Joe Victim

Chapter Fifty-Eight

They drag me toward the holding cells until somebody decides that it’s a bathroom that I need dragging to, at which point they start me in a different direction. When I try to use my legs I find I just can’t get them to grip the ground beneath me. The organs squashed earlier aren’t bouncing back into shape. Instead they’re getting tighter. I’m placed in front of a toilet and the view of a chunk of shit caked above the waterline is better at helping the purging process than jamming my fingers down my throat.

I have never in my life felt this sick. Sweat is dripping off me. I throw up again, then topple forward and somebody catches me before I lose my front teeth against the porcelain. They get me up and I don’t see much of the journey except for some blurry walls and sometimes my own feet, but I’m taken into a first-aid station and I’m laid down on a cot, but none of the chains are removed. The room smells of ammonia and ointments and recently wiped-away vomit. It smells exactly how the first-aid station back in school used to smell, and for a moment, just one brief moment, I’m back there, I’m eight years old and I’m feeling sick and the nurse is soothing back my hair and telling me I’m going to be okay. That doesn’t happen this time.

“Joe,” somebody says. I open my eyes. It’s a nurse. She’s attractive and I try to smile at her, but can’t manage it. She’s looking down at me. “Tell me how you’re feeling,” she says.

“I feel sick.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“Real sick,” I tell her, being real specific. She hands me some water and tells me to drink and I manage a few sips, then roll onto my side and start gagging.

Hot Detective Kent, Jack, and the other two officers are in the room with us. The nurse is chatting to them, but I can’t focus on what she’s saying. Then Hot Detective is making a call somewhere. The nurse comes back, Hot Nurse, and I must be sick because as much as I try to imagine Hot Nurse making out with Hot Detective, my mind just won’t go there. It wanders off to other things. I think about my mom’s wedding. I think about Santa Suit Kenny. I think about my nights spent with Melissa.

“Joe, what have you eaten over the last few days?”

“Shit food,” I tell her.

“Can you be more specific?”

“Real shit food,” I tell her, being real specific again, wondering if this woman needs everything in life explained.

“Does this hurt?” she asks, then pushes her fingertips into the side of my stomach. I can hear fluid moving in there. We all can. It doesn’t hurt and I don’t tell her it doesn’t hurt so therefore she doesn’t ask me to be more specific. She pushes a little harder and I have to tighten my ass muscles to stop a huge mess from happening.

“Yes,” I tell her, wanting to push something sharp into her stomach and ask her the same thing. “It’s a sharp pain,” I tell her.

“Where exactly?”

“Everywhere.”

Kent comes over. She’s shaking her head. “Nobody else at the prison is sick,” she says.

“He’s faking it,” Jack says, but it sounds like even he doesn’t believe it.

The nurse shakes her head. “I don’t think so,” she says. “I think we need to get him to a hospital.”

“There’s an ambulance out in the parking lot,” Kent says, then turns toward the security guard. “Go get the paramedics,” she says, “and let’s hope we can get this sorted out so we don’t have to delay the trial.”