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Chapter One Hundred-Twenty-Two
Point of View: Nick


I woke up to someone shaking my shoulder. I expected it to be Zoe, but she hadn't ever woken me up upon her arrival before, so I thought something bad might've happened and I sat up fast without thinking. Searing pain went through my back and I dropped back onto my stomach, gasping. I looked over, knowing Zoe would feel bad for it but found a cop looking at me instead. He was frowning.



I didn't want to go back to jail. I was scared to fucking death of the place by now. I mean I'd been there less than 24-hours and managed to get into two fights and get shot in the back three times. They assured me I was going to a safer jail this time, that I wasn't going to be in danger this time, that Leon wasn't there... But still, jail had definitely left a bad impression on me. Which really is the point of jail, isn't it? I mean if you aren't scared of it, what the hell would keep you from doing all kinds of crimes and shit?

The worst part was I wouldn't get to see anybody anymore. The cop explained something about protection programs and keeping me away from Leon and all kinds of stuff - the way he was talking you'd think Leon was walking the streets of Los Angeles rather than locked up in jail, too - and for my supreme safety, they couldn't allow me to have visitors.

I stared out the window, leaning against some pillows they gave me to brace my back, which ached like a son of a bitch, and watched as the hospital got smaller. "They'll tell Zoe, right?" I asked the cops in the front seat. "They'll tell her I'm okay and stuff?"

"Yup," the cop answered, without even looking at me. He didn't seem to really give a damn about answering me.

I sighed.

He drove to the jail, stopping at a Dunkin' Donuts to get coffee along the way (well, I didn't get any). I stared out the window and tried not to let the pain I was feeling show on my face. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but it hurt too much, and I ended up watching the yellow lines on the center of the road fly past, which made me dizzy, but it distracted me.

The new jail looked like a giant brick. It was long and rectangular, with huge fences completely surrounding it, settled in a dense wooded area upstate of Los Angeles. Some guys were wandering around the fenced in area, lounging on picnic tables and wearing seafoam teal scrubs. At least it wasn't that God-awful orange shit I'd been shoved in before.

A rough-faced woman guard pulled open the door as the cop pulled to a stop in the inmate unloading area, and I got out of the car slowly as she held my arm to help. A couple feet away they had a wheel chair to help me get inside. The cop quickly handed off a sealed medical file and a supply of medication, and got back into his car, preparing to leave again as the woman wheeled me into the jail.

"We gotta process you and get you checked in and then we'll let you rest," she said in a voice as rough as her face. I nodded. "You don't talk much, do ya?" she asked.

"I talk," I said.

"You're just quiet, that's all."

"Sorry," I said.

We got to a plain room and a couple cops were there and they started checking me over to make sure I hadn't snuck anything with me from the hospital. What, I didn't know. It's not like I'd seen anyone except Zoe while I was there. Well, Kayla for like five seconds, but they took her away before I'd even really gotten a chance to comprehend she'd been there. I'd been so doped out on the morphine it was more like a blur of Kayla-memory than an actual visit.

Once they'd done their search and poked me in places nobody should be poked, I rested my elbow on the arm of the wheel chair and buried my face in my hand, smooshing my nose in my palm and trying to pretend I wasn't where I was.

They took some more mug shots and more fingerprints and made me sign papers and did the whole process, and over an hour later, the rough faced woman was wheeling me down a long, drab looking corridor. I had the seafoam scrubs on my lap, folded and waiting to be put on. She pushed me into a small square of a room, with a tiny window that if I tilted my head just right I could almost see a patch of cloudy sky through, but that was about it. It was corroded beyond recognition of a window for the most part. There was, however, a bed, and a small desk with paper and pencils, and a door that I assumed led to a bathroom - an actual one, not one that was exposed to the world like in the last jail.

Feeling more comfortable now that I'd seen I wasn't in a regular scary jail cell, I looked at the rough-faced woman and decided she was weathered, rather than mean, and asked, "What's your name?"

"Lucy," she answered. She quickly moved around me to the bed and turned down the sheets. Yeah, definitely weathered.

"I'm Nick."

"Yeah, I know." She offered me a hand and I got up and winced as I climbed gingerly onto the bed, and laid down on my stomach. She pulled the blankets up around my waist and opened a box she'd put on a carrying apparatus on the bottom of the wheel chair. "I'm going to change your bandage, then we'll give you your pain medication and let you sleep," she declared.

"Can I have some water?" I asked.

"Yeah."

She started pulling crap out of the box, arranging it on a rolling table-tray thing I hadn't noticed before. Swabs, peroxide stuff, a big ass bandage, ace tape wrappy-stuff... I gasped when she pulled off the old bandage and the cool rush of fresh air struck my back. I bit the pillow. I felt like I'd been biting a lot of pillows lately.

Lucy frowned and threw the old bandage away - which I caught a glimpse of and felt sick. After seeing what the old one looked like I was glad she was changing it. She hummed as she worked and I tried not to get all worked up but it stung hella bad as she moved the swab over my back, cleaning up the wounds. I had one in the lower left of my back, and one below my right shoulder blade.

Once she'd gotten the bandage back on my back and had me push up so she could get the tape around my torso to secure it, she lifted the one on the back of my neck, where the thing had apparently only scraped the side of my head enough to chip at my skull a little bit and cause an open wound more than any actual damage. She whistled. "This was a close one here," she commented.

"It was?"

"If it hit you right you would be dead," she replied, moving a swab over my neck. I gasped - it stung extra bad. "Sorry," she apologized, and stuck a bandage over that one too.

She gave me water and the horse-sized pills the hospital had sent along with me, and pulled the blankets up over my torso, then handed me what looked like a remote control. "Because you're in a locked room, you need to call us if you need anything. This red button pages your nurse on duty. Right now, 'Chesca's on, but in a little bit it'll be Katie. Probably by the time you need anything it'll be Katie."

"What about you?" I asked, feeling like I was being abandoned.

"I'm just an assistant," she said. "I might be sent to answer if they're busy, but for the most part they answer the calls themselves and I do the dirty work. Like bandage changing." Lucy winked. "I'll be in and out." She picked up the mess of stuff off the table thing and shoved all the trash into the box. "Sleep," she commanded, and she left the room. I heard the door click resolutely behind her.

I sighed and looked up at the little square of blue sky I could almost see out the window. Please God, I thought, Get me out of here soon.