I clutched the couch cushions to pull myself up to sit, swinging my gimp leg around. I’d been here about a week now, and every day I’d try to get into the chair on my own. Mostly I could do it.
I rolled my chair in front of my legs, and locked the wheels. The scars winked at me. They looked like bad bruises that would never heal, with dark holes where the pins went in. I grasped the back of the chair and pushed with my good leg, up, up, up, and for a second it seemed like I could swing the momentum of my hips over to the target.
Then the slightest twist of my ankle on the floor and the pain came streaming back. And just like that I felt the bullets again. The metal spikes stabbing, stabbing, stabbing.
I was on the floor, rolling. Wetness on my cheeks. Stabbing, stabbing, up through the bottom of my foot and from the sides, my bones were made of pain. A gunshot sounded near my ear.
It’s not real.
Footsteps.
Cassie knelt and bent over me, her hair on my face, smelling like sleep. “Did you fall out of bed?”
“No,” I said, and I wanted to explain exactly what happened, but the stabbing dominated my thoughts. The red polka dots on the dust. A pair of boots. I pulled them toward me.
No.
Open your eyes.
“One, two, three,” she whispered, and I was sitting upright on the floor in the pile of old magazines.
Her eyes were half open, her tank top thrown on backward and inside out, a strap falling off her shoulder. “Can you get back on the couch from here?”
“No,” I told her, avoiding her eyes.
She put her hands underneath my armpits, the skin of her chest in my face. I turned my face away, blood rushing to my head.
I propped my hands on the edge of the couch, ready to push.
“Were you having a bad dream?” she asked.
“No.”
If I told her what I saw, she might think it worse than that, but it wasn’t. It was just a bad dream that happened to come when I was half awake, half asleep, sometimes all awake, mostly all asleep.
“Yeah,” she muttered. “Right. One, two, three.”
When I was back on the musty cushions, Cassie straightened, gave me a weak smile, and sat on the floor.
“You can go back to bed,” I said.
She rubbed her eyes. “No I can’t.”
“Why?”
She looked up at me, confused, a little hurt. It must have been my tone. Damn it. I didn’t mean for it to sound as bitter as it did. When the Oxy wasn’t working, it was like the pain was a filter for everything I said, clipping it, spiking it.
She shrugged. “I just can’t get back to sleep once my brain starts going. I’m supposed to get drowsy on metformin, but it never seems to work. God, I hope it’s working in general,” she mused.
Metformin was one of her diabetes medications. I’d peeked in the medicine cabinet on Wednesday while I was washing my hands. She had seven altogether. Even under my health insurance, that was a lot. A lot to pay for, and a lot to put down your throat.
I wanted to be kinder. “Sorry I woke you.”
“You— I’ve kinda noticed in the past week,” she began, then stopped, choosing her words. “Luke, you make noises a lot when you sleep. Like screams.” She continued, slow, each word making me feel smaller, more compact. “Do you think we should rethink the plan? And maybe get you some help?”
Just like that, kindness failed me. I felt like a floodlight was shining. How was it possible to feel so exposed under the stare of just one person? Her eyes were still sleepy, gentle, but if this was her version of kindness, I didn’t want it. It was too close to pity.
I tried to keep my voice level. It didn’t work. “I said sorry for waking you. I don’t know what else to say. If you want to go back on the plan, then that’s on you.”
“Hey, whoa,” Cassie said, standing. “It was just a suggestion.”
“Just say the word and I’ll do it.”
“Uh, okay.” She picked up the pillow from where it had landed on the floor and tossed it next to me. “I’m not your boss, or your mother, or whoever. I was just trying to point out that something seems to be off.”
Her gaze burned. Everything I wanted to say was cycling at once, up and down, like the hills in my dream, and I couldn’t figure out which one to take hold of. I kept going toward anger because it was the easiest. But it wasn’t the only thing I was feeling. Everything else was buried under my nightmare.
Jake, with Hailey and JJ, lying on the blanket. Why hadn’t Jake called me? What if Johnno had showed up in Buda again? Is that why Jake wasn’t calling again?