Nobody's Business

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     Tegan sat on her bed in the tiny hospital room, sick to her stomach. She tried not to look down, but even that was beyond her ability. The stump at the end of her right leg was a sight even more unbearable than her ravaged foot had been.

     Her foot had been damaged so badly by the gunshot that repairing it would have been impossible. When the doctors had told her, she had not quite believed them. Couldn't modern medicine fix everything? Nevertheless, she had accepted what might as well have been the end of her life as she knew it, at least until she could get a prosthetic.

      The door swung open, startling her. "Roman?"

     "Hey, Tegan." A smile illuminated his face. "They said I could come visit."

     "What about your dad? Did he say you could come see me?" she asked.

     "He drove me here," said Roman. "And not only because he works here." He sat down in the chair next to her bed. "Does this mean we aren't doing school today?"

     She chuckled. Tegan had been his homeschool tutor for the past few years, and unlike most teenagers, Roman treasured his school time. "On what Saturday have we ever done school?" she asked.

     "This one," he suggested.

     "Yeah, not today." She did her best to smile through the pain. "Anything happened that I should know about?"

     "I don't know if you know already, but Fiver killed the man who shot you. It actually happened before you guys came back to the den. They gave him an injection of...what's it called? Fennel?"

     "Fentanyl," she corrected. "Fennel is a vegetable, not a drug."

     "Oh." Roman laughed a little at his mistake. "What does it do, anyway?"

     "It's an opioid pain reliever. A hundred times stronger than morphine," she told him. "Dangerous stuff. And to think, they get that illegal prescription filled right upstairs in the pharmacy. Speaking of the pharmacy, how's Linda doing?" Linda was the elderly woman who ran the drugstore that served as their cover-up.

     "Good as ever." He smiled uneasily. "Still sharp as a tool."

     Tegan stared down at her stump again. "It'll be a while until I can get a prosthesis," she admitted. "Until then, it'll be crutches. I won't be very useful for a while."

     "You'll be stronger up here than all of us." Roman flexed his scrawny arms. "And in here." He pointed to his chest.

     "You know, Roman." Tegan set her hand on his shoulder. "You're the sweetest kid ever."

      The boy smiled a little wider, even though she could tell his nerves were getting to him. "Thanks."

.........

     After his visit with Tegan, Roman left the hospital on foot. He didn't know where his father was, much less where he had left the car keys, so he'd left a message saying where he would be and set out for a walk. The day was overcast and brisk, but not too cold. The sights, sounds, and smells of the city's underbelly greeted him like an old neighbor. Cars and buses grumbled along the narrow streets, occasionally flashing brights or honking at one another. People were everywhere, doing all manner of things.

     Roman set off down the cracked sidewalk. Being a Saturday morning, there were far more other young people out than usual. No school, after all. None that he knew, though, and none that paid any attention to him. A boy and a girl, probably a year or two younger than he was, passed by him, holding hands and laughing. In an alley he passed, some kids were tossing a ball and shouting to each other. He smiled a little and pressed on.

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