"You knew about this and didn't report it?" the emergency room doctor cried.

Curt was resting in a private room upstairs, and as promised, the man who was seriously reconsidering his earlier loyalty to Jack Fairy, told Dr. Krauss what he knew. Or rather what he couldn't prove.

"There wasn't anything to report. I had my suspicions. We all did. But now...have you seen the papers?"

Krauss shrugged. "Not yet. It's still early. Why?"

"The man you just saved is Curt Wild."

The older man looked blank. "Should I know him?"

"Until a few months ago, he was with Brian Slade. Maxwell Demon?"

The momentary confusion in Krauss' face cleared. "Oh, I've heard of him. Wait, I heard something about him on the radio. They said he was-"

"Killed. I know. Curt was his lover. For over two years."

Krauss sighed. "No wonder he's in shock." Suddenly he frowned. "Then what's he doing with the other one? What's his name? Jack?"

"I wish I knew." Holtz shifted uneasily. "I tried to get a message to Brian a while back. But I never got a reply."

The emergency room doctor looked thoughtful. "How do you know it got there?"

The heavy-set man shrugged. "I just assumed..."

There was a long pause as both men digested what this could mean. "Maybe I should give Mandy Slade a call."

"You do that."

*****

It wasn't that easy to get through to Mandy. The news of Brian's murder was a front page story. In an effort to get away from the constant questions, Mandy changed her phone number several times.

Brian kept a low profile, but a deepening depression set in, compelling him to act out in the most self-destructive way possible. He took up drugs. Specifically, coke. Mandy argued against self-medication and urged him to get into therapy. But Brian fell slowly into an abyss that was only partially of his own making.

"Brian, you've got to stop," Mandy pleaded.

Brian laughed, cackled, really, a sound that grated on Mandy's nerves. It was a call for help in a foreign language that she could barely translate. "Why?"

"If you keep this up...you'll die."

Brian sobered, if only for a second, and said in a sputtery whisper, "I know."

"Is that what you want? Am I wasting my time here, Brian? Trying to keep you together? And for what? So you can fuck boys you pick up off the street and snort coke?"

Brian reached over and slapped the smooth buttocks of the pretty boy he'd slept with the previous evening. "Hey, sunshine. Get up."

"Wha--?"

"Get out," Brian continued cheerfully.

"Why?"

"Time's up."

The naked young man slid out of bed and ambled slowly to the door, trailing the bed linens behind him. "You're a real prick, aren't you?"

"Yeah. Spread the word," Brian said. He was coming down from the coke now. He could feel it. Sensation was returning to his nerves with a vengeance. His body ached, but that wasn't the worst of it.

The worst of it was coming back to a world without Curt.

*****

"Good news, Curt," Holtz told Curt. "You can go home today," he said with a broad smile.

"H-home?" Curt hoarsely whispered. Where's that? he wanted to scream.

"Hello, love," Jack said, fairly beaming at him. "You gave us quite a scare. We thought you weren't coming back to us."

Curt closed his eyes, the dark brown eyelashes a striking contrast against skin that remained too pale. "I wish I hadn't," he muttered.

"Now, now, don't be ungrateful. The doctors have worked wonders with you, and they say you're ready to be discharged."

To where? The world he used to live in was dark and forbidding. Brian was gone. Curt wished, prayed, to feel something other than this overwhelming grief that welled up in him.

Then his prayers were answered.

*****

tbc