The Ram Read Online Free

walk on his own. He doesn’t allow Riley a chance to protest; he lifts him off his feet and places him on the exam table. The motion dishevels his boss’s work coveralls. Double Al tugs at the zipper running the length of his torso before swiping a magazine off a spare chair and collapsing into it.
    The tissue paper lining on the table crinkles under Riley’s slightly padded tan pants. He leaves smudges of dirt and grease on the pristine whiteness. The pain is still unbearable. He looks down to his boot and wonders if he should pull his foot out of it before the doctor gets there, so he can assess the damage on his own. It’s only now he notices his foot is surrounded by liquid, cool and thick. Some of his nerve endings are noting wetness instead of pulsing out the same distress signal again and again. He bends over and shoves a finger into the top of his boot and pulls it out. It’s covered in blood just beginning to coagulate.
    “Keep your hands out of there,” Double Al commands as he absently flips the pages of the outdoorsman magazine before throwing it to the floor.
    A light mounted on the ceiling tile catches Riley’s attention. It shines blue and a chime rings out every five seconds. The sound is insistent but pleasant and Riley knows that someone must be dying somewhere.
    The doctor comes into the room and washes his hands briskly under the tap without greeting Riley or Double Al. The nurse who led them into the back room pulls out a blood pressure cuff and rolls up a sleeve on Riley’s plaid work shirt. He winks at Riley before pumping away at the black bulb attached to the sleeve.
    “What’ve we got?” the doctor asks as he shakes the water on his fingers to the floor. He snaps on white exam gloves. Riley wonders if they’re latex or nitrile. The sight of them reminds him of the nitrous he’d be given before his old dentist would pull his baby teeth. “It’s your foot that’s the problem?”
    “Might be my foot,” Riley says and grins at Double Al, “but could be inattention to detail.”
    The doctor doesn’t laugh or warn Riley he’s about to swing his leg up onto the table. Riley swears under his breath at the sharp shock brought on by the motion. The doctor walks to a drawer and pulls out a large metal tool that looks better suited for cutting wire or shearing sheep.
    “Let’s get that boot off and take a look. You want to tell me what happened?”
    Riley’s eyes dart toward Double Al. He doesn’t want to say too much, get his boss and his old family friend in trouble. Of course he’s not looking to sue; years of contract law and application of just the right diction and wording to dominate any situation has taken away his stomach for the game. It’s certainly a game he won’t play against someone he actually respects.
    “Worksite miscalculation,” is all Riley will give the ER doctor.
    Doctor Lemic cuts down the back, front and sides of the boot, sectioning it so it can splay open like a flower with heavy, droopy petals. The nurse helps peel back the layers of leather and the doctor lifts the toe of the boot gently away from the foot and places the sodden mess on a tray behind him.
    Riley keeps his face turned away from the mangle he knows is there. He watches Double Al stand up from the chair, his eyes wide and white against his dark complexion. The doctor clicks his tongue, makes a sound of displeasure. Riley can feel the blood that had been contained by his boot slide down his ankle and trickle into the pit of his knee as the doctor keeps his foot hiked high into the air. He wonders how ashen his skin is on his body. He wonders if he could be mistaken for a ghost.
    “Oh, buddy,” the doctor says and Riley forces himself to look.
    The foot itself, the heel, the instep, the ball, is a mass of swollen black and blue punctuated by small swatches of skin still their normal white. But his toes are not right. His toes can’t even be rightfully named toes anymore. Five pulpy,