Next of Kin

Chapter Twenty-Four: 44%

“Naturally.”

“Okay. Well, I'm at the checkout, so...”

“I can wait,” I said. In the background I heard her talking to the fruit vendor, before giving him access to her account. I shifted, ever so slightly in her bed, and I felt pain from my shoulder to my side.

“You still there?” Jenel asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “What did the doctors say, about, uh, getting back to work.”

“I don't know how to tell you this,” she said, and her voice trembled, “but you'll never tutor again.”

“I meant the investigation.”

“I know,” she said. “And that's a tougher question. Because essentially the doctors want you on light duty. If you can manage to get Jim on the other side of a table peaceably, then that's fine. If there's going to be fighting... it could kill you.”

“And if I was going to rest.”

“Weeks,” she said.

“By which time Jim will be gone, and the case will be unsolvable. I'm not even sure why he stuck around this long.”

“Well, he thought he'd get away with it, for one. You two never got along, right, you and John? Knowing that, even I'm surprised you've seen it this far. Two, though, everyone he knows is in this city. If he's going to up stakes, he needs to gather contacts, and try and find some other place he can start over plying his trade. Otherwise he'd be starting completely from scratch.”

“How long do you think that's going to take?” I asked.

“Less time than it'll take for you to heal,” she said quietly.

“I guess that's good,” I said, and realized I was going to have to explain that better. “If it was in some gray area, I think that would be more difficult. But it's black and white. I have to go after Jim.” I sat up, and the blankets fell away from my shirt. “What happened to my shirt?” I asked, and hoped I didn't sound too accusatory.

“They had to cut you out of it,” she said. “Which is probably irrelevant, since it was pretty fucked up with blood, and had a large gunshot hole in it.”

“Yeah,” I said. I liked the shirt, but I don't think that was a recoverable state.

“And my underpants?” I asked.

“No, I took you out of those. They just looked too constricting.” She paused for a moment, to let me picture that, and feel awkward at the idea. “For the surgery, they needed you out of any unclean clothes.”

“I don't suppose you have a comically oversized bathrobe I could borrow for the ride home, do you?”

“Well, it was supposed to be a surprise,” I heard the words and then a partial delay before they came again. Jenel lifted the tent flap and walked inside. She threw a parcel into my lap. I opened it. It was a pair of clothes. “I used some archived footage of you to get your measurements, so they should fit well enough.”

“Thanks,” I said, and started to put the shirt on. “Ah, ah, ah,” I said, when I tried to raise my arms. “Okay, that was a stupid, stupid idea.”

“Here,” she said, “I'll go set the fruit down while you wriggle into the pants. Then I'll help you with the shirt. Okay?”

“Yeah. Just, uh, do me a favor, and think of baseball, or, really anything other than me changing.”

“I'll just hum my favorite opera,” she said. I leaned back into the bed to put my legs through the pants. It hurt, considerably, but nowhere near as badly as raising my arm had. Then I noticed she was pulling fruits and vegetables out of a bag, in a very specific order. Already on the counter was a squash and a plantain. Next she removed a cucumber, a parsnip, and finally, a single baby corn.