do. I would like to stay and help for a while, if you will consent. I don't know that Cole will agree. He has avoided my help in the past."
"It would give me such hope if you stayed. But...but I have no money to pay you."
"What help I can give would be small reparation for the damage my profession has done Cole." He grinned and swirled the brandy in the glass before taking one last sip. "Officially, let us say I am on vacation. Augusta has already graciously offered to provide for my accommodations."
*****
If Cole didn't know better, he could blame his throbbing headache on his injuries. It did seem to have its root behind his ear where, since the removal of the cervical collar, he could see the bruise was blackest. From there, it radiated across the back of his skull reaching down his spine to clutch at his stomach.
And yet, when the nurse arrived to ask with chirpy enthusiasm, "How are we doing this morning, Mr. Brewer? Any pain?" he had said no and sent her on her way without wielding her pain-deadening magic wand. He wanted nothing deadened. He wanted no surrendering of control to drugs, or sleep, or anything else. He welcomed the pain.
Better than breathing to let you know you're alive, he'd told the girl. Better than breathing and as familiar as an old pair of sneakers. He did not need a beating to introduce him to pain. It was an old friend, an old foul-weather friend who'd come creeping back when he'd awakened in the gray light of morning, alone.
Of course, he preferred to be alone, always had. He reminded himself of that when the girl wasn't there to smile her sad smile, to gaze at him with what might have been love, for all he knew of it, shining in her round, blue eyes, to brush her lips against his with a good morning, I love you, Nicholas kiss. It was best, he thought sternly, that the girl was not here, for Nicholas was not either, and there was no one at all to love. The party was over, all the guests gone home. Once again, Cole was left to sweep out the debris.
By ten o'clock, when she had not come and had not called and the pain had begun clanging the Anvil Chorus on his skull, he remembered how connections were such a nuisance and better cut cleanly and without delay. There would be a difficult week or two as he scraped away the barnacles Nicholas always let collect, but soon, he would be clear of all of it, the girl and everything.
He couldn't think how this might hurt her, better this small hurt now. She was young. She would heal. Or would she? Fitapaldi's words rasped against the clatter in his brain, "You are kindred spirits, it seems. Her background is different only in degree from yours."
No, he did not want to hear that. He did not want to know that. He danced on a thin wire strung high above the abyss. He had balance for no one else. There was no one else.
"Brewer." The name barked out by the huge and surly looking doctor who filled the doorway, served as greeting and address. Unable to see his nametag, Cole was forced to simply nod and frown in return, which the doctor took as permission to enter.
"A hand grenade. I've been thinking of it all night and a hand grenade is the precisely right description for you. A hand grenade in that spit of time between the removal of the pin and the throwing and the blast. That's the borrowed time I figure you've got."
"As long as that? Whole lives can be lived in that instant," Cole said sullenly. This was the part he hated most, sorting out and disposing of the friends Nicholas had accumulated. Most times, he could avoid them all together, just leave town without a trace. But he was trapped this time. He had to be able to walk out.
"You should know. You're either incredibly lucky or the fates are trying to prove by you that only the good die young. Just do us a favor and see that Trissa is well out of the way when you really do blow." He was close enough now so that Cole could read his tag, Dr. Bryant Edmonds.
Without invitation, he sat in the chair by the window. His expression was more smirk than smile. "I assume, since she's been