Henry woke up a little during the bumpy ride. He wondered briefly what his percentage was now. He guessed it wasn’t a hundred percent because if it had been, shouldn’t… something have already happened? He wondered, too, if maybe Milo had been taken in another ambulance. Maybe Henry would see him at the hospital.
Henry closed his eyes, wished he were outside again, feeling the night’s fat snowflakes falling gently on his lips.
* * *
Again – hospital green.
And again, the same nurse. His girlfriend, Faye.
“You here again?” she said, smiled a little, leaned over Henry, fluffed his pillow. Faye was used to seeing Henry brought in to the hospital, had come to relax about it much more than when they’d first started dating. Back then, about a year ago, she regularly panicked, didn’t know how to react, what to do, what to say. But you get used to anything, as the saying goes. She knew what Henry was – to a certain extent, anyway. Her repeated exposure to him – day in, day out – helped shore up his personality in her mind, like sandbags against a flood. In this case, the flood was a mysterious memory wipe that came, presumably, from the same place the bodies of loved ones went when they vanished.
Henry’s mouth felt stuffed with cotton, his head packed with burnt chestnuts. “Sure looks that way. Not for long, though, I suspect, once the doctors get wind of it.”
Faye said nothing, just kept smiling.
Looking up at her pretty face, Henry suddenly remembered something Milo had said on the phone last night: You need a woman’s touch over there, my friend. Someone to bring some fucking life to that shitty little hole you call home.
And he decided to give it a shot… before his head fully cleared and he was capable of talking himself out of it.
“Hey, uh, so, when I’m feeling better and stuff, you wanna maybe, I don’t know…” Shit, this was going well. “Like, kinda… fucking, um, move in with me?”
A few seconds passed. Faye smiled wide, said, “Yes.”
Henry was blushing, and was prepared to backpedal the moment her refusal was out of her mouth. When she didn’t refuse, he didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t banked on an acceptance.
“Uhh, OK,” he said. Then trying to act cool, added, “Good deal.”
Henry, wanting desperately to change the subject now, asked where Milo was.
“Henry, listen…” Faye said, her smile quickly vanishing, brow furrowing. She took his hand, squeezed it. “Milo’s dead.”
Faye waited a beat, swallowed, locked eyes with Henry. “I’m so sorry.”
Inside Henry, metal shifted. Bullets and shot moved slowly, piecing themselves together. Like a puzzle.
“I, uh… I have to go now,” he said, some base instinct taking over. A need to be home. To be warm, somewhere familiar.
Henry swung the sheets back from his legs, got to his feet. Staggered, nearly fell. Faye caught him, steadied him.
“Henry, your head. Jesus. You can’t just walk out of here with–”
“Jesus Christ, I’ll be fine!” he shouted in Faye’s face.
Henry took a breath, put a hand to his head – the walls swam and rippled. “Look, I’m sorry, Faye, I just… I can’t be here right now. I need to…” He moved forward, hugged Faye hard, kissed her head. “I’ll call you later, OK? We’ll sort out moving in and all that, and we’ll figure out Milo’s… arrangements, or whatever.”
Henry’d never had anyone die on him, and he’d only ever been to one other funeral in his life – his grandfather’s. Three quarters full of lead, but dead simply of old age. He hoped he’d be as lucky.
Henry turned and walked out the door.
Faye followed, trying to convince him to go back to bed, stay and talk for a while. Just until he calmed down. But he kept walking, would no longer look at her.
She gave up at the front door, where it was clear she wasn’t going to stop him, no matter what she said. She watched Henry from the hospital’s front-entrance window. Watched him stumble slowly out into the blowing snow. Trip. Fall. Collapse on his side.
She cursed under her breath, threw her coat on, ran through the double doors, across the parking lot. She knelt down, tried pulling him to his feet, but he was too heavy.
Faye stood up, left him lying in the snow, ran to the curb, flagged down a cab. The cabby pulled over; she approached the driver’s side and explained the situation. The cabby put on his hazard lights, jumped out of the car, moved to help Faye.
Together, they lifted Henry to his feet, shuffled him through the snow and ice to the back door of the cab. Faye ran quickly inside the hospital, fished around for some bills in her purse, came back out, paid the cabby, told him Henry’s address.
The car pulled away from the curb, soon lost in a white sheet of snow.
T H R E E
It snowed for another three days straight, then cleared up suddenly to usher in sunny, blue skies. But colder now. Much colder.
Henry shivered in his apartment. Not only had the temperature dropped, but his bedroom radiator had shut down. So much for getting warm.
He was too tired to move out into the marginally warmer living room, so he wound the blankets around him as tightly as he could to keep in the heat. But no matter how many blankets he curled around himself, or how snugly he wrapped them around his frame, the cold still got in.