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Chapter 12: The Hanged Man

Rex handed me a bottle of water. He’d chilled it in the freezer for a few minutes, and it was ice cold. In his left hand, he held another bottle, similarly chilled, meant for himself.

Grateful, I held the bottle up, and Rex bumped it with his. Silently, we toasted our friendship.

My throat felt bone dry. As I drank, I sat up. Rex stretched his tall, lanky, Great Dane frame. Then he sat down in the chair next to my bed.

“While you were napping,” Rex said, “Julia and Ario went to go get more aspirin. And bandages and stuff. And Ario knows where a library is - because Julia wants to check some medical books, find out stuff about concussions.”

“Yeah? I thought you said . . .”

“Yeah,” Rex replied with a smile. “I don’t have the symptoms - nausea, blurry vision, trouble thinking. And my headache’s gone. I’m almost a hundred percent sure I don’t have a concussion. But Julia’s worried anyway.”

“You two really like each other, don’t you.”

Rex blushed.

For a second, I thought of the way Rex had dropped, when the rock had struck his head. I shook off the memory.

“It’s not easy for us to have any time where it’s just, um, the two of us,” Rex said. He looked worried, suddenly, and he rushed to say, “No offense! It’s not a bad thing. And I’m not blaming you, or Ario, or Gunnar. It’s just - I like all of you, and Julia likes all of you, and we want to hang out with you. We don’t usually want to go off on our own - which is weird, because, you know . . .”

He blushed again.

“Because you like each other.”

“Yeah,” Rex affirmed. “We haven’t talked about it, not really. I guess, for one thing, I’m really shy around females. And Julia - you know how she is. She doesn’t like to talk about personal stuff.”

“Well, you’ve only known each other for two months, and those two months have flown by. So it’s not like you’ve been waiting years and years, right? No reason to rush. Take your time, you’ll figure it out.”

“I also like what I have here - what we all have here.” Rex looked around, then he looked at me. “For a second, I thought - last night, there was a second where I thought I lost you.”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice suddenly hoarse, even though I’d chugged nearly all the water. I thought, again, of the way Rex had dropped. “For a second, I thought I’d lost you - I didn’t know if you were hurt, and if so how badly . . .”

The two of us were silent, a moment.

Then I raised my bottle again, and Rex bumped it with his. I drank the last of the water. Then I burped, loudly, and that took all the tension and stillness out of the air.

Rex laughed, and he called me Gunnar, because our Pit Bull friend sometimes communicated by belching.

“Where is Gunnar, by the way?” I asked.

“Out with Ramses. They’re walking around, wondering if they’ll see the Bear out there - they’re worried he’ll come looking for you.”

“Just the two of them?”

“Well, you’re not going out there.” Rex sounded worried.

I looked down, at the bandage on my stomach.

“No, I’m not going out there,” I affirmed.

“The Bear - what was his name? Reese? - probably will come back, right? Because you beat up his friend - that Beagle - pretty good.”

“I don’t regret that,” I said, scanning Rex’s face for his reaction. “He hurt you, after all.”

Rex raised his hands.

“Hey, I’m cool with it,” he said. “And he started it - he pulled a knife and went after you.”

“He seemed pretty angry.” I thought of the loud, snapping sound that had echoed out, when I’d broken the Beagle’s wrist. Most likely, I’d given him another reason to be angry.

“Yeah?”

“Oh yeah.”

I looked down, again, at the bandage.

“I have to change this,” I said, keeping my voice casual. “And I need to look at the wound. It’s bleeding again.”

“Oh.” Rex noticed, then, the blood that was seeping through the thick bandage. “Are you okay?”

“Let’s find out,” I said, keeping my tone light and casual. As if this were a normal, everyday thing. “Can you get me a damp towel?” I asked.

“Sure. How’s your arm?”

I looked at the other bandage, the one that was on my forearm.

“That one seems okay. I’ll look at it later.”

Slowly, I stood up, and pain raced up and down my midsection. Because the wound - the deep cut - was on my stomach, anything and everything I did that involved contracting or expanding the skin on my stomach . . . hurt. Standing, sitting, walking, breathing, taking in or letting out deep breaths, laughing, yawning or stretching . . .

Slowly, I walked to the kitchen. Rex joined me after he emerged from the bathroom carrying a damp towel.

Taking my time, trying to rise above the pain, I pulled off the bandage on my stomach. I used the towel to wipe away the blood on my skin, clean the area. I wanted to expose the damage done.

“Shit,” Rex said, softly. “That looks -”

“Nasty? Yeah, but it doesn’t look infected. That’s helpful.” I bent over, slightly, examining the wound as closely as I could. It stretched out, in a long line, just above my navel. “This would’ve been so much worse if he had stabbed, instead of sliced. Stabbed, I would’ve had internal injuries. But this - this is something I can deal with. I think. It’s just a huge cut, really.”

“Are you sure? ‘Cause it looks pretty serious.”

I examined the wound again.

“You know . . .” I mused. “I’m not sure it’ll close up on its own. I should probably give it a few stitches.”

“How would you do that?” Rex’s eyes were wide.

“I put a needle and thread in the first aid kit which I made last month. You didn’t notice? I’ll just sterilize the needle, and voila -”

“Wait, are you kidding? Because that’s the kind of thing folks do in the movies, not real life. You need a doctor, or a nurse.”

“I was trained on how to do it,” I replied, with a slight shrug. “Plus, I’ve seen it done before. There was one mission - things went bad, long story made short, and we didn’t have the medic with us - so one of my squadmates sewed up a wound on his leg.”

“Holy shit.”

As I got out the kit, and sterilized the needle, Rex asked if he could help.

“Um,” I said. “You could probably put your hands here -” I showed him where, and how. “And hold this thing in place while I put in the stitches.”

I handed him a pair of latex gloves, because he’d be near the wound, and the blood.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Rex said, placing his hands on my stomach. “Won’t this hurt? You don’t have any - what’s the word - anis - anesthetic - is that the right word?”

“That’s the right word,” I replied. “And I sure don’t have any. No way to numb the area, take away the pain.”

“Well, that sucks.”

I did think of something, however - something not an anesthetic, but close.

Quickly, and deeply, I drank straight from the bottle of rum which was sitting on the counter.

“Let’s do this,” I said. “You sure you don’t mind? I really appreciate the help, but if you’d rather not . . .”

“I’m good.”

I looked at the needle, wondering, for a moment, if I could really do this. The training - which had been quick, part of a quick lecture on battlefield medical techniques - had been a few years ago. On the other hand, how long would it take to find a doctor or a nurse? What if, among the folks who’d stayed in the city, none of them were medical professionals of some sort? I had no choice, I told myself, but to shrug off the doubts and carry on.

I poked the needle into my flesh, and I hissed, from the pain. I told myself to accept it, accept the pain, because it wasn’t going anywhere. I wouldn’t be able to deny it, or get around it, so I would have to accept it. Live with it, I told myself. Live with it.

“So . . .” Rex said, slowly. He took a deep breath. “I was going to tell you something, since we’re alone until the others get back . . .”

“Might as well do it now. We don’t know when they’ll be back, right? So go for it.”

“You sure? I can wait, ‘til you’re done with this.”

He watched, not even flinching, as I stitched my wound shut.

“Trust me,” I said. I wondered what Rex was leading up to. “Whatever it is, it’ll distract me from the fact that I’m sewing up my stomach.”

Rex launched right into it.

“When he was still in high school, one of my brothers got hooked on some new drug - some new pill - that was going around. For most folks, it wasn’t that addictive, supposedly, and it just made you feel real, real good. And it lowered your inhibitions. For other folks, however, it was addictive, and the high was super intense. Things got bad. He got kicked out of school.”

“Damn, that’s rough,” I sympathised.

“Once we found the right therapist, and the right rehab center, he got clean. It went a lot smoother than everyone said it would. My parents took out a loan, and they enrolled him in a private school. He graduated, and things looked good.”

“And then . . .”

“And then, he got a job, and he got addicted again.” The pain in Rex’s eyes was heartbreaking. “Life kind of turned into a cycle, I guess. Jim would lose his job, or he’d break up with someone - so he’d get clean, and find a new job. And go to his therapist, regularly. But, at some point, he’d get hooked again - and he’d lose his job, or break up with someone, and he’d kick the drugs, and get clean . . .” Rex sighed. “My parents and the therapist were the ones most involved in helping Jim clean up, every time he went clean. My other brothers and I kept busy keeping the ranch going. This went on for some time. Jim would be on drugs, then off, then on, then off - it kept going like that.”

“Did something happen?” I asked, gently.

One last time, I ran the needle through the skin of my stomach.

“You can stop holding my guts in place,” I said, again making my tone light and somewhat amused. “Would you mind grabbing the scissors and cutting the thread?”

Rex did so, and then he stepped back. I tied a knot in the string, and then Rex and I both surveyed my stitches. I drank another shot of rum, and I passed the bottle to Rex.

“I’m going to mix this with some Coke,” he said. “Want some?”

I nodded, and Rex began mixing two drinks.

Because of the pain, endorphins were flooding into my system, and I felt giddy, somewhat high. At the same time, I worried that Rex was leading up to something terrible. This curious duality rolled through me, as I cleaned up the needle and put away the first aid kit.

“Well, anyway,” Rex said, “life went on. Jim was clean, then he was a mess, then he was clean - on and on, back and forth. Finally, my parents staged an intervention. After that - and, dude, it was really heavy, and everyone cried - after that, things seemed okay again.” He paused, and took a deep breath. “And then Jim vanished. Just . . . up and vanished.”

“Oh, shit.”

“So my parents took out another loan, and they hired a detective, and she found Jim - here. Here, in the city.”

“That’s why you came here.”

“Yep. I volunteered. Well, it was supposed to be easy. Jim had gotten clean again. At first, he wouldn’t talk to us - he told the detective he was ashamed. Eventually, he allowed me - only me - to call a payphone near where he lived. We talked, a few times, and Jim said - he said he was sober, he’d been sober, and he was getting the best help he’d ever had. He said he was afraid to leave here, leave the support system he said he had. But I could come and visit.”

I sensed, rather than worried, that something terrible was indeed coming.

“You know what’s funny?” Rex asked. “When Jim was still in California, still struggling to stay clean, we all felt responsible. My parents, my brothers, the folks who worked on the ranch - we were all one big family, and we all blamed ourselves, in a way, for what was happening. We knew that addiction, of course, does not work that way. We knew that we - well - we didn’t create his addiction, and we weren’t the reasons why he couldn’t kick it. And yet, we felt like we’d failed him, somehow, in some way. Because he couldn’t stay sober.”

“That happens,” I said. “Your brain, the rational part, tells you one thing, but your heart tells you another.”

Rex paused, in the act of drinking, and he surveyed me, for a moment. We had shut the curtains tight, blocking out both the outside world and the summer sunlight. Thanks to our generator, however, we had turned on the ceiling light, there in the kitchen. There was a second of silence, while we drank. The potential dangers of the fallen city, and the potential dangers from a certain Bear, felt, just then, far away.

Eventually, Rex said,

“And you blame yourself for what happened in January, even though you know you shouldn’t.”

“Yep,” I said, with a nod. “And sometimes, I can’t imagine I’m the only one. There were a lot of folks working on that cause, trying to bring down the Insurgency, and many of them had so much passion and energy . . . I wonder, how many of them blame themselves for the Insurgents blowing up the world?”

“Well, then,” Rex said, attempting a sardonic smile. He set his glass on the counter, and he reached for the bowl of pretzels. “Here we are now, holding on to our guilt.”

“We’re idiots,” I said, with a smile. “And I was just an idiot on the front lines. I wasn’t involved in any of the decision making. And yet, yeah, I do tend to blame myself for what happened.”

“I never blamed the therapist or the rehab center.” Rex shrugged. “Every time Jim went back to using, I never blamed them. Maybe I should have? Or maybe they did all they could, and it wasn’t anyone’s fault? Who knows. I did blame myself, however, even though I knew it was wrong to do it. That might be one reason why I volunteered to be the one who flew here, to the city, to make sure Jim was really doing okay.”

I reached out, and I squeezed Rex’s shoulder, a gesture of support.

As I started walking towards my bed, still holding my glass of rum and Coke, I asked, “When did you fly here?”

“Just a few days before the bombs went off.”

“Oh, shit.”

“It was supposed to be so simple. My parents had saved up some money, and they told me to stay here as long as I wanted to - or needed to. Stay for a month, they said, or maybe even longer. I wasn’t just going to check on Jim - I was also going to - well - the plan was, I’d stay for at least a few weeks and really make sure Jim was doing okay.”

As Rex spoke, I peeled off my shorts. They had gotten stuck to my skin, because the blood from the wound (which had come out earlier) had run down, soaking them. Again, I used the towel to clean up. I noted, with satisfaction, that the wound was no longer bleeding.

Rex, too, was looking at the stitches.

“You’re going to have another scar,” he said.

As I put on a fresh bandage, I gently asked Rex what happened to Jim.

“He wasn’t home,” Rex said, softly. “Or at work, or at a meeting. I waited, then got a cheap hotel room - well, cheap, for the city. The next day - same thing. His neighbors, his co-workers - no one knew where he was. Finally, his sponsor helped me track him down. He was - ah, Seven Gods - he was in some little shithole downtown. He was with a group of folks, and they’d all shot heroin, some batch of heroin some fucking genius mixed the wrong way, or something - and it killed them. They were all dead.”

Rex finished his drink, and he looked away.

I put on underwear, and a clean pair of shorts, and then I went to Rex and I gave him the strongest hug I could give. After, we both had tears in our eyes.

“The day after,” Rex said, “Or maybe it was two days after, who knows, the bombs went off.” He looked at me, as he wiped away the last of his tears. “So I was kinda messed up, when we met.”

I told Rex how sorry I was - as one does, in those situations where words really can’t convey our sympathy and our pain (and yet, we speak anyway).

“You were messed up, too, weren’t you.” It wasn’t a question. Rex picked up his glass, and we went back to the kitchen for more alcohol. “I could tell, but I never asked you about it.”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “The bombs going off brought back a lot of memories. I spent a lot of time either going undercover or doing surveillance - but - there were some firefights, too. There were some battles.” I paused, remembering.

“And the last battle you were in, that was the one where you were seriously injured. You told me about - what was that look for?”

Rex must’ve seen something in my eyes, something I had tried and failed to hide.

“Well . . .” I hesitated. “I don’t want to make this about me. You were talking about your brother, Jim, and we can -”

“If there’s something else, you can tell me, if you want to. It’s cool, of course, if you don’t want to. But, you know, I’m here. If you want to talk.”

I had always meant to tell Rex the story, even though, quite honestly, there wasn’t much to it. And, since Rex had just told me about his brother - it seemed like a good day for sharing secrets, there in the shelter of our apartment, with our recent injuries and a half-full bottle of rum.

“I told you how I got injured,” I said. Rex nodded, as he mixed fresh drinks. “Well, I didn’t mention that I was in that firefight because I’d been taken captive.”

“Oh, fuck.”

“It was only for a week, or so,” I said, casually. “But they did torture me. And they called me a traitor, which was stupid. The whole thing - you know how it is, we all know. That old prejudice against anthros never made sense. And it was never popular in some parts of the county. Just twenty years ago, it seemed so old-fashioned and so - um - quaint. Well, except for parts of the North, of course. But then those Insurgent assholes brought it back - and why? Because they needed someone to be mad at. Anyway . . .” I took a breath, and collected myself. “My squad came and rescued me. Just being honest - my rescue was the secondary objective. The primary objective was to take my captors alive, because they had vital information. Well. Or so we thought. Turned out, not so much. Anyway, things went to shit, as they sometimes do, and everyone started shooting at everyone else. Craziest, most horrific battle I was ever in. Went on for a long time, too. We were in this old, abandoned office complex, where there were long hallways, and tight spaces, and it was like a huge maze.”

“How many folks died?” Rex asked.

“Just two, on my side, which was shocking. But, there were a lot of injuries. However, most of the Insurgents were killed.” I drank, deep, chasing away memories.

“And you ended up in the hospital, for a long time, getting your hip replaced. And then you were sent here.”

“Yeah. Some of the higher-ups blamed me for getting captured. They felt like I’d ‘allowed’ myself to be taken captive.”

“Seriously?” Rex was shocked.

“Seriously. Not all of them, just some. There were debates. Meetings, plural. All these officers and advisors, trying to decide what to do with me. And, instead of making a decision, they assigned me - temporarily - to the recruiting station here, in the city.”

“Wow.”

“I felt like I was in limbo, when I first got here,” I said. “Instead of moving on to the next thing, I was . . . in a state of suspension, I guess - waiting for whatever the next thing would be. Turned out, that next thing . . .”

“Yeah.” Rex’s smile was rueful and sad. “The next thing was the Insurgents setting off bombs all over the world.”

“C’mon,” I said, after a pause. “Let’s go sit by the pool and get drunk. I’d like to hear more about Jim, if you don’t mind. If you want to, you can tell me some stories about your childhood, before things took a turn.”

“I’d like that, yeah.”

Briefly, Rex put his hand on my shoulder, echoing the gesture of support I’d given him earlier.

I could not - of course - feel grateful for what had happened. The brief captivity, the last battle, the injury, the feeling of being abandoned by some of my superior officers.

However, I could - and I did - feel grateful for Rex, for his friendship.

Terrible things had brought us to the city, just before the terrorist attack. Those things should not be treated lightly, or dismissed. And their awfulness should not be forgotten. But, they did bring us together. For that, I was grateful.

I suppose it could have been tempting, as we sat side by side on the edge of the pool, to feel like I was still in limbo, or suspension - to feel like we all were - because the future was so uncertain. Would the world ever go back to the way it used to be? Would things get worse? We just did not know.

However, I did not feel that way. Perhaps because I was not alone?

In January, newly arrived in the city, feeling that feeling of suspension, I had been alone.

As August approached, I had friends. The future was indeed uncertain, but - hopefully - we would face it together.