Infected: Freefall (41 page)

Did that mean Paris was around here, free of his infection? He looked around, but the room was empty, save for him. There was a strange noise, though, a kind of scritching, and he turned back to see the cat was now scratching on the glass, as if wanting to come in. But it was no longer a tiger but a lion, a lion with a mane shot through with deep reddish-brown fur the color of half-dried blood. His lion. The tiger was nowhere to be seen. “You can’t come in ’til I let you in,” Roan told it. Wow, his dreams weren’t subtle at all, were they? Very in your face with its supposedly veiled messages. He almost didn’t trust how desperately it wanted to come in.

Roan was aware enough to wake up, hearing small random noises before he decided to open his eyes. There was a black male nurse in a sea-green uniform checking his IV bag, and almost offhandedly he noticed him.

“Hey there, back to the world of the living, huh?” he asked, picking up a clipboard and looking at it. He had a Puerto Rican accent.

“Guess so.” Roan rubbed the sleep from his eyes and wondered why he still felt so incredibly groggy.

“Can you tell me how many fingers I’m holding up?”

Roan looked up at him in disbelief. “Did someone drop me on the floor? Did I get a concussion?”

“Not that I know of, but it’s always a good thing to be sure. How many?”

This was annoying. He glanced at his hand and said, “Four. Did I pass the vision portion of the test?”

The nurse marked something down on the clipboard and said, “Yes, you did. What do you want to do for the talent portion?”

Oh good, a funny nurse. Was Robin Williams not available? “Punch people in the head.”

That made him snicker. “Nice to know you still have your sense of humor.”

“Who’s joking?”

“Can you tell me if you’ve had headaches recently? Before now, I mean. Problems with your vision?”

“I have migraines. That should be in my records.”

“It is, but have they gotten worse?”

Okay, maybe he was still groggy and out of it, but he knew leading questions when he heard them. This was leading to something. “Why are you asking me these questions? What’s going on?”

“We just want to make sure you had no adverse reactions to the treatment. You were given some pretty heavy downers, man; your system was well overloaded. Most people wouldn’t have survived it.”

“Most people aren’t freaks. And it doesn’t make any sense that you’re asking me how I was before the treatment to determine how I took the treatment. You’re asking me for another reason.”

“Damn, you are awake, aren’t you?” He shook his head, and the tiny braids of his hair shook slightly. They were small and close to his scalp, so there was little room to move. “The notes just say I’m suppose to ask you these questions, it doesn’t say why.”

“Bullshit.”

“Ooh, now we’re getting personal.”

“You know why, or at least you can guess.”

He appeared to consult the clipboard once again, but Roan didn’t believe it. He was stalling for time. “I assume it’s related to your migraines.”

“You assume, and so do I, but I doubt it.”

“I also notice you’re dodging the questions.”

Roan sighed. “My migraines are always bad. It likes to get my attention. Could you excuse me? I really gotta piss.”

The nurse shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me none. Now, would you answer—”

“I’m asking you to move so I can get out of bed,” Roan asked pointedly, sitting up and gesturing toward the bathroom. “You mind?”

The nurse seemed slightly nonplussed by that. “Um, you’re hooked up to a catheter.”

“What?” Roan lifted the sheet and looked under, and either his penis had become much longer, thinner, and translucent, or…. “Fucking Christ on a pogo stick,” he snapped, dropping the sheet so he didn’t get nauseous. No one really wanted something up their dick, did they? Well, maybe those with piercings didn’t mind. And of course now that he knew it was there, he was fairly sure he could feel it. “Can I get this removed? Can I also be drugged for its removal?”

The nurse grinned, his teeth movie-star straight and blindingly white. “Yeah, we can remove it, but drugging isn’t really an option, not after what you’ve been through.”

God, this was humiliating. “What was I through? What’d I get dosed with?”

“Elephant tranquilizers. You were on a respirator for a while, so your throat will probably be sore for a bit.”

It did hurt a little, but he was so concerned with the feeling of a tube jammed up his dick he really didn’t notice it. “Now that I’m conscious, can I get outta here? After you remove the tubes and things.”

He shook his head, briefly pasting on a sympathetic smile. “Sorry, dude, but we have to run some tests. You’re not off the hook yet.”

Somehow he figured that. But why was he asking him all these questions? It had to do with his worsening migraines, that weird pain in his head. They’d found something, and the fact that the nurse wasn’t telling him meant either they weren’t sure what it was, or it was so horrible the doctor had to break it to him. Roan took a calming breath and decided to level with the nurse (whose security badge read Ethan Velez). “Look, I’ve spent a good portion of my life in hospitals. I’m an infected, so either they were poking and prodding me to see what was wrong with me, or, oftentimes, what wasn’t wrong with me, as they were often thrown by the fact that I didn’t have something wrong with me that I should have had wrong with me. You get me?”

He nodded. “You’re pretty remarkable. You could probably dislocate all your limbs and have ’em popped back in without noticing.”

Was that a good thing or a bad thing? He decided not to ask. “These questions you’re asking me… I know you found something you didn’t like. Would you just level with me and tell me what it is? I assure you I can handle it. When I was ten, I was told I’d probably be dead in three years. I didn’t freak out then, and I’m not going to freak out now, no matter what you say.”

“Whoa, that’s harsh. They told you you were gonna die when you were ten?”

“Yes. And when I was twelve, fourteen, and every year between sixteen and twenty-six. Eventually they realized how foolish they looked and stopped. So are you going to level with me or what?”

He shook his head, grimacing doubtfully. “Sorry. I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

Roan sighed. Fine, he wanted to be difficult? Why the hell not? Everyone else in his life was. “Is it a brain tumor?” That’s what they were always testing him for, since his migraines were so bad.

Ethan shook his head and shrugged simultaneously. “Honestly, I don’t know. All it says is I’m supposed to ask you these questions and record your responses. But, at a guess, I’d say they were worried about any after-effects of the drug overdose. Humans aren’t supposed to have those drugs, and certainly not in that quantity. How it didn’t permanently fuck you up, I don’t know.”

“I’m not completely Human.”

“Don’t say that. Just ’cause you’re infected—”

“I’m a bit more than simply infected,” he countered. “Look at that chart. Tell me what on it is normal.”

“That’s no way to think of yourself. Your readings are great: you have the heart rate and blood pressure of a nineteen-year-old.”

“And I’m almost forty, I have a minor pill habit, most of my diet is take-out food, and I spend a lot of time sitting on my ass in a car. My body is a garbage dump and it should reflect that, but it doesn’t. You know as well as I do how freakish that is.”

Nurse Velez scowled at him. “Why do you keep calling yourself a freak, man? You’re not a freak. You’re a fucking miracle. Be proud of it. I know I would be.”

He wanted to say, “
You’re not me, and I’m not a fucking miracle,”
but that sounded both bitchy and self-pitying, and he really wanted no part of either. Instead he looked away, aware of how privileged he was to have a private room, no matter how small. But infecteds were generally segregated from the other patients, especially if no one was sure of their time of the month. No one wanted the legal drama of one patient eating another. That reminded him of Grant Kim. “How long have I been out?”

“’Bout a day. Your boyfriend was in here from early this morning ’til they kicked him out. Want I should give him a call?”

Dee wasn’t just friends with every goddamn EMT on the planet; he managed to have lots of friends amongst the nurses too. Since nurses didn’t usually extend such a courtesy, he figured Dee must have spread the word that he was a friend and to be treated accordingly. Roan had had no idea when he started dating Dee that he would turn out to be the most important man he would ever know in his entire life, but there it was. “Yeah, sure.” Velez was on his way out of the room when Roan asked, “Does he know?”

Velez had to consider that a moment, but the confusion collapsed after he figured out he wasn’t asking if he knew about the overdose, since he’d brought him in. He was asking if Dylan knew why they were asking these extra questions, if he knew there was possibly something else wrong with him. Velez finally just shrugged. “I dunno. I wouldn’t think so. Medical privacy and all that. You guys aren’t married, are you? I mean, maybe then, but maybe not. Kinda depends on the doctor.”

“Not all gay-friendly around here, huh?”

He snorted in such a derisive way, Roan figured if he wasn’t gay, he was queer in some respect. Bi maybe, or just had too many gay friends to automatically side with the straight. “Man, I don’t know how Hardwicke got through medical school with such a tiny, narrow brain, but I didn’t tell you that.”

“If I get him, I’ll make sure to hit on him relentlessly.”

Velez laughed, a big, hearty, caught-off-guard sort of laugh, and slapped the clipboard on his leg. “Hot damn. If you do that, I gotta come watch.”

Yeah, that was probably more entertainment than you got watching soaps in the staff lounge.

Roan took some comfort in that fact that his knee-jerk asshole response was still functioning—how bad off could he be if the idea of tormenting an asshat was still his first impulse?

But he remembered his dream of the lion wanting in, and he wondered if letting it in would save his life, or end it faster.

T
HERE
was no other word for it: Grant was hysterical.

Dylan supposed he couldn’t really blame him. If he’d killed and eaten a few people, he might be a bit freaked out himself.

Grant was sitting on the couch, and Dylan kept trying to get him to talk to him, but he kept sobbing, and when he did try and talk, it was broken up by sobs. Dylan could hardly make out a word.

So he went into the downstairs bathroom, found Roan’s secret Percodan stash, and cut a pill in half before pulverizing it into powder. He hoped Grant wasn’t allergic to it, but he really needed him to calm down, and Roan didn’t have any antidepressants. (Oh, he had a bottle marked Prozac, but it was just full of codeine.) Dylan mixed the pulverized pill in a cup of chamomile tea, which he all but forced Grant to drink. He told him it would calm him, and that Roan swore by it. (Roan only swore by it if the box fell out of the cupboard and hit his foot. He didn’t like chamomile tea. But again, this wasn’t anything Grant needed to know.)

The drug seemed to start working on him fast, either that or he was taking Dylan’s instructions to heart. He’d been telling Grant to breathe, to blank his mind and focus on his breathing, meditation techniques. Grant seemed to be sobbing through them, though, so he didn’t think they’d work.

When he calmed down a bit—or at least stopped sobbing so much—Dylan was able to coax some of his story out of him. He didn’t know how or when he’d got infected. Grant had been thinking about it, but was only able to think of his “lost weekend.” A couple of weeks ago, he went to a party with a couple of friends he only referred to as Luce and Weed, and they were doing some GHB, passing a water bottle dosed with the stuff back and forth. They went club-hopping, and Grant lost most of the night after the first club. He woke up in a cheap motel with a sore ass and a mouth as dry as a biscotti (his words) the next afternoon. But he wasn’t worried about it because he found a couple of used condoms. (A couple?) Curtis thought maybe he should get checked out, he thought he had been raped, but Grant didn’t think so, mainly because he went out specifically to get laid. The only problem was, he got so wasted he couldn’t remember it. He assumed he’d had fun. Luce vaguely recalled him leaving with a couple of guys, maybe three, and maybe a girl was there too—her memory was equally checkered.

Dylan wished he hadn’t seen this type of shit before, but he had. More than once he’d overstepped the bounds of his job description and stopped a guy from leaving Panic with a guy so fucking wasted he could hardly stand on his own. Sometimes the wasted guy protested more vehemently than the more sober guy, but Dylan didn’t like the scenario at all. Maybe he took the drugs on his own, maybe he was dosed. Dylan didn’t know and he really didn’t care, he just didn’t want to end up as someone who stood by and did nothing when someone was in trouble. People had complained to the manager about him, but all he got was a slap on the wrist. If the customers didn’t come back, good riddance. Nobody wanted Panic to be known as date-rape central.

Grant was really worried about Curt and Tiffany. He’d seen the papers, he knew Curt was dead, but he wondered if Tiffany had been found yet, if she was okay. Dylan honestly told him he didn’t know. Roan read newspapers, watched BBC World News, but Dylan avoided it all. His one concession was to watch the Daily Show and the Colbert Report with Roan, but that was it. He just got to a point where he couldn’t take it anymore. Television news was shallow and shock-driven (okay, BBC World News probably not so much, but that just showed you how needlessly clever Ro was), newspapers were depressing, and he’d decided he’d had an overload of negativity in his life as it was, so he eschewed all of it. He knew enough to get by in conversation, to know what was generally happening in the world, but that was it. If anyone needed a deep conversation about some news item, he pointed them to Ro and went elsewhere. He wasn’t stupid, just burnt out on everything he wanted to change but couldn’t.