Burn | It Will Come Back #2

 

Relief washed over my nerves like a soothing balm. The trailer was in sight as I took the turnoff down the gravel paved driveway.

Dust enveloped the Wrangler as I hit the brakes, the back tires skidding in the slippery gravel once the vehicle stopped in front of my trailer.

Bishop was coming around, but his coloring wasn’t good. I was in a position in my life where I could honestly say that I’d seen corpses that looked better than he did.

My seatbelt slapped against the door as I hopped out of the Wrangler and ran up the porch steps, listening to his groans from the passenger seat of my truck, and opened the door.

Of course, this action caused all the dogs to bark.

I spotted Scooter, the miniature dachshund, dancing on the arm of the sofa and knew what he was about to do. 

“Use your steps, Scooter.”

The small dog’s lips curved into a cute dopey smile before he hopped off the arm of the sofa and sailed straight over the steps.

“Scooter!”

You would think that the three-pound wiener just leaped from the roof of the trailer from my reaction as I bent down and scooped him up. My fingers gliding over his back to make sure that there weren’t any bones protruding.

“How many times do I have to tell you to use the steps, or you’ll hurt your back?”

Panic making me more irritated by Scooter’s behavior. He was already prone to back injury and no matter how much I coached him using the steps, he just wouldn’t use them like he should. 

“Mama has a friend who needs her help, so you guys have to go to my bedroom for a little while, okay?” I ask. My voice suddenly cracking. What if there wasn’t anything that I could do for Bishop?

My heart suddenly tightened as I carried Scooter back to the spare bedroom and sat him down on his little bed where Boo and Jerry Lee looked up at me, as if it surprised them to see me home.

It was unusual, I could give them that.

“Mama will let you out and everyone will get a treat soon, I promise.” Closing the bedroom door on the four dogs, one cat, and one ferret. At least Pickles didn’t roam the house unsupervised. He stayed in his tank when I went to work and came out sometimes in the mornings and the afternoon to sun himself on the porch.

Swerving into a door facing, I righted myself again and ran back outside as Bishop’s eyes rolled around in his skull. I knew what he was doing. Bishop hadn’t seen where I was living since before the fire that took the house. His eyes were trying to focus on the single-wide trailer as I pulled the passenger door open.

“You moved.” He grunted as I took his arm, and tried to guide him out of the seat, watching his feet and stepping back from them.

If one of those hogs landed on my foot, I knew that my foot was going to be crushed, or at least that was the vivid image that skirted through my busy brain, watching the blood-stained boots meet the gravel.

“Sort of,” I said with a sigh. He didn’t need the blow by blow right now as I hooked myself under his arm and shut the truck door once he cleared it.

The walk from the Jeep to the front door was a long one. “Bishop, I really need you to stay conscious, okay? Just until I get you inside.”

He just grunted. His eye sockets looked sunken in and his lips were paler than the rest of his corpse-like colored skin.

His weight nearly pushed me to my knees as he used me like a crutch up the steps of the porch, and I knew he would not make it much further once the shade of the doorway shadowed his face. His hands grasped the frame as the muscles in his knee gave out, going to his knees.

“No, no-no-no. Not here. Come on, just a little further, please. Please, Bishop! Get up! On your feet!” My voice thickened, lacing with panic as my arms tightened around him as if I, the person who had to lure Lu and Omen to the bathtub with treats, could carry him. But fuck, I carried Bruiser, and he had to weight at least a hundred pounds.

“You will not stop right here in this fucking doorway Bishop, do you hear me, do you understand? Get up. Get the fuck up!”

I was trying to be cruel, to make my voice sound as angry as I could, but at the very end those fears roared through my vocal cords as his knee hit the old beige carpet just inside the doorway.

My arms shook from the effort to get him back on his feet, but the effort was fruitless.

“Alright, we’re going to do this the hard way. You stubborn mule.” Cursing under my breath as I gripped his shoulders, trying to ease him to the floor, so that I did not hurt him when he went down.

Getting my forearms hooked under his armpits, I put the heels of my boots into the carpet and started dragging as the muscles in my arms and glutes screamed from the strain, dragging him across the carpet to the back of the house.

Why did the master bedroom have to be at the very back of the house?

Blood smeared across the carpet and the linoleum in the kitchen as I pulled him. The door was right there, it was only maybe six or seven more feet to the air mattress from the door. Sweating it out, inch by inch, I got him into the bedroom and kicked my boots off as the back of my legs touched the end of the mattress and tugged him up.

Was all of this pulling and tugging causing more damage?

Probably.

Was there anything I could do to help it?

No.

Swallowing, I got him onto the bed, face down in the covers before rolling him onto his side and butt walked myself to the edge again, grabbing the Bubba cup of mountain dew sitting on the plastic organizer that served as my bedside table and took a few pulls from the rubber straw, catching my breath.

From behind me, I heard him cough, then a groan followed as I looked back.

What am I supposed to do for you?

They had shot him in the belly close to his side where those abdominal muscle things are that I don’t understand, but they’re pretty to look at—what purpose they serve is gibberish to me, and maybe that’s the whole point.

Some fancy doctor that studies the habits of humans and how we chose partners for sexual purposes thinks that there are certain physical attributes to the male and female body that have dual purposes, like breasts. Men like breasts, they like butts, but breasts also serve a purpose after the mating rituals have taken place. Butts, not as much.

Maybe those muscle things only had the one purpose, to lure and attract a female or a male—whatever the sexual orientation was.

What was I thinking about again?

Pushing myself up, I went to the bathroom, flipping the big light on and opened the cabinet doors, grabbing a stack of towels out of the cabinet and the rubbing alcohol, the peroxide, and a bunch of cotton gauze and paper tape before I carried it back to my room and dumped it onto the bed beside him and turned on the light.

Bishop must have been drifting in and out because his sweaty eyelids cracked open and then they squeezed closed again for a few seconds before he tried to open them and look around again as I crawled closer over the blankets, pulling his shirt up to his chest and pealed back the bandage I affixed to the bullet hole before. Blood soaked it and I tossed it quickly. It was hot and sticky, and I didn’t like the feel on my fingers. I didn’t like the way his blood felt on me.

Like it was trying to burn its way inside and take me with him.

“Fi-fire.”

My eyes snapped up quickly, looked around, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I thought he meant that there was a fire—but he lost me.

“Fire.”

Bishop gurgled again, but I couldn’t understand until, staring at the blood still seeping out of the wound, it hit me.

“I’m not leaving you, but I have to get something. Something to close up the hole. But I’ll be right back.”

Scrambling, my knees felt weak, I was lightheaded as I ran down the hall into the kitchen and picked out the biggest knife in the silverware drawer. I used it to carve a pumpkin at Halloween and the turkey at Thanksgiving… it would just have to be big enough.

Running back into my bedroom, he had picked up one of the towels and pushed it against the wound at his abdomen, but he was drifting in and out so minutely if he were alone, he couldn’t do this. He’d never survive it.

Crawling closer to him, I sat the knife down and took the bottle of alcohol, tossing the cap somewhere to find later and doused him. That brought him back around for a few seconds as a scream I wasn’t aware he was capable of ripped through the bedroom and I heard the dogs immediately start barking down the hall.

“I’m sorry! I had to!” I screamed back, moisture pooling up in my eyes behind my glasses, grabbing the peroxide next and sloshed a generous amount over it, watching it bubble and fizz as Bishop cursed.

“Mother fucker!” I hated it. The heavy base of a male voice. It always sent me seeking shelter far away. Afraid of pain, afraid of myself and the seething anger laced voice that vibrated in my ears, repeating it over and over in my head. But I couldn’t leave him, he wasn’t cursing me, he was cursing the pain. He wasn’t angry at me; it was a different hatred that licked at my skin with each curse that spewed from his lips and burned me.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Bishop.” Trembling, I don’t know what possessed me, but my sticky fingers pressed over his lips.

Taking the towel to hold over his abdomen, pressing down as hard as I could. I wasn’t trying to hurt him. That was never my intention as I sat up on my knees, holding the towel over the bleeding wound as I covered his lips.

“I’m so sorry Bishop, but I had to do it… re-remember when I got shot? It got infected… bad… and I was sick. I can’t let this get infected… I-I can’t h-help you the way I was… I h-ave to kill the infection now so i-i-it doesn’t g-et in your blood.” Nodding, I couldn’t see his face clearly through the moisture that kept spilling from my eyes and dropping off my chin as I carefully pulled my hand away from his lips.

“Burn it…burn it now, Nina.”

His voice was barely above a whisper as I jerked my head up and down. Taking the miniature blow torch lighter, I keep in my beside drawer for when I’m smoking. Sniffing. Snot kept trying to roll right out of my nose as I picked up the knife and started running the fire over the blade.

I’d have to throw it away after this, but it was just a knife. It wasn’t important. A knife wasn’t more important than his life. And he came to me… he needed me.

With the blade glowing hot, his eyes widened for a second before resolve made their hazel depths look as cold and hard as steel.

“Do it, do it now.”

Clicking the lighter, the flame died away. I didn’t hesitate, I just did it. Laying the burning ember to his flash. It sizzled and burned, smoke warping up from the fissure where the blade met his skin.

He tried to hold it in. If the sound that he made could even be called a scream, it was more like the agonizing wail of someone losing a part of their soul. If he cried, I never saw it, I never saw the pain released from his eyes, so… I did that for him. Whimpering as I pulled the knife away and sat it down out of the way. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry, Bishop. Please don’t hate me for doing this do you. I’m so sorry… I know it hurts…”

He lost consciousness again and this time, he didn’t flinch awake like the times before. I triple checked to make sure he was breathing before I got up and cleaned away all the dirty towels, wrapping a fresh one over his abdomen and cut off the used shirt. No one was going to be wearing that anytime soon as I straightened everything up and carried it all to the trash. With him closed up in my bedroom, I let the dogs out and fed them, giving them extra treats.

I felt emotionally exhausted. Like someone attached a vacuum to my ear and sucked out all of my thoughts. I didn’t even bother trying to keep the fur babies out of my bedroom as I opened the door and let them all go inside to check him out. No one reacted badly, so I undressed and put on a pair of boxer shorts and a t-shirt and curled into a ball on the thin space that was left on the full-size air mattress. It would be fine. I just wanted to lay there with Boo laying beside my head and Scooter in my arms while Bruise guarded my feet and Lu and Omen took turns coming to lay beside me and watching the door.

At least where I was, I could feel him breathing.