After that — or before that; these are islands of awareness in a foggy voyage, and I’m not sure of the order in which I reached them, or whether they were really there — I remember being terrified that Beano would find me. Then I recalled that I was safe from Beano. He was paid off. It was the other people I owed who were dangerous. Like Cassidy. Of course he was dead; that was the heavy thing on his side of the scale, that I was having such trouble balancing. He didn’t seem angry about it. He looked sad, in fact, and I wondered if I’d told him about the apartment burning. I meant to ask him why he didn’t have a hole in his face, but I don’t know if I did, or if he answered.

Curiously, none of those islands had pain as part of its shoreline. The first one that did involved, again, not getting enough air, and being in darkness. But this time I was on my back on something level and hard, and the smell was of livestock and clean straw. I heard the rise and fall of voices at a distance, and suddenly a thump, something striking wood, very close to my face. Reflex made me flinch. That, in turn, started my nerve endings speaking to my brain. I’m fairly certain that the endpoint of that memory isn’t random, that I passed out.

Sherrea’s voice — Sherrea’s? — shouting, and a bang like a screen door, and a fresh breeze. I opened my eyes on a black satin sky full of stars and the dry-brush streak of the Milky Way. Somewhere under that sky was my body, which was as full of pain as an orange is of juice. But I didn’t have to live in it. I recognized the effect of some painkilling drug, and something else; a distant relative of the healing process, in that it relieved suffering that healing couldn’t handle. I closed my eyes again.

“… broken,” Sherrea was saying not far away. “Can you fix it, Josh?” There was a frantic edge on her casual words.

I was marginally aware of cloth being drawn back, of contact with one of my hands. “Oya Dances,” said a new voice, softly, as if there was a terrible thing described in it. “LeRoy, quick, get Mags out of bed and tell her to prep. I’ll meet her in the surgery. Sher, fingers here — that’s it — and monitor the pulse. Do you know CPR?”

I was glad I wasn’t there. It sounded scary.

For a while my mind kept working while my body was giving notice to quit, which is a sensation I don’t recommend to anyone. Memory, dream, and drugs collaborated to open doors that I wouldn’t have so much as walked past, had they been real doors, and had I been given a choice.

Behind one was a roomful of water, where I swam, badly, looking for an exit. It didn’t help that the water was full of people floating. They were naked and limp; their limbs waved like seaweed. Their eyes were open on nothing. Mick as I’d first met him, tall and athletic, with a bullet hole that went all the way through him. Dana, her pale hair clumped and writhing around her face, more alive than she was. Theo, his glasses on his nose despite the water, his head at a quizzical angle. Cassidy, a little blood trailing behind him like bright red thread and a half smile on his lips.