Born to Be Badger (Honey Badger Chronicles #5)(28)
“Why are you in a hospital bed?” she wanted to know.
“There was an . . . incident.”
“What incident?”
He took in a breath before admitting, “It’s complicated.”
“Oh, no. Did you get involved?”
“Uh . . .”
“I told you not to get involved. I told you to wait five minutes and—”
“Tock, I did all that. Then there were armed men and you were . . .”
“I was what?”
“Poisoned.”
She laughed. “So?” She sucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth a few times and asked, “Is that why I taste cobra?”
“I don’t mean that kind of poisoning.”
“What kind, then? Cyanide? Rat poison? Ricin? Strychnine? Tetrodotoxin? VX?” When he frowned, she added, “Used during the Cold War.”
“No. I don’t think. I . . . uh . . . actually don’t really know . . . what was used on you.”
Still holding the sheet against her chest, she took a step back. “What? What do you mean you don’t know what was used?”
“I don’t know. Nobody knows.”
“Shay . . . what the fuck is going on?”
“I don’t know. Not yet. But your family—”
“My family? Which family?”
“Uh . . . I don’t know how to answer that.”
“Are they Black, Shay? Because that would give me a definite point to start.”
“Not from what I’ve seen.”
“Fuck,” she said. “Savta. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
She began to frantically scuttle around the room, briefly stopping to look through the glass windows before studying the floor and checking under his hospital bed.
“What are you doing? What are you looking for?” he asked.
“Where are my clothes?”
“I have no idea.”
“Why are people just taking my clothes?”
Confused by Tock’s behavior, Shay watched her attempt to twist the sheet into a makeshift dress while keeping it on her body. He’d be entertained if it wasn’t so weird. He’d never seen Tock this hysterical. Not hysterical for anyone else, but definitely for her.
Tock didn’t get mad. She didn’t get sad. She didn’t get happy. She just always seemed annoyed. But now, it was as if she wanted to jump out of her skin or out of his hospital room window. She actually opened it and stuck her head out, and he grabbed the alert button to let the nurses know that one of their patients was making a crazed run for it. But then she stepped back in.
“I gotta get out of here,” he heard her saying. “I gotta get out of here.”
“I think you need to calm down.”
Waving him off, she jogged toward the glass front door. She had her hand on the handle when Shay, in desperation, called out, “Tock!”
She stopped long enough to look at him and demand, “What?”
He didn’t know what to say. He wanted her to calm down. He wanted her to stop running. He wanted to stop her panic. But he didn’t know how to make any of that happen. He knew she would bail on him at any second, so he did the first thing he could think of.
He asked, “What time is it?”
She froze, the door pushed halfway open. “What?”
“Do you know the time?”
She looked down at her left wrist, then around the room. “Where’s my watch? Who the fuck took my watch?”
Tock released the door and faced him, and Shay quickly lifted his hands to his chest, palms out. “I didn’t take it.”
“I have to have my watch. I need my watch.”
He gestured at the open window. “It looks like morning—”
“It looks like morning?” she repeated with obvious disgust. “What the fuck does that even mean?”
“I mean that it looks like morning, but it may not be. Morning. It could possibly be afternoon.”
“How could you possibly think from the way the sun is positioned in the sky that it was afternoon?”
“Well—”
“How can you possibly go through life not knowing the time?”
He shrugged. “People tell me where to go and I go. No one ever says I’m late. If I were late, I’d hear about it from Keane.”
Tock’s top lip curled in disgust, but she seemed calmer. “That is an appalling way to exist in the world.”
She moved toward him but stopped at the many machines that surrounded his bed. She studied each one until she pointed. “It’s eight thirty-four in the morning.”
Closing her eyes and letting out a breath, Tock repeated, “It’s eight thirty-four in the morning.” She took in another breath, let it out, and repeated one more time, “It’s eight thirty-four in the morning.”
When she looked at Shay, it was with calm brown eyes. He’d given her something to hold onto and it centered her.
Gazing at him, she suddenly asked, “What happened to your neck?”
*
Tock didn’t understand. Why couldn’t she remember what had happened?
As Shay told her the story of what had taken place the night before, she began to understand that the poisoning wasn’t a simple ambush for a bounty or for revenge over something she or her family had done. This was much worse.