Ex-Purgatory by Peter Clines (best book club books TXT) 📕

his movement, so he couldn’t get a good look at his chest. The woman with him—he wasn’t sure if she was a paramedic or an EMT or something else—kept asking him questions. His name. What year it was. Who was President. He was pretty sure they were supposed to distract him.

The woman had strapped an oxygen mask over his face and stabbed at his arm with three different needles. She cut open his shirt and probed at his chest with her fingers. She pushed a wad of gauze against him and held it with one hand. The driver said something and she turned her head to talk over the sirens.

She looked worried.

He’d been shot. Madelyn had shot him at point-blank range. He’d seen enough cop shows to know what that meant. He was maybe an hour from death, crippled if he was lucky. He tried to wiggle his toes, and it felt like they moved, but he couldn’t see them. He knew amputees felt phantom pain and itches in limbs they hadn’t had for years.

He also remembered reading somewhere people never felt extreme pain. The human body had some kind of built-in system for deadening nerves. People never felt the full pain of broken bones or other severe injuries.

George felt a dull throb in his chest. Nothing else. Combined with the woman’s worried expression, it had him on the edge of panic. He tried to talk but she pressed the oxygen mask against his face.

They pulled the gurney out of the ambulance and rolled him down a hallway. There were white panels and fluorescent tubes, just like the endless ones he changed at work. A new woman and two men leaned over him. He glimpsed a police uniform on one.

The gurney slipped through another door and came to rest inside a circle of curtains. The police officer had vanished. The new woman moved her hands around his chest. She was younger with dark hair tied back in a short ponytail. She pushed and prodded and asked if he could feel any pain. Then she vanished, too.

Had they given up on him? There was a word for it, when they stopped wasting resources on hopeless cases. His heartbeat felt strong. He wasn’t having any trouble breathing. He couldn’t feel anything in his chest. Even the dull ache had passed. He guessed it was all the shots they’d given him in the ambulance, even though his mind still felt very clear.

The dark-haired woman reappeared. “George,” she said, “I’m Dr. Velez. We need to take some X-rays. It’s just going to be a few minutes. Don’t worry.”

She was gone before he could ask anything. The gurney moved again, through the curtains and back into a hallway. It was chilly without a shirt on. A few minutes later a new face loomed over him. “George,” the man said, “we’re going to shift you.” They didn’t wait for him to respond, but lifted him onto a separate bed. It was cold, and a machine like a cannon loomed over him. The cannon made a loud click, he heard things clack beneath him, then another clack as the man switched something out.

Then he was back on the gurney and moving through more halls. He settled back inside the curtain just in time to hear people arguing. Velez reappeared. “We’ve got to do this again,” she said. “Sorry.” The ceiling shifted and he went back down a familiar hallway. They slid him under the X-ray machine again, the plates click-clacked below him, and then he was headed back to the curtain room.

His hand felt its way across his torso. He couldn’t feel any stitches or bandages. He wondered if he was numb.

He was there for twenty minutes before he heard a voice. “You,” said Dr. Velez, “are a very lucky man.” She patted him on the arm and unfastened the strap across his hips.

George looked at her, then craned his head to look at his bare chest. “What do you mean? Am I going to be okay?”

The doctor smiled. “You’re going to be fine,” she said.

He tried to think what “fine” could mean. “It missed organs,” he said. “I’ve seen that on television, when the bullet goes through you but misses everything. Is that what happened?”

“Not exactly.” She pulled an X-ray from an oversized folder and pushed it up into the light box. The black and gray image flared to life. In real life, an X-ray was a lot darker than they looked on television. She looked back at him and her stubby ponytail swished on her collar. “You the morbid type?”

“What?”

“Do you read about attempted suicides? Darwin Awards? That kind of stuff?”

“Now and then,” he said. “No more than anyone else, I guess.”

“Ever hear any of those stories where somebody gets shot in the head in just the right place, at just the right angle, and it bounces off?”

He looked at the X-ray, then back at the doctor. “What?”

“It’s rare,” she said, “but it does happen. Bones are strong. A lot stronger than people give them credit for. Think about the punishment you can put a body through, and figure the skeleton’s taking most of it.”

“I … I’m not sure what you mean.”

She pointed at the gray skeleton on the light box and traced a line down the center of the rib cage. “You were shot, but the bullet hit you right on the sternum, between the fifth and sixth ribs.”

His fingers pressed against the thick bone in his chest. It felt tender, but he couldn’t find the wound. “What do you mean?”

“It bounced,” she said. “Hit dead center against the bone and flicked off. No breaks, no fractures. Didn’t even break the skin. You’ve got a bruise where it hit, but that’s it.” She tapped the X-ray with her pen. “Just the right place at just the right angle.”

The temperature in the room seemed to rise three or four degrees. A wave of relief washed over him. “I’m not hurt?”

Velez shook her head. “A bit of shock,