Second Honeymoon Page 0,8

didn’t chat up the patients. All she did was what she got paid to do: dole out drugs. Nothing more. And that was fine by Ned.

But two weeks earlier, Roberta had been fired. Sticky fingers with some of the pills, it was rumored. It’s always the quiet ones.

Her replacement was a guy who liked to be called by his nickname, Ace. Asshole would’ve been more fitting. The aide was loud, obnoxious, ignorant, and didn’t know when to shut up. Clearly, the applicant pool for the graveyard shift was as shallow as a California puddle in August.

“C’mon, Ned. I know you can hear me in that screwed-up little head of yours,” said Ace, wheeling in the cart. “Say something. Talk to me, dude.”

But Ned had nothing to say.

Ace didn’t let up. He hated being ignored. He got enough of that in the L.A. bars, where he would hit on women with the deft touch of a wrecking ball. Glaring at Ned, he wondered, Who the hell is this dickwad patient to give me the silent treatment?

“You know, I did some asking around about you here,” he said. “Found out you were some kind of math genius, a hotshot college professor. But something bad happened to you. What was it? You hurt somebody? Hurt yourself? Is that why you’re up here on the seventh floor?”

The seventh floor at Eagle Mountain was reserved for the PAINs—staff shorthand for “patients abusive in nature.” Accordingly, they were never—not ever—supposed to get hold of anything that was sharp, or could be made sharp. They weren’t even allowed to shave themselves.

Ned remained silent.

“Oh, wait, wait—I remember what it was now,” said Ace. “They told me you lost your shit when your sister died.” He smiled wickedly. “Was she hot, Ned? I bet your sister was hot. Nora, right? I’d tap that sweet ass if she were here. But of course, she’s not here, is she? Nora’s dead. She’s a bony ass now, that’s all she is!”

The aide laughed at his own joke, sounding like the kids who used to taunt Ned for his stutter all those years ago in Albany.

That’s when Ned turned to Ace for the first time.

He finally had something to say.

Chapter 10

“MAY I PLEASE have my pills?” Ned asked calmly.

Ace’s puffed-out chest deflated like a bounce house after a church carnival. After all his goading, his baiting, his outright cruelty, he couldn’t believe this was the best Ned could do. Nothing. The supposed hotshot professor had no fight in him.

“Do you know what? I think you’re a pussy,” scoffed Ace, reaching for the pill cup on his drug cart.

The night before, though, Ace wasn’t thinking at all. He’d been asked to cover for Eduardo, who usually delivered the dinner meals to all the patients. Eduardo had called in sick. Ironically, the reason was food poisoning, perhaps caused by sampling one of the hospital’s entrées.

So Ace made the rounds the previous evening, mindlessly dropping off trays to every room on each floor. Including the seventh floor. That’s when he forgot that the PAINs were supposed to get a different dessert from the rest of the patients. It was a simple mistake.

Then again, sometimes the difference between life and death is as simple as the difference between an ice cream sandwich and a cherry Bomb Pop…

On a stick.

“Here you go, take it,” Ace said, pill cup in his hand.

Ned reached out, but it wasn’t the cup he grabbed. With a viselike grip, he latched on to Ace’s wrist.

He yanked him toward the bed as if he were starting a lawn mower. In a way he was. Let the cutting begin.

Ned raised his other hand, viciously stabbing away with the popsicle stick, which he’d honed to razor sharpness against his cinder-block wall. He stabbed Ace’s chest, his shoulder, his cheek, and his ear, then went back to his chest, stabbing over and over and over again, the blood spraying high in the air like fireworks.

Then, for the finale, Ned plunged the stick deep into the incompetent aide’s bloated neck—bull’s-eye!—slicing his carotid artery as if it were a piece of red licorice.

How’re you holding up there, Ace?

He wasn’t. Falling to the floor, Ace tried to scream for help, but all that came out was more blood. The guy who couldn’t shut up suddenly couldn’t say a word.

Ned stood up from the bed and watched Ace bleed out on the floor, counting how long it took for the aide to die. It was just like counting ceiling tiles, he