Page 30 of Dirty Pool

“Open the door, ya cunt.”

Michel let out a heavy breath, and looked upward, silently asking God for the strength to get him through this without a bullet in his skull. That would be great. He pushed the handle on the metal door down, and opened it up.

At first, he didn’t notice anything strange about the room given it was dark. A bit empty, maybe, and the smell … a wet, musky scent that had his stomach turning. He fixed that easily enough by breathing through his mouth.

Then, he was shoved inside.

And a light was flicked on.

Michel was barely able to catch himself before he fell to the floor, and finally he figured out why these idiots had brought him here. He found it in the corner, on a dirty blanket with a pillow propping it higher.

Or rather, a man.

A bleeding man.

From his chest, it looked like.

Michel sucked in another breath, his panic welling higher as all the pieces of this crazy puzzle started to properly fit together. One after another, it all clicked in his mind, and he didn’t know what to do. That night at the club with Gabbie, there had been quite a few people around when the guy wanting to cop drugs had called him doc as he helped her in the bathroom. It was possible they mistook that nickname because he’d been the one to tend to Gabbie’s cut on her arm, and they just didn’t know any better.

Rumors traveled fast.

They spread, and grew into a bigger lie.

A part of him wanted to laugh.

Another wanted to scream.

“Stray bullet caught him downtown,” the Irishman with the gun at his back said. “Thought you might be able to help us out with this problem, and get it out. That’d be mighty grand of you, doc.”

Holy fuck.

Were they serious?

“I’m a pre-med student,” Michel muttered under his breath.

“What?”

He kept staring at the man on the blanket with the pillow under his head. Even the pillow was bloodstained, and the blanket? Ruined. He didn’t need to be a doctor to tell them that just based on their friend’s shallow breaths, and gray pallor … there was no way he was going to make it through the night if they didn’t get him to a hospital.

And soon.

“I’m not a doctor,” Michel said clearer.

Not much louder, though.

“What the feck did you just—”

“I’m not a doctor!”

Did they hear him yet?

Was it clear enough yet?

They took him based on something they heard. They grabbed him because of a fucking rumor and a nickname. He was the one they brought here to save this guy, really? Because the most he knew how to do was fix a bad cut with some crazy glue if he really needed to.

And they wanted him to dig a goddamn bullet out of some Irishman’s chest?

Michel started laughing, then.