Oz’s eyelids hung heavily. It was too difficult to open them, so he didn’t for a while. He stretched and paper crinkled beneath him. He tried to lift his arms, but they were bound.
Machines beeped somewhere beyond his vision and patients coughed and gagged. He didn’t bother trying to convince himself that it’d been a nightmare. The scene played over and over again, each time Jamie’s face became more vivid, more terrified.
He tried to sit up but a sharp pinch in his arm and the tug of the handcuffs pulled him back. An IV dripped clear liquid into his vein.
A nurse walked past the foot of the bed, nose buried in a chart.
“Nurse!”
She didn’t look up.
“God dammit.”
“I’ll ask you to watch your language. There are children on this floor,” a man said. He was short and squirrely with a head like a cue ball. If it wasn’t for his stethoscope and lab coat, Oz would’ve had an easier time believing he was a taxidermist.
“I have to leave,” Oz said. “There’s nothing wrong with me. Take these cuffs off. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
The doctor wrote on his clipboard and fiddled with Oz’s IV without looking at him. “You broke into the ICU and passed out. You’re severely dehydrated. Once you’re up and at ‘em, the police are going to retrieve you.” He made a note. “Which should be soon,” and turned to leave.
“Wait.”
The doctor raised his eyebrow.
“The boy in that room. Is he okay?”
A brief shadow fell over the doctor’s face before he shook his head once and disappeared in front of the curtain dividing Oz’s bed from the rest of the ward.
He felt the blood drain from his face. His head spun. The room slowly melted away until once again blackness cradled his mind.
* * *
When he woke, Oz was not the least bit surprised, but strangely relieved, to see Bard straddling a chair, smoking the last puffs of a cigarette. He stared through Oz, as though trying to penetrate the wall behind him. Bard looked older, which Oz knew was impossible. Reapers didn’t age. Or did they? He really didn’t know much of anything about reapers outside of their reaping. He didn’t look angry, but his jaw hung loose like it was too much effort to force his teeth to meet. And his eyes were shadowed. Greyer.
Oz didn’t know what to say, so he remained silent, propped against the poorly stuffed hospital pillows, and waited for Bard to say something.
A long time passed, before Bard finished and stubbed out his cigarette, and then spoke. “You get what you wanted?”
“Jamie’s gone.”
Bard nodded. “So that’d be a ‘no,’ then?”
“I messed up. I know that. But you have to help me fix it.”
“And how exactly do you suggest I do that? From the looks of it, you’ve all but lost everything being a reaper gave you, and then some. You probably don’t realize it, but the wolves are stalking this place at this very moment. They haven’t taken anyone yet, but that doesn’t mean they won’t. You’ve thrown everyone off with your little stunt. Imagine Cora’s surprise when she was all but run over by a candy-striper.”
“I know.”
“The kid was getting better. Pneumonia nearly tore his lungs to shreds, but he was getting there. He wasn’t supposed to die, Oz.”
“I don’t—”
“And let’s not even mention the other Bas you’ve let the wolves sink their putrid teeth into. Bas that will never cross over. Never get another shot at life. Because of you, their fate has changed. You don’t fuck with Fate, Oz, because she’ll ass-rape you with no lube, wearing a spiked dildo.”
“Jamie—”
“Forget it. You’re out of commission, Princess. The wolves can have you for all I care.”
“You can’t do that!”
“Can’t I?”
Cora appeared from behind the curtain. “Give us a minute, Bard?”
Bard rolled his eyes. “Whatever.” He turned to Oz. “Your ass is mine once this little powwow is over.”
Cora waited for Bard’s footsteps to fade before sitting on the edge of Oz’s bed. She held a plain manila folder.
“You’re an idiot,” she said.
“I know.”
“I’ve never seen anyone screw up as badly as you. What were you even thinking?”
“I don’t know.”
“You should’ve listened to me in the beginning. I knew you were having trouble but you were too self-pitying to ask for help. I’ve been where you were, Oz. We all have. Do you think this is easy for any of us?”
Oz closed his eyes. “Just spare me the fucking lecture and let it happen already.”
“I’m giving you the lecture because it doesn’t have to happen.”
Oz’s eyes popped open. “What do you mean?”
Cora traced the edges of the folder with her finger. “While you were out there fucking up, I paid a visit to the file room.”
“What file room?”
“The place where all the records are kept. Everyone has a file with a record of their words, actions, thoughts—everything. I thought that if I had a little insight into Oz the Human, I’d have a better chance of helping Oz the Reaper. The record-keeper owed me a favor, so he let me take yours.”
She tapped the file. It seemed too small to hold everything about him. Had he really been that simple a person as to warrant a few scraps of paper in a plain folder?
“I left most of your paperwork behind,” she continued. “This is only a fraction of it. One event specifically. Does the name “Jen” ring a bell?”
Oz groaned. This was the information she chose to throw back in his face?
“Yes,” he said.
“It’s obvious you know about her son, Jamie.”
He nodded.
“Did you also know that,” she checked the front page of the file, “Mark wasn’t his father?”
“Excuse me?”
Cora stood and tossed the file onto his lap. “I’m going to talk to Bard. You don’t have to look at what’s in there, but I strongly suggest that you do.”
She closed the privacy curtains on her way out.
Oz looked at the file, afraid to touch it; afraid of what he might find inside. Heart pounding, he opened the cover to find a single sheet of paper. Typed on it was a detailed report of the night he spent with Jen. He cringed as he read. At the bottom of the page, in bold, red print was the word: RESULT, followed by: Conception. See file: Jamie Oswald Greene.
New ache ripped through the center of Oz’s chest. Jamie was his son.
Was. What have I done?
Bard pushed through the curtain. “You’re one lucky fuck, you know that?”
“Lucky?”
“Cora has convinced me to send you to lock up.”
“Lock up?”
Bard snickered. A low, wheezing laugh that held more malice than some of the threats Oz had ever received. “Think of it as time out. You thought it was bad at The Department? You’ll be bent over trying to gnaw your own balls just for a distraction.”
Two men who obviously weren’t medical staff brushed aside the privacy curtain. Apparently, even reapers needed muscle. One of them, a man built like a brick wall, held a strong hand on Oz’s chest while the other ripped the IV needle from Oz’s arm and detached the various monitoring equipment.
“No, wait, Bard you can’t—get the fuck off me you troll! Jamie... You have to help me. There has to be a way.”
Tweedles Dumb and Dumber, lifted Oz from the bed by his forearms. Oz went limp. The strain on his arms was excruciating, but it slowed them up. He kicked one of them in the shin, to which they responded with a punch to his solar plexus. The wind rushed out of his body and the room spun.
“Help. Somebody,” Oz wheezed.
“Pointless, Princess. No one can hear you. With me and the boys here, it’s like you don’t exist.”
The big guys dragged Oz from the ward, down the elevator and out the front door without anyone giving them even a glance. His heels burned from being dragged, but he wasn’t about to make it easy for them.
Outside, an empty rust-bucket of a car idled next to the curb. One of the big guys held onto Oz while the other climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Bard, please. You have to let me fix this. If you can’t help me, then at least let me try.”
“The balance can’t be fixed just because you want it to be,” Bard said.
“Fuck the balance. I have to help Jamie. Bring him back. There has to be a way.”
The anger felt good. It cleared his head a little.
Bard shook his head.
“Reapers walk where no one else can walk. You said it yourself. I can go get him. Afterward, you can do whatever you want with me. I don’t care. Just let me do this. He’s my son.”
Bard met Oz’s eyes for a long minute. “Marcus, go sit in the car.”
Big guy rolled his eyes and huffed before dropping Oz’s arm and stalking to the car.
A soft breeze blew and Oz became aware of the fact that he wore nothing beneath his hospital gown. He gripped the fabric closed over his backside.
“You’re going to fail,” Bard said.
“So there is a way?”
Bard turned away and walked to the car. He came back with a bag and tossed it to Oz. “Clothes.”
Oz nodded.
“Not like it’ll help you. It’ll just be less humiliating when we escort you to lock up later. Call it mercy.”
Oz pulled a pair of rumpled jeans and a white shirt from the bag. As he dressed, Bard took several steps backward and the earth cracked open like an egg, revealing a black, cavernous expanse that led only to more blackness.
“Down there?”
“If it’s too scary for you, you’re more than welcome to come with us now. Save us all a headache.”
Oz flipped Bard the bird and stepped off the edge.