Once again, Oscar’s connections in the adult film industry have proven useful to you. Besides the director who had given your first real job in nearly a year, and the costume designer who made Detective Blake’s Aztec Warrior colors, he also knew a doctor who was willing to make discreet house calls.
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The old sawbones was in his mid seventies, and had the shaky hands and permanently bloodshot eyes of the alcoholic who long ago passed the point of no return. Aside from regularly testing Oscar and his co-workers for sexually transmitted diseases, he would occasionally be called on by certain less than reputable characters to discretely remove a bullet or stitch up a particularly nasty knife wound.
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In spite of his shaky hands he does an excellent job of patching you up and cleaning your many cuts and abrasions. You’d suffered a severe concussion, a pair of cracked ribs; and a cut over your right eye required eleven stitches, ensuring that you would soon have a gnarly looking new scar to add to your collection. As if you weren’t already ugly enough. Four stitches took care of your split lip, and the rest of the damage was just scrapes and bruises. From head to toe, but you still feel extremely lucky to be alive.
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Randy Blake shows up right as the old doctor was finishing up.“Thanks Doc” you say, meaning both thanks for fixing you up and for the bottle of Vicodin he’s just handed you. “Be careful with those” says the doctor. “In the shape you’re in if you take too many and pass out you might never wake up” he says, his tone of voice indicating he could really care less either way. Oscar hands him an envelope, presumably with cash inside, and without another word the drunken doc is gone, nodding curtly to the portly detective on his way out.
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There is a long moment of awkward silence, no one knowing quite what to say, so you do what you always do in these types of situations, you make a bad joke. “If you’re here to break my nose again Detective, do me a huge favor and come back tomorrow okay?”
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No one laughs, and realizing that you sound like an ungrateful asshole and acting on instinct, you cross the room and wrap your arms around the big cop, pulling him into a hug that makes your broken ribs scream. Caught off guard, Detective Blake returns the embrace very briefly and then steps back. To your complete and utter astonishment, he looks a little misty-eyed.
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