Vigilantes

Billie felt himself waking up, the lack of recollection of falling asleep in the first place frightening him beyond words. He became vaguely aware of something resting on his arm…in his arm. At first, he thought it could be a bug and motioned to swipe it away. When his hand ran over the wires, however, his mounting fear reached its peak as a terrified whine escaped his throat. His eyes flashed open, quickly taking in the unfamiliar setting. There were indeed wires and tubing connected to an IV in his arm, and those wires were hooked up to a machine that appeared to be recording his heart, blood pressure, and oxygen intake. The other numbers and various markings on the screen made no sense to him whatsoever, so he ignored them to take in the rest of the room. Near the bed was a window, though the shades were drawn to decrease the chances of sunlight waking a sleeping patient. The walls were painted a cheerful shade of blue, as if a simple color could uplift the spirits of a sickly, dying person unlucky enough to be occupying the room. Billie would have snorted in disgust at the hospital’s feeble attempt, but the tubes in his nose that were helping him breathe made it damn near impossible to do so. Lastly, a sleeping child slumped haphazardly in a chair across the room with drool dribbling lethargically down his chin caught Billie’s eye. Jakob. The poor thing looked as if he’d been glued to the chair for hours.

Without warning, a woman in colorful scrubs to match the attempted cheerful outlook of the paint on the walls barged right in, clipboard in hand. She looked about as startled as Billie when she realized the man was finally awake. She gasped, covering her mouth in embarrassment, as her face blushed bright pink.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Armstrong! If I’d known you were awake…” she rambled, but Billie hurriedly interrupted her.

“It’s ok,” he croaked, growing conscious of the fact that he was dying of thirst. “What am I doing here?”

The nurse gawked at him, truly at a loss as to how she should go about explaining. Billie tried not to become impatient with her, for the way she became so easily flustered was enough of an indication to prove that she hasn’t been a nurse for very long. As she opened her mouth to enlighten the injured man in the hospital bed, Tre Cool leapt valiantly into the room, a manic smirk on his face.

“Billie! You’re alive!” he squealed, skipping to his friend’s bedside to pet him. Billie merely shook his head, chuckling slightly. Tre could make anyone laugh despite a shitty or depressed mood.

“How did you get past security?! I specifically told them family only!” the nurse shrieked, flabbergasted by Tre’s actions.

The excitable man’s cheerful glow adopted a downcast shadow at the nurse’s words as he whined, “What the fuck, I gave birth to this man right here! He’s my son! How can you not see the resemblance?!”

Billie’s hushed chuckles broke into a full-on laugh attack at the nurse’s horrified facial expressions. She stormed from the room, muttering something about calling security and completely disregarding the fact that she was supposed to be checking her patient’s vitals. As soon as the nurse was gone, Tre rounded on Billie, all playfulness vacant in his eyes.

“Are you ok, Bill?” he demanded.

“Not really, no. What the hell’s going on?”

“You passed out in my driveway. Do you remember that?”

Billie searched his memory, unable to recall anything that might have happened following the rape. The irony of it all irritated Billie to no end. The one thing he wished he could forget more than anything was the only thing he could remember.

“No,” he answered honestly, glancing over at his son. Tre followed his gaze.

“He’s fine, just a little wiped out after everything that’s happened today,” Tre explained, though there was something missing from the explanation.

“What about Joey?”

Tre hesitated uneasily, the knowledge he possessed not exactly savory. After a moment or two, he finally responded, “Still in surgery. They’re trying to figure out why he’s not regaining consciousness.”

“Oh,” Billie groaned, his panic made obvious by the quickening beeps of his heart monitor.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine, Billie. It’s probably just a concussion…nothing to worry about,” Tre assured the panicking man, though he wasn’t exactly convinced of it himself.

“Y-yeah…right,” Billie whispered feebly. It was then that he became aware of a rising, burning sensation in an awkward area of his body. He shifted, trying to ease the pain, but his movements simply made it worse. “Fuuuuuck,” he whimpered.

“Um…yeah. Apparently, they had to fucking stitch up your ass since you were losing too much blood? I dunno, it grossed me out, so I stopped listening halfway through the doctor’s rant. And um…you’ve got some stitches on your face, too.”

Billie didn’t say anything, so Tre continued his uncomfortable ranting.

“The doctor insisted to know how you got so messed up, but I told him I didn’t know. He looked pissed, Beej, I don’t think he’s gonna let it go.”

Once again, Billie refrained from answering what Tre was hinting at. He made a promise to Mike, and he had no intentions of breaking it no matter how thoroughly Mike damaged him. In his own twisted way, Billie couldn’t help but notice he was still in love with Mike.

“Come on, Billie, say something! The doctor’s not gonna buy some made up story about this.”

“That’s why we just don’t tell him what happened,” Billie stated flatly, then added, “Why do I have all these tubes hooked up to me? I only go stitches.”

“You were severely dehydrated and lost too much blood, so…voilà,” Tre stated, pointing at the machines.

“Oh…and what about pain killers? I think they just wore off.”

“Right…where’d that sexy nurse go? She’s just too easy to mess with…” Tre confessed darkly, a mischievous grin making its way onto his lips before he trotted happily from the room. Billie was relieved at how easily Tre’s mind can be sidetracked…he knew, once Tre remembered where he was going in telling Billie about the doctor’s concern, that he would be unable to avoid the rape question. He groaned out loud, wishing desperately that he could get out of the godforsaken bed…but the pain he was in kept him glued to the spot. In seconds, a new visitor arrived in Billie’s room, momentarily keeping his mind off of the pain. A visitor he loved and despised all at the same time.

“Hey Billie,” Mike murmured, keeping his distance by standing at the end of the bed.

“How’d you know I was here?” Billie hissed.

“Don’t worry about that…I just needed to know you were ok,” Mike confessed, unable to meet Billie’s eye.

“Nope, you didn’t kill me. Satisfied?”

Mike shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other, glancing nervously up at the man he’d defiled sheer hours ago. Billie took the knowledge that Mike felt remorse for what he’d done as a small victory of sorts. It could very well be an indicator that he wasn’t completely insane…

“No, I didn’t want to hurt you.”

Billie laughed out loud, unable to contain the bitterness he felt as he spat, “Well, what the hell did you think you were doing?”

“Helping you.”

“I don’t fucking believe this.”

“You’ll see. Just give it time, and you’ll see I was right.”

Billie found himself hopelessly unable to formulate his anger into words, so he noiselessly fumed as Mike proceeded in keeping his gaze on everything else but Billie. It didn’t take long for Mike to be incapable of handling the silence.

“So are you going to come home after this?”

Billie thought for a moment, wondering if his decision to stay with Mike was the right choice for him anymore. Mike didn’t understand that violence couldn’t mend Billie’s emotional wounds, so how could that be a safe environment for the injured man to return to? Then again…leaving Mike could make him worse. He could start harming even more people all because Billie was too chickenshit to help his boyfriend. Upon coming to that realization, Billie knew what he had to do.

“Yes.”