A Home For Timmy (boyxboy)

Chapter 29: The Warehouse

            

Chapter 29

~Jason~

I could handle pain. It was one of the things I'd had to get used to while living on the streets for all those years. I'd taken hits to the face and practically every other part of my body, I knew what it felt like to get cut by a sharp knife, and I would never forget the pain I'd felt the first time I'd been stabbed. Getting hurt was just something that came with being a street kid, and it wasn't that hard to get used to.

What I'd always hoped that I'd never experience though, was getting shot. I didn't like how unpredictable a bullet was. In a knife fight, I could gain the upper hand and fist fights were pretty standard, but with guns, everything was up in the air. I'd watched enough people die from bullet wounds to know that dodging bullets was a thing for the movies.

Getting shot was something I told myself would never happen to me. It was the reason I only stuck to small cons and tiny bait.  It was the reason I'd quit running with Ronny and them and it was the reason I'd ended up struggling to scrape money together while everybody else had been getting ahead. I didn't want to end up in a body bag and leave my son to fend for himself, because I'd decided a long time ago, that one way or the other, he wasn't going to spend his entire life living on the streets.

I'd worked my ass off for us and I'd had dreams as big as the moon. Then, for some reason I still couldn't quite explain, I'd been scraped off the streets by an FBI agent of all persons, and given the chance of a lifetime. I'd finally found a home for Timmy and for as long as it had lasted, I'd been happy.

Funny now, how despite all my planning, my dreaming and my luck, the one thing I'd avoided my whole life had happened anyway. I'd gotten shot, but the fucked up thing about it, was that it took leaving the streets behind for it to happen. It was times like this when I didn't understand how some people didn't believe in fate. If shit was meant to happen, you best believe it would happen.

I smelled some sort of cleaning agent; something between rubbing alcohol and the tangy scent of pine, and I wrinkled my nose against it. That, and the beeping machines told me I was in the hospital. I groaned, afraid to open my eyes because I didn't want to see what damage the bullet had done.

I carefully moved my each of my limbs one at a time, testing for damage, but mostly I just felt numb. Finally, I opened my eyes and groaned as I squinted against the harsh overhead florescent lights.

I blinked a couple of times, trying to get my eyes to adjust, then finally looked around the room. It was nothing like any of the hospitals rooms I'd ever seen; not that I'd seen many anyway. Hospitals were expensive after all, so I'd spent most of my life avoiding them.

The paint was peeling off the slightly dirty walls in the small cramped room. I'd thought hospitals favored white walls, but these were grey, dingy and kind of depressing.  There weren't any cool paintings on them either, and when the light above me shifted, I looked up and realized that it was swinging from the ceiling by a thick worn looking cord.

I figured I must have been at the cheapest hospital they could find. Even the equipment looked ancient, and after getting used to Michael's warm, soft sheets, these felt itchy and coarse against my skin. I couldn't wait to go home and climb into my own bed.

I sighed, and blinked a few times. Damn, my eyes were tired. I wondered if maybe Michael was nearby, and that I realized that he was probably picking Timmy up from school. I glanced around the room again, and realized that there weren't any windows or clocks, which meant that I couldn't even tell what time of day it was; or even if it was even day time.