Doubletake

“Not what I wish you’d shown back then.” He looked at my hand when he said the words, the large puncture flushed, stitched, and wrapped in a bandage cleaner than a bar towel. And there’d been another shot instead of ointment. Hands were more prone to infection than most body parts. Nushi didn’t have to teach Nik that. We’d seen that ourselves years before Nushi and we both remembered. Niko had come close to dying from a bite. Not a Wolf bite, but a dog bite.

Like he’d said, back then…

Hell, the dog had been a beagle, but the infection had set in by the next day. His arm had swollen and turned bright red. The bite had been on the wrist. In three days the infection was an inch away from his elbow. He was eight. I was four. Sophia was working two conventions back-to-back, emphasis on the “back.” I was four and I knew what that meant from the smirking kids down the street, but medicine and nonmicrowaved food, those I didn’t know anything about.

She wouldn’t have done anything anyway.

I’d wanted to go to the house next door from where we rented. A nurse lived there. Or she’d been a nurse, but then she wasn’t. Nik had said she stole medicine from the hospital and was fired. Everyone in the neighborhood knew it. I’d brightened when I remembered that and said she’d help us. She was a nurse. She had to have tons of medicine because she stole it. The same as we had tons of things Sophia stole, but useless stuff. No medicine. Nik had shaken his head. “That’s not the kind of medicine she has, kiddo.”

I’d stood by the rickety table where Niko was doing his homework. It was hot, but he wore long sleeves to cover his arm. It was the first time I’d had to help Nik like this, but not the last, and it was the first time he told me: Don’t tell. Don’t tell teachers about Sophia. Don’t tell the counselor. Don’t tell anyone. They’ll take us away. I’d thought being taken away from Sophia sounded great…until Niko had said that then they might take us away from each other. There might not be enough room in foster homes for two kids at once. They were crowded all the time.

Take us away? Niko gone? When he’d said that I’d blinked hard to keep from crying. I was four years old and I was a big boy. Big boys didn’t cry.

“Never tell. I’ll never tell. I won’t forget,” I’d chanted, rubbing the first tear away hard before it had a chance to reach my cheek. “I promise. I promise.”

Niko had looked sicker than he already had. His dusky skin was lighter, kind of gray. After my promise, it had turned as white as his could. He wrapped the arm that wasn’t hurt around me and hugged me tightly. His longish blond hair—no money for haircuts and no trusting Sophia’s shaky hands with a pair of scissors—fell against my cheek. “I’m sorry, little brother. It won’t happen. I won’t leave you. They can’t make me. I promise. Okay? I promise and you know I never lie.”

I’d hugged him back, careful not to touch his bad arm. No, Nik never lied. If he said it wouldn’t happen, it wouldn’t happen. He sometimes ducked the truth or circled it somehow, but not to me. He was good, in the way adults were on TV, but sometimes he was too good. Already I knew if you needed something, needed it really badly, being good didn’t work.

I’d offered to microwave him some soup. He said he wasn’t hungry. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday and then just crackers. I’d said okay and that I’d go outside to play. But I didn’t. I’d gone next door to talk to the used-to- be-a-nurse. She’d opened the door wearing flip-flops and sweatpants and a top that was small enough that I could see her pasty belly pooch out. Her hair was straw blond, her eyes bloodshot brown, and she had a cigarette hanging from her lip. She didn’t look like any nurse on TV. She stared at me and then started to shut the door without saying anything.

“Wait!” I pushed against the door and slipped inside just before it shut. “It’s my brother. He’s sick. A dog bit him and his arm is huge and red and he’s hot. He has a fever.” How high I didn’t know. We didn’t have a thermometer. “He needs medicine. Everyone says you have medicine.”

“Go to the doctor, kid.” She flopped on the couch to blankly watch TV. “My folks might’ve named me Happy, the bastards, but I ain’t no charity and I ain’t got the kind of medicine to help no dog bite.”

“But maybe you could get it?” Four-year-olds didn’t cry. Big boys didn’t cry. I didn’t cry…unless I wanted to. And I did. I’d cried and cried. My face was wet, my shirt, part of my hair. I didn’t whine. Whining was a mistake and adults didn’t like whining. Adults told me how cute I was. Playing outside, shopping in the grocery store with Nik, buying clothes at the Salvation Army. Black hair, pale skin, huge solemn gray eyes. They hadn’t seen a little boy as cute as me. When cute little boys cry, most adults run to help. “Please,” I’d begged, my voice hitching. I was sad and scared. Really, really sad. Really, really scared. No one could not see that. “He’s sick. We can’t go to the doctor, and he’s so sick.”

She yawned. “Yeah, and it’s a damn shame, but I don’t have what you need and if I did, what’re you gonna give me for it? A Tonka truck? Go home.”

Oh. She was one of those kinds of adults. She was a Sophia. Fake tears wouldn’t help. The same with fake sad and fake scared. I wasn’t sad or scared anymore. I hadn’t been since I’d known what to do. I’d stopped crying instantly, dried my face with the front of my shirt, and asked, showing all the mean I felt in me, “What do you want? We have five bottles of scotch, a stolen diamond ring, a pearl necklace,” stolen too, but Sophia wasn’t sure if it was real or not, “and a motorcycle. The big ones that cost a lot. A Harley-Davidman.” It was a whole lot of mean as I added, “And I know how to call nine-one-one. Cops don’t like people that steal. They don’t like people who hit little kids either. Or touch them in bad places like it says on TV.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, kid.” She stared at me, then finally clicked off the TV with the remote. “A Harley- Davidman, huh? Stolen too?”

I’d smiled. Not a cute kid smile. She was a bad lady. She didn’t deserve a smile at all. But I’d seen Sophia do business, and though Nik wasn’t like her and I wasn’t like her, I was something else. Not good like my brother, and not rotten like Sophia, but maybe in between. And even at four I’d known sometimes you have to do not-so-good things. I knew Niko would’ve done it for me, but he’d have moped over it forever and ever. That people weren’t better, that life wasn’t better, that you had to do wrong things to do right things.

Sometimes Niko wasn’t very…practical.

He’d taught me that word last week. It was weird how I knew what it meant right away and he was four years older and didn’t know. He could spell it and explain it to me, but inside, he didn’t know it. No. That wasn’t right. Not really. He knew, but it was hard for him to do it? Um…be it? Maybe when he was older it’d be easier.

He was a hero. Heroes on TV, where I learned most stuff, usually weren’t practical either. It got them into all sorts of trouble. I was practical and I didn’t care about anybody like I cared about my brother. “You’re some strange-ass kid, you know that? Creepy as hell too, you little blackmailing asshole.” Like I’d cared. They were just words. I’d heard a whole lot worse from my mother. They didn’t matter. What mattered was that Nurse Happy stood up. “But I’ll go get an antibiotic. If it’s practically his whole arm, he’ll need a shot. That’ll take a little longer to get.”

I couldn’t tell time yet. It was hard to learn even with Nik teaching me. But she didn’t know that. “In an hour I’ll pour a bottle of whiskey down the sink. In two hours I’ll flush the diamond ring down the toilet. In three hours…”

She’d made it before my favorite cartoon was over. Nik said that lasted half of an hour. He’d liked that I was interested in learning to tell time again and was trying to give me a lesson when Nurse Happy showed up. She’d given a confused Niko a shot and a bottle of pills to take twice a day. I’d hidden them in a rusty lunch box under the porch steps where the rats were. Sophia hated rats. She wouldn’t go there. She wouldn’t find them. “Thanks for doing this,” he had told her, although pinching me for disobeying him. “It’s very nice of you. What’s your name?”

“You don’t know? Your…No one told you?” she said, her eyes sliding sideways to look at me. She saw the finger I put to my lips, but Nik didn’t. He was too sick to be worrying that she’d tell on me for doing a kind of naughty thing. She wouldn’t tell because she knew I hadn’t lied. I did know how to call 911. I knew that she hadn’t cared about my tears, but cops would. And I knew who cops would believe between a cute, crying kid and someone who’d been fired for stealing medicine from sick people.

“Happy,” she answered. “Good joke on me by my parents, huh?” She snapped her fingers at me. “Pay up.”

I’d made Nik rest on the couch with a blanket over him—that’s what they did on TV when you were sick,