Page 86 of Not Mine to Rescue

That she was.

“And you bagged that shit. Fuck, Wombat. I’m impressed.”

“Plan B. How and where? You owe me.”

He grinned. “CVS. Dual Highway, next to the lube. Idiot.”

“No prescription?”

“Nope.”

Well. “Thanks.”

He kept staring at me.

“You’re being creepy.”

“A lawyer… a woman lawyer. Damn.” He tipped his head.

“Fuck off.”

“You know, you could swing by there on your way home after all this, pick it up, drop it off in person. Maybe shoot for round two and make sure it’s worth the fifty bucks?”

“More like round…thirty?” I hadn’t kept track.

His eyes widened. “You have officially been designated as a god. I wanna learn those tricks, because…shit man. That’s fucking unreal.”

I met his eyes and said earnestly and with full seriousness, “There’s no trick to it. You just gotta treat ’em right.”

He didn’t answer right away. Then he laughed once. “That rules me out.”

Fuck him for making me laugh when Dumb Ass was fighting for his life. “You dick.”

“You got that right. Welp. I’ve got shittin’ kitten bootie duty. See ya, man.” He used my shoulder to stand up. As he did, a grimace tightened his jaw. His first few steps were wobbly and slow.

I felt for him. He’d almost died. Organ damage. Broken vertebrae, ribs, collarbone, and more. He barely pulled through. The residual pain was right there for everyone to witness. No wonder he was using more often.

Another mental note went onto my list. Tell Walt he needed help. Maybe even tell Snake to watch Fly’s ass for signs he was getting hooked. The last thing we needed was a junkie in our midst.

“Random?”

I looked up. The on-call vet was calling for me. “How’s Dumb Ass?”

He winced at the name. “Stable. We’re going to keep him here for two days to make sure the toxins are flushed from his system. It was close.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Is he awake?”

“He’ll be coming around in about a half hour. Lemon’s with him.”

“I wanna be back there if it’s not going to crowd you too much.”

“Of course.” He led me to the surgery lab where they had DA hooked up to a machine. A tube snaked from the filtration device to his neck. Another IV was inserted in his back leg. They’d restrained him and put a muzzle on. Pretty standard stuff to protect the staff and to keep him from chewing at injection sites. I found a rolling stool and dragged it over next to Lemon. She looked beat.

“You saved his life. Thanks.” I leaned into her, and we touched shoulder to shoulder in order to let her know I owed her.

She wrapped an arm around me and squeezed. “He’s not completely out of the woods yet.”

No, but he wasn’t convulsing or dying. I wrapped both hands around his head and rubbed his ears and jaw the way he liked it.