Page 104 of Fish in a Barrel
Dave scowled at him, clearly out of patience. “Look, man, you’re here because you obviously can’t rest at home, so here we are. We’re keeping you sedated until this shit has time to heal, and then we’re changing that number on that sign from ninety-seven to zero, and we’re all mad about that.”
Jackson blinked and actually looked at the sign, which was written in Sharpie on printer paper and tacked to the examining room wall. It said, “Days since Rivers was last admitted for care: 97.”The number was on a Post-it, which had obviously been replaced every day since Jackson’s heart surgery.
“Wow,” Jackson said, a little stunned. “You, uh, keep tabs on that?”
“Yes, we do,” Dave replied coldly. “And we were super excited too. We almost had you up to a hundred. That would have been a banner fucking day for us here. I mean, sure, you’ve come in for cuts and scrapes and shit—but no overnights.” He glared. “Until now.”
Jackson smiled apologetically, grateful for the layers of anesthetic they’d smoothed on his back before they’d restitched the entire thing. “I swear to God, Ellery tackled me. I was just standing, having a conversation with a guy, and Ellery jumped on top of me. Wasn’t even my fault.”
The loud snort from where Ellery sat at the end of the treatment cot told Jackson his understatement wasn’t appreciated.
“There was a gunmanaiming for him,” Ellery said, his voice assuming that persnickety tone that Jackson had always found irritating—and adorable. “It was either tackle him or let him getshot!”
Dave paused and stared at Ellery. “Well done. I don’t want to have to piece togetherthatmess again.” He turned back to Jackson. “No, I blame this entirely on you. You have got to get your shit together, man. We can’t keep doing his!”
Jackson sighed. “I’m doing my best,” he said honestly. “Living clean, calling in my backup…. I mean, I wasn’t alone out there today, right?”
Dave harrumphed and disinfected the inside of Jackson’s elbow to administer the sedative. Jackson knew that ordinarily they would have checked him in, had him cleaned up, gotten him on the hospital bed, and inserted an IV for this, but he was already shaking with anxiety. Dammit.
“But if you put me under and make me stay here,” he said a little desperately as Dave picked up the needle from the tray, “I’ll miss the two days of Ellery telling everybody I proposed! And we’re getting married. Don’t you think I want to be conscious for…?” Dave injected him without mercy, and the delicious wave of ennui that accompanied the morphine began to seep in through his bloodstream. “Goddammit. That.”
“Married!” Dave said, as though Jackson hadn’t just taken the stars-and-moon express. “Are you inviting Alex and me to the wedding?” He helped Jackson into a johnny, now that all of the tending to his back was over and the sedation had begun. Jackson assumed his pants would be removed when they got to the room.
“’Course,” Jackson murmured. “You guys are my people. Ya hear that, Ellery? I’ve got people!”
Ellery snorted, but Jackson felt his hand, gentle on his calf through his jeans, as Ellery said, “You’ve always had people. You deserve people. Don’t worry. Everyone’s going to be there.”
“It’ll be in the sunlight,” Jackson mumbled. “In the spring.”
“In Capitol Park,” Ellery told him. “You can have the rabbi officiate.”
“That’d be nice,” Jackson agreed. “Flowers. I like flowers. Dave, do you know Ellery buys flowers sometimes? Just to have on the table. Isn’t that amazing?”
“It’s really special, Jackson,” Dave said, finishing cleanup and disposal. “Do you ever buy him some?”
Jackson grunted as Dave helped him off the table and into the wheelchair. “Not enough,” he said, as Ellery said, “All the time.”
Dave laughed. “Perfect balance, I can tell.”
“Flowers at our wedding,” Jackson mumbled dreamily, wondering exactly how much morphine Dave had been authorized to give him. “Ellery, promise me….”
“That’s a promise I can keep,” Ellery said softly, kissing his temple.
The next two days were uncomfortable and fraught with dreams, but Jackson clung to that kiss on the temple, the dream of flowers in the springtime, and Ellery smiling at him shyly while dressed nattily in his best suit, to get him through.
It was daylight at the end of the tunnel. A long, lifetime of a tunnel, into the best, most glorious day.
TWO DAYSafter Jackson had been admitted, Ellery was pacing the floor of the kitchen, looking at his watch. Jackson was supposed to have been released from the hospital that afternoon, and Henry had been dispatched to go get him. That had been hours ago, and they werelate, goddammit. So late.
Ellery had been in court that day and had given deposition after deposition about the events leading up to Myron Adler’s arrest. The DOJ had finally stuck their nose into things when Arizona Brooks had sent them file upon file that suggested Trey Cartman had coerced and blackmailed law enforcement, judiciary officials, and gas-station clerks in his meteoric rise to the top. He was under investigation for everything from extortion to hit-and-run, and Ellery would be testifying in front of the investigative committee for another two days at least. Jackson would be at the courthouse for most of next week, Ellery assumed, which would serve him right for being late tonight!
Myron Adler had pled guilty to one count of murder with extenuating circumstances and had been given ten years in Leavenworth, since he was still enlisted. He’d broken down, apparently, as Henry and the others had processed him, and the story had been so pathetic—and Trey Cartman so monstrous—that Ellery would have intervened to have the case tried if Arizona had offered anything harsher. Cartman and Boehner had not only threatened to smear the circumstances of Nathan Brentwood’s death across all media fronts but also Elaine Brentwood’s subsequent emotional breakdown and the heartrending lengths Clive Brentwood had gone to in order to shelter his daughter and wife from any of the brutalities of public exposure. They’d had pictures Cartman had illegally requisitioned from the coroner’s files that they’d threatened to release, of Nathan Brentwood dead with a needle in his arm, and privileged files on Elaine’s shaky mental health that they’d been ready to send to gossip rags. None of it legitimate, all of it ghoulish and in the worst possible taste.
A taped recording of Clive Brentwood in tears, pleading with one of the most vitriolic conservative news hosts in the country to keep his wife’s name out of his mouth when he went live in a segment to be aired the following week had been Adler’s trigger. He’d overheard the conversation firsthand, and hearing Cartman’s threat to air the tape on social media had been too much to bear.
The fact that Cartman and Boehner had both been in positions of power that they’d abused to do this had helped keep Adler from doing life without parole.
Goslar and McMurphy had been arrested. Apparently Boehner had kept records on “his boys,” and the ones on Goslar and McMurphy implicated them heavily, particularly for the assault on Jackson and Cody Gabriel. As a father confessor, Boehner had been ready to turn around and tell the next “God” up the line who was liable for doing bad things. The fact that Goslar and McMurphy had been brought down by the words of the man who had been supposed to be protecting them but who had enabled their sadism instead had seemed particularly delicious, in an irony-as-breakfast sort of way.