelthem staring at me on the other side of the glass. Whoever they are, they’ve got some fucking stones to—
