My heart felt like it had stopped working. But when I put my finger to my neck to feel, it was still beating.
The policewoman told another police officer to take me to the hospital and to stay with me. They were worried that Toucan’s friends were going to get mad and then try to hurt me, or try to hurt AK47, who was asleep and not waking up.
“It’s just precautionary,” the police officer said.
I sat in a waiting room in the hospital, with a police officer standing at the other end of the room, reading a magazine. AK47 had been taken to the emergency room by an ambulance while I was at the police station. When Dr. Laird showed up in the hospital, it was the first time I had seen him outside of the office. He was wearing a brown overcoat that went to his knees.
He saw me and said something to the police officer, showing him an ID from his wallet. Dr. Laird walked over to me and before saying anything he handed me the stress ball. I didn’t want it.
I stared at the wall behind him, where there was a picture of a beach and the summer. More than anything in the world I wanted to be there with Gert and AK47 on the beach and under the palm tree.
“I know how you must be feeling,” Dr. Laird said. “I came as soon as I heard.”
I also wanted to continue being mad at him, for calling the police and getting Gert in trouble. But I could not be mad. He was not only my doctor, he was also my friend and a part of my tribe and the Wise Man in my legend. Sometimes people in tribes have to do things that hurt at first in order to help the greater good.
“I feel like a shit-heel,” I said.
Dr. Laird held out the stress ball. “You sure you don’t want this?”
This time I took it and squeezed.
He stayed for an hour, listening to me, letting me cry. He did not write anything down and had a package of tissues that he gave me so I could blow my nose. I told him all about Toucan, how he had died before the police arrived. I was supposed to feel mighty and heroic. But I did not feel either of those things. Toucan had tried to talk to me while he was dying and bleeding from the hole where the bullet had gone. He put out his hand and I had held on to it and it reminded me of Hendo’s baby, Artem, wrapping his baby fingers around my one big finger.
Toucan could not hold on to my hand for very long. It became me holding his hand, until his hand let go and I let go and he was a corpse, not a person anymore.
“I forgot that he was a villain,” I said. “He was a person who was dying, and AK47 was trying to pull me away from him and then she started dying too, and I didn’t know what to do.”
“Sometimes life isn’t as simple as heroes and villains.” Dr. Laird came close to me, until I could see into his eyes, which were green, even though I thought they were blue. “But I want you to know that you were very brave, and that you are heroic. You could have run away from your problems. A lot of people do that.”
“He made a noise,” I said, and thought of the way Toucan’s mouth had opened and then words didn’t come out. Just the noise.
And then I started crying again.
“Okay,” he said. “I know.” And he put his hand, with his big wedding ring and hairy knuckles, on my arm.
We sat in the chairs in the waiting room, Dr. Laird with his hand on my shoulder, and I made myself into a little ball on the chair.
“Can we talk about something?” I asked.
“Like what?”
“Anything but what is happening.”
He smelled like shampoo and like laundry right out of the machine, and he told me stories about all the interesting things his daughter was learning in school, like how butterflies taste with their feet, and how starfish are one of the only animals who have two stomachs, one that they can shoot out of their bodies.
“Gross,” I said.
“Very gross. They use it to eat oysters like that.”
He had never talked about his family before. I did not even know he had a daughter. It was part of our rules that we did not talk about him or his life or family. I asked him why he was okay talking about his daughter now.
“I guess this is different.”
“Yeah.”
Dr. Laird looked at his hands. “I don’t think I’ve been helping you as much as I could. And I feel responsible for a lot of this.”
I did not understand what he meant. He kept squishing his hands and starting to breathe like he was going to say something, and then stopping.
“I should have been more prepared, with your personal history.”
“My personal history.”
“Your family history, I mean. With your uncle.”
“Oh.” I played with my hands, since it was easier to talk to my hands than to Dr. Laird. “Uncle Fuck-dick.”
“Yeah. Uncle Fuck-dick.”
The doctor came out and said I could see AK47 if I wanted. Dr. Laird and I both stood up.
“Well,” Dr. Laird said. He put out his hand. I took it and gave it a shake.
“Can we hug one more time?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “We can hug.” And I hugged him. I tried to give him back the stress ball but he told me I should keep it. “Whenever you feel like you’re going to burst, just give it a good squeeze.”
* * *
AK47 did not share the room with anybody. The policeman who was watching me went with me and the doctor to her room. The doctor pulled back a blue curtain that hung from the ceiling and wrapped around AK47’s bed.
The person in the bed didn’t look like AK47. She looked like a dead person on the crime shows on TV. Her skin didn’t have the glow it usually did, and you could see the little pink veins on her eyelids. A tube went into her mouth and the computer next to her bed made bleeping noises that reminded me of videos games—like AK47 had become a video game that the computer turned into sound.
“Is she okay?” I asked.
The doctor cleared his throat. “We’re not entirely sure. She sustained a lot of neurological trauma and lost a good bit of blood.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that we’ll need to do more tests.”
The doctor said I could sit with her until Gert arrived. He was still at the police station. I asked the police officer how long it would take.
“I’m not sure,” the officer said. “Shouldn’t be too long now.”
There was a chair by her bed and so I sat down in it. AK47’s hand was turned up and had tape holding a tube going into it. I put my head on it.
* * *
I stayed with AK47 for an entire hour, talking to her like she was awake. Sometimes she talked back in my brain, or at least words I thought she would say came to me. The words asked me to pray for her.
“I know you are still in there,” I told AK47. “I will find a way to make everyone see.”
Normally I would have prayed the way Hamsa and I prayed together, him to the Muslim god, me to Odin and the rest of the warriors in Valhalla and to the Norn sisters, asking them to make a different day for AK47 to die. But I was not sure I believed in any of that anymore. I was not sure whether to believe in Odin, and I was not sure I believed that good people could go to a place like Valhalla after they died. AK47 was a good person and it had turned out very badly for her, just like it had turned out very badly for Toucan, who would never be alive again.