NURSE JULY WAS only half-surprised to see Sweet stumbling through the doors of the emergency room, holding his injured hand to his chest like a sick rodent, gripping a large juice smoothie in the other.
"Best damn smoothie in town," he muttered, his face red from the pain.
July ushered Sweet into an examination room and told him to take off his shirt. She watched his pale, uncomfortable bulk emerge from behind the buttons while she lit a cigarette and inhaled with relish. July had the gravely voice of a lifelong smoker and the non-stop, solid curves of a dedicated bodybuilder. She was about 40, beautiful, and she wore her uniforms tailored to fit.
"Take off your pants, too," she suggested.
Sweet--what a moron. Nurse July saw him about every other week. He was a dangerous man, but not for the reasons he'd tallied up in his brain. He was accident prone, reckless and uncoordinated. He suffered from a psychiatric disorder that led him to believe he was some sort of badass "detective"; a "private dick for hire." This was a character he had assembled from an assortment of bad TV re-runs and old noir flicks--pretty much standard fare. Man alone, chick magnet, reckless driver, milk and whiskey for the ulcers.
"What's a broad like you doing in a dump like this?" he muttered, as if on cue.
"I'm starving," July replied. "I'm going to order a pizza. Not any pizza. I'm going to order a pizza so incredible it's going to eradicate all previous memories of pizza. It's going to make every other pizza you ever bite into taste like a piece of cardboard spread with some store-brand ketchup. This pizza will dissolve on your tongue while simultaneously making your head explode with pleasure. This pizza will make you smarter and increase your salary."
"Sounds okay," Sweet replied, "but I'd rather have the best fucking chimichanga in town. Something so rich and spicy it induces hallucinations of old Mexico, a wild land where gunslingers fight shoulder-to-shoulder for the honor of themselves and their buddies. In a time when food was food and men were men and there was no confusion between the two."
"Those days are gone, cupcake," July replied. She began an examination of his wrist. It was sprained. She began to tape on a splint. What was the use? Sweet would just hurt himself again.
"Have you seen this man?" Sweet held up a picture of a guy in a Mickey Mouse suit.
"No..."
"How about him?" Sweet held up a picture of himself dressed in the Amish manner.
About then, July was distracted by a milky stain she'd discovered on Sweet's pants. "What's this substance? Is this ice-cream from a local outlet?" She bent closer to examine the residue--this was Nurse July's passion. Her superpowers had diminished since the old days. But she still had the ability to chemically analyze samples without the aid of a laboratory or any other scientific instruments.
"This is that new pygmy owl elixir!" she cooed. "The one that assuages the guilt and vastly increases the potency of venal land developers! Where did it come from?"
"A lucky little lady with a mean mallet hand must have spilled some on me when she was clubbing me," Sweet replied, grinning proudly.
Well, thought Nurse July, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. She bent over and licked the residue off of Sweet's pants, with long methodical strokes, like a dog licking the bottom of a bowl.
"I've been dying to try this stuff," she admitted.
Something dark crept over Nurse July then, something evil and self-serving and environmentally incorrect. Sweet saw it steal over her like a rash.
"Screw the pizza. I'm going to the Anthony's in the Foothills in order to enjoy their elegant service. Those boys will make me a pizza, douse it in brandy, and set it on fire!"
Before she left, she injected enough morphine into Sweet to kill a horse. What the hell? Under the influence of the elixir life seemed cheap to Nurse July. She lingered a moment until he was dead, irrevocably dead. He was dead and he wasn't coming back. His face became smooth and waxy, like a child's, or like a very good crème brûlée.
He wouldn't be hurting himself anymore. He wouldn't be hurting anyone.
Unless there was some sort of horrible, revelatory mishap at his funeral service....
