“How come you don’t have proper emergency contacts listed in your phone?” he asks. “They said they called me because I was the last number you dialed.”

“You’re good enough,” I assure him. “You came.” That means something. To rush to someone’s bedside. It means something.

Ow. Breathe.

“Nurse!” Brick shouts. “Someone get in here!”

“I lost you in the crowd,” I murmur. That’s what comes back first, the moment when our hands slipped apart.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t know what happened. You were there and then you weren’t.” He strokes my cheek. “You’re so damn tiny.”

“I’m tougher than I look.”

“At least you weren’t arrested,” he tells me. Arrested?

The night, the march, the melee. It all comes rushing back. The baton. Falling down. Someone knocking the cop off me. Who?

“Ow,” I repeat. The pain is blinding, stabbing. I let my eyes close.

“Nurse!” Brick calls. “We need some pain meds in here!”

“It’s not time yet,” a woman’s voice says. “Stop yelling, please.”

“Look at her face,” Brick thunders. “It’s time.”

Ow.

They argue. Brick is fierce. You wouldn’t expect it of someone in his line of work, but he’s fiercest when he’s fighting for someone else. I wonder if he knows that about himself. Or if he’d want to know. It’s probably not great for his street cred. I laugh to myself.

The pain is less now. I’m floating.

Brick’s hands are on mine. “You’re okay,” he says. “You’re okay.”

I’m not, though, am I? My shoulder is on fire. Even as the pain dulls from the meds, it still smolders. Is it broken? Am I broken?

“How’s the other girl?” I ask. The one I was running with. We tried to get away.

“What other girl?”

“I don’t know. There was a girl.”

Brick shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

Sadness floods me. I don’t know who she is. I’ll never know how the night turned out for her.

My hand relaxes under Brick’s. It’s hard to hold the bar anymore. I don’t see the reason to try. He places my fingers gently on my stomach. “Rest,” he says. “I’ll come see you again later.”

Brick’s here. He’s here for me. Things are okay even though they’re not okay. I can sleep.

I wonder what this medicine is. I can feel it getting all up in my veins, softening my body into sleep. Whatever it is, it’s the good stuff. Lucky my job comes with health insurance. This is going to be expensive.

OFFICER YOUNG

“They can’t keep this up,” O’Donnell says. “They’re gonna wear themselves out.”

“Not before we drown in paperwork,” says the desk sergeant. “Christ, look at all these arrest reports.”