“Shh, shh,” the woman hissed, thinking snake sounds would comfort him. “Your brother has a concussion. He’s not crippled. I don’t know who told you that. Breathe now. You’re going to be fine.”

Now, he was going to be “fine.” She filled a hypodermic needle and squirted liquid out the end just like he’d seen in a hundred TV shows. Inserting the needle in a port of his IV tube, she squeezed the plunger a half an inch or so.

“Just fine,” she whispered.

Warm. Motherly.

But only for him. The way she’d said “your brother” told him that. Try as she might, she couldn’t entirely keep the loathing from her voice.

“You just worry about getting yourself well,” the nurse said as she pushed the plunger all the way in. “That brother of yours will be right as rain in a day or so. And don’t you worry; we’re going to take good care of you.”

Right as rain, white as snow, Richard thought, and wondered where the words came from. Drugs?

“This is going to put you to sleep,” the nice, motherly Sara was saying as she pulled out the hypodermic needle. “When you wake up again, we’ll have your leg all fixed up.”

“I’ll be right as rain?” Richard heard himself murmur.

The nurse smiled as if he were the cleverest boy in the world.

In the space of a night, maybe not even a night-he had no idea how much time had elapsed-the world had changed utterly. Richard hadn’t. They had. They, them, everybody else had.

Beef Cop edged the nurse out of his range of vision. “Son, was it you who hit your brother?” he asked.