“Stay awake,” I ordered, tapping his cheek. “Talk to me.”
“I’m so cold,” he whispered. “So tired.”
“If you sleep, you die,” I said, and my voice held no softness because softness would kill him. “Remember when you broke your arm climbing that guava tree? You cried all day and tried climbing again the next morning. You’re the most stubborn kid I ever raised. Stay with me.”
I cranked the heater to maximum, but I knew the cold wasn’t just the air. It was inside him, in his blood, in the way his body was trying to shut down.
We needed a hospital. But not the big one downtown where cameras watched and people asked questions and the wrong phone call could bring wolves to the door.
I remembered a small clinic outside Oak Creek.
The Oak Creek Clinic was a peeling yellow building surrounded by eucalyptus trees, its emergency sign flickering weakly. I parked and dragged Matthew inside, his weight heavy on my old arms, my knees protesting with every step.
A nurse jumped up, eyes wide at the sight of us: an old man covered in blood, a young man with a chain on his ankle.
“Emergency!” I shouted. “Help my son!”
A doctor rushed out, glasses slipping down his nose as he examined Matthew’s leg. His expression shifted from concern to suspicion.
“These aren’t accident wounds,” he said sharply. “Who are you? What did you do?”
“I’m his father,” I snapped. “I rescued him from kidnappers. Fix his leg before you interrogate me.”
The doctor hesitated, then barked orders. Treatment room. Morphine. IV. Someone grabbed bolt cutters for the chain.
Then he said, “Call the police.”
My stomach dropped.
“Don’t call local police,” I said, grabbing the nurse’s arm, not hard, but urgent. “Call federal.”
She stared at me as if I were insane, then her eyes flicked to Matthew’s bruised face, to the chain, to my bloodied hands. She swallowed.
Sirens arrived twenty minutes later.
Not an ambulance.
Police cars.
Two municipal patrol cars screeched into the lot. Four officers stepped out. The commander, a heavy man with a bushy mustache, walked straight toward me without even speaking to the doctor.
“Are you William?” he demanded.
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