At the hospital the doctor explained that Kent had been shot. The bullet had passed right through him and luckily hadn’t done any serious damage. But he’d lost a lot of blood. His body, they told me, was in shock. An officer sat me down in a quiet corner of the waiting room. I told him that I thought Kent had done it himself. He agreed. We both wondered where the gun was.
When the officer let me go he went back to Kent’s room to speak with the nurse on duty. A few minutes later he stepped back out into the hallway and finished his notes. Then he radioed his partner, who arrived with a tray of coffee for the cops and nurses in the ward.
Everyone stepped out of the room when I went in to see Kent. They all thought I was dating him.
I guess I had kind of told them that. Not explicitly, but I liked the misunderstanding.
It was more dramatic.
I went to the window first and looked out at the parking lot and the traffic roaring down 89. I could hear Kent breathing behind me. I turned and sat down next to him. His body was pale and dry. His lips chapped.
“How are you doing?” I asked.
Then laughed, because there was something wrong with me.
Maybe because there was nothing else moving, except his chest, and then only slightly, like he was an actor playing dead in the movies, the hair in his nostrils seemed to have an exaggerated animation as they quivered with his breath. I unconsciously addressed those little blond hairs, as if they were the only part of him alive.
“Why would you do that? You have a lot of promise, you know.”
I touched his hand. It was much colder than mine.
“Get better, okay?”
It seemed like something was stirring in him. Something quiet, something not visible or that I could feel with my hand. Whatever it was, it was in the air, building, a release.
A release from what? I didn’t know.
I stayed with him, though, until much later when the nurse came in and politely asked me to leave.