He sat on the edge of a gurney in the ER, his crisp white shirt no longer crisp but wrinkled, unbuttoned, and sporting four small holes where the taser darts had torn through the fabric. His flesh wounds had been properly cleaned and bandaged and were hardly more than a discomfort, whereas all the muscles in his chest and abdomen ached like the worst kind of postworkout hangover imaginable. Larkin’s head was pounding, and every time he closed his eyes, unprovoked associations played out of sequence—people and places and times mixed up like someone had taken out every single card from his Rolodex and replaced them at random.

He let out a shallow breath and focused on doing up his shirt, the ambience of the hospital seeping into his concentration: the whoosh of the AC, telephones ringing at the nurses’ station, medical lingo being punted back and forth between EMTs, nurses, and physicians, the groans, cries, and snores of patients, and somewhere, a faulty machine had been beeping obnoxiously for forty-three seconds straight.

Doyle’s deep baritone, tense where it was usually as smooth and smoky as Laphroaig, could be heard moving down the hall and toward the curtained wall that made up Larkin’s “room.” “—Just want to make sure, because he suffered a traumatic brain injury about eighteen years ago.”

“I understand your concern, Mr. Doyle,” a tired-sounding but ever-polite doctor answered before drawing back the curtain, the rings jangling. She was about Doyle’s age, honey-brown hair drawn back into a no-nonsense ponytail. She wore no makeup, and the shadows under her eyes suggested she was on the latter half of a very long shift. “Mr. Larkin?”

Larkin stopped what he was doing, his gaze shifting to Doyle, who hadn’t stepped into the cramped space, then back to the doctor. “Yes.”

“Because your partner said you briefly lost consciousness at the scene, we wanted to run a few tests before discharging you.” She opened the manila folder she held in one hand, flipped the pages quick enough to scan pertinent details, then said, “Your EKG came back normal, as did your CAT scan.”

“I had a CAT scan.”

She seemed confused and cocked her head to one side.

“I’m asking,” Larkin clarified. “I don’t—remember a CAT scan.”

“Yes, you did.”

“If it came back normal, why don’t I remember the process.”

“Some people do suffer a more serious, adverse reaction to being tased. It’s rare, but it definitely happens. They can experience anxiety, lethargy, brain fog, even a brief lapse in memory within that first initial hour. Studies show that these individuals have a cognitive responsiveness about on par with that of a seventy-nine-year-old.”

“But I don’t forget,” Larkin said. He further emphasized his point by adding, “Anything.”