If she could've left long ago, she would've, and I think she still might if she ever gets an opening.
Shaking his head at my silence, he turns away from me and picks up the knife again as he sets back to work. "I wish I could say I'm surprised, surprised you'd drag that girl into your mess, but I'm not. Your mother, though... your mother would be devastated. Disappointed. Disgusted. You can destroy yourself all you want. I don't care. I'm done caring. You want to be one of those schmucks who calls himself a man but lives like a thug, you do that, but you do that away from me, and away from your mother, and you especially do that away from innocent little girls."
I'm glad he's not looking at me, because his choice of words makes me grimace. "She's not a little girl."
"Yeah? How old is she?"
"Nineteen."
He laughs. Laughs. "I remember you at that age. Running the streets, thinking you were a man... a big man... but you were no man. You were a little boy with a gun and a grudge, thinking you had it all figured out. But I'll tell you—you didn't. You still don't. You never grew up, and look at you. Look at you!" He doesn't look at me, but I can only imagine what he'd see if he did, the wall holding me up as I clutch my wounded side. It's throbbing. "I heard you got shot again. One of the neighbors heard about it, told your mother. I thought she was going to have a stroke!"
"It was nothing," I say. "I'm fine."
I feel like I've said that a hundred times this past week.
"You look like death," he says. "You're taking yourself down again, you're going under, and you're going to take that girl with you if you're not careful. And that certainly doesn't make you a man, Ignazio."
It's nothing he hasn't said before, but I caught him early enough in the morning that the harshness hasn't taken over. What I hear now is exhaustion with a hint of concern.
The concern is for Karissa.
He's just plain tired of me.
"You know, I didn't come here for a lecture."
"You shouldn't have come here at all," he says. "I told you you're not welcome. You're trespassing right now."
"You gonna call the police? On your son?"
"My son's dead," he says, matter-of-fact. "He died on the streets when he was just a kid. I don't know why you come around, why you're even here right now."
"Yeah," I mutter. "I don't know either."
I consider leaving when he turns around, pointing the knife at me. There's no threat to it. He's just trying to make a point, trying to get my attention. "You care about that girl?"
"Yes."
"Remember what happened the last time you cared about one."
He turns back away from me, and I know he's said all he's going to say. If I don't walk back out the door right now, he'll call the police. He will.
And I can't let it get that far.
I can't do that to my mother.
My father gave up on me long ago.
My mother's the lingering hope that maybe I'm not all hopeless.
"It's infected."
I move my forearm from across my eyes and glare at the man standing over me. Dr. Carter. I don't like people in my house. I don't invite people in my house. But yet here the man is, standing in my den again.
My gaze moves from him down to my chest, as I lay shirtless on the couch. The skin on my side is enflamed, the wound oozing. It's throbbing, every inch of me burning up, raw and painful to the touch.
Infected. No shit.
I can even smell it.
My eyes turn back to him, but I don't say anything. He was the compromise, a forced concession. Karissa insisted I needed to go back to the hospital but I said I was fine, so she called him instead.
I'm ten seconds from removing him from the vicinity.
Carter clears his throat, surveying my injury as he holds his medical bag. "Did you take the medicine you were prescribed?"
"No," a voice calls from the doorway. "He didn't."
Karissa.
Sighing, I cover my eyes with my arm again, not in the mood for this.
Carter has dealt with me enough to know his line of questioning is pointless, so he doesn't bother asking anything else. I keep my eyes closed and clench my jaw when he puts on a pair of latex gloves and starts poking around at my skin. He flushes out the wound, sterilizing it, before covering my side with a fresh bandage.
I feel it, as he sits near me, perching on the table right in front of the couch.
"I get it, Vitale," he says quietly. "If you wanna suffer through this, go right ahead. We both know the pain won't kill you. But this infection? If you're not careful, it will. Take the antibiotics, keep the wound clean, and for God's sake, stay off your feet."
"For how long?" Karissa asks, listening to our conversation. "How long will he be down for?"
I want to make a snipe about why it even matters but the truth is, I couldn't get up and move around if I wanted to right now. I pushed myself too fast, too far, and I hit bottom before I could even really start.
"Until he's better," Carter says. "He needs to relax and sleep."
"I'll sleep when I'm dead," I mutter.
"Yeah, well, at the rate you're going, that might be soon."
The man walks away. I listen to his footsteps as he heads for the front door, Karissa behind him, showing him out. I can hear their voices in the living room, whispered words I can't make out, before the front door open and closes. Relief eases the tension in my muscles once he's gone and I hear the locks jingling, Karissa securing them.
I don't hear her footsteps.
No, she's deathly quiet.
I don't know she's there until the couch shifts, starling me when she sits down on the edge. I move my arm again, peeking at her as she holds out the orange prescription bottle and shakes it in my face.
"Antibiotics," she says. "You heard the man."
Words are on the tip of my tongue.
I don't take orders from anybody.
I nearly say the words but swallow them back at the last second as I force myself up into a sit. I grimace, one hand clutching the bandage on my side, as I snatch the pill bottle from her with my other hand. I glance at the label, reading the instructions:
Take four times daily for seven days.
Wordlessly, I open the bottle and take out a pill, popping it in my mouth and swallowing it dry. I toss the bottle down on the table in front of me before lying back down and closing my eyes.
"You're supposed to take it with food."
"I'm not hungry."
"Then at least let me get you some water."
"I'm fine, Karissa," I tell her. "Good as new."