Getting out of the car, I started running to the door of his house, not even stopping to press the button to lock my vehicle. In fact, I don’t even think I closed the door. “I’m almost there,” I wheezed, realizing exactly how unfit I was. I also thought about the mug Ellis had bought me last month that had ‘I never run with scissors… the last two words in that sentence are unnecessary’ on it. True story! But after this, I would be open to looking at doing some exercise, the key word being some, though.
The door opened before I could knock on it, and Garrett stood on the other side looking at the screen of his phone. It must have been the text from his brother because he pulled me inside and then squinted over at my house, like he was trying to see through the walls.
“Put me on speakerphone,” Raoul asked. After I’d done it and confirmed it was on, he said, “G, keep her safe. We’re on our way, but I want eyes on the property. No one goes in or out of it until we get there. If you see someone leaving, I want a full description and the direction they went in.”
“Roger dodger,” Garret confirmed, not looking away from the house.
“Don’t engage and risk injuring yourself even more. Just watch and report.”
Sighing, Garrett rolled his eyes at me. “I said ok. Jesus, you’re worse than Mom,” he muttered, and then hung up.
“You’re hurt?”
Eyes back on my house, he nodded. “Yeah, got some burns on my back. Raoul said you could look at them but you’re to stay away from my butty boo-boo.”
I figured the last bit was pretty self-explanatory, so I didn’t question it. I did have two questions I wanted to ask, though, so I did. “He’s not the boss of me, if your ass needs looked at, just shout.” Shooting me a grin over his shoulder, he snorted and then went back to watching my house. “I have some questions for you. Is it bad? And how do you sit on a wounded ass?”
“Second degree burns and carefully.”
Burns had been one of the things I’d always hated. You can stitch up and dress a wound, but burns? Then again, it beat losing a limb. But a burn on your ass?
One of the doctors I’d worked with after I’d graduated had been burned in a house fire when he was a teenager, and the skin on his arm looked painful when he’d shown me. He said it was like touching your face after you’d had a cavity fixed at the dentist, and that description had stuck with me since then. He also said that the best thing for most burns was ice and cold water (just not directly on the skin with the ice), but it was also one of the most painful things to have on it so to make sure to keep on top of the patient’s pain medication.
Sure enough, a week later, a woman came in with a burn on her leg from a firework, and she had been unconscious because someone had poured a bucket of ice water on it. It was lucky for her that they’d been storing their beers and drinks in it, but also unlucky because it had been so painful that she’d thrown up and passed out. After that, she freaked out anytime one of us mentioned doing any sort of cold treatment on it.
I’d been watching Garrett during my thinking and noticed how he kept rubbing his teeth with the sleeve of the Henley was wearing. “Did you injure your mouth, too?”
Turning his body to face me, he leaned against the window frame and glared at me. “How long does it take for this shit to wear off?”
“Uhh, what shit?”
“The coffee, Rose. How long?”
Thinking through all the things I’d read and heard about coffee, I tried to figure his question out. It had a laxative effect, that first coffee triggering a poop, too much caffeine, heart tachycardia, it was all there. There was also the fact that cocaine was smuggled in coffee sometimes, too, and only a couple of months ago someone had overdosed in Florida after they’d drank some because there had been drugs in it. That had me up on my feet and crossing the room immediately, grabbing his wrist to take his pulse.
“What are your symptoms?” I asked, reaching up with my other hand to feel his forehead.
“Blue. Fucking. Teeth.”
So, in my defense, coming home to a wrecked house had made me forget what I’d done to Raoul’s coffee the night before. Also in my defense, I’d been fairly certain that the trick wouldn’t work because the blue would show up after he added creamer so he’d see it – which is what had occurred to me this afternoon.