“What’s this?”
Alex shrugged, maneuvering the car into traffic. “Honestly, it could be the answer to everything we’re looking for or eight thousand expired Enfamil coupons. I just took what I could grab.”
My newly naked scalp was cold. My leg throbbed and ached. But things were finally—if only a little bit—starting to look up and that felt good.
“Hey, where are you going? The city is that way.”
“Yeah, but the hospital is this way.”
“I don’t need to go to the hospital,” I said, hiding my wince. “A little Bactine, a couple of Band-Aids, and this baby will be fine.” I was itching to get back to research, to saving Sampson—but the throb in my leg was starting to make me a little woozy. “And maybe just an aspirin or two.”
“No offense, Lawson, but I’m less worried about a little pain than I am about you getting norovirus or mad cow from Mort’s scissors. You have no idea where they’ve been. Actually, I’d be surprised if Mort has any idea where they’ve been.”
I shot Alex a glance and he curled his upper lip into a disgusted scowl. “There were two boxes of plus-sized lingerie in the ‘library.’ I don’t think Mort’s picky about the shit that he hoards—or from whom he gets it.”
I shuddered, suddenly certain that each throb of pain was delivering a whopping cocktail of bubonic plague, alopecia, and bird flu.
“Can you drive directly into the emergency room?”
It’s one thing to have just survived a shearing-slash-stabbing at the hands of a psychotic hoarder. It’s a whole different thing entirely to actually have people gape at you at the emergency room of San Francisco Memorial. The blood from my scissor wound had dried into an immovable hunk so I leaned on Alex, swinging my leg pirate peg-leg style when a stooped man who looked like he had gone man-o-a-machine-o with the business end of a weed whacker slid three plastic chairs away from us. I glanced up at Alex, my arm threaded through his.
“Does my hair really look that bad?” The whole ride down I had avoided the vanity mirror. Now I patted the little furry nubs that Mort had so kindly left on the left side of my head.
“No,” Alex said. “You look fine. You look like one of those cutting-edge chicks with one of those edgy, funky new hairstyles.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Look at me when you say that.”
Alex pressed his lips together, still avoiding my gaze. “Don’t make me look directly at it,” he whispered.
By the time we got through the emergency room—with a very vague explanation as to how one gets a scissor to the calf and fifty percent of a horrible haircut—plus a dramatic request by yours truly to be pumped with every inoculation, antidote, and drop of hand sanitizer possible, I was discharged with a handful of painkillers and a pair of hospital scrubs.
I limped into the waiting room and glanced around at the selection of slightly injured, severely injured, and hypochondriacs, and gulped.
Had Alex left me?
I had gotten nothing from Mort but tetanus and a bad haircut, and now Alex had deserted me. Sampson could be a rabid murderer, Mort could be making redheaded Sophie Lawson voodoo dolls, and I would die here, while being stared at by a man with a fork mashed into his right ear.
So this is how it ends, I thought dejectedly. With a tombstone that said, Sophie Lawson: Probably Should Have Listened.
I sniffled.
Though the painkillers took the edge off the pain, I could feel hot tears at the edges of my eyes, and the niggling flick of anger starting in my chest.
“Oh, hey, you’re out already.”
I whirled, then groaned, doubling over. “Not enough painkillers!” But I steeled myself and pushed my fists against my hips. “Why did you desert me? Where were you?”
Alex patted my shoulder, his palm a delicious, comforting weight against my skin. “If I deserted you, do you think I’d come back?” he asked.
I frowned. “I have bad hair. I’m a little sensitive.”
“Here.” He reached into a plastic SF Memorial bag and produced the ugliest—but sweetest—hat I’d ever seen. It was a navy-blue trucker number with the words Somebunny at SF Memorial Loves Me written in hot pink glitter. A pair of floppy, plush, pink bunny ears shot out either side.
My heart melted. It could have been the painkillers, or the fact that I’d bludgeoned a man with a taxidermied owl just hours before, but the gesture was enormous and touching. I took the hat in both hands, holding it delicately like the treasure that it was.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered, as Alex blurred in front of me.
He took the hat and perched it on my head, pulling it low over my mangled scalp. “How does it feel?”
“Like the crown jewels,” I said, stroking one of the shoulder-length bunny ears.