Kairos - Blood (MxM) | Book 2 | ✅

13.Every Goodbye

'Through here' the woman had said. It meant a double metal door that slid with a loud screech raking at my nerves. How very comfortable for a patient.

Henry remained with the woman outside and I found myself in a two hundred-something square foot room.

Unlike the rest of the building, the walls here were painted in an impeccable white and a gray linoleum spread neatly over an even floor. Hospital equipment scattered near the walls. Beds, mobile surgery lamps, some other square machines with buttons - life monitoring equipment, maybe? And a few brand new metal cabinets. In the middle of the room presided a curtain concealed area.

Beep-beep-beep. A machine counted heartbeats.

Huff-puff. Was that a respirator?

I approached the curtain and almost tripped on a plastic shoe bags dispenser. Two, one for each foot. Swoosh-swish. I was rather noisy. Maybe Bill was asleep and couldn't hear my clumsy movements.

Slowly, I pulled the curtain aside and took a peek inside.

Bill...

The area was large enough to hold a proper hospital bed, machines, nightstands, chairs and even an armchair and a coffee table.

Shit, Jack, how many of your guys do get shot since you have this sort of setup?

I plopped in the armchair and set the food on the table, not bothering with how noisy I was.

Bill was a pale cocoon on life support.

He can't even breathe on his own.

I gawked at the patient and felt nothing. That nothing made my limbs numb and squeezed mercilessly at my heart and stomach.

Is this your future, Jack?

Screech. The door slid open and I jumped up and out of my stupor. How long had I been sitting there?

A hand that was too small to be Jack's gripped the curtain and pulled it aside.

"Hi," a strange kid waved at me.

He couldn't have been older than seventeen. He even wore a school uniform. A private High School as far as I could tell. He put down his backpack and paced around the bed.

"Hi," I blurted.

"You work with Bill?" he asked with a dull expression dominating his youthful face.

"No. I," What was I to Bill? "He helped my brother for a while."

"Sean? That idiot?" the kid uttered with a grin.

"Hey, no way to talk about... Wait no, you're right about that. Sean is an idiot." I shrugged.

The kid snickered.

"How do you know the idiot?" I wondered.

"Bill or Sean?" he asked.

"Both."

"Bill's my dad. Sean's the idiot he brought home a few times to help me with math."

Shit. I looked down at the cocoon that Bill had been reduced to. He has a family. He's a dad. Fuck. I've never thought about that.

"Sean mentioned a brother so you must be Steve?" the kid went on.

"Yes," I answered and took a moment to study him.

A long face, with similar features to Bill, but his eyes were big and the nose smaller. A pretty mother.

"I'm Tom."