In the Light of You by Nathan Singer

Author:Nathan Singer [Singer, Nathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4405-3225-2
Publisher: Tyrus Books
Published: 2008-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

12.

IT was a long night. Sherry was exhausted. She felt grimy and sick. It was close to 8:30 AM when they entered Mercy Hospital. They were told Phil would get into surgery as soon as possible, but there was no point in waiting around.

Richard dropped Sherry off at her dorm and they made plans to go see Phil later.

Had she not been so exhausted Sherry would have laughed out loud when her roommate Sarah laid eyes on her. It hadn’t occurred to Sherry until just then, but this was the first time they had been in contact since her “makeover.”

“Sharon?” Sarah asked blinking.

“It’s hell out there kid,” Sherry replied, re-hanging her giant poster of Norma Jean that had obviously been ripped down. “I’m going to sleep for long, long time. You wake me up and I’ll suck your eyeballs out of your goddamn skull.”

Richard, Reeba, and Brian came to pick Sherry up around 7:45 PM. It was after visiting hours, but Richard had worked something out so that they could see Phil. It was hard not to notice that Reeba had already begun the process of “unloading Phil,” and Brian was perfectly willing to fill that vacant hole.

“Don’t worry, Phil,” Richard said. “We’ll find the cocksucker who did this. He’ll be maggot breakfast by end of the week.”

Phil lay in bed with both his arms elevated and his swollen jaw bandaged and wired shut. I’d been at the hospital all day. Promised I’d stay by him. I don’t know why exactly. I felt that I owed it to him.

“Shorget adout it, Rish. Goezh wit ta territory.”

He looked deformed. Misshapen. His left eye was swollen closed. But the worst bit of it, and he knew it, we all knew it, was that he was different from us now. He didn’t look like us anymore. He couldn’t do what we could do. He was no longer a soldier. He was a cripple. Even in the world of low-rent fascism, there’s nothing lower than the cripple.

He looked up at Reeba with his one working eye. She ran her fingers lightly over his ravaged, broken face. He knew she wasn’t his any more. Brian would fuck her and that would be that. He’d never have her again. And he’d have to choose between sitting around eating through a straw, with his hands so bound and bandaged he can’t even jerk off, while the woman he loves is gobbling his friend’s cock in the next room … or he could leave for good and be completely on his own. Tough call.

After a while, whatever Richard, Brian, and Reeba had to say to Phil became nothing but low static to me. Sherry and I stared silently at one another. Pretended we weren’t. It was ridiculous, but we shared a secret. A stupid, pointless secret we shouldn’t be keeping. Tell them, or I will. Tell them, or I will. But I didn’t.

When it was time for everyone to leave I walked down to the lobby with them. Richard said he would come pick me up in the morning.

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