Needles & Sins Read Online Free Page B

intersection two blocks down, but nobody had passed through the sighing wind on our street in five minutes. It was desolate. And lonely. More than a little creepy. The wind felt empty as hopelessness, and tasted hot and end-of-day stale as broken dreams. When I had moved into this office, this had been a vibrant section of the city. Now it had about as much going for it as I did.
    “Let’s go in through the alley,” I suggested, not quite ready to bash in a window in full view of the empty street. I picked up one of the paving stones from the front walkway, and then we walked around an unkempt browning evergreen shrub to slip into the shadows of the alley. There wasn’t a light on in any of the buildings nearby, and in seconds, we were literally feeling our way down the wall of the building to a window.
    “This should be the window in the hall near the first waiting room,” I said, raising my hand to bash the rock through it. She pulled a t-shirt over her head and held it out to me, while standing in the alley wearing only a bra and pants.
    “Wrap this around your hand,” she said. “We can’t afford for you to cut your hand now.”
    Appreciating the irony, I used the shirt to wrap and protect my hand, and then brought the rock down on the glass.
    In the movies, glass smashes like so much electric tinsel. This glass was tougher. My hand bounced off it on the first try, and again on the second, though this time the edge of the rock made a chiseled, white-crusted mark.
    On the third try, after I exposed the edge of the rock better, and swung my arm harder, the glass gave way with a crackling splash of sound. My arm slipped into the warmth of the inside of my old office, and jabbed painfully on a shard of glass still stuck in the base of the window. But the protection of her shirt paid off, and I pulled back my operating hand unscathed. In moments, using her shirt as protection, I had cleaned off enough of the ledge of free form glass that she could help me up and into the office.
    Once inside, I found a chair and handed it through the window to her. In seconds we were both inside. I pulled the window shades on my old small surgical center room to close out prying eyes, and flipped the switch to turn on the lights. The electric still worked.
    Another bonus. My ex-office was on a deserted street in a shady side of the city and was locked from the outside…but still had electricity. Janis had surely chosen her surgeon well.
    I almost cried as I looked around at my old operating table, equipment drawers and red-stickered bodily waste disposal can. I hadn’t performed an operation in weeks now. And I missed it so bad. It had been my life…when I had a life.
    Janis didn’t look around. She wasn’t here to reminisce. She stripped off her bra and pants, and laid down on the table in the center of the room. “I’m ready,” she announced.
    I wasn’t. I asked for her to wait a moment and walked out of the bright room back into the black of the hallway and into the shadowy grey of my old office. The furniture was still there as well, and I pulled open a drawer of my desk. It was empty.
    But I felt with my fingers to the way-back of the drawer until I found a small steel stub. I pushed it, and a small door opened. My fingers slipped in, pulled out the glass container, and held it up to the dim light.
    A small secret stash of Maker’s Mark. Half full. I twisted off the stopper, took a long gulp and held it in my mouth, enjoying the burn as it settled on my gums and strained at the back of my throat.
    I coughed when I swallowed, and said “Fuck yeah” to a vacant room. Then I stalked back to the OR, to do what I was being paid for.
    To kill a woman.
    A woman who was paying me to kill her. My only saving grace here, I figured, was the fact that I would be wearing rubber gloves. I pulled on a pair as soon as I got back to the room with my bottle.
    “Care to share?” Janis asked.
    When I cocked an eyebrow at the question,