Do No Harm

Clyde's eyes went to the floor, his lips moving in a murmur. She stepped forward and put a hand under his chin, raising his head. He spun her and seized her around the waist from behind, shuffle-walking her to the bed. He bent her over, and she grunted when her elbows jarred against the mattress. Her jumpsuit bottoms came down easily, the elastic stretching to accommodate her wide rear end. He pulled them off roughly, and her slippers came with them. He fought her huge beige panties down to the crooks of her knees. She gave surprisingly little resistance.

He mounted her from behind, pushing and laboring through a panic sweat as the sequined bunny looked on from the pink puddle of cotton on the floor. After a few strokes, she responded with guttural noises, and he was alarmed and dismayed to realize they were colored with pleasure. He imitated them, drowning them out, pretending they were grunts of fear. His imagination could only stretch so far.

Limp and defeated, he climbed off her. They were both slick with sweat and unsatisfied. She sank down, flat on her stomach. She did not look at him. "Are you onna ell em about my dog?" she asked.

"Yes," he said.

She cried softly into a stained pillow. He sat and stared at the floor. Her quiet weeping went on steadily.

He reached under his bed and pulled out an old shoebox. The rubber bands around it had grown brittle, and one snapped as he pulled it off. He nudged her. She did not look up. He nudged her again, and she rolled to her side, face swollen and ugly.

He handed her the shoebox. Sniffling, she slid to the edge of the bed and sat with the box across her lap, staring down at it.

He studied the half-moon of grit rimming his overgrown thumbnail. "Open it."

She removed the lid, her head jerking back slightly at the odor. "Wow," she said. Reaching in, she removed a white seagull's wing, balancing it on her open palms like a crystal plate. It had been severed at the shoulder, and the scapular feathers were stained black with blood.

Clyde took it from her gently and spread it, the primary feathers fanning wide. She reached over and felt the longest feather, her thumb tracing its lines. She tugged on the wing, and he relinquished it to her. Her tears dried as she spread the wing, then contracted it, spread and contracted.

She did not seem to notice when he rose from the bed. He opened the footlocker and removed a container of DrainEze and a Pyrex beaker. Alkali filled the beaker quickly when he poured, the white gradation numerals outlined clearly against the blue liquid.

He put the DrainEze container back in the footlocker and closed it. The full beaker sat alone on the table. He stood beside it like a stern patriarch in a family portrait, knuckles pressed to the scarred wood. She did not look up from the wing. "It's eautiful," she said.

Clyde picked up the beaker and set it back down with a small thump. Still, she did not look up. She was playing with the wing and smiling.

The mattress bounced her up a bit when he sat beside her. "You need to go," he said.

Fingers working through the soft feathers. "Huh?"

"You need to go. If you go now, I won't tell anyone about your dog."

Her eyes narrowed-she had forgotten about the dog. She set the wing gently back in the shoebox and rose, her long jumpsuit top dangling over her thighs like a dress. She pulled up her panties, then yanked on her pants, forcing her legs through without pointing her toes.

Clyde held his sweating head in his hands. "Go," he said. "Go."

She paused beside the table, rising up on her tiptoes to peer into the Pyrex beaker, though it was clear. "Uht is this?" she asked. "It's pretty. Pretty blue."

He rubbed his temples, rubbed them hard. "Taste it," he said.

Tentatively, she dipped a fingertip into the liquid. It colored the tip of her print like a blue condom. She stared at it for a moment. "Ow," she said, shaking her hand. "Ow." When she twirled her finger in the fabric of her top, it left a blue stain on the bunny's cheek. "Ow," she said. She stuck her finger in her mouth, made a face, and spit onto the floor. She gagged and drooled a little.

"Go," he said. His fingers dug through his tufts of hair, gathering them.

"I on't like that," she said. She spit again.

He did not look up at the sound of the closing door, though his fists tightened around handfuls of hair.

"Go," he said.

Chapter 18

THE scream reverberated through the ER. Adrenaline pumping, images of flying alkali and blistering faces racing through his mind, David sprinted through the CWA to Hallway Two.

A disheveled man was shaking Pat against the wall, banging her head while two nurses and a lab tech looked on, stunned. "You stole my fucking tote bag," he yelled. "Where is it?" He wore a baseball cap, though the back of his head was sticky with blood.