Roughhouse by Jeffery Hess

Author:Jeffery Hess
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Down & Out Books

Relief the cops weren’t after him as he sped away from Starke combined with his need to be with Kyla pushed Scotland to drive ninety the whole way back to Fort Myers. The hell with the 55 MPH signs up and down the interstate.

At the beach house, he stormed through the front door and found Debbie seated at the desk. Legs crossed, shoes off.

“Where’s the treatment facility?”

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” Debbie said, “but your wife is upstairs.”

“She’s here?”

Debbie pointed.

Scotland spun around. “How is she?” he asked. He didn’t wait for Debbie’s answer. In a burst of adrenaline, he bounded up the stairs with a faint hope that Kyla had opened the curtains and was sitting on the balcony waiting for him to watch the waves.

Inside the room, nothing had changed. The curtains were still drawn, the room nearly black. The blue glow of the television the only light. Scotland’s breath seemed choked off, his throat too tight to swallow.

She was in bed, her head propped on a pillow. Another wedged beneath her knees. A smile on her face, crooked, bitter, as she tilted her head down away from him.

“It’s too late,” she said.

Scotland took a knee on the floor beside her. “Wait. No. What does that even mean?”

She looked him in the eye and held that smile. “It’s nobody’s fault. It’s okay. I promise.”

He leaned his forearm onto the mattress. “So, this treatment didn’t work. Big surprise.” He took a breath and didn’t wait for it to calm him. “Now let’s get you to the right doctors.”

She stared off to the muted television where deputies were breaking up a fight outside a run-down apartment complex. “You don’t understand.”

“What, Kyla?” He stood. “What don’t I understand about taking a sick person to an oncologist or a surgeon?”

She licked her lips and half whispered, “Hand me that box on the nightstand, will you, please?”

Scotland would bring her all the water and sand outside the windows if she asked.

As he handed it to her, she said, “Open it.”

A walnut, chrome, and steel Buck folding knife. “A pocketknife?” he asked.

“I was going to get you a Zippo, but lightning don’t strike twice.” She laughed through two long coughs.

His hands shook and he held his breath until she quieted.

“I’m okay,” she said, resting her head on her pillow.

His sight ricocheted from her to the knife and back again. “I love it,” he said, despite being unable to reciprocate the safety and utility the knife implied.

“And there’s something else.”

“It can wait. You need your rest.”

“I wrote down the combination to the safe. It’s there inside the lid to the box. Forty cubed.”

“The combination is 40-40-40?”

“I didn’t think it could be done, but Bud arranged it for me.”

“Bud did?”

“It’s in the living room.”

He flinched and then searched her face for signs of attempted humor. “The living room?”

Her nod came so slow her pillow never moved. “It came with the place. It’s fine there. Close to the desk and too heavy to move and find a place for.

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