‘I’m pretty much straight already, C-man, after that nut-shot,’ Gately said, ‘if you don’t want to waste the Narcan.’
‘Oh this isn’t no Narcan,’ C said softly, holding Gately’s arm.
‘Hadly,’ said the assistant, uncapping the syringe.
C said ‘Hold on to your hat.’ He poked the assistant’s shoulder. ‘Tell him.’
‘It’s pharm-grade Sunshine,’[387] the assistant said, tapping for a good vein.
‘Hold on to your heart,’ C said, watching the needle go in. The pharmacist slid it in expertly, horizontal and flush to the skin. Gately had never done Sunshine. Next to ungettable outside a Canadian hospital. He watched his own blood ruddle the serum as the pharmacist extended his thumb to ease the plunger back. The pharmacist’s assistant could really boot. C’s tongue was in the corner of his mouth as he watched. The corporate guy had Fackelmann’s arms held tight and a transvestal who’d gotten in behind the chair held his head by the chin and hair as the gray lady knelt before him with her threaded needle. Gately couldn’t keep himself from watching the stuff go in him. There was no pain. He wondered for a second if it was a hot shot: it seemed like a whole lot of trouble to go to just to get him off. The pharmacist’s thumbnail was ingrown. There were a couple eczema-flakes on Gately’s arm where the guy was inclined over it. You get to like the sight of your own blood after a while. The pharmacist had him half booted when Fackelmann started screaming. The scream’s pitch got higher as it drew out. When Gately could look away from the stuff going in, he saw the librarian-type lady was sewing Fackelmann’s eyelids open to the skin above his eyebrows. As in they were sewing poor old Count Faxula’s eyes open. A kid on the playground had used to turn his lids inside out at girls like they were doing now to the poor old Faxter. Gately gave a reflexive jerk toward him, and C hugged him tight with one arm.
‘Easy,’ C said very softly.
The taste of the hydrochloride in the Sunshine was the same, delicious, the taste of the smell of every Dr.’s office everywhere. He’d never done Talwin-PX. Impossible to get scrips for, the PX, a Canadian blend; U.S. Talwin’s[388] got.5 mg. of naloxone mixed in, to cut the buzz, is why Gately only did NX on top of Barn-Bams. He understood they’d given Fackelmann the anti-narc so he’d feel the needle as they sewed his eyes open. Cruel is spelled with a u, he remembered. The two Orientals left the room at C’s direction. Linda McC. sounded borderline-psychotic. The little gray lady worked fast. The eye that was already sewed open bulged obscenely. Everybody in the room except C and the corporate guy and grim lady started shooting dope. Two of the fags had their eyes shut and their faces at the ceiling as if they couldn’t take watching what they were doing to their arm. The pharmacist was tying off the passed-out Pamela Hoffman-Jeep, which seemed like insult + injury. There was every different kind of style and skill-level of injection and boot going on. Fackelmann’s face was still a scream-face. The corporate-tool type was dropping fluid from a pipette into Fackelmann’s sewed-open eye while the lady rethreaded the needle. It was just seeming to Gately he’d seen the fluid-in-eye thing in a cartridge or movie the M.P.’d liked when he was a Bim playing ball on the chintz in the sea when the Sunshine crossed the barrier and came on.