Maria asked, “Can you fix his eyes?”
“Not if he doesn’t learn how to follow directions.”
She undid the straps. I breathed easier and easier with each uncoupling, and I sat up as soon as the last strap slithered off.
“Hold out your arm so I can change your dressing.”
I had my arm pulled in tight, hugged to my body. I didn’t trust her. I had to get out of here.
Maria gave me the eye. The doctor made a don’t-keep-me-waiting face. “You need fresh bandages. The wound has to stay clean or the rot will set in.”
The rot had taken my mother.
Reluctantly, I lifted my half-arm and let her start unraveling. I watched the layers peel off, steeling myself for my new reality. The last bandage fell free. My hand was gone, an empty space where it should be.
I raised my arm. It had a cap on the end, some kind of thick, plastic-like substance that sealed the wound, a dozen or more vinelike tendrils holding it on.
She was going to give me a new hand? A hand of her choice.
Fuck that.
I had to get out of here.
I held my arm out straight. It held steady. Didn’t shake anymore.
I could deal. I was plenty used to having only one good hand.
I could fucking deal.
With my mind made up, I sat still and let the doctor dress my arm with a fresh set of bandages. When she finished, I made my intentions clear. “Pull the IV. I’m leaving.”
“Not until I take measurements for your new hand.”
“Pull it.”
Maria tried to intercede. “You’re not thinking straight. She’s a great doctor. The best.”
I looked the doctor in the eye. I wanted to enjoy this. “She’s a hack. Tit jobs and robo-snatches. Artist, my ass. Real doctors cure the sick.”
The hack glared at me, cheeks burning, eyes smoldering, her carefully constructed doctor’s face not so doctorly anymore.
I held my left arm up and nodded at the IV. “Pull it.”
“Fine. Be a cripple.” She reached over my torso to my left arm and yanked the IV tube like she was starting a cheap outboard. I didn’t feel it. I could get used to this no-pain thing.
Maria watched the doctor go out the door before she got in my face. “What’s wrong with you?”
I nudged her back with my left and stood. A bead of blood formed on my arm where the needle had been.
“I’m going to kill you if you screwed this up for me.”
The drop broke loose and I swiped it away with my… my stump.
I was in my underwear. “Where are my clothes?”
“They were stained. I threw them away. Sit down and think it through.”
“Shoes?”
“Under the bed.”
I used my toes to pull them out one at a time and slipped them on. “My money and my gun?”
“In the drawer. Listen, why don’t you wait here while I go buy you a set of whites. It’ll give you a chance to think.”
I didn’t want to think. I wanted to leave before that bitch doctor cut off another part of me.
I walked out the door. Maria’s voice sounded behind me. “You can’t go out in your underwear.”
Looking left, I spotted the houseboy. “Where’s the exit?”
He pointed to a set of steps.
I took them down and threw open the door at the bottom. Greeted by a blast of party noise, I moved into the street, a jungle breeze kissing my skin, clouds of O smoke wafting on the black air. Music blared from a dozen open doorways, the combined sound mixing and mashing into a pulsing cacophony. The street was filled with a large herd of offworld kids bucking and braying.
Bangkok Street.
I refused to be bothered by the strange looks coming my way. I spotted a clothes counter down the way and made straight for it. As I cut through the herd like a wounded lion, everybody gave me plenty of room.
I glanced to my right. Maria’s big hair had fallen in lockstep with me.
Wearing more bandages than clothes, I stepped up to the counter. “Whites,” I said to the kid who had watched me approach with saucer eyes. He grabbed hold of a pincer device and used it to reach for some pants that sat on a high shelf behind a crowd of cheap BIG SLEEP ’89 T-shirts.
A full-length mirror stood between the counter and the dressing curtain. I forced myself to take a look. Bronze skin overrun by an unhealthy gray, like I’d been rolled in ash. I’d lost a lot of weight, my underwear hanging loose around my pelvis. When was the last time I could see my ribs?
A dead tree with a bough sawed off. That was what I was.
The kid tossed aside the pair of pants he’d pulled down after checking the size. “Too big.”
I looked at Maria, a frown on her face.
“What?” I asked, innocent-like.
“You better not have screwed things up for me.”
“I wouldn’t let that woman touch my sister.”
“Don’t you get it? She’s an offworlder. The local doctors can’t do the shit she does.”
“She’s a hack, and I won’t be her lab rat.”
“Dammit, Juno, she was going to help you. I got you a deal.”
“Who asked you?”
Anger flared in those mascara-lined eyes. “Who asked me? I saved your damn life.”
She was right. Without her, I would’ve bled out on the sweatshop floor. As unsure as I was that being saved was a good thing, I had to admit she’d tried to be a friend. For that I should show some respect. “You’re right. Sorry.” I cranked up the sincerity in my gaze until she acknowledged the apology with a smirk of acceptance.
The kid passed me a pair of white linen pants. I set my piece on the table, took hold of the waistband with my left, and shook out the folds. I slipped in a leg. “Were you following me?”
“Remember those two guys who came looking for you? I was worried they might be waiting for you outside, so I followed you until I saw you go into that apartment. At that point, I figured you were safe so I went and got some breakfast. I was eating eggs up at one of those rooftop places when I saw you go running underneath.”
I tried to slip my other foot in but couldn’t hold my pants correctly with the one hand. I let myself lean against the counter while I forced my foot into the pant leg. I tugged the pants up and started fumbling with the button.
“Jesus Christ, let me do that.”
I stood there like a four-year-old letting her button and zip me up.
“What’s wrong with you? You gonna go through the rest of your life with one hand?”
I chose not to respond.
“You know that cap is just a temporary, don’t you?”
I shook my head no.
“You can’t just leave it like that. And when those pain blockers wear off it’s going to hurt like a son of a bitch.” She caught the surprise on my face. “You really are a dumb shit, aren’t you? You wanna go back inside?”
I looked across the street at the door I’d exited a few minutes earlier. The door was unmarked, anonymous. I looked up at the second-floor windows, dark glass staring down. “No.”
The temporary cap would have to do for now. I had more pressing matters, like the fact that Mota hadn’t killed Froelich or Wu. There was a serial out there, a fucking lizard-man.
And one by one, he was killing my crew.
I clenched my fists but was half robbed of the sensation. Christ.
Time to move. “Where the hell is my shirt?” I snapped at the kid. “What you waiting for?”
He nervously cleared his throat. “Um, short sleeve or long?”
A piece of me was missing. I was unbalanced. Incomplete. Not whole.
I had to get it back.
But it was too dark behind this tree. Couldn’t see shit. Was it asking too much to get a little daylight?
I looked up, my gaze climbing through boughs and leaves, and settling four stories up on police tape wound around a railing. Right where I’d almost gone over this morning. Would’ve been quite a fall.
The courtyard patio was quiet, no sign of KOP. They’d probably wrapped the crime scene hours ago.
Gotta be around here somewhere. I roamed, my squinting eyes straining to see the ground. I kicked something, felt it through the toe of my shoe. I reached down with my right but came up short. Forgot. I switched to my left and pawed through ash and crisped leaves.