Robert Rodriguez owns Sands and anybody else you may recognize from OUATIM. Lucky him. If he doesn't like me borrowing his characters, he can always send Sands over to my place to shoot me.

A/N: Sands strikes me as the kind of man who's going to get the job done, regardless, whether it's plotting a coup or surviving its aftermath. Not for the weak of stomach!

2. On the Third Day

There were nightmares, of course, and he woke to find the biggest nightmare was true. For a minute, he wasn't entirely sure if he was awake or asleep--it was completely dark, and he was confused. Then the pain bore down on him from all sides. His right leg felt like it was caught in a bear trap. The left leg was pulsating, but less severely. His side was radiating hot pain. The worst agony came from his head, which felt like it was going to implode. Oddly enough, it wasn't his vacant sockets that hurt, it was everything around them. From his brows, to his temples, to his cheekbones, everything throbbed. Even the sound of his own ragged breathing hurt.

The pain, horrible as it was, was real. He anchored himself to it. It kept him afloat while he made himself relive the events of November second. All of them. So here he was, completely, totally, permanently blind, trying to survive multiple gunshot wounds without medical attention in an abandoned Mexican garage. "Helluva way for a nice Jewish boy from Boca Raton to wind up," he muttered hoarsely. "Hey Dad, is it too late for me to finish med school and join the practice?"

Probably delirious, he thought. But he'd stopped shivering. He was warm, not freezing to death. Was that a good sign or a bad sign? Moving his right hand cautiously, he realized for the first time that he'd been covered with one or more blankets.

His left arm grumbled sharply as he explored his other wounds. It was by far the least annoying of his injuries. He was surprised that there was no indication of fresh bleeding from his eyes. The way it felt, he thought his brains would be leaking out of his head. The bandages covering the side wound were damp, but not soaked. The fact that he'd awakened at all probably meant that any bleeding was relatively minor. If he'd been hemmorhaging internally, he'd be dead by now.

The left thigh, the one with the bullet still in it, was swollen badly. His tight-fitting pants felt like a sausage casing that was going to burst. If the rest of the bleeding stayed minimal, he might have to resort to amateur hour; losing a leg or dying of gangrene was not on his agenda. The left leg hurt worse, but it didn't seem to be as swollen.

Memories of first aid training reminded him that raising his legs would help. Ideally, he should be lying down, but unless God, Who didn't seem to be too helpful lately, had sent him a recliner...he leaned back in the chair, pushing down on the armrests, and was amazed to feel an old mechanism trying to work beneath him. He'd never realized how many muscles it took to get a recliner to recline. His arm protested, his side lanced a sharp bolt deep into his gut, and both legs howled at his attempt to flex them.

The footrest banged into something at his feet, and he investigated. There were two gallon jugs, still sealed, and Sands realized Manolo had brought water. There was also a bucket with a long funnel. He had stray thoughts about adding transmission fluid, and the fact that he'd never drive a car again. A funnel? He was nonplused until his bladder gave him a hint.

"Kid's a genius," he thought, grateful that he wasn't faced with the choice of get up or piss himself. He carefully relieved himself, funneling his urine into the bucket. Too bad he didn't have any way to tell if there was blood in it.

Finding the alcohol bottle, he cleansed his hands and opened one of the jugs. The water was room temperature--warm, bordering on hot--but to his dry throat and empty stomach it was nectar. From donating blood, he remembered advice: drink extra liquids, and hoped the kid would be back before the supply ran out. Locating the pain pills, he downed four more with more gulps of the water. He didn't know how long since the last dose, but judging by the pain, long enough. He leaned back in the recliner, head aching, hoping the pills would kick in fast.

I have no eyes. The thought echoed through his skull. Blind was a bland word to convey the emptiness he felt. Eternal darkness. Endless night. No sunrise, sunset, no stars, no heavenly bodies. No bulbs, fluorescent or incandescent, neon or LEDs. No lamps, not Tiffany or lava, or Waterford chandeliers. No more headlights, taillights, turn signals, traffic lights or blue light specials. If he could limp into the Cathedral and light a candle, he would not see its glow.

"I'm getting maudlin," he told himself. Was there a bright side he could look on? (In a matter of speaking?) He could cancel his magazine subscriptions--he'd save a couple hundred bucks a year on porn alone--damn, no more Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. No more centerfolds. He'd have to cough up for lap dances at titty bars instead of drinking and staring. At the thought of a woman's reaction to his eyeless condition, his heart sank. Damn, it was really going to suck if his last piece of ass had been that cartel whore who'd scorned and maimed him.

Well, at least he'd had the last word. He was still among the living, and he intended to stay that way. Okay, things were going to be--different. He could still live by his wits.

He awoke again to the sound of mariachi music coming softly from nearby--it was still dark--it would always be dark--for a moment, he half-expected to hear that hired gunman, El, taunt him--then there was a crackle of static, and he realized it was a radio tuned to a music station. "Manolo?" he said aloud.

Not a peep. But the kid must've been here; the radio was proof of that. He groped around beside the chair after tending his wounds. Several more jugs of water had joined the first one, and the slop jar had been emptied. He found a paper bag, which yielded several candy bars--melted--and what felt like a bag of beef jerky.

Fumbling among the pharmaceuticals, he found an unfamiliar bottle and opened it cautiously. The smell was familiar--some kind of multi-vitamin. Hopefully, it had iron--anything to help counter his blood loss. Crossing his fingers that something else hadn't been stashed there by mistake, he swallowed one of the pills. Yech, it sure tasted like a real vitamin. It was definitely time for more codeine, too. He did the math: a hundred pills in the bottle, four at a time--that was twenty-five doses, but he didn't know how often he'd been dosing himself. Better pay attention to the radio, he could keep track--time wavered and disappeared again.

The next time he regained consciousness, with an agonizing start upright, he knew there was someone else in the immediate area. "Senor Sands?" He relaxed slightly at the sound of Manolo's hesitant voice.

"How long--what day is it?" he demanded, feeling just as shitty as he had the last time he'd awakened.

"It's been three days."

"Okay, we'd better take another look at things." He grimaced at his choice of words. Words like "look" and "see" were suddenly someone else's verbs, not his. He reached for his shades, but they weren't there. "My eyes--tell me if you see any sign of infection. Are they swollen, is there yellow or green stuff anywhere? Has there been any more bleeding?"

"No, Senor Sands," the boy whispered. His voice came from an arm's length away.

"No what?" he demanded, frustrated.

"The blood is old and hard," Manolo said simply.

"Let's keep it that way," Sands said. "Hand me the peroxide." He repeated the ritual with the peroxide and antibiotics. This time the burning was less severe.

His left arm was stiff, but bearable, and he wasn't surprised to be informed that it, too, was healing. Gingerly, he brought the recliner fully upright, and hauled himself to his feet, swaying. "Senor!" Manolo was alarmed. There was some kind of counter or workbench to his left, and he leaned on it, peeling off his filthy shirt. He pulled the dressing away from his ribs and felt something liquid trickle down his side.

"Manolo? What's this?"

"It's yellow, Senor Sands."

"Not good," he said, thinking, maybe I should've cauterized the damn thing. Trying to get his boots off defeated him. He almost fell over trying to get them off so he could remove his pants. Perching on the edge of the recliner, he slid the knife out of his right boot and used it to hack off his ruined slacks. Sitting there in his boxers (Had he worn "Home of the Whopper" or the Scooby-Doo pair that day?--he couldn't remember), he tugged the wrappings from his leg wounds, panting from the pain.

The right leg still hurt like hell, but the smell of the other bandage told him where the real problem was. "There are lines on your leg, red lines," Manolo confirmed.

"Here, put this in the alcohol for a while," Sands said, handing over the knife. "As soon as we take care of the rest of these, we're taking that bullet out. Is my other leg bleeding?"

"A little bit. There's a little yellow spot." The agent squeezed the area Manolo indicated, and encouraged drainage. Today, he felt decidedly hot, rather than cold--a fever, like he didn't know already that he had at least two infected wounds. He had the kid douse his hands with alcohol as soon as he'd finished.

Assured by Manolo that there was ample medicine--he'd made a second trip to the empty pharmacy--Sands rinsed the side wound out several times, and poured in an even dozen of the penicillin caps. Good thing he wasn't allergic.

"Now it's gonna get messy," he said, as much to himself as to the kid. There was a gout of fluid as he dug the knife into the wound, and Sands froze as he felt the tip of the knife come into contact with the slug. For a moment, he couldn't move; then he commanded his hands to work and slid the blade until it was to one side of the pellet. When he was sure the blade was in deeper than the slug, he twisted the knife like a corkscrew and yanked upward.

Manolo had the bucket ready; Sands felt the rim of it against his neck as he vomited. There was nothing but bile in his stomach to lose, but his side protested the effort. Let it; that might help get the rest of the crap out of there. Yeah, the leg was bleeding again, naturally, but if it helped get rid of the infection, fine. "That's not spurting blood, is it?"

"Que?"

Oh, hell, it probably wasn't his femoral artery.... His hands were shaking too badly to continue. "Take over, kid," he said wearily. "Alcohol on your hands first."

"Here is your bullet." A small lump of metal found its way into his hand. Awfully small to cause so many problems....

Manolo baptised his wound with the peroxide and Sands lost count of the number of capsules that were consigned to the newly reopened hole. At last, it was packed and bandaged. "What time is it?" the blind man asked.

"Late afternoon, senor. Almost sunset."

"Can you come in the morning, for more bandages?"

"Si, I will try."

When the boy left the garage, Sands was dosed with more antibiotics by mouth, painkillers, and the vitamins, which he was grimly amused to be told were special maternity vitamins with lots of iron, according to the label Manolo translated for him. The kid didn't know dietary iron from wrought iron; they were left over from his aunt's last pregnancy.

His wounds had improved slightly by the next day, though he was still running a fever. Although still warm, Mexico in November wasn't enough to account for the sweat that rolled down his body.