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"Max."
He heard the young blonde speak, and Logan felt a fire inside of him. He didn't have transmissible diseases, and who was this guy to come in here making him feel like scum?
"I don’t need to be here," Logan said, mustering up every last ounce of his energy to stand up. He wiped his face and went to the clothes that were lying on the floor near the bed. He began to put on his shirt. "I was calling you because I didn’t want to be here anymore, not because I wanted you to bring some guy in here to look at me and tell me I had some disease, which I don't."
Logan was humiliated and angry. He couldn’t believe he had agreed to this. The guy was all decked out in matching athletic clothes. He looked like he was sponsored by Nike.
"I'm leaving," Logan said, getting dressed. "Just go and leave the door open. I'll be out of your way. Thanks for the offer, but I'm outta here."
"Please don't," Rita said. "We'll get you through this part of it. I thought Max might have access to an IV if you needed it. I thought we could take care of what you need here."
Chapter 3
Logan Lacey
***
Four days later
Logan could barely see out of the long, narrow windows that ran along two sides of his room. He climbed up and looked out of one, but he only saw the brick of the building next door. Out of the other one, he could see some sky, another building, and the edge of a neon sign that had a word that started with a W.
He had a phone and a small, old television in the room, but his body was out-of-it in those first days, and he didn't have a concept of the day or time.
It was like the flu but ten times worse. The anxiety alone was crippling, and the physical symptoms added to it, causing Logan unimaginable pain. He had the general sense that he was locked in a room on the second story of a building with a restaurant below him. He thought the restaurant was Rita's. He thought the whole building was hers.
Last night was the first time that Logan had slept for more than a couple of hours in a row, and today he woke up feeling more cognitive than he had in weeks.
He found his telephone, which had no battery, and he plugged it in. He sat on the bed for what must've been a half-hour, thinking of the past few days and experiencing memories of painfully sick moments. He understood that physically, the worst of it was over. It had to be. He had flashbacks of certain moments.
There was Rita, the doctor whose name was Max, and then there was the young woman. Claire. Claire was tied to both of them. She was the granddaughter of Rita and the wife or girlfriend of Max.
Logan didn't like the doctor at all. But the man had given him a mild dose of some kind of drug to make his symptoms better, and for that Logan was thankful. Before the medicine, he thought he would surely die.
Logan had existed in a half-alive state for the past few days, and now, thankfully, he was slightly more than half-alive. His head still pounded and his mouth was dry, but his heart wasn't about to beat out of his chest, which was such a relief.
It took him a while to get off of the bed, but once he did, he went and took a shower. This was something he hadn't been able to do, and he stood there and scrubbed weeks of grime off of himself. He didn't think of himself as homeless when he was living on the streets. In his mind, one night out had run into another and he was still in complete control of everything.
These last few days had shown him that he was not in control. There was just no way he should have those intense physical reactions from quitting something. He had to put a stop to it. He had to take control of his life.
He showered, washing his body with a bar of soap and his hair with a tube of 2-n-1 shampoo and conditioner that was already in the small shower stall.
He had just turned off the water when he heard a knock on his door.
"Hold on!" he called. He put on some clean boxer shorts that were in the drawer. They were baggy, but he didn't care. Rita had pointed them out to him when she first brought him to the room, and he was glad they were there.
"Okay!" he called.
Rita would wait for him to say, "Okay," and she would open the door and come in. If he didn't respond for a minute or two, she would let herself in to check on him.
"I need you to let me in," he heard a voice say from the other side.
It wasn't Rita.
"I have a key, but it's not working."
Logan went to the door and opened it.
Claire was standing there, and she pulled back staring at him with a surprised smile. "Oh, I'm just in time," she said, holding up a handful of clothes. She thrust them toward him. "I'll wait out here till you get dressed," she added.
