“Sir,” the guard says. “A word?”

“Please.”

Animal instinct elects flight. Henry pumps left, then rockets off to the right. The guard wobbles but manages to grab the back of Henry’s jacket, tearing him to a stop. Duty overrides the impulse to squirm out of the jacket, because Henry will not abandon the medicine in its pocket. Thrusting both arms frees the fabric, and he sprints past the first set of doors, through the shopping cart atrium then out to the pavement, and he’s so close now, so close that he can just about reach out and touch the passenger door, behind which is Junior, and when he looks behind him for the guard, a second one spears him into the side panel of the truck.

The second guard pins Henry facedown on the sidewalk. Henry thrashes and screams until a knee slams square between his shoulder blades, zippering him silent, scraping his breath out of him as if with a rusty spoon. He gasps and gasps, swallowing heat but no oxygen. The guard’s knee is a stake, forcing him to writhe like a salamander nailed to a board. The concrete is a cheese grater against his cheek. He can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t fight, can’t think. The thrashes ebb down to squirms, the gasps down to whimpers. As his limbs deflate, his wrists get wrangled into a set of zip-tie cuffs over the small of his back. His bound wrists are used as a lever to hoist the rest of him to his feet in a way that keeps him bent over, head down, submissive.

Oxygen returns to him in tiny, emphysemic straw sucks. When his chest gets pressed against the truck bed, he turns his gaze to the tailgate, away from all their garbage-bagged belongings and Junior, and instead looks back to where they’d come from, as if searching for the point where they’d made a wrong turn. A foot kicks the inner arch of his boot and spreads his legs. Questions are asked but nothing is said. Hands pat up and down his ankles, waist, and sides. Whatever strength he’s got left is spent on twisting his shoulders and hips just to make things difficult. Puny spitballs of resistance.

They find the Advil first. Henry spits air. A threat to call the police turns into a call to the police. A hand digs into the front pocket of his pants, withdraws his driver’s license, job interview note cards, and the dashboard cigarette burner. The one quarter, two nickels, and three pennies remain in place.