Paul Cleave - Collecting Cooper

He nods. “Okay,” he says, “use it on me.”

She smiles. He never wants to see her not smiling. She pads two cotton balls against his thigh, then slowly wipes them downward. “You’re doing really well,” she says. “Not much longer to go.”

“Okay.”

“You really should get stitches, Adrian.”

“I can’t.”

“Then we’ll do the best we can. Now, I need to cut some gauze into the right size.”

“I’ll do it.” He leans over to the bed and picks up the gauze and the scissors. “What size?”

“Just a little bigger than the wound.”

“Oh, of course.” He uses the scissors then hands her the gauze. He puts the scissors into his back pocket. She holds the gauze in place and puts another medical pad on top of it.

“Now I need you to cut some tape to the right lengths.”

“How long?”

“Just a little longer than the pad.”

She passes him up the tape. It’s difficult because he’s still holding the gun, but he manages okay. He cuts a piece at a time and hands it to her and she sticks it across the edge of the pad and across his thigh. When all four are in place she lets go and leans back.

“Looks good,” she says. “How does it feel?”

“Much better,” he says, and he smiles and she smiles back and this is perfect, just perfect.

“Okay, now, where’s the bandage?” she says, turning back to look at the contents on the bed. “Ah, there we go,” she says, picking it up. “Now I’m going to put this on tight, but not too tight, okay, Adrian? Let me know if it hurts.”

“It won’t hurt,” he says, his heart fluttering, liking how his name sounds coming from her mouth. He can see what Cooper saw in this girl, but what Cooper was going to do to her was wrong. Very wrong. He will never let Cooper hurt her. Never.

“Just let me know if it does,” she says. “I don’t want to hurt you, Adrian.”

“And I don’t want anybody to hurt you.”

She puts one hand on the inside of his thigh and he can feel himself stirring and is embarrassed about it. She reaches the bandage behind his leg and takes it in her other hand then starts pulling it around. She repeats the movement over and over, crisscrossing the bandage until it’s nice and secure and covering about half of his thigh.

“Now you’ll need to do this again tonight, so if you like I don’t mind staying for the day, and tonight after I re-dress the wound you can take me home? Is that okay, Adrian? I need to see my parents. I love them so much and miss them.”

“Sure! Sure,” he says, excited.

“How does it feel?”

“Good.”

“Now you’ll need to use both hands to hold the bandage,” she says, “one here on this side and one on this side, just until I can pin it into place. Be careful with that gun and don’t shoot yourself in the foot. I’d hate for you to hurt yourself, Adrian.”

“Okay.” He lowers his free hand and holds the bandage, and he lowers his gun hand and does the same, extending his grip along the side of the gun to the bandage, the barrel pointing to his foot.

“You got it?”

“Yes,” he says, wishing things had gone this easy with Cooper.

“Now don’t let go. Keep lots of pressure.”

“Okay.”

“Now, what else do we have here,” she says, turning toward the bed, then she comes back with the safety pin. “Let me secure it with this,” she says.

He’s thinking about the sunrise, about how, if he’s allowed, he’d like to hold her hand as they sit on the porch, a nice warm wind, both of them drinking orange juices. He’s thinking about a future with her, about the sun coming over the tops of the trees and shining in her hair and he’s thinking about how beautiful she’ll look. He’s picturing himself on the porch at the opposite end of the day, watching the sun set behind the mountains in the distance, Emma cuddled up next to him for warmth. He’s thinking about holding the bandage nice and tight, and he can’t think of too many things at the same time because he’ll end up forgetting things.

Her hands brush against his, and he watches her fiddling with the safety pin, poking the point just so it will slide beneath the material. Her hand touches more of his hand and she tries to get a better angle, and then her hand is on his hand and then. .

The gun goes off. Her finger is jammed against his finger, which is resting against the trigger. The barrel is still pointing down at his foot. Two toes have completely disappeared, replaced by a pulpy mess that looks like a crushed tomato. He doesn’t even feel any pain, it doesn’t have time to register before Emma’s arm swings upward, the safety pin is in her hand and it’s bent open, he gets a real good look at it because it comes racing toward his face. His hands are still on the bandage, still on the gun, and he’s still not letting go just as she told him, at least until the pin hits, enters, and sinks down deep into his eyeball, right up to the small O -shaped hinge. Then he lets go with both hands and screams.

His hands race up to his face and the gun hits him in the side of the head hard enough to give him an immediate headache, but he hangs on to it. He squeezes his eyes closed and his left one closes across the pin but won’t seal shut, letting in light, allowing him to see the shaft of the pin as it trails out of his blurry perspective. There’s an immediate flow of tears. The pain comes from his eye and from his foot at the same time, both far worse than anything he ever felt in the Scream Room. The pain has a weight to it, it’s heavy inside his head pulling his gaze to the floor, a sharp intense pain that starts at his eye and detours through his brain before spreading to his shoulders, and from his foot a dull ache races up his leg into his belly. He touches the pin with his free hand wanting to pull it out and the pain widens, and immediately he vomits, no warning of it, stomach bile spilling over his chin and down the front of his shirt. There’s a sudden ache in his groin and his entire body burns with pain and he doesn’t know what’s happening.

The girl is screaming at him but he can’t absorb the words, they’re all insults, even if he can’t focus on them he can recognize the tone, and the pain explodes in his groin again and he realizes she’s kicking him. He puts his arm ahead and pulls the trigger and the gun goes off and he can’t see if he hits the woman or the wall, and he fires again and then again, the sound deafening, hurting his ears. He staggers to the side leaving one of his toes behind, another barely hanging on, and he can’t maintain his weight on his foot, he buckles and trips over the bucket and hits the floor, his bare feet soaked in the process, his body banging against the drawers and the Taser landing in his lap. He pinches his fingers on the safety pin, takes a deep breath and pulls. He can feel his entire eyeball being brought forward and the pain is too intense and he has to let go, it’s as though the pin is much longer now that it’s inside of him, so long it’s gone directly into the center of his brain. He opens his good eye and has to hold it open with his fingers to stop it from closing. Something oozes down the pin and drips onto his cheek. He looks around the room and he’s alone now. He takes another grip on the safety pin, puts down the gun, pushes his other fingers against his eye to stop it moving, grits his teeth, and pulls as hard as he can.

The alarm clock goes off and I wake up feeling even more tired than before I went to sleep. It reminds me of how I used to feel last year when I’d wake up every morning with a hangover. I spent months on end trying to drink away the memories of the bad things I thought I’d done before crashing into Emma Green sobered me up for good. A couple of cups of coffee go a long way to bringing me around. I take a cold shower and drink another coffee before settling up with the hotel clerk, this one a different guy from two hours ago.