Page 27 of Property of Bob

“Yeah.”

“Can we talk about your throat first?” she bargained.

“No.”

“Ash.”

“Ramona.”

“You almost died.”

“And now I’m not.”

“That is not how almost dying works,” she sighed. “You don’t just get to brush it under the rug and act like it didn’t happen while you sit in a hospital bed.”

“Pretty sure it is.”

She stared at me, then she leaned forward and rested her forearms on her knees. “What happened?”

I looked toward the window. I didn’t want to talk about Bernice. The blood. The floor. The pieces of memory that still didn’t fit together. “I got cut.”

“No shit.”

My eyes went back to her.

She lifted one eyebrow and I almost laughed.

“You always this annoying?”

“Yes,” she laughed.

“Good to know.”

“Someone attacked you?”

“Yeah.”

“Who?”

“Don’t know.”

Her forehead wrinkled. “You didn’t see them?”

I looked away. That question wasn’t as easy to answer as it should’ve been. I had memories. Pieces. Nothing I trusted enough to give the club. Nothing I could grab onto and say this was the motherfucker who did it. “I don’t remember enough.”

Ramona went quiet.

I rubbed my thumb against the blanket. “Someone else was there.”

“The person you were protecting?”

I nodded. “Bernice.”

“What happened to her?”

My jaw tightened. “She didn’t make it.”

Ramona didn’t say anything.