Read Online Critical Injuries by Joan Barfoot - Free Book Online Page B

those words did he not mean to say?
    â€œThe ambulance screamed up first. I didn’t want them tearing in on top of you, so I stepped outside to show them in. The cops arrived a couple of seconds later. The two of them jumped out of the cruiser with their guns drawn, which was a bad moment. I don’t think they get a lot of really heavy experience around here. They looked kind of wild-eyed, anyway, so before they took a notion I was the bad guy, I waved them down, told them you’d been shot, the gunman was gone, the clerk was a witness, and I was sort of a witness, and I guess I was being so calm, because I thought I needed to be, that one of them said, ‘You’re pretty cool for a guy whose wife’s just been shot,’ like I might have done it myself.”
    â€œOh, who cares?” Isla would like to cry out. “Who the fuck cares? Get to me!” But she can only whisper a protest, which Lyle evidently doesn’t hear, or can’t interpret.
    â€œBy the time the cops got inside, the ambulance guys had you strapped onto a board and were lifting it onto a gurney. The cops looked mad, like they should have just left you there. But maybe I’m wrong about that, I was kind of hyper-sensitive right then. Like everything was real bright and real clear. Not loud, but clear.
    â€œI said I was riding along with you, and the one who’d got shirty in the first place said something like, ‘You’re a witness, we need to talk to you,’ but the other cop said, ‘We can catch up to him later, we got the clerk to interview anyway, a lot of other shit to do.’ Like it was a chore. He was looking at the floor, where you’d been. The blood.” Lyle shivers.
    How long ago did all this happen? Recently enough that Lyle might be in shock? Do witnesses and loved ones go into shock, or is it mainly just victims themselves?
    Isla isn’t in shock. She doesn’t seem to be in anything except a rage.
    â€œI said, ‘There’s no big mystery, you probably know the kid that did it, the clerk does. He ran out the back, but I can’t see he’d be hard to find. About five-eight, freckles, thin. And scared, okay?’ I wanted them to know he was scared, which maybe meant he was sorry. I didn’t know if being scared would make him more or less dangerous, but the shotgun was on the counter so he probably wasn’t armed any more, and I didn’t want them getting excited and blowing him away when they found him.”
    This seems excessively merciful. What about vengeance? How about loyalty? Isla would shoot the son of a bitch herself, if it would undo what happened. If it would just get her up on her feet, she would shoot him. If for no other reason than simple, straightforward balance: this for that.
    She hopes that boy’s conscience, if he has one, eternally vibrates from the persistent, wide-eyed haunting of those few bright seconds in Goldie’s when he, something in him, an instinct or a desire or a terror, made a decision. Because these things are decisions, no matter how swiftly or incoherently taken. Decisions are responsibilities, she believes that, not whims; at least not solely whims.
    Do people like that think people like her go around armoured and bulletproofed? Do they dream no one will be hurt? If they don’t deliberately set out to cause harm, do they suppose harm is unlikely? Impossible? Do they imagine their intentions are true? Oh, she is angry. Unspeakably furious. All the real disasters and true betrayals of forty-nine years — not so many, perhaps, but each one monstrous to her — and now Goldie’s.
    â€œI felt,” and Lyle sounds puzzled, “that it would be bad luck for you if things went wrong with the cops and the kid. Like it was all a mess, but if we could keep it from getting any messier, it might still be repairable, somehow.”
    And will it be? Repairable? For God’s sake, Lyle!
    â€œI