"You walked here?" she asked.

"A helpful Boy Scout brought me most of the way," I said.

She sighed. "Well, it's been a slow day. They should be able to see to you shortly."

"That's super," I said. "Because it hurts like hell."

"I can get you some Tylenol," the nurse said primly.

"I don't have a headache. I have a four-inch piece of steel in my leg."

She passed me a paper cup and two little white tablets. I sighed and took them.

"Heh," the orderly said after she left. "Don't worry too much. They'll get you something when the doctor sees to you."

"With this kind of loving care, I probably won't need it."

"Don't be too hard on her," the orderly said. "You should see what people try so that they can get to some painkillers. Vicodin, morphine, that kind of thing."

"Yeah," I said. "Hey, man, can I ask you something?"

"Sure." He had brought a bowl of ice with him, and he started sealing it into plastic bags, which he started packing around my leg. "This should numb it a little, and maybe take down some of the swelling. It ain't a local, but it's what I've got."

The ice didn't actually burst into steam upon touching me, even though it felt like it should have. The pain didn't exactly lessen, but it did suddenly feel a little more distant. "Thanks, man. Hey, I was hoping I could talk to a couple of guys I know while I was here," I said. "They're EMTs. Gary Simmons and Jason Lamar."

The orderly lifted his eyebrows. "Simmons and Lamar, sure. They drive an ambulance."

"I know. Are they around?"

"They were on shift last night," he said. "But it's the end of the month and they might be on their swing shift. I'll ask."

"Appreciate it," I said. "If Simmons is there, tell him a school buddy is here."

"Sure. If I do that, though, you gotta do something for me and fill out these forms."

I eyed the clipboard and picked up the pen. "Tell the doc to sign me up for carpal tunnel surgery when he gets that thing out of me. Two birds with one stone."

The orderly grinned. "I'll do that."

He left me to fill in forms, which didn't used to take terribly long to fill out since I didn't have any kind of insurance. One of these days, when I had the money, I was going to have to get some. They say that when you pay for insurance you're really buying peace of mind. It might make me feel peaceful to think of how much money the company was probably going to lose on me in the long run. If I lived my whole life in the open, as I had been since I'd come to Chicago, they might be dealing with me for two or three centuries. I wondered what the yearly markup would be for a two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old.