“Davey, you got some more blue?”
David leers for his alloy nightstand that echoes out a great ring whenever his wrist nicks the side. Out he pulls some aqua-blue mouthwash from the bottom drawer and tosses it into my hand. Brittle-boned fingers unscrew the ribbed cap and a few gulps ache my throat into new burns.
“Don’t drink it all now, gotta leave some for Dewey.”
“Screw Dewey—he can have his sip, he doesn’t need this more than me.”
Shifting from his bed David reaches for the bottle just for me to step it back.
“What are you doing?”
“I need this, man.”
“Give it here.”
His frail body dangles bandages and wraps and poultices and I find his yellow-bloodshot eyes beading with dilated pupils. Lurching at me with his supine body he misses my arms and falls over to the ground for support—a crack bellows out on the welded metal sheets. He shouts for his wrist and it looks like a node of bone shot through his forearm’s sheet of muscle of skin.
Clutching the bottle still in the crook of my elbow, I reach out for David and he bats my hand away to slap down onto his elbow and the rest of his burnt flesh drops to the floor; his undone coverings on his arm slap the floor and with a few more crunches he flies into a seizure.
“Oh my god, man—let me. . .”
The mouthwash nests in my off-hand as I kneel down to finger for some divots in his bones for a grip on his body; I push him to his side so that his head stops rapping the metal and run down hallway through hallway for the medbay—there Dewey sits pricking his fingers on bloodied syringes.
“Dew, he’s—he’s. . .”
The wind drops my chest and the mouthwash shifts into view from my rear.
“What are you doing with that?
Vats and tubes knock from his lab desk as he lunges from his swivel chair and his track-marked arms overpower my palms. All out of breath I watch him wire me down into submission as the plastic clatters on the floor and cry out in great pains.
