Red Rooster (Sons of Rome #2)
Lauren Gilley
1
The Ingraham Institute
Queens, NY
Five Years Ago
For a moment, clutching the address tight in his left hand – his bad hand, his bad side – staring up at the clean, white fa?ade of the building, he had allowed himself a rare sense of hope.
The ad he’d torn out of the paper with painstaking care, left hand shaking the whole time, had promised hope for wounded veterans, and that’s what he was, wasn’t he? He wasn’t the sort who put stock in hope, not anymore, but he’d been half-drunk and not thinking with his usual dire cynicism when the paper came tumbling down the sidewalk and snagged on the toe of his combat boot. He’d picked the paper up with the intent to throw it away, when a half-page ad caught his eye. Soothing blue font on the heading. Words had jumped out at him: new drug trial, looking for participants, $250 per person.
Two-hundred-and-fifty bucks would buy a lot of cheap bourbon.
But more tantalizing than that, even to his alcoholic mind, was the idea of a trial. A radical new treatment, it said, believed to be incredibly effective.
He couldn’t see well, vision blurred from drinking, and not enough sleep.
He made his way into the closest Starbucks, plugged his phone into a wall outlet, and turned a blind eye to the uncomfortable glances shot his way by the student crowd. He Googled the Ingraham Institute from the ad, and lost half an hour down the rabbit hole, scrolling through article after article praising the Institute’s breakthroughs in trauma research and medical advancement. The VA spoke about the place in glowing terms. Smiling photos of vets were posted next to quotes talking about changed lives, a return to normal thought processes, an increase in mobility and quality of life.
Rooster finally set his phone down on the table, stared at the cardboard sleeve of his small black coffee, and asked himself some hard questions. Was he capable of getting better? Of thinking normally again? Was normal qualitative anyway? And, most importantly, did he deserve the chance to get better?
That was something his therapist had told him, when he first got out. You deserve to get better, Corporal Palmer. Yeah. Sure. He hadn’t been a person to that quack, just another rank, name, and serial number. (That was what he told himself, in the moments when his guilt for turning away from her kind eyes and helpful smile stabbed him in the gut.)
But there were kids with cancer languishing in hospital beds, mothers dying in childbirth, innocent teens T-boned by drunk drivers. Why, of all the wretches of the world, did he deserve to get better? Because he’d served his country? That’s what his therapist had said. Before he stopped showing up.
He sat leaning against the steam-fogged window of a Starbucks, ignoring the whispers and glances of a group of kids in NYU sweatshirts at the next table, and he realized, for purely selfish reasons, that he did want to get better. Deserving it had nothing to do with it…he just wanted to be whole again.
So he’d called the toll free number, and set up an appointment. And for a moment, on the sidewalk, a brisk afternoon in Queens, leaves tumbling in the gutters, he’d allowed himself to feel hope.
He’d been one of five in the waiting room. All men. All clean cut and well-groomed, in clothes that fit well. One man with a prosthetic lower leg had his wife with him, and the two of them talked in low tones. Rooster had become uncomfortably aware of his own scruffiness. The way his boot soles were starting to peel off, the dirt crusted into the wrinkles of his jeans and jacket. He looked homeless, which wasn’t far from the truth.
Then had come the examination. First a physical, to test his limitations. His body had been so badly damaged by the bomb, had been hacked and pieced back together by so many doctors, first in Germany and then in the US, that he no longer felt shame when he stripped naked and allowed someone to pass gloved hands down the pocked, scarred skin of his arm, and side, and leg.
Then came the psych eval. That’s not what the bright-voiced doctor called it, but Rooster had endured enough to know that’s what it was. Question after question, designed to catch him off his game, tough ones that could shake loose his fragile framework of lies.
When it was over, all hope had bled out of his system, and it was his old friend resolution who took up the hollow space in his chest.
“Alright, Mr. Palmer,” the doctor said, straightening the paperwork in his lap and shooting Rooster a perfunctory smile. “You’ve given us a lot to consider today.”
Rooster took a deep breath and let it out slow. “That means no, right?”
The doctor, a soft-in-in-the-middle man with glasses and a premature bald spot, glanced up with obvious surprise, maybe even a little affront. “I beg your pardon?”
The scar tissue on his left hand – mottled, and lumpy, and tight – made simple, everyday tasks obscenely difficult. Rooster fumbled with his shirt buttons and tried to keep his tone civil. He didn’t know why he was angry; he’d expected it to go this way, after all. Holding onto hope was about as useful as trying to catch soap bubbles.
“You said you need to consider,” he said, flatly. “That means you won’t take me.”
“Oh. Well. Um. Of course not,” the doctor said, flustered. “We receive a wealth of applicants every day, and we consider each one carefully before we make our selection.”
Which meant jack shit. Rooster snorted and managed to get the rest of his buttons secured. He wished he’d worn a pullover instead. He wished he gave enough of a damn to be polite, but he just didn’t, not anymore.
The doctor adopted an annoyed expression. “As with any intensive medical procedure,” he continued, lifting his head to a lofty angle. “A prospective patient’s circumstances must be taken into consideration. Eligibility is key.”
“Yeah,” Rooster said, sliding down off the paper-covered exam table with only minimal wincing. The pins in his left knee had preserved his ability to walk, the VA docs had told him, but when his foot hit the floor, bright sparks of pain moved down his entire leg. Hot as fire in his knee, bringing tears to his eyes that he quickly blinked away. “I bet.”
The doctor exhaled through his nose and fixed Rooster with the sort of look every doctor and therapist had fixed him with over the past year. “Corporal Palmer, it’s very important that–”
“Thanks, doc. I’ll see myself out.”
The doctor didn’t protest.
Rooster didn’t expect him to.
He limped back through the mazelike hallways, following the laminated signs that steered patients back to the waiting room.
If he’d cared about aesthetics, he would have said it was a beautiful building, in the way that a medical facility can be eye-catching. The walls had been painted a warm taupe, the terrazzo floors looking more like those of an upscale hotel lobby. Rather than harsh overhead tubes, glowing wall sconces provided the light. The air held a subtle floral smell. The effect was miles from the glaringly-bright, bleach-scented hospitals he’d cycled through after he was blown up.
Not just a place of healing, but a well-funded one. A place not intended for the likes of him, with his unwashed hair and grungy jacket.
In the waiting room, a new group of hopefuls occupied the chairs. All of them still with buzzed hair and immaculate dress. Several guys had spouses. An athletically-built woman in head-to-toe Nike sat upright, right arm cradled in her lap in a way Rooster knew too well – it was the same way he held his own bad arm in public, holding it close, guarding it.
She glanced up as he walked past, eyes flashing dark and guarded. Stay away from me, her expression said.
That was fine; he figured his own face said something similar.
He was in the air lock when the alarm sounded.