In the Path of Falling Objects (36 page)

Black shadow moves beneath the door.

Someone is out there.

I flip myself back up onto the bed. My ankle burns. Just that moment of exertion leaves me gasping for breath. I am sweating, my eyes wide; and I watch the light at the door’s edge.

It opens.

I shut my eyes.

I heard him walk up to the edge of the bed. He put his hand flat on my chest.

“I know you’re awake, John.”

I opened my eyes.

“How are you feeling?”

And I thought,
What an idiot. How do you think I feel?
I wanted to scream, howl, but I kept my mouth shut. Mostly, I had questions. I kept hearing them over and over, but I didn’t want to say them.

What the fuck are you trying to do to me?

“I bet you’re thirsty,” Freddie said.

I was.

“Would you like a drink of water, John? Do they call you Johnny, or just John?”

Jack, asshole
.

“I promise it’s only water this time.”

He walked out the door, leaving it open. My eyes adjusted to the light. He was wearing those same doctor’s scrubs. I saw the name badge, too. He didn’t even try to lie about his name. That was bad, I thought. And he looked big, like I’d never be able to fight him, even if I was pretty strong.

In a minute Freddie Horvath came back through the doorway, pushing one of those adjustable rolling desk chairs in front of him. There were some plastic bins on the seat that had things in them — I couldn’t tell what they were — and a bottle of water, the same brand he’d given me the night before.

A cigarette pointed at me from his mouth. The smoke curled back through the uncombed hair that hung down over one eye. I tried to take in as many details about him as I could, but looked away every time his eyes landed on mine. I thought he was maybe about thirty. Maybe younger than that. His mouth and eyes looked dead, like he was bored.

He took the things from the chair and put them down on the floor beside the bed. He took a drag from the cigarette and pulled it away from his lips, exhaling streams of gray from his nostrils.

“I know.” He smiled. “A doctor who smokes.”

He held the water bottle in front of him and sat down.

I could reach your fucking throat.

“Thirsty?”

I put my hand out, but Freddie jerked the bottle away.

“First lesson, John.” He drew another hit from his cigarette and said, through the smoke, “You have to ask me.”

I looked at him, his name badge, the water.

He sat back in the chair.

“Ask me for it.”

“Can I please have some water?” My voice sounded sick, far away from my body.

“That’s nice,” he said. “That’s how you do it.”

He handed the bottle to me.

“See?” Freddie said. “It’s sealed. No tricks.”

I drank, and spilled some of the water down my neck onto the mattress.

“What did you do to me?” I said.

“I didn’t do anything. You did it to yourself.”

I capped the bottle.

If that’s what you think, asshole
.

“This thing really hurts my ankle.” I thought about what he’d do. I wanted to be careful. “Will you take it off, please?”

Freddie leaned over the bed. He put one hand beneath my heel and the other on top of my foot. The way he turned my foot in his hands and looked at me told me he really was a doctor.

“Stop pulling against it,” he said. “I can put something on it so you don’t get an infection. Tomorrow, maybe I can switch it to the other side if you want.”

I wondered if he was going to make me ask for that, too. He reached down to the floor. I heard him moving things around, the sound of a plastic lid being pulled open. He took the cigarette from his lips and tilted it toward me.

“Smoke?”

I looked away.

“Didn’t think so. You sure can drink, though.”

He put the cigarette down somewhere. I couldn’t see. He squeezed clear, greasy cream from a silver tube onto the tips of his fingers and wiped them around the burning cut on my ankle. Gently. I looked at the window, wondered what was out there.

“Does that feel better?”

I didn’t say anything. I took another drink and recapped the bottle.

“You need to pee? I bet you need to pee, John.”

I needed to piss so bad, it felt like I was going to burst.

“My name’s Jack.”

I looked right at him, trying to see if he’d have any reaction to that. I couldn’t tell anything from his eyes. He scared me. I knew I’d have to play along with him so he wouldn’t hurt me, but I wanted to lash out and hit him as hard as I could. The only way he’d think my name was John was if he’d looked through my wallet. I wondered what he did with it, with my clothes. How he got me into this room. I knew what I’d done to myself to get here, and I realized nobody would even miss me yet.