22 NOVEMBER 1988
6:13 AM
Margaret jolted awake with a whimper, completely aware and terrified, instinctively tugging at her arms — and discovered that she was still on the floor with her wrists tied to one of the bed legs with the thin twine that had been in the trunk of her own damn car.
Then she realized she was gagged, too. She froze, taking in quick, quiet breaths through her nose, and listened. The room was quiet, but — no, she could hear breathing. Foxy was still in the bed above her, and that rushing noise… Otis was in the shower. She yanked at the bindings, grunting with the effort and jarring the entire bed frame, until Foxy's voice wafted down, "Girl, I swear if you don't quit that shit I'm going to kick your fuckin' skull in."
Margaret froze, then let her head hit the floor with a thunk and a defeated groan. The water cut off at that point and she jerked her head around to stare at the bathroom door, every muscle going taut.
The door clicked open a few moments later and Otis padded barefoot into the room, belt buckle clinking as he fastened it and tucked the tail through a loop, stopping with his hands clasped loosely over the buckle, staring down at her. She looked up at him, eyes going wide as she took in the scars littering his body. So many bullet holes. The fact that he was alive was astounding, that he was mobile enough to terrorize her made him seem inhuman.
She flinched when he crouched down and hooked his finger through her gag, pulling it out of her mouth and letting it drop around her neck. He pressed his first two fingers against her lips, raising his eyebrows in a clear direction and threat to keep quiet. "All right, nursey — you're up."
At his words, Margaret flicked a look up at the bed, a rush of panic going through her. She should be doing this in a hospital, in a sterile environment, she should be a supporting part of a team, not the lead — she wasn't a surgeon.
She didn't realize she was working on hyperventilating until Otis smacked her sharply across the face. "You gonna do this, or am I wasting time keeping you alive?"
Margaret sucked in a fortifying breath, squeezing her eyes closed for a moment. This is a car wreck. This is just another busy night in the ER. There's nothing to do but the best that you can. She coached herself, then opened her eyes to meet Otis'. "I need—" She coughed, not realizing how thirsty she was or how much her face hurt until she tried to speak. "I need — we need to call housekeeping, get clean sheets. Gotta get him on a clean surface. I need to get him clean, gotta get both of us clean."
Margaret cleared her throat, then jerked her head towards the bag. "I'm gonna need full access to everything in there," she said, then let out a shaky breath. She was trying to be firm and in-control in the face of this maniac. "You're — you're gonna have to trust me on the phone to get the sheets. Didn't mention any, uh, gentleman callers when I rented the room. And I'm gonna need you to help me move him."
By this point, Otis was grinning behind his beard, eyebrows steadily rising higher. "Oh, well, sure, Nurse Ratched. By your command." He then tugged the bindings at her wrists loose and pulled her upright, wrapping an arm around her and yanking her tight against him. Margaret tried to lean back as far as she could, then stilled when he nudged the barrel of his gun up beneath her chin. "Ain't stupid, mama. You say one word wrong on that phone and I'm blowing your fuckin' teeth out your head." He snarled in her ear, then marched her over to the phone and sat her down on the bed, responding to Foxy's groan of protest with a sharp, shushing hiss.
He kept the gun trained on her the entire time she was on the phone, listening intently as she asked for the new bedding and specified that it be left outside the room. Satisfied, he snatched the handset from her and dropped it back on to the cradle before he stood, leaving her on the bed so that he could drag the room's one chair over to the side of the bed. He plopped down, then gestured between her and Foxy with the gun. "Well?"
Margaret stared at him for a long moment, then reached up and flicked the lamp on so that she could look at Foxy. He was awake — sort of, staring at her with sunken eyes gone glassy and glittery with fever, his skin was pale and waxy, radiating heat. "No wonder you wanted to sleep." She muttered, then got to work peeling back his vest and the makeshift bandage he'd had slapped over the bullet wound, letting out a harsh, "Oh, fuck me," when she saw the extent of the wound.
This would've been difficult to deal with on the best of days at the hospital, but lightheaded from injury and blood loss? She had no idea how she was going to do this. The wound was inflamed and oozing a truly nasty mixture of pus and blood — and without the bandage covering it, the smell of decay and infection was nearly enough to take her out. Angry red streaks radiated out from it, following the man's veins down his arm and across his chest. She reached out to touch his chest a few inches from the wound, earning a warning hiss of breath from Foxy.
She jumped and yelped when there was an abrupt knock on the door, Otis whipping around with his gun raised. She raised a hand, trying to settle him with a gesture, "Sheets." She said, then got up and stumbled to the door, cracking it open — the house keeper was already gone, but there was a neat bundle of sheets on the mat in front of the door. She brought them in and threw the deadbolt for the door out of reflex. She dumped the sheets on the dresser, then turned back to the bed, bracing her hand on the edge of the dresser to steady herself as she thought about the next step to take. Her thoughts felt slow, like she was trying to wade through molasses.
"Mister, uh — Foxy?" She ventured, waiting for him to turn his head to stare at her. "Can you get up? We gotta get you clean, I can't… Cleaning the wound won't do anything if you're still filthy."
He looked at her, even and blank, for a long moment before he nodded once and started trying to sit up. Margaret walked (stumbled and teetered) over to him, reaching to help Foxy and studiously ignoring Otis, who'd gone tense and watchful again. Foxy took her offered arm, and once he was on his feet he was a lot steadier than Margaret would've expected, but with as scarred up and rough as these two were, maybe having a massively infected wound was more of an annoyance than a hindrance to him, except for the fact that his right arm hung dead at his side. Then he tried to take a step and Margaret found herself nearly collapsing under the man's entire weight.
Not as together as he made out, then.
She got her arms around him, got him braced upright, and then stopped. She was just barely strong enough to hold this position, she had no idea how she was going to walk him over to the shower, or get him in, or —
Foxy's body jerked against her and he let out a howl and a torrent of obscenities that, even in this situation, had Margaret's eyes going wide and face flushing. She reeled back in confusion, only to discover that Otis had gotten under his brother's injured arm and had hoisted most of his weight away from her with a roll of his eyes and a muttered, some fuckin' use you are, girl.
Between the two of them, they managed to get Foxy into the bathroom and he slumped, panting, against the vanity. Margaret stepped back, staring at the men for a long moment as she considered her next move. She eventually turned and kicked the shower on, blindly fumbling with the knobs until she was satisfied with the temperature. At this point, she had to deal with her patient. And his clothes. Margaret paused with her hands lifted halfway in the air. Foxy followed her line of sight and started laughing, a nasty little chuckle that turned into a rough cough. She pursed her lips, then glanced over at Otis. "Can you switch the sheets?" She asked, and his brows rose again.
"Can. But fuck you if you think I'm leaving you alone." His gaze flickered to the window above the toilet.
Margaret followed his look and let out an uncontrolled, exasperated noise. "There's no way I can fit through there, and what do you think I'm gonna do, drown him in a half inch of water?" She flung her hands out, "I just want to get out of this. I'm just doing what you want me to." Infuriatingly, she could feel tears clawing up her throat. "I just want to live, and you want him to live, and I'm going to do my best, just — please — help me."
He stared at her for a long moment, then pushed away from the vanity and his brother, exiting the room but leaving the door wide open.
Margaret found herself alone and face-to-face with Foxy, who was just standing there and watching her with a crooked little smile, waiting to see how she handled this. She gave him a flat look in response, letting herself go into the sort of autopilot that got her through long nights at the hospital and extremely ornery or intoxicated patients. Swallowing down the knot in her throat, she stepped up to him and began quickly but gently divesting him of his clothes. Under the vest he was thin and rangy, and she wasn't sure how much of it was due to the illness burning through him and how much was their nomadic lifestyle. She couldn't imagine either of them did real well on regular meals and sleep on the best of days. She laid the vest aside, then dropped down to deal with the laces on his boots, shoulders stiffening as Foxy made an amused noise. "Sure is easy to get you on your knees, sweetheart," he said.
She clenched her jaw, going still for a long moment and debating her odds if she beat the man with his own shoe and made a run for it. Margaret twitched at the clink of metal on metal right by her head as Foxy undid his belt. "Shit, my dick ain't gonna bite you girl, and I don't wanna be upright any longer than I gotta be."
She didn't dignify that with an answer, instead focusing on helping him step out of the pants — and lord, his clothes were so dirty that they could almost stand on their own — and shuffling him into the shower.
Twenty minutes, a whole lot of swearing from the both of them, and the intrusion of an irritated and nosy Otis later, Margaret was now shirtless, in a bra and soaked jeans and leaned over Foxy on the bed, examining the hole in his shoulder. Otis was looming nearby, digging through her medical bag. "You sure do got a lot of shit in here," he commented, handing her the pair of forceps she'd asked for.
Margaret shrugged, sheepish. "Yeah, I've, um, been building that kit up for a while." She'd been stealing from the hospital for months, planning on her escape from Kenny. Just a few things here and there, never too much at once, but she had a little bit of everything for just about any kind of crisis, because she planned to avoid major cities, hospitals and police stations as much as possible. She knew he'd report her missing soon, and since she was a cop's wife, well, there'd be actual effort put in to finding her.
She didn't know if she welcomed that idea or not. She felt like anyone looking for her would probably just end up horribly dead. She pushed the thought out of her head, she was too exhausted and weak for distractions, this man's injury needed all the limited brain power she could bring to bear right now, and she didn't want to examine too closely how Otis' violence had suddenly and inexplicably scaled so far back. His calmness and apparent willingness to be her assistant to this hack job of a surgery made her more uneasy than if he'd been snarling and swearing and making her do this all on her own.
She knew what he was capable of, and waiting for the moment when the calm ended was awful. It was bad with Kenny, but with these two, the potential for her life to get so much worse was so much higher. It made her husband seem like a complete sweetheart in comparison, and she'd been with these two men a matter of hours versus the solid eight years she'd spent as Sheriff Hawkins' wife. Margaret shook her head. Stop getting distracted.
She looked down at Foxy, giving him a sympathetic pat on his good shoulder. "Buddy, the best thing you can do for yourself right now is pass out." She told him, then gestured to Otis. "Help me hold him down."
And with Otis in position, Margaret went to work on prying the bullet out of Foxy. At some point, she glanced up to see that Otis had undone his belt and put it between Foxy's teeth, which explained the high, wheezing breaths instead of screams coming out of the man, who was drawn wire-tight beneath them in pain, tendons sticking out starkly in his neck and knuckles white where he'd grabbed on to the sheets. Margaret shook her head and went back to work, marveling that he wasn't full-out screaming and that he was still conscious, and really wishing he wasn't. If he wasn't so tense, this would be so much easier. She felt the forceps graze the bullet and sucked in a victorious breath, only for Foxy to judder in pain and she lost the bullet again, mopping at the thick ooze coming out of the wound. She briefly closed her eyes in frustration and tried again — this time the man bowed up beneath her and then slumped into stillness. Finally. Margaret relaxed fractionally, able to work easier and more quickly. It wasn't horribly long after that and she was dropping the bullet into the ash tray on the bedside table.
Then she went into a flurry of activity at the new rush of blood from Foxy's shoulder, swearing and sobbing, unconsciously begging him not to up and die on her in a frantic whisper. She had no idea how, or how long it took, but she eventually got the bleeding under control, the wound cleaned, packed and bandaged. She didn't let herself lose her momentum from there, immediately going to the bathroom to wash the gore off her hands — Otis followed her, taking up the entire doorway with his hand braced on the jamb furthest from him, forcing her to duck under his arm as she went back to her medical bag.
He circled around behind her as she filled a syringe. She'd only stolen a few, so she'd have to find some way to sterilize these enough for re-use, even if the idea made her skin crawl at the concept. "Whassat for?" Otis' words made her jump even though she was well aware he was standing there.
"Penicillin." She answered, then scooted past him again to administer a shot to the still-unconscious Foxy. "It'll help fight off infection, which he needs with that hole in him. You —" She made a vague gesture at Otis, " Isn't that why I'm still here? Keepin' y'all fixed up?" The exhausted tremble was back in her voice by the end of her words, and she sank down to sit next to the unconscious man, not entirely certain her knees would hold her up anymore. She was so tired, and the adrenaline associated with digging the bullet out and keeping the man alive had suddenly and completely worn off.
"That's one reason why you're still kickin', mama." He drawled, watching her as she slid the needle into Foxy's arm. Margaret might not have been able to tell anyone Captain Spaulding's eye color after meeting him, but Otis' icy blue eyes were so piercing, so unsettlingly intense that she was convinced she'd have nightmares about them until the day she died. Which, of course, could be five minutes from now. She quailed under the stare, shrinking away as soon as she was done with the shot.
"Do —" A brief surge of insanity brought a completely different question out of her than what she'd originally intended to ask. "Do — Do you remember me?"
Those unnerving eyes narrowed, hardened. "Should I?" He caught her by the chin, tilting her face up. She stammered, trying to pull back and then stopping when he dug his nails in. "About a decade ago — I got gas and — and you stopped the clown from sending me to y'all's house." She said, bringing her hands up and tugging ineffectively at his wrist.
He swatted at her with his free hand, jerking her closer. "Aaaah, yeah." He let out a brief laugh. "Didn't look like you'd be much fun. Girl, you damn well got the shittiest fuckin' luck of anyone, don't you?" He shook his head and kept laughing, clapping his hand against her uninjured cheek. Then his hand slid down her neck, tracing a line of blood that had oozed from her face down her throat and down her sternum until his index finger hooked behind the front closure of her bra. Margaret could swear her blood turned to ice when she caught the look on his face and she shied away from the man, panic spiking when he hooked his finger more securely around the band and refused to let go. "Where you goin', mama? We're just gettin' to the other reason for keepin' you around."
She somehow managed to disentangle his hand from her bra, bolting for the bathroom and slamming the door right as Otis closed the distance between them — she yelped when he slammed his fists on the door, diving under the sink and wedging herself into the corner. She screamed when the door flew back on its hinges and hit the wall, barely having any time to react before Otis was dragging her out from under the sink.
She made an absolutely unholy noise, kicking and biting at him until he slammed her against the edge of the counter, stunning her as pain shot up from the middle of her back. Otis took that time to raise the knife that had — as far as Margaret was aware — just materialized in his hand, and with a swift jerk that left a shallow gouge down her sternum, he sliced through the front of her bra before bringing the point up beneath her chin and using it to force her head back. He brought his other hand up and pressed his thumb against the seam of her lips, increasing the pressure until she was forced to open her mouth or cut her lip on her own teeth or his thumbnail. He pressed his thumb as deep as he could into her mouth and she choked, then tried to force down her gag reflex as the taste of Foxy's blood, dried around Otis' nails, flooded her mouth.
"Now, where was I? Oh, yeah…"