I still didn’t know if Chance was all right. He was on his side, arms folded to cushion the ribs, his eyes closed. He didn’t speak, but his face was better than I’d thought. Blood, yeah, but none of the cuts were deep. I used my shirt to clean him up.

“Gibs.” It was a whisper.

“Yeah, man. I’m here.”

“That kind of sucked.” His eyes stayed closed. His lips twitched.

“Dude, are you smiling?”

“I don’t know. My face hurts too much to be sure.”

“Why are you smiling?”

“I couldn’t find a tool kit.”

That made no sense. I thought again, Concussion. Or shock.

Then he opened his hand, and showed me what looked like a pair of scissors, curved at the tips, some kind of surgical clamp.

Chance’s voice was very soft. “It’s called a hemostat.”

He seemed so certain and calm I thought maybe I was the one in shock. “How in the world do you know that?”

Another smile, very faint. “I saw it in a magazine once. Medics in Vietnam…”

“Chance, Jesus…”

“Much better than your fingers.”

43

Jason waited for someone to take him to X, but no one came to his cell or even into the hall. The world was stillness, dark thoughts, and dead silence. Like most inmates unfortunate enough to be awake in the middle of this particular night, Jason was thinking of the execution. He knew enough to visualize the way it would go down. At eight o’clock, three corrections officers would remove X from his cell, walk him the length of death row, and down a short hall to the execution chamber, where thick, leather straps at the wrists and ankles would secure him to the chair as the final two straps crisscrossed his chest, shoulders to hips. One officer would shave his head as close to the skin as possible, as a second prepared the sponge and bucket of salt water, placing those items beside the chair. The third officer, the most senior, would adjust the headpiece to assure a proper fit and maximum conductivity. Every preliminary step was designed to further that end: the salt water and sponge, the bare skin and the cranial cap lined with copper mesh. Those steps wouldn’t take long, maybe twenty minutes.

After that, X would have to wait.