Every Street, Chapter 10

--See previous chapters for notes--

When he awoke again about an hour later, he felt compelled to escape from the confines of his trailer, and indeed the whole town. It felt like an oppressive force pushing down on him and choking him of air, being in the same small space for so long. He put a pair of jeans on and a black t-shirt, taking three pop tarts from their packet and leaving his trailer. He got into his car, ignoring the small dent to the rear wing where he'd seen a kid bounce a baseball, and stepped on the gas. Driving felt like good therapy, he thought. Go and see what else lay beyond the jagged edges of this tiny place. It was another hot day and he could see the heat rippling off the car bonnet in front of the windshield as he accelerated down the highway that ran between farmland. He groped for his sunglasses on the passenger seat and slipped them on to dull the glare of the sun's rays as he drove towards them. Maybe if he kept driving, he would catch up with that burning fireball.

It was mid-afternoon when he returned to his now home town, a little disappointed having seen little but miles and miles of fields and farmland, but feeling better for the escape. Hot and thirsty, he made the decision to stop by the bar for a cold beer - just the one. But instead of the normal friendly shouts of recognition when he entered, a stony silence greeted him. He felt like he was in one of those old Westerns, when the bad guy walked into the bar and everyone stopped eating and talking. Unsure what was going on, he saw Bill, Charlie and Carlos at a back table and made in their direction. But before he could get too close, he saw all three of them stand up, staring him out as his pace slowed and his brow crinkled in confusion.
"Guys?"
"Get outta here, Doug."
"Huh?"
"I said, get outta here. We don't want you in here no more, in fact we don't want to see your face again as long as we live."
Doug frowned harder and took another step closer.
"Do I gotta say it again, doctor?" Bill used the phrase to taunt him.
"Whoa, whoa guys, what did I do?"
"You cheatin' son of a bitch!" the yell echoed around the wooden panels and off the floor as Doug saw a blurred body come flying at him, fists slamming into anything they could find that got in their path, and Doug's jaw was the next victim.
"You motherfuckin' son of a bitch, you're gonna pay! You're gonna pay!"
All hell broke loose as Doug lay on the hard floor, trying to fend off the stray blows of Charlie above him, rolling this way and that to deflect them. He moved hard to his right as he felt a boot in his side and scrambled to his feet attempting to defend himself with his forearms. He threw his own punch at the crazed animal that continued to hurl himself, full of aggression and adrenaline, at Doug's sore, bruised body. The deluge of violence stopped as Doug found himself backed up into the bar itself, standing in a puddle of spilt alcohol and smashed glass, and he breathed hard as he looked down and touched his side carefully, feeling a tender area that was swollen with burst blood vessels. So he never saw Carlos pass Charlie a beer bottle, smashed in half so that the rim was comprised of sharp edges pointing skyward in shards that glinted in the dim light. His first knowledge of the weapon was when he felt a numb sensation around his neck and then a rush of intense pain in his stomach as he saw the enraged figure before him embed the glass into his abdomen as a final move. Doug reached for his neck as the pain ran from his ear to his collarbone and he felt the warm sensation of his own blood pumping out over his skin and running down his front. His knees tipped forward as he gripped the skin together, remembering dimly that pressure on the laceration would stop the loss of too much blood, and holding the bottle into his stomach, just grabbing it out of sheer agony. As he slumped to the floor, leaning back so he stayed upright, held up by the bar, at the fringes of his vision he saw Mac holding Charlie's shoulders, pointing to the door and whispering something in a friendly manner. Charlie looked once at Doug and spat on the floor before leaving. Everything was becoming blurrier as he felt his shirt soak up more blood and Bill crouched down next to him.
"You don't sleep with people's fiancés in this town, buddy."
As he blacked out, he heard a distant siren.

He came to in a very white room, with an incredible headache. Craning his head forward to see where he was and blinking wildly, a flash of pain shot through his neck and he felt a hand on his head, forcing it back down onto the pillow beneath.
"Please lie still, sir. You're in hospital, do you remember what happened?"
"Uh..." The intern was suturing the wound on his neck, slowly and calmly. Doug let his head rest back as the room swam around him in pools, the sudden movement making him light-headed and dizzy. He tried to dig down through the furry layers in his mind for what had put him in this position, and he vaguely recalled going to get a beer.
"You were in a fight, we removed a glass bottle from your belly. Fortunately it didn't cause any major damage, although you had some mild internal bleeding. This laceration on your neck just missed you carotid artery by about that much." He held up two fingers, measuring roughly a centimeter apart. "You're a lucky man."
"Uhn, I guess so. How many sutures you putting in?"
"Well, this is my fourteenth, I'm maybe half way through now."
Doug grunted. He ran a hand down one side and felt the large patch of a sterile bandage across his midsection, and the gastric lavage tube that trailed out of him.
"When I'm done here, there's a cop outside who wants to talk to you. Do you feel up to that?"
"I dunno, I don't really remember all that much."
"He just wants to know if you want to press charges."
"No, no charges."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah."
"Okay..." The intern carried on suturing in silence, and Doug tried to recollect what had happened. He did remember fighting now, or not so much fighting as being an unwilling victim. The sound of Bill's voice suddenly echoed in his painful head and he groaned.
"Sorry," the intern said, obviously presuming he'd nicked the skin. Doug let him think that, preferring not to share the realisation he'd had. That woman, from last night. She'd said her name was Cass, Cassie, Cassandra? It was a name like that anyway, but he hadn't put two and two together when he'd noticed the engagement ring. And then he'd walked into the bar like nothing had happened...oh, God. What was he going to do now? How could he go back to that tiny little town, where everyone would know? He cringed again as a short burst of pain rocketed up his side, and a nurse removed the lavage tube.
"You could have given me some warning." he mumbled to her, only to receive a grumpy look in return.
The intern grinned as he cleaned around his sutures.
"Okay...Mr. Ross, I'm just going to go and get an attending to come and check you over and release you. Sit tight."
The nurse cleared away the suture tray and removed the sterile drape from the side of Doug's head with as much delicacy as she'd removed the lavage tube. Doug wondered if he'd done something to piss her off too, but resolved not to ask. He took a deep breath and heaved himself upward to a sitting position, his legs over the side of the gurney. For a moment he thought he'd fall off it, or black out again from the dizziness, but the mess inside his head calmed down and his brain sat still. His jeans were still on, unbuttoned, but his shirt was gone. Bizarrely, one of his trainers was not on his right foot either, and he peered down to the floor where he could see it lying at the far end of the gurney, by one of the wheels. He thought for a moment then got up very slowly so as not to disrupt his equilibrium and walked painfully to his shoe. He slipped it onto his foot without bothering to bend down and tie the laces - that move was a little complex for his liking just yet. He was just scanning the surrounding surfaces for his shirt when the door clattered open and a woman in scrubs and very wet hair came in, reading what he presumed to be his chart. She said nothing, but pressed on his shoulder for him to sit down, then tipped his head to one side to look at the sutures.
"Good job. Okay, sir. You feeling okay? You lost a lot of blood, so you may feel light-headed for a while. Don't do any exercise or drink any alcohol for the next 36 hours. Eat something as soon as you get home. We did transfuse you two units, but if you have repetitive headaches or prolonged dizziness over the next couple of days, come back. You need to come back in two weeks so we can check that those wounds have healed well enough anyway. You can make an appointment out at the desk..." She filled in his chart as she spoke, signing different bits of paper and making notes of his blood pressure, pulse and oxygen levels from the cardiac monitor above the bed.
"Um, okay. Can I get a couple more of these dressings?" He pointed to his stomach. "And have you got a shirt I can use?"
"Sure. Nurse Braithwaite here will just get you some more dressings, and I'll get someone else to get a shirt. We had to cut the old one off, I'm afraid it was pretty much soaked through with blood."
"That's okay, wasn't anything special."
The doctor signed the chart one last time and smiled before leaving the room. A few moments later, a male nurse came in with a red t shirt that said "Elvis Lives!" on it, and dropped it onto the gurney beside Doug. On top of that landed a handful of sterile dressings and Doug was quickly shooed out of the room in his new shirt, to make way for the next patient.

Back in the trailer that night, Doug swallowed two more Advil tablets as he dumped his radio into a cardboard box along with some groceries and the cactus. Stopping his haphazard packing for a few moments, he wrote the name of the trailer park owner on one envelope, and the name of the town council director on another. Inside the first he put next month's rent money and a quick note, and in the second he put a brief letter of resignation. Leaving the two envelopes on the counter, he brushed his arm along its surface, sweeping the last few bits and pieces into the box. All his clothes, not including the Elvis tee shirt, were in a suitcase already, and any other items were already in his car. He wasn't going to hang around tonight, waiting for more trouble. He opened the door and dropped the suitcase out onto the gravel, and followed holding the box. He set that down on the floor, returning briefly inside to check for anything else and to collect his paperwork. When he finally shut the door on the trailer and locked it, dropping the keys into the first envelope, he heard calls from behind him.
"Hey, Doug! Where are you going?"
"I'm taking a vacation, Jack."
"Where to?"
"I don't know. California maybe."
He picked up his suitcase, with the box under one arm and started to walk towards the car carefully, wincing when the cardboard corner dug into his side. Small feet ran behind him and eventually caught him up.
"Is it nice in California?"
"I don't know."
"Why are you going there if you don't know about it?"
"I don't know where I'm going, Jack, okay?" Doug snapped. There was a small silence while he opened his car and put everything on the backseat.
"Sorry." Jack said, quietly, kicking a pebble in the dust. Doug shut the door and sighed. He hadn't meant to be harsh on the kid. Opening the driver's door, he picked Jack up and sat him on the seat, facing out towards him. He leant forward, resting his hands either side of the boy and looked him directly in the eyes.
"Jack, I'm not going on vacation. I'm going somewhere, I don't know where yet, but I'm going away and I don't think I'll be coming back."
Jack's face sat as still as stone, the only movement in his eyes as they grew bigger. "Not coming back?" he said.
"No. I...I'm not a good person, Jack, and I can't stay here anymore. You're a great kid, and this isn't your fault, so don't think it is, okay? I'm just...messed up, that's all. You don't need people like me around."
"But I do! I do need you here, Doug! Please don't go."
Doug looked at the ground, shaking his head. Jack held onto Doug's arm, shaking it.
"Please. I'll be good, I'll be real good. Please, I want you to stay, Doug..."
Still shaking his head, Doug looked back up at him. The realisation that this really was happening and he was losing a friend, a coach and a father figure dawned in Jack's eyes and his face crumpled, the tears dissolving the stony exterior. Feeling like the lowest species ever to walk the Earth, Doug brushed his hand over the top of Jack's head. "C'mere," he said, quietly and picked him up in a bear hug. He hated doing this to a kid, any kid. He knew what it was like to be on the receiving end and that knowledge comforted him not one bit as Jack sobbed into his shoulder.

©Triggersaurus 2001