Luce Worth was twenty-two and halfway to drunk when his best friend barged in through the front door of his tiny studio apartment. His black boots smeared dirt all over the crappy carpet, but it was the man Lamont was holding up that really made Luce gape.
"Who the hell is that?"
Lamont grunted under the weight. "My cousin Anthony."
"Yer shittin' me."
"Nope. C'mon, help me." They staggered into the room and Lamont kicked the door shut. It slammed, making the whole cheap place vibrate. Luce got to his feet, not sure where he was going, but certain he didn't want to keep sitting. He drained the rest of his beer and crushed the can, tossing it aside.
"Mont, are ya freakin' nuts? The guy's bleedin!" He moved back a step, still gawking. Anthony, whoever he was, was big. He was taller than Lamont and wider to boot. He looked exactly like the kind of guy Luce might go looking for in a dark alley, if he was feeling particularly masochistic. And there was a wound on his arm that was making a big mess.
Lamont made a face as he lowered his cousin onto the only crate in the house. Chairs were something Luce couldn't afford. "Like you've never seen blood before? Serious, Luce, we need your help. I can't take him home like this."
"So take 'im to a fuckin' hospital, ya dumbass!"
"We can't. We sort of – " Lamont exhaled hard, shoving a hand through his hair. "Look, don't worry about it, okay? Just do us a favor, just this once. C'mon, Luce, I'm begging."
Luce stared at Anthony's arm. It was leaking blood everywhere, all over the man's shirt, his pants, everywhere. The metallic tang was sharp in the air, making Luce wish he had a scalpel in his hands to quell the sudden itch along his skin. But all the same, his own blood was one thing; someone else's was quite another. "Shit, Monty… ya can't mean it. I ain't a real d –"
"Real enough, shut your mouth, you're a freakin' genius with that shit and we both know it. You've got all that stuff you keep here, so hurry up, before he gets it all over the floor!"
He couldn't say no. He did have 'stuff' in his place, Lamont was right. When you had a slicing hobby like Luce did, sometimes things got out of hand. There had to be ways to patch yourself up if you didn't want the local hospital thinking you were crackers for being a return customer. So he did it. He stitched up Cousin Anthony, who, to his credit, said not one word during the whole procedure except, "Thanks, man," bandaged the guy's arm up tight and told Lamont to take him the hell home.
Then he sat on the one crate – which now had Cousin Anthony's blood on it, right next to old smears of Luce's blood – and smoked an entire dime bag. Lamont hadn't meant to be cruel, but it had hurt all the same. That had been the closest thing to a medical profession Luce Worth, Dropout, was ever going to get, and he knew it. The knowledge stung like a sunovabitch.
When he was high enough, he locked the door, got out his pocket knife and cut himself, and if he cried while he did it, well, it wasn't like there was anyone to see it.
And two weeks later, when Cousin Anthony showed up with Cousin Xavier, begging "Lamont's doc friend" to help them out, Luce didn't say no.