Taking In Strays (4 page)

Chapter Two

It didn’t help Donny’s self esteem issues when they arrived at headquarters and no one there believed that he was twenty-two. Pointing to some face stubble only rewarded him with the embarrassing nickname
Peach Fuzz
. Their mistake kept him from being tossed into a cell with real criminals when they began processing him. Not that it began to matter much where he was, when what he suspected was a full blown flu, sank in its teeth and proceeded to show him what true misery felt like.

Seated in a hard chair, Donny waited for an overworked, elderly officer, to enter in answers to his questions into a computer, with the two-finger, hunt and peck, method of typing. The large room filled with officers, citizens filing complaints, and criminals on their way to processing, seemed too chill. Drafts kept crawling up Donny’s backside from a window that wasn’t sealed properly. It added to the misery of a nose that was beginning to run incessantly and a growing headache. When the officer slid over a box of Kleenex sympathetically, Donny was grateful. He blew his nose loudly into one and then proceeded to use more, in quick succession.

Something beeped near his ear. Donny swiveled in his chair and looked up, startled, at the man at his elbow. The man was frowning at a digital thermometer in his hand. “Your temperature is kind of high,” the man announced to the room in general.

He had brown hair and brown eyes, but also had an easy smile that relaxed Donny. He exuded confidence and Donny easily accepted him when he leaned into Donny’s personal space and checked his pupils. There was something about him that was familiar. His large frame, square chin, and a worried bend of one eyebrow made Donny think of Peter. He was wearing a white button down shirt, a bright orange tie, and black dress pants. He didn’t look like a police officer or a doctor.

“He should take a trip down to the clinic,” the man told the officer, who had stopped mid peck to watch his actions.

The man sighed and left off his typing to reply, “You can’t take off with all of them, Dr. Dan.”

“If you can tell me what good sentencing him to
juvie
will do for someone who just needs a few good meals, a helping hand, and someone to listen, then I’ll stop trying,” Dan chuckled, but there was a steely glint in his eye, too, that told the officer that he wasn’t about to back down.

Donny blew his nose and glared. “I’m not a
juvie
. I’m twenty-two.”

Dan’s smile broadened. “We can easily confirm that, right, Officer Bunko? Since he’s of legal age, there’s no reason not to let me take him off your hands and get him some medical care.”

“He has a date with processing,” Bunko warned. “They’ll be looking for him once I file this report.”

“Which you haven’t even finished yet,” Dan reminded him. “You can’t turn in half completed forms, Bunko. Don’t worry, I’ll have…,” he peered at what Bunko was typing, “Donny, back to complete them as soon as I have medical find out what’s wrong with him.”

Bunko put a chin on his fist and sighed. “Nurse Jenkins is not really qualified to do more than bandage people up and dispense aspirin, Dan, and you know it. It’s stupid to even call the place
medical
. I have a better chance flipping a coin to find out what he has than she does.”

“That’s just insulting, Bunko,” Dan admonished him with a raised finger. “She’s a very competent nurse.”

“Whatever,” Bunko grumbled as he pushed a delete button on his computer. “I’m not bothering with a report until he’s sitting in that chair, again. Somehow, I don’t think he will be.”

Dan put a hand on Donny’s shoulder. “Come on. You’re free from Bunko’s inquisition, for now. Let’s find out what’s wrong with you.”

When Donny stood up, the pounding in his head grew worse. He snatched more kleenex from the box for his nose, before he began following Dr. Dan.

Bunko called after them, “He asked to speak to Peter Parker. Since he’s on duty in twenty minutes we didn’t bother calling him.”

Dan looked surprised but then nodded and asked. “Would you have Peter call my cell when he shows up?”

“Will do.”

Once they were out of the large room and into thankfully warmer hallways, Dan asked, “How do you know my brother?”

“Brother?” Donny pulled at his too tight clothes and looked the larger man up and down. “You don’t look fourteen years old. Unless Peter meant that you visited years ago, these can’t be your clothes.”

Dan chuckled. “Those must be David’s clothes. He is fourteen years old. The next question is, why are you wearing them and how do you know Peter that well?”

“It’s not a good story,” Donny replied evasively. “Can we save it for never?”

“My brother is a cop,” Dan said as he motioned Donny through a narrow door that led into a small office with a few beds covered in sterile, white paper. “His beat is in a part of town known for bar hopping and prostitution. Do you really want me to imagine how you met? It might be uglier than the truth.”

An African American woman came from a little office. Her pink lab coat and stethoscope were business like, balancing out her braided, red and white hair and her golden nose ring. She was large and she made the rest of the room seem much smaller as she looked Donny up and down and then narrowed eyes at Dan.

“Another one of your saves, Angel Dan?” she asked derisively.

“
Dr.
Angel Dan, Nurse Jenkins,” he corrected jokingly.

She gave him a fish eye and then said to Donny, “Don’t let him fool you. He’s a psychologist. I can’t fault him for using his degree to save troubled youths, but his success rate sucks. His last
save
, stole my purse in the parking garage.”

Dan looked guilty, “I can’t be blamed for that. He hadn’t actually agreed to let me help him, yet.” He pulled out his digital thermometer. “Speaking of saves; thanks for the loan.”

“I didn’t loan you anything,” she retorted as she took it. “It’s called stealing.”

“It was for a good cause. It saved Donny, here, from the evil clutches of Officer Bunko,” Dan told her with some satisfaction.

“Making people die of boredom isn’t evil… just… boring…,” she corrected as she put the thermometer next to Donny’s ear and waited. When it beeped, she looked at the read out, frowned, and motioned Donny to sit on one of the beds.

“He was going to process him,” Dan told her, in a tone that was close to begging. “He might make me bring him back and finish his report. If you could say that Donny, here, is over eighteen, and in need of bed rest, I can whisk him off to the county clinic and get him into a program.”

She grabbed Donny’s chin with a firm grip, felt the stubble there, and then let him go. “In his early twenties, I’d say, by the look of that five o’ clock shadow. Why was he arrested?”

“Prostitution.”

“I’m not a prostitute!” Donny retorted, “And stop talking about me as if I’m not here! I made some bad choices in sex partners and I drank too much. I promise to do better next time, okay? Can I go, now?”

“You’re sick and it’s cold out there,” Nurse Jenkins argued.

“I thought you were waiting for my brother?” Dan said almost at the same time. He checked his watch. “He should be getting in any minute.”

Danny rubbed at his runny nose as he stood up, the paper making crinkling noises and sticking to his bare lower legs. He shivered and hugged himself to get it stopped. “I wanted him to tell those morons that I’m legal. Since I don’t need that any more, am I free to go?”

“There is still the charge of prostitution…” Dan reminded him.

Donny’s arms tightened around himself. “It’s a first time offense and probably won’t get me anything, but a lecture from a judge, right? Why bother?”

As Donny tested his limits and began walking, he heard Nurse Jenkins and Dan arguing with each other. Entering the hallway, he walked quickly, determined to make the front door and freedom before they could regroup and come up with a reason to stop him.

Peter was not going to see him at his worst, again, Donny decided. Dan might talk about him, after he was gone, but at least Donny wouldn’t be there to see Peter’s disappointed and disgusted expression.

It was colder when Donny made the street and began walking briskly to keep warm. Men and women passed him by on their way to destinations that probably included food and warmth. Donny couldn’t help feeling resentful. He wasn’t sure when he was going to see either of those two things again. It didn’t seem possible that a city, that had just recently catered to his every whim, as the mayor’s son, was now a hostile, unwelcoming place. Establishments were closed to him, now, because of the simple fact that he didn’t have money, ID, or his important status.

He should have stayed with Dan, Donny thought, where there had been warmth and medical attention. The prospect of returning there made him feel keen trepidation on many counts, though, and he couldn’t stop his feet from continuing deeper into the city, despite the danger of being sick and out in the weather. It might have been pride, or a newly developed sense of shame, he thought. It seemed crazy to admit that Peter’s opinion of him, the opinion of a man that he barely knew, was more important at that moment than his health.

“Donny?” a familiar, deep voice called to him.

Donny stiffened and half turned, unsure whether he wanted to face Peter Parker in his present state of misery. The man came to stand very close to him, a tower of warmth in his thick uniform jacket. Donny couldn’t meet his eyes.

“Dan told me…” Peter began, but then failed to find the right words. Donny imagined him nervously smoothing a hand over his crew cut.

“That I sold a blow job in an ally?” Donny wondered bluntly.

Peter sighed and replied, “Yeah.” It was enough to tell Donny what he must have been thinking.

Donny wiped at his nose and said softly, as people moved around them, “Well, I’m sure Dan wanted you to come after me, and try to convince me to go with him, but you don’t have to put yourself through it. Really, I’m not worth it. You can see that, right?”

“I can see that you’re headed for real trouble.”

Peter’s coat suddenly dropped around Donny’s shoulders. He smoothed it down so that the thick lining and overlarge material was as close to Donny’s freezing body as possible. “I can also see that you want help,” Peter continued, “but that something’s keeping you from asking for it. I see a lot of people go bad, Donny, people who could have turned it all around if they had just accepted a little help. I’m sorry that I pushed you out of my apartment. I thought that you’d make peace with your father and go home. I didn’t know that you were really on your own.”

A light rain started and people began rushing around them faster, wanting to get to their destinations. Gray, cold, and indifferent, the city would ignore him until he dropped dead, Donny thought, and then pedestrians would probably just step around him in irritation until someone called the morgue to take him away. Even if he found a hidey hole out of the wet, he wouldn’t escape the cold, Donny thought, feeling utterly depressed. Donny doubted that he would last the night.

Donny finally looked up at Peter. The man’s concerned blue eyes were begging him to come to his senses.

“You’re a good man,” Donny told him as he unconsciously pulled the jacket tight around him and began shivering harder. “You’re upstanding, kind, and giving. I’m just what my father told me I was; a waste of space, a drunken whore, a user, a pervert… You don’t need to be around someone like me. Nobody should bother helping me. I should be face down in the gutter. It’s where I belong, with the other street shit.”

Sometime during his rant, punctuated by coughs and difficulty breathing, Donny had begun to cry. When it turned into racking heaves, tears streaming down his fever hot face to mix with the rain, he didn’t think that he could sink any lower. Surely Peter was going to yank off his jacket and leave him, now? Crying little shit, he thought to himself, he’d have left his own ass in a heartbeat.

The big arm that came around him shocked Donny. It held him tight, turned him, and guided him back towards the station. In the warmth of Peter’s embrace, Donny tried to stop crying, tried to stop shaking, tried to reassert that he didn’t need anyone. Though he managed to stifle the crying to a minimum, he couldn’t manage the rest by the time they entered the police station.

Dan was there to meet them, anxious and speaking quickly to Peter. “I’ll take it from here. I’ll get him to the clinic and into the program.”

The thought of that big arm releasing him into the unknown was too much. Donny took a step lower that he hadn’t known existed. He clutched at Peter, hands fisting into his shirt pathetically.

Peter’s arm tightened and he made a decision that had Dan’s eyebrows climbing up his forehead in surprise. “Call in sick for me. I’ll take care of Donny.”

“Peter,” Dan replied in a tone of voice that was full of alarm bells. “You told me to warn you when you were projecting. Well, this definitely looks like projecting to me. I’m a professional. I’ll take Donny to professionals, where he’ll be under the best of care, I promise.”

It was obvious that Dan didn’t want his kindhearted brother to get involved. Donny could imagine that Peter had probably been taken advantage of more than once. In fact, wasn’t that exactly what he was trying to do? The man was calling off sick and intending to take responsibility for him. Donny had made him feel that sorry for him.

Donny forced his trembling hands to release Peter’s shirt. There were dirty wrinkles in the man’s uniform shirt, now. Donny smoothed them out with deliberate motions and stepped away. He almost fell from his knees going weak. Peter’s arm was instantly there to support him again.

“H-he’s r-right,” Donny said, teeth chattering with cold. “I-I’m no good. D-Don’t get m-mixed up w-with me anymore.”

“You’re different,” Peter said, and his blue eyes looked both sad and determined as he chucked a hand under Donny’s chin and made him meet those eyes. “You’re trying so hard to push people away and to save them from you. That’s how I know how genuine your emotions are. You need a warm place to stay, some quiet, rest, and some hot food. There’s nothing wrong with staying at my place and catching your breath for a little while. We can go to the clinic, tomorrow, and see about your flu, but I don’t think that’s what you need right now.”