From the moment I'd heard how badly I'd been injured and what it meant for my future, I'd lost interest in pretty much everything. Except her. I didn't know how or why, but that damn girl got to me more than I wanted her to.
It wasn't Nori, and I settled back under the black.
Dr. Catlin Fellner had been my primary doctor in the burn unit, and she was the one to give me the bad news. In her early fifties, she was a plain woman, but something about her demanded attention and respect. She was a little under five and a half feet tall, but I had a feeling she could've given some of our biggest drill sergeants a run for their money.
“I looked over all of your charts and progress reports,” she began in her matter-of-fact way. “No infections. The dressings on your arm, as well as a couple places on your chest and back, still need to be applied.”
I tuned her out, knowing the rest of what she'd say. Nothing much had changed over the past few days. There'd been some concern in the beginning about how the skin on my arm and my broken bones would hinder one or the other from healing. I didn't know all of the medical jargon or explanations for any of it, but I did know it hurt like hell and the mess of scar tissue I had left wasn't pretty. It hadn't been my arm, however, that had kept me here this long. That award went to my lungs since I needed regular breathing treatments for longer than they'd expected.
“Xavier, are you listening to me?” The doctor's voice was sharp.
My eyes jerked back to her. “Not really,” I answered honestly.
Dr. Fellner's eyes narrowed. “I know you don't want to be here, but I won’t release you until I'm satisfied you're well enough to go home.”
I almost scoffed at her and asked what home I was supposed to go to. My home for the past ten years was wherever the army sent me. Except, if I was truly honest, I'd never really thought of any of those bases as home. Despite all of the shit in my past, Philadelphia was still what I thought of when I heard the word home. As long as I had one person in that city who cared about me, it was still home.
And I had that, no matter how much I didn't want it anymore.
I knew what I wanted didn't matter to Father Doron O'Toole though. Not when it went against what he believed was right for me. The problem was, everything he'd done for me since the moment we met had made me want to be a better man. And I'd tried my hardest to succeed.
I walked down the street, resisting the urge to pull my hood up. It would hide my face, but it would also keep me from having my peripheral vision. I wasn't an idiot. I knew I was in some serious shit. I'd been away for nearly two years, fending off the threats that Martinez had sent my way. Now that I was out, I knew he'd come after me even harder.
After all, I was the reason he was rotting behind bars.
What a lot of people didn't understand about the kind of life I'd lived was that the concept of honor among thieves wasn't entirely inaccurate. To use less than noble purposes to take out someone else's crew was one thing.
But no one liked a snitch.
No matter what Martinez had done to make me want to betray him, no one in my world would ever forgive me for what I'd done.
I couldn't forgive myself.
But not for turning in Martinez or testifying against him. Those were the only right things I'd ever done.
Ever.
And it had all been for nothing.
I heard the footsteps behind me, and for a few seconds, I thought about running. Jumping a train into the center of the city and getting lost there. I could run somewhere else, start new. I could get a job that paid in cash, make a life for myself.
I didn't move any faster. What was the point? I'd kept myself alive in juvie, somehow thinking that when I got out, things would be different. But as soon as I stepped outside, I knew that was a lie I'd told myself. I didn't believe it anymore.
The first hit didn't take me by surprise. The fact that there were three of them told me that Martinez's people thought I'd fight back.
Or maybe they just wanted me dead.
That was okay.
I lost count of how many times they hit me, and it even stopped hurting after a while. Everything stopped. I drifted above it all, feeling my body jerk and twitch under the assault.
I waited for it to be over.
Except I heard someone shouting, saying the cops were on the way. I heard the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being cocked. Then more than one person running away.
Then I heard the voice again, closer this time. A man's face blurred in my vision.
“Oh, kid. What'd you do?”
I'd been almost as close to dead then as I'd been when I arrived here. Broken ribs, fingers and collarbone. Bruised internal organs. A concussion.
The man had picked me up and carried me to his car. I barely remembered anything until a couple days later. That was when I'd come to and found out that my savior was a priest in his late fifties. A priest who'd pulled a shotgun on three gang members.