I tried to get my bearings by what senses were available. Cataloging. One by one.
It was silent and still.
It smelled clean, but in the way that chemicals do.
It felt… warm.
Scratchy.
It felt likelife, and that if I could only bear opening my eyes….
Dark.
Gray.
Blurry.
But I instinctively knewthatwas my dad asleep in the chair to my left. And I knewthiswas Calvin holding my hand, on my right. He was nearly falling out of his own seat, head resting against my arm on the bed.
I didn’t do anything, but Calvin woke with a start. He turned his head, like stretching out a kink in his neck. He rubbed at the overgrown stubble on his jaw. He looked at me, and I could feel his shock at seeing I was awake.
“Sebastian,” he whispered. Calvin was out of the chair. He leaned over me, still holding my hand tightly in his own. He pressed our foreheads together.
I realized I couldn’t speak. Something in my mouth was prohibiting it. But it was okay. I reached up with my free hand and shakily touched Calvin’s face. He kissed the inside of my wrist.
“Welcome back,” he said.
Everything was going to be okay now.
Chapter Seventeen
BEING SHOTsucked.
Being shot with a lead ball that flattened upon impact, lodged into my side, and transferred its kinetic energy to my body for absorption sucked even more.
I’d almost died in May. No two ways around it.
Doctors had told me if the revolver had been just half an inch more accurate, I would have probably bled out before reaching the hospital.
I didn’t know what happened after death. Maybe nothing. Maybe your consciousness just… ceased to be, your body gently rotted back into the earth, and… that was all she wrote.
But I liked to think there wassomethingwaiting.
Not much. Perhaps an empty hallway. Or an office with no windows.
Just enough that I could be cognizant that I wasmeand this wasthatplace and I could spend eternity never forgiving myself for abandoning Calvin.
Anyway.
We were both okay.
Now, I meant.
Neil had run toward the bathrooms after hearing the first shot. He’d been too late for the second, but had body-slammed Pete to the floor and handcuffed him. That son of a bitch was now awaiting trial with a laundry list of charges against him, including two accounts of second-degree murder, attempted murder, multiple accounts of robbery, and a slew of lesser offenses I wasn’t even interested in.
Calvin had almost reached me that day.
Almost.
