Page 19 of Dr Feel Good
“For when your pain ratchets up to a hundred,” I said with sarcasm.
She scowled.
“In case you didn’t fucking hear me, I offered you a choice.”
“If you have alcohol, keep your pills.”
“I do, butyouaren’t allowed any.”
She threw a sullen look at me.
“One or the other. I’m counting to five, then I’ll decide for you.”
“I’ll count to ten and give you my answer.”
Folding my arms, I lifted a brow.
“Fine,” she huffed. “Give me the sleeping pill.”
I lifted her again and carried her back to the bedroom, throwing a longing look at my abandoned soup.
“I’ve always wanted a fireplace,” she said as I situated her back on the bed. “My trailer gets so fucking cold in the winter,” she revealed in a conversational tone, her argumentative mood gone.
“Some trailers have fireplaces,” I replied, unsure what else to say.
At one time, my parents had a luxury RV that came with a fireplace.
“Yeah, well, mine doesn’t.”
“What do you do during the winter?”
“Turn on the heat and bundle up.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked after a heartbeat of silence. For sympathy? Money? She wouldn’t get either from me.
She shrugged. “You said you wanted to know more about me. That’s a fact about me.”
“I meant your profession, where you’re from, and why the hell you were out there with three gunshot wounds.”
Relevant information that would give me clues to her real identity.
“And here I was about to tell you my favorite color and the name of my childhood pet. Purple and Patches, by the way.”
“And what type of animal was Patches?”
“A raccoon,” she revealed, shocking the hell out of me. “She wasn’t really my pet. She just hung around my childhood home, and I’d give her food whenever I saw her. She started to follow me around at one point. I wanted to bring her inside, but my parents got upset that I even asked.”
“As they should. Who would allow vermin into their home?”
“Raccoons aren’t vermin!” she protested. “They’re highly intelligent animals that can adapt to many environments.”
“They also carry diseases,” I reminded her.
She waved me off. “Well, Patches didn’t.” She looked at me. “You have any pets?”
Not in the sense she was thinking.
“No,” I said simply, refusing to detail my NSFW hobby. “Do you have any real pets now?”
