“Take a number,” Danny said and vomited blood onto the street.

Luther didn’t like the sight or the sound of it. He got a grip of Danny’s hand and started to tug him to his feet.

“Oh, no, no,” Danny said. “Don’t do that. Let me kneel here a bit. Actually, let me crawl. I’m going to crawl to that curb, Luther. Gonna crawl to it.”

Danny, true to his word, crawled from the center of the street to the sidewalk. When he reached it, he crawled a few more feet over the curb and then lay down. Luther sat beside him. Danny eventually worked himself up to a sitting position. He held on to his knees as if they were the only things keeping him from falling off the earth.

“Fuck,” he said eventually. “I’m busted up pretty good.” He smiled through cracked lips as a high whistle preceded his every breath. “Wouldn’t have a handkerchief, would you?”

Luther dug in his other pocket and came back with one. He handed it to him.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Luther said and something about the phrase struck them both funny at the same time and they laughed together in the soft night.

Danny dabbed at the blood on his face until the handkerchief was destroyed by it. “I came to see Nora. I got things to say to her.”

Luther put an arm around Danny’s shoulder, something he’d never ventured to do with a white man before but which seemed perfectly natural under the circumstances. “She needs her sleep, and you need a hospital.”

“I need to see her.”

“Puke some more blood and tell me again.”

“No, I do.”

Luther leaned in. “You know what your breath sound like?”

Danny shook his head.

“A fucking canary’s,” Luther said. “Canary with buckshot in its chest. You’re dying here.”

Danny shook his head again. Then he bent over and heaved his chest. Nothing came out. He heaved again. Again, nothing came out but a sound, the sound Luther had described, the high-pitched hiss of a desperate bird.

“How far’s Mass General from here?” Danny bent over and vomited some more blood into the gutter. “I’m a little too fucked-up to remember.”

“’Bout six blocks,” Luther said.

“Right. Long blocks.” Danny winced and laughed at the same time and spit some blood onto the sidewalk. “I think my ribs are broken.”

“Which ones?”

“All of ’em,” Danny said. “I’m hurt kinda bad here, Luther.”

“I know.” Luther turned and crawled over behind Danny. “I can push you up.”

“’Preciate that.”

“On three?”

“Fine.”

“One, two, three.” Luther put his shoulder into the big man’s back, pushed hard, and Danny let out a series of loud groans and one sharp yelp, but then he was on his feet. Wavering, but on his feet.

Luther slid under him and draped Danny’s left arm over his shoulder.

“Mass General’s going to be filled,” Danny said. “Fuck. Every hospital. My boys in blue going to be filling emergency rooms all over this city.”