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Great.
Consciousness luckily fell away, and darkness greeted me.
At least for a short time, anyway.
The next time I was awake, I felt like I was floating. Nothing hurt anymore, least of all my head.
Hell, I wasn’t sure it was even attached anymore.
“It’s attached,” a voice I hadn’t heard before said.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Pretty sure. Your neck is solid.” The male’s voice was amused. “My name is Dr. Felix Kent. Do you know where you are?”
“In the hospital, I’m assuming. Since you’re a doctor and all,” I drawled.
“You’d be correct, based solely on conductive reasoning. Looking like that bullet didn’t take all your brain cells out,” he said with relief. “What’s the last thing you remember before getting here?”
“My soon-to-be wife getting home, me telling her brothers that she no longer had to worry about anyone killing her, and then getting to my office.” I paused. “I think I remember seeing my sister, but that could be because I saw her before I left my girl’s place.”
“From what I hear,” the doctor said, “your sister, or her husband, is the one who shot you. This is the first time I’m hearing about your wife, or soon-to-be wife, having someone out to kill her, too, though.”
I relayed the whole story, not leaving a single thing out.
I told myself I was telling him the story because I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t losing it, that I still had a functioning brain, but in reality, I was scared as hell of what was about to happen, and anything was better than thinking about leaving this earth when I’d just found someone I wanted to spend time on it with.
“That’s a hell of a story,” he said. “I’m glad to hear you found the person responsible. Do you know if the guy and gal that hired the hit woman—wow, times are wild when you find out that women are hired killers—are going to face the consequences of their actions anytime soon?”
I thought about that for a long moment before saying, “The last I heard, they were collecting evidence to allow them to call a judge for a warrant for their arrest. Right now, at least at the time before this happened, they were still waiting for enough evidence.”
“This world has gone to shit,” he said. “Can you tell me how you feel right now?”
I felt like my head was so full it was about to burst. Which I relayed to him.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to take the tape off your right eye. You’ll be able to see everything inside here, but don’t really expect to see something grand. My nurse is going to show you some photos, and I want you to tell me what they are. If you start slurring your speech or not recognizing what they are, we’re gonna stop playing around in that part of your brain.”
So that was what we did.
In between flash cards, I told him about my life. About my sister. About everything.
And he told me a little about himself, too.
“Yeah, I had my own girl once. She was in medical school with me. Then all of a sudden, her family called and said she was needed back at the family business, and she left without a single look back,” he said. “I haven’t been the same ever since.”
I could imagine he wouldn’t be.
There was nothing quite like being shown that you weren’t as important as you thought you were.
“I’m sorrrrrrrrry,” I slurred.
• • •
“Okay, so here’s the deal,” Folsom informed me.
I blinked away the memory of the moment everything went bad inside the operating room.
Although it was a “success,” at least that was what Felix called it, it certainly didn’t feel like it when nothing was the same.
