With nothing other than waiting on Albertine to do its job, I decided to get a workout in. Changing clothes, I went into the spare bedroom, where my old laptop already waited sitting on a small table. I pulled up a television show I'd been hoping to catch up on, and climbed onto my bike, losing myself in the show. It was fun and easy to lose myself in the silly comedy, and provided a needed distraction, both from the depression of the day and the pain of the workout.
By the end of forty minutes, the length of the show minus commercials, my legs were burning and sweat dripped off my chin and nose. Congratulating myself, I took a quick shower and dressed for work.
Cam came home at just after five, which made me glad. I wanted to see him before going into the pharmacy. "Hey babe, how'd it go with the police?"
"So far, they're willing to go along with my ideas," he said. "They have agreed to not let my name out to the press, and to make the reports look like everything was done by the cops themselves. The coroner doesn't really care, as the dead bodies don't have families coming forward to claim them so far. But I know it’ll only take one of the students who saw me at the scene of Pinzetti's death for stories to start going out."
"So what should we do?" I asked. Cam came into the living room and sat down. In the time I had before going in, I decided to make sure his sutures were clean. Taking a pair of bandage scissors, I sliced off the gauze around his left arm, unwinding it carefully. There wasn't a lot of seepage, just a little bit of scabbing, and taking a look at the gauze itself, there was none of the yellowish or whitish discharge that said Cam might have picked up an infection. Still, he hadn't gone into the hospital, and the wound was ugly, with hasty stitching that would leave a scar even nastier than what I'd told Jay about. "Jesus Cam, you really should have this taken care of at the hospital. I'm sure someone will be able to do a better job than this."
"Carl did a good enough job," Cam said. "It's fine."
I blinked, surprised. "Carl? You don't mean Carl Washington?"
"Yeah," Cam said. I shook my head in exasperation. Carl Washington wasn't a doctor, he wasn't even a physician's assistant or nurse. He was a veterinarian. "He worked as a medic when he was in the Marines long ago, but the State Police wouldn't let him help out since he's not a medical professional. So when I asked if he could look me over, he was more than happy to do so."
"And probably gave you a dose of antibiotics big enough for a damn horse," I said. Carl was one both one of the pharmacy's clients and people with prescription rights. In a weird system that I still didn't understand, he could call in prescriptions for his animal patients, their owners picking them up just like normal scripts. "Cam, he stitched you about the same way he'd stitch a cow."
"It holds, and I don't care about the scar," Cam said simply.
I sighed and nodded in agreement. "I understand. Well, it isn't infected, I guess that’s one thing he did right. But at least let me put some Neosporin on it and rewrap it, that should minimize some of the scarring."
"That's fine," Cam said, holding still on the couch while I went into the back. In the medicine cabinet, I found the tube of Neosporin. I took it back out and smeared the messy goop over the stitches before rewrapping it. I used a safety pin to hold the bandage in place and gave it a once over. "It looks good."
We kissed at the door, and he gave me a smile, this one both happy and sad. I tilted my head, confused and concerned. "What is it?"
"I'm glad that I found someone so noble," he said gently, stroking my hair. "It just saddens me that I have to find it out this way." He shook his head and kissed me on the temple. "Go on, go do the right thing, and I'll be here when you get home."
I gave Cam a kiss on the cheek, thinking about his last words as I drove to the pharmacy. Was I really being noble by doing this? I mean, just a day before I was wanting to unleash the power of the most dangerous weapon outside of perhaps nuclear bombs on someone over the shooting. That didn't seem very noble to me.
Then again, why did I want to do it? Was it merely for revenge? I didn't think so. If it was just for simple revenge, my feelings would have subsided with time, or I would have been angry. Instead, I felt just as saddened and horrified as I did the day before, but because of that, I was more resolved than ever to see that Albertine was unleashed on those who had set Pinzetti on his path.
There's a time and a place for violence. Some people, with the noblest of intentions, seem to screw that up, thinking that violence is never the answer. Sadly, while that may have been the case at some point, it didn’t seem to make sense to me now. That said, there are those who just engage in violence willy-nilly. Both sides are wrong, I thought as I drove. There is a time and a place for violence. If there was anything that lent an air of nobility to that fact, it was that I was willing to unleash violence not for myself, but in the defense and with the intention of the long term good of others.
That was good enough for me, I thought, as I parked my car. Getting out, I smoothed my shirt over my chest and walked in. It was good enough for me.
Chapter 32
Cam