After very nearly doing just that one night at some poor, unsuspecting twink who had been ranting about his inability to find his favorite brand of jeans, I decided it would be best for me to stay away from clubs for a while.
That was when I discovered the wonders of the internet. I was more than familiar with porn sites on the web. Mack and I had joked often and loudly about the corny plot lines on some of the videos as we’d watched them together.
A casual chat with someone half a world away had led me to chat rooms I’d never thought I’d find myself interested in. Each site took me deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole, discovering a whole world where it was commonplace for people to pay for sex.
I thought it made sense at first. No fuss, no emotional attachments, just make an appointment and manage a biological need, or at least I tried to convince myself it was that easy.
I often spotted posts by “escorts”—high end prostitutes who always looked glamorous and sexy as hell. They’d advertise a date and time they’d be available, for a price.
I tried it out. The first couple of times I was nervous as hell. I’d never even gotten a ticket for jaywalking, and now I was paying strangers for sex.
I’d started out carrying my gun with me when I went to my appointments, but I became complacent after several encounters where I didn’t have any problems. I did learn fast, though. Cash was preferred. Oddly enough, most prostitutes weren’t interested in accepting debit cards. Go figure.
But the day I’d met Mason had changed my attitude forever. I remembered my horror at seeing a teenage boy tied to a bed, battered and bloody, with two men outside obviously holding him against his will.
I’d talked my way out of the situation and called the cops when I got back to my car, but his eyes, his whispered “Please…” tugged at me, and I knew I couldn’t just abandon him. His injuries were serious, and I wasn’t sure he would live long enough for the ambulance to arrive.
I might have gotten out of the habit of carrying my sidearm, but I still kept it with me. When I’d made it back to the car I grabbed it from the trunk along with the go bag filled with medical supplies. More old habits dying hard.
I knew I could have just left, the police were on their way, after all, but who knew how long it would take them to respond, or whether they would even take my call seriously? The kid had looked like shit. As a medic, I’d seencorpsesthat looked better than he did. Plus, the way he’d looked at me and whispered, “Please…” I couldn’t,wouldn’t,leave him to die alone.
By the time I made it back to the hotel room he was being held at, I was cursing my leg and the delay it caused. There wasn’t anyone at the door when I’d approached and I’d frozen for a moment, afraid that they might have moved him somewhere else. Then I heard a guttural cry from the room, a sound of such despair and pain.
I’d crashed the door open, only to find one of the men who had been present earlier raping the boy. Killing the piece of shit who had been brutalizing him hadn’t bothered me in the slightest. My only regret had been that the other one, the one Mason called Dreyven, had gotten away.
I’d worked on Mason’s injuries, stabilizing him as much as I could with the supplies on hand, but when I heard the sirens getting close, I knew I had to get out of there. I had no explanation for how I might have known he was there, or why a bullet from my gun had found its way into the other man’s head. I did not need to spend my life in jail for ridding the world of this sadistic piece of shit.
I kept out of sight until I saw the paramedics transport him and followed up on the kid in the hospital. As a medic, it was amazing what you could find out about patients if you tried. Mason had been placed in a medically induced coma to give his body time to heal from the injuries that had been inflicted on it.
For a while, I’d hung around outside the door to his room. I was worried that his other tormentor might come back and try to finish the job. A heart to heart with a charge nurse and a vague story about the kid being estranged from “our” family was all it took, and fromthen on, all I got were looks of sympathy and the occasional cup of coffee from the nursing staff.
Doctors were hardly ever on duty this late at night, so I didn’t get much grief from anyone once word got around. The hardest part had been when the staff had brought me paperwork to fill out and requested permission to treat his many wounds. I hadn’t known anything about him, so I guessed about most and left the rest blank.
I’d slip into Mason’s room late at night, just to watch over him. He was still in a coma and looked so small in that hospital bed, so broken. Tubes ran in and out of his body, a cast secured pins in one skinny arm. He’d obviously not been eating well even before the attack. He had that gangly look teenage boys often got in their late teens when their arms and legs grew faster than the rest of them. His face had a sort of unfinished quality to it, caught somewhere between the boy he had been, and the man he would become.
I’d stay with him most nights and found myself talking to him about everything - my family, my life, even about Mack. Something about those one-sided conversations helped ease the pain I’d been carrying around inside me since Mack had died. It became a nightly ritual. I’d limp my way through the darkened hospital halls with my coffee and newspaper in one hand, my cane in the other. I’d read Mason stories I found interesting, or tell him about whatever antics my family was up to. I told him about Afghanistan and the work we’d been doing there, how we’d been changing lives with our work before it was interrupted.
I didn’t know what it was about Mason, but I couldn’t just leave him in that hospital by himself. Just like I couldn’t have left him in that motel room. Every time I thought about leaving, going back to Ohio, going back to my own life, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. So I stayed in Milwaukee for almost two weeks.
I’d gotten into such a routine with visiting him that I screwed up. I let my guard down. I’d walked into Mason’s room one night, coffee in one hand, cane in the other and a newspaper under one arm, only to find a middle-aged African American woman sitting next to his bed, holding his hand in her own.
“Hello there,” she said, smiling gently and looking up at me sleepily as I came through the doorway. I’d woken her up. As quiet as her voice was, it froze me in my tracks.
“Um, hi…?” I stammered.
She smiled and stood slowly, reaching her hand out to me. I set my things down on the bedside table and shook her hand almost automatically.
“I’m Tira. Tira Graham,” she said, her voice soft and warm.
“Lee,” I stammered, totally unprepared, too shocked to even make up a name. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you…” I said, starting to back up, ready to beat a hasty retreat.
“Please don’t go,” she said, her warm eyes searching my face. “Is he a friend of yours?” she asked, gesturing toward Mason. Her eyes captured my attention. They were a startling blue in her honey brown face. Lighter than Mason’s, but striking, nonetheless.
“Not… exactly,” I hedged, totally unprepared for the woman’s questions. I berated myself for becoming complacent and not noticing her presence before I entered. I should have known someone would come sniffing around asking questions sooner or later.
“Well, me neither, ‘exactly’,” she said, her voice full of gentle good humor. “Please, sit down,” she said, gesturing to one of the chairs across from the hospital bed. “I don’t bite.”
I smiled at that. I guessed her to be in her late fifties, and she certainly didn’t look threatening. Her hair was in soft black curls, cut closely around her face. She was dressed in a pair of dark jeans and a white turtleneck, with a cardigan over it embroidered with fall leaves. Her lips were full, and while her cheeks were soft and a few wrinkles gathered at the corners of her eyes, her gaze held a sharp intelligence.
