The pain was a thin sheet of agony layered under dizziness. Every time Nick surfaced, he felt it, wondered at it, then slipped away again into a cocoon of comforting unconsciousness. Sometimes he tried to speak, but the words were disjointed and senseless even to him.

He heard a disconcerting beeping, annoying and consistent, that he didn’t recognize as his heartbeat on the monitor. The squeak of crepe-soled shoes against tile was muffled by the nice, steady humming in his ears. The occasional prodding and poking as his vital signs were checked and rechecked was only a minor disturbance in the huge, dark lack of awareness that covered him.

Sometimes there was a pressure on his hand, as if someone were holding it. And a murmuring—someone speaking to him. But he couldn’t quite drum up the energy to listen.

Once he dreamed of the sea in a hurricane, and watched himself leap off the deck of a pitching ship into blackness. But he never hit bottom. He just floated away.

There were other dreams. Zack standing behind him at a pinball machine, guiding his hands, laughing at the whirl of bells and whistles.

Then Cash was there, leaning on the machine, the smoke from his crooked cigarette curling up in front of his face.

He saw Rachel, smiling at him in a brightly lit room, the smell of pizza and garlic everywhere. And her eyes were bright, interested. Beautiful.

Then they were drenched with tears. Overflowing with apologies.

The old man, shouting at him. He looked so sick as he stumbled to the top of the stairs. You’ll never amount to anything. Knew it the first time I laid eyes on you. Then that blank, slack look would come over his face, and he could only whine, Where have you been? Where’s Zack? Is he coming back soon?

But Zack was gone, hundreds of miles away. There was no one to help.

Rio, frying potatoes and cackling over one of his own jokes. And Zack, always back to Zack, coming through the kitchen. You going to eat all the profits, kid? An easy grin, a friendly swipe as he went out again.

The gleaming piano—that polished dream—and Zack standing beside it, grinning foolishly. Then the glitter of the overhead light on the barrel of a gun. And Zack—

With a grunt, he threw off sleep, tried to struggle up.

“Hey, hey…take it easy, kid.” Zack sprang up from the chair beside the bed to press a gentle hand on Nick’s shoulder. “It’s okay. You got no place to go.”

He tried to focus, but the images around him kept slipping in and out like phantoms in shadows. “What?” His throat was sand-dry and aching. “Am I sick?”