Page 132 of Romeo

Fuck the light. He was going to resist for as long as he could. He wasn’t going willingly. He would have to be dragged kicking and screaming?—

“Romeo!”

God or Satan, he couldn’t tell which, had a very familiar voice.

Damn, they were trying to trick him by using Wick’s voice. He wasn’t falling for it.

“Rome!”

“Not goin’,” he moaned. “Fuck off.” Why did it even hurt to talk? Or,hell, breathe?

What the fuck?Why was he feeling pain at all? He was dead. He wanted a goddamn refund if you still suffered after death.

“Rome! Wake up before I hafta call a fuckin’ ambulance.”

What?Shouldn’t it be the coroner?

“You ain’t Wick.” Even saying those three words was a damn struggle.

“Who am I?”

“The fuckin’ devil.”

“Been called that before.”

When he lifted his eyelids again, a sharp, shooting pain caused his brain to throb. “You’re tryin’ to trick me with that light.”

“It’s my fuckin’ phone, you dumbass.”

“Why do you need a—” He tried to block the blinding light with this hand, but his arms weighed too much for him to lift. “Am I dead?”

“Sure don’t sound like it. Checked your pulse and you still got one. And since you’re bein’ a dick, my uneducated guess is no, you ain’t dead.”

That would explain the unbearable agony in every inch of his body. Or at least in the parts he still could feel.

He’d been in plenty of fights, including bar fights and prison brawls. Never had it hurt this fucking bad.

“Should get you to the hospital, anyway.”

“Should but won’t.”

“Not sure you got a choice, prez.”

“Always got a choice.”

“Sure, a choice of life or fuckin’ death. Could have internal injuries. Brain could be bleedin’. Lungs punctured. Who the fuck knows?”

“When the fuck did you turn into an EMT?” Every damn word uttered was a chore.

Wick huffed and threw up his hands. “Whatever, brother. Just so you know, you look like week-old roadkill right now. Musta done somethin’ stupid to spark this. Got every fuckin’ right to continue to be a dumbass.”

Romeo could agree with that. He was a dumbass, but not because he didn’t want to get medical attention. “Call Sparky.”

Sparky, a fellow Knight, was also a volunteer firefighter. He sometimes could pull off some medical shit in a pinch. Stitches, cleaning up wounds from fights, pulling debris out of road rash… That kind of shit.

Romeo wouldn’t trust him to do brain surgery. Or a vasectomy.

Wick huffed, “Sparky ain’t a miracle worker.”

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