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Lincoln raised his head at the sound of his name. A man stood across from him. “Lincoln, that you? What happened?”
“Brady?”
“Yeah, man.” Brady put out his hand. Lincoln eased himself up and took it.
“You're a doctor?”
“Just about. Still putting in my hours to make it official.” Brady dropped his hand. “But basically.”
“Congrats.”
“Ha.” Brady paused. “Word on the street was you were living the life in Montreal. Heading one of your old man's offices or something.”
“I was. Yeah.”
Brady cocked his head. “Like that? No offence, man. But is that what corporate looks like these days?”
“I've switched directions.”
“Switched directions?” Brady cleared his throat. “Saw your brother last week. Now he looked corporate.”
“Corporate as they come.”
Brady stared at him a moment before looking at his clipboard. Brady. Class clown. Royal screw up. Doctor. “So, I heard you jumped in front of a moving vehicle?”
“Yep.”
“To save a kid? Kali's kid.”
He knew her. Of course he knew her. “Uh huh.”
“That's some heroic shit. You get a little?”
Lincoln flinched. His lip curled.
“I'm joking, man. She's not giving it to anyone, ever, from what I hear.”
Lincoln leaned on his crutch and made a show of rubbing his back.
Brady glanced at the clipboard again. “Well, people are waiting, right? So, you've got the ankle and complaints of severe back pain. The car hit your back?”
Lincoln nodded.
“And you didn't come in that day? She didn't make you come in?”
“I didn't notice the back so much. My ankle was worse and,” Lincoln hesitated, “shock, I guess.”
“Yeah. All right. And the back's bad?”
“Worse than anything I've ever felt.”
Brady turned and waved Lincoln to follow. “Let's get you into an exam room. I'll check out the ankle first and then the back.” He looked back and grinned. “Seeing as you're an old pal and a hero, I may even send you for an MRI. Make sure everything's all hunky dory. If I don't and you continue to have intense pain you'll have to go through your doctor, which means the normal channels, normal wait. Three to four months at least.”
“Sure, uh, thanks.”
Two hours later, Lincoln was on his way with a filled prescription for painkillers. Brady warned him not to take them while operating any machinery and gave him directions not to walk on his ankle for at least another two weeks and then, as Kali had said, only walk as much as he could normally. No limping.
As to his back, the MRI revealed nothing but intense bruising. Lincoln hobbled away from the pharmacy. Once outside he stopped to take his first pill.
It'd been too long since he'd been lying down and the pain radiated all the way up his leg. The thought of those steps at home, of another night of ravioli or peanut butter on toast ... he clenched his jaw and opened the pill bottle while balancing on his crutches. He popped a pill and swallowed hard, then clamped the bottle shut and balanced on his crutches to get the bottle into his pants pocket.
Damn it.
Lincoln watched the bottle fall, bounce, and roll between the passing feet. His eyes burned and watered. This was shit. Absolute shit. How would he navigate? How would he get down the street, bend low enough to reach the bottle, and get back up again? And why was the hospital entrance so busy? Had every person in the city taken sick?
An oblivious passerby knocked the bottle with the toe of his shoe. The container bounced and rolled further away, landing perilously on the curb.
That pharmacist would never give him another bottle. She'd think he was an addict. She had already looked at him with shifty eyes. And Brady? He'd believe him, hopefully, but it would mean hours of waiting again. And what if he wasn't on shift?
Lincoln gritted his teeth and hobbled onto the sidewalk, his gaze glued to the pill bottle. Mother. The thought washed over him. The sight of her materialized in his mind. Here he was, a twenty-seven-year-old man, and what he wanted was his mother. His mother to scurry ahead, pick up the pill bottle, place a warm hand to his cheek, then usher him into her car and take him home, to the home he grew up in, the room he grew up in. She'd prop him up on pillows in his old bed and smooth his cheek once more.
She would too. Probably. Maybe. If he'd ask.
Lincoln weaved his way into the throng of people. Heartless, the lot of them. Blind. Couldn't they see he was struggling? These people were here to visit some other infirm soul or had become one themselves, and yet they—a woman bent ahead of him, her hand clasping the bottle. She was pudgy. The type of woman who, though not fat, probably spent her life perpetually trying to lose weight. She turned. Her face was blotchy. Plain. But angelic.
“These yours?” She smiled up at Lincoln.
“Yes, um. Yeah. Thank you.”
“No problem.” Her head tilted. “You all right?”
“Yeah. Sure. Fine.”
She looked at him a moment longer. “Okay. Well, keep a grip on those!” She turned and continued toward the street. Lincoln clenched his fist around the bottle, the skin over his knuckles tight, and slid it into his pocket. He turned toward the bus stop and watched the one he needed drive by. He closed his eyes. He could get a cab. But that would require a phone. There were no pay phones anymore. Would some shop owner let him make a call? A hospital receptionist? Maybe.
He could wait and try to flag a cab down. Would it stop? Trust he'd pay? And for what? A five-minute drive, maybe less. Waiting for a cab, paying for a cab, would be stupid.
He tugged on his beard and glanced at the crowd of people milling around in front of the bus stop. Eight months ago he would have felt comfortable asking any of them to let him make a call. Not that he would have needed to. Of course he wouldn't have needed to. His phone had been attached to him like a limb.
He searched down the street for the woman who had stopped to help him. Long gone.
He scanned the faces within a ten-foot radius. No one made eye contact. One woman who'd been looking at him averted her gaze. Not meanly so, but uncomfortably. Nervously. As if she cared but not enough to offer help. As if she feared he'd ask for money and she'd have to make a decision—be kind and potentially feed a habit, be dismissive and turn away from someone who genuinely needed her.
He got it. He'd been there. Been that person. His shoulders slumped over his crutches—as they always did. He'd walk home. That was simplest. The painkillers would kick in soon. They had to. Then he'd be home. He'd lay back, maybe even take another pill, turn on some music and forget today.
Or no. He'd remember today. Remember the reason to get away. Leave the tribe. Escape. Cleanly. Perfectly.
Lincoln crossed the street and headed onto Trollope. Trollope. He'd never noticed the name of the street until he lived in the area. He bet the nearby high school students got a kick out of that.
A group of runners sprinted by. How long till he could run like that again? Weeks? Months? Not that he'd been running much. He needed to get back to that ... when he could.
Just past the oval, Lincoln noticed one of the local bottle collectors. He stopped. Someone stood opposite him. Same satchel, same boots, same ridiculously large headphones. Kali.
She looked at the man tenderly, the same way she had last time Lincoln had seen her with him. She passed him something. The man, shoulders slumped even more than Lincoln's, took it. Kali kept talking. The man nodded, his head down, not looking at her. She laughed and the man looked up. Kali's smile softened. She raised a hand and placed it on the side of the man's face, just the way Lincoln had yearned his mother would put her hand to his face.
She hugged the man. Wrapped her arms around him and clung tight. He stood more rigid than he had before, arms at his side, face scrunched and averted as if she were hurting him. She stepped away and he must have said something; Kali nodded, looking sad, resigned almost. Suddenly she seemed the child, he the parent. She nodded. She smiled again—softer this time, put a hand on the man's shoulder, patted it, and said one last thing before walking past, straight toward the crosswalk ahead of Lincoln.
Lincoln backed up, shading himself behind a tree, and watched her go. Stride, really. He looked back to the man who was behind his cart now, pushing it in the opposite direction.
So it wasn't a fluke, a random occurrence the night several weeks ago when Lincoln had seen her in the park sitting with the man, by all appearances sharing a meal. Lincoln had assumed it was a random act of kindness. She'd been coming home with takeaway perhaps, seen him there and in a moment of compassion offered her meal. Lincoln had been surprised, but pleased. It added to the intrigue.
This added too, but in a different way. Not that it mattered.
He would get through these next few weeks, return the crutches, and get back to work. That was what mattered. That was the only thing that could matter.