In Wolves' Clothing by Greg Levin

Author:Greg Levin [Levin, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: White Rock Press
Published: 2017-10-10T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Sometimes to get the vacation you deserve, you need only get shot point-blank by a pimp.

This is the first time Neda and I have been outside the country together since Santo Domingo for our tenth anniversary. That was three years ago. She joined me there after one of my missions. I was exhausted, so not the best trip. But at least I could feed myself.

“Nothing wrong with your appetite,” says Neda as she spoons a lump of brown goop into my mouth. It tastes like chocolate and how a dirty sponge smells. I force the goop down my gullet and open wide for more.

“Slow down,” Neda says. She peers into the small plastic container. “You’re almost through your second one this morning.”

I tell her this protein pudding is my only hope for not needing a new wardrobe. “Nurse Fernanda says it’s loaded with good calories. Keeps patients from wasting away.”

A chocolate sponge burp bubbles up my esophagus. I close my mouth but it escapes through my nostrils. Neda curls her lip and says, “Gross.” Like she hasn’t seen and smelled so much worse in the two days since my awakening. I’m wearing a diaper, for chrissake—another big difference between this vacation and the Santo Domingo one.

Neda digs the spoon into the goop container, scraping the sides, and here comes the choo-choo train. I open wide again and—

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” says Neda as she caresses my hand, the one clutching the gauze covering my entry wound. “Just breathe,” she says. “Try to relax.” My writhing tests every suture in front and back. Neda takes a hand towel from the side table and wipes the sweat pouring from my scalp. What she misses leaks through my gritted teeth. My tongue catches the salt of it.

“Breathe, baby, breathe,” she says and I do my best. The room sounds like childbirth.

I miss Santo Domingo.

“Silva lowered the dosage too much,” I say through a spasm. “On the morphine and the muscle relaxants.”

“You’re doing great, baby,” says Neda, one hand holding mine, the other toweling me dry. “He told us flare-ups like this are—”

“Normal. I know, I know.”

Neda reminds me it’s going to get easier and easier. That this is the worst part.

I tell her I know that, too. With Dr. Silva starting to wean me off the morphine, I know a lot of things. I’m getting sharper every day. So smart, it hurts.

A text message lights up Neda’s phone and nearly buzzes it off the small table by my bed. She grabs the phone, skims the screen, then laughs and says, “You’re a very popular guy these days.”

“Who’s this one from?” I ask, the spasms starting to subside.

Neda says it’s Barrett again and holds the phone in front of my face.

“Just read it to me,” I say, turning my head away. “All these messages are making me dizzy.”

Neda tells me to say please, and I do, and in her best baritone Barrett voice she says, “I’m still glad you’re not dead. Keep hanging tough.

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