Chapter 11: Mass General

The plane bumped through a cloud somewhere over Ohio.

I hadn't answered him.

I'd sat on the edge of that bed for ten minutes with the burner in my hand.

Then I'd gone down the ladder and banged on Bunny's trailer door at midnight.

She'd opened it in a satin robe and curlers with a baseball bat.

"I need the airport."

She'd looked at my face and put the bat down and got her keys.

She didn't ask one question the whole drive.

At the curb she grabbed my wrist.

"Whatever he did, kid, you come back. You hear me? This yard needs you."

"I'll come back."

"Go break something."

Now I sat in a middle seat with the burner on my knee and the new name on my boarding pass.

I scrolled up through three weeks of texts.

How is the comet.

Pigeons are a Providence bird.

Perhaps he did not understand what he was asking.

I read every one with his real voice in my head now.

Every single word changed shape.

By the time we landed in Boston, I'd stopped shaking and started burning.

Mass General was a city of glass and parking garages.

I asked at the front desk for Ventresca.

The woman typed, frowned and gave me a floor number.

I didn't need the room number.

Two men in dark suits stood outside one door at the end of the hall.

I'd seen both of them across Atwells Avenue in a black car, watching me climb a ladder.

They saw me coming.

One of them reached inside his jacket.

The other one put a hand on his arm, said something low, and stepped aside.

I walked in.

Lucio was propped up in the bed in a hospital gown, gray as the sheets.

There was a tube in the back of his hand and a pump beeping on a pole.

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