Tastes like trouble: II

The clocked ticked slow, time was stretching as long as it could for me. My left eye had completely swollen shut. I was off the street. Or, still in the street and completely naked. I assume that the bums clothing was probably in better shape than my own. But money was on the hospital.
A blade of light slashed through my iris as my one good eye parted to confirm my state. Hospital. The walls were white, everything was white. I felt like a shit floating in the bowl. Moving was even harder than it had been the last time I was conscious. I was dry, tapped, broken, empty. I closed my eye and put my full weight into the bed, and waited for someone to flush.

Time passes in the normal tick, tick, tick fashion… but less like a bomb. So tick, tock, tick and so on. The nurse comes in. I start to feel better, so she must have slipped me something good. The bed inclines. Something was about to happen. I open my eye to see the nurse leave and a house of a man enter. He wore a MMA t-shirt, it was tight, like his skin had been painted. Tattoos down each arm. His hair was short under an ill fashioned fedora. He sat down in a relic of easy chair that was near the bed. My angel of death was going to take his time? I waited for the clock to slow.
He produced a notepad and a pair of reading glasses. He sat his hat on the floor and put the glasses on. “Can you speak?”
I responded quietly, I wasn’t sure if my voiced worked. I was glad my ears had somewhat recovered. “What is your name?” he asked.
Thank you, crossed my mind. He wasn’t going to kill me. Or if he was, at least I wouldn’t be buried as a john doe, a number painted on a wooden box in a hole on the edge of town. The people responsible for my current condition knew my name. Being asked my name was a good sign that this guy didn’t come into the room with murder on his to do list. I tell him my name. He wrote it down.
“We thought you were dead, the way you went down in the street. To everyone’s surprise you’re not.” He tapped his pen against the pad and looked over the top of his glasses. “So… tell me your story?”
I asked him if he was a cop. He said no, he was something else. I told him I didn’t have a story and he asked for some gratitude. He heard me say if he wasn’t a cop my name was gratitude enough, and if he was a reporter he could fuck himself.
“I assure you, I am law enforcement. Get some rest. We will talk again in the morning.”
I assured him we might talk again if he produced a badge. He laughed and put his hat on. Once it got quiet I shut my monitors off and found my legs. I looked at my chart. Broken this, bruised that. I had fractured something in my head and my shoulder. I felt each trauma individually as I read them off my grocery list of pain. I wrap the bed sheet around my tattered hide and look for pants. I wasn’t going to stick around.