Chapter 106

When he woke up the second or third time now, Rawle was still seeing spots and tracers but his vision was otherwise clearing up. He was now lying face up in a white box, staring up at a white interior of some kind through a sort of grating or mesh. It looked like the inside of the lifeguard’s shed at the beach at Camp Kelso where Rawle had worked in high school.
A paramedic in a white and blue uniform began to speak in a low voice at the side of his head.
“Mr. Rawle. Can you hear me? Are you in any pain?”
“Yess,” Rawle murmured in a slushy voice. “Where is my son? Oh-oh,” Rawle whimpered, feeling the words reverberate like copper cymbals inside his skull.
“Your son’s fine,” the paramedic said. “Your neighbour is taking care of him. Mr. Rawle, you’ve been shot in the forehead. Can you see me? Can you see where you are? You are inside an ambulance on your way to the hospital.”
“Yes,” Rawle could see the pasty-faced paramedic. “What’s this on my face?”
“Just try to relax. We’re almost there. You have a field splint on your face and down your neck. It’s like a metal mask with holes in it. We’ll take it off once we get to the hospital and the doc’s have a look at you.”
“Is my neck broken or something?”
“They’ll order X-rays, sir, to look at that possibility.”
“Am I paralyzed?”
“Your skull is fractured. You’ve lost blood. But your vitals are OK, considering. Except low blood pressure. Have you ever had low blood pressure?”
“No.”
“Are you allergic to any medications?”
“No. Please, can you tell me where Athan is?” Rawle began to tear up a little.
“Your young fella’s fine. Your neighbour is looking after him. Does it hurt?”
Rawle’s eyes just watered in response.
Christ no, anybody but Fenerty.

When Rawle came to again, he was in a hospital bed, a stretcher actually, parked in a ward with three others. An old man lying next to Rawle on his left was holding his stomach through a thin blue Johnny shirt, whimpering: “Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh.”
A woman on the right was propped up in a sitting position with a frothing oxygen mask over her face.
Rawle was in the emergency room.
A beautiful, superior-race-type blonde nurse in pink scrubs was hunched over Rawle’s tiny sleeping penis. She held a plastic dish under it and was inserting a beige rubber catheter into the fragile red pee-hole. The tube sent a sharp pain stabbingup his penis as it snaked upward.
“Jesus Christ!” he whimpered at her.
She looked up at him like nothing at all was going on. Rawle was wide-awake and blushing. Some piss dribbled out the end of his penis onto her gloved hand, but she didn’t notice.
“Holy fuck, what is going on?”
“How are you feeling?” the nurse asked him in a very pleasant voice.
“I’d be better off if you weren’t raping me I think.”
She laughed. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”
She stood up and pulled the curtain around Rawle’s bed, something she had obviously neglected to do earlier.
“Do I really have to have this thing in?” Rawle said, softly, looking down at the sickly flesh-coloured tube in his flaccid dick.
“Maybe not. You were right out-of-her before, though. Can you see okay?”
“Yeah.”
“How are you for pain? Do you remember what happened?”
“I’m fine. Where’s my son, do you know?”
She pulled a thin white flannel blanket over top of Rawle’s lower body, covering his privates. Then set to work checking his blood pressure and pulse. “He’s with his mother, from what I understand. She was here a little while ago.” She turned her head and looked toward the triage area. “Mr. Rawle. The doctor will be coming in a moment. The bullet skinned your skull but there may also be a fracture. We need to get you in to X-ray in a few minutes.”
“-Kelloway was here?” Rawle’s heart started to pound. He was terrified something happened to Athan, that his enemies would kidnap him.
“Was Kelloway here in emerg, Ryan?” the nurse called out into the hallway to another nurse passing by. “You know Kelloway from ICU?”
The other nurse stopped in the doorway and leaned his head through the partly open magenta curtain. “Yeah. She was here. She’s around somewhere’s. That little fellow is great,” the nurse said to Rawle. “I think she just had to use the telephone.”