Touch & Geaux

“You don’t really think . . .” Zane let the words trail off and shook his head. It didn’t matter. Ty definitely looked ill, and Zane was more convinced by that than some fantasy about voodoo curses. “All right. Can you get dressed?”



Ty nodded, but he didn’t actually seem to be listening. He was still clutching his side when he snatched the bag out of Zane’s hand. He fumbled with the string that bound the bag, and peered in. He didn’t have a chance to examine the contents, though. He doubled over with a gasp, leaning against the mattress as his knees started to fold.



Nick rolled over the corner of the bed to come to his side, and Zane crawled over to put a hand on his shoulder.



His entire body was trembling, but he was taking deep breaths, trying to fight through the obvious pain.



“Do we need to call an ambulance?” Kelly asked. He was finally fully awake, though he looked almost as rough as Ty did.



“You’re the corpsman,” Nick grunted.



“Well, as a trained professional, I advise we call an ambulance.”



“No,” Ty gasped. “Fuck the shirt, just get me to the ER.” He let the bag go, leaving it on the bed.



Zane tugged his jeans on and grabbed the first shirt his fingers touched, one of Ty’s T-shirts. He pulled it on as Nick tried to help Ty into a button-up flannel. Zane grabbed his wallet and Ty’s, then the felt bag, and nodded to Nick. “Time to go.”



“I’ll help you get him into a cab,” Nick said. Ty threw an arm over his shoulders. “Then I’ll get the boys and we’ll meet you there.”



“Feels like my insides are being torn apart,” Ty groaned.



When they hit the lobby, it was relatively empty, but two of the young bellhops soon took notice of them.



“Does he need help?” one of them asked Zane as they came toward them.



“We’re going to the hospital,” Zane said, taking a lot of Ty’s weight onto himself as Ty bent in pain. “We need a cab or the hotel shuttle.”



One of them turned to jog for the entryway and hail a cab.



“Too many hurricanes?” the younger man asked with a knowing smile.



“Bad gris-gris,” Ty muttered to him. The man hopped away from him as if he’d said he had the plague.



“It’s just food poisoning,” Zane insisted.



Ty growled, pulling away from Zane and Nick to stand on his own and pace several steps. He held to his side. He couldn’t seem to stay still. He would stalk back and forth and then curl as pain overtook him, then start the whole thing again.



In a matter of minutes, the hotel’s courtesy shuttle was pulling up outside and they were on their way to the hospital. Ty rocked in the backseat, fumbling with the little red bag he’d snatched from Zane’s hand as he tried to get it open.



“Give me that,” Zane said, taking it out of Ty’s hand and putting it in his pocket. “Let’s not scare the locals any more than we have to until we find out what’s wrong.” When the van pulled up to the emergency entrance, he climbed out of the van and reached back in to help Ty out.



Ty gripped his hand hard and practically fell out of the van. Someone called to them, asking if he needed a wheelchair. Ty nodded wordlessly. It seemed he wasn’t going another step.



“I know what it is, Zane,” he gasped. He looked up at Zane, and Zane could have sworn that he was smiling. “Fucking kidney stone.”



Zane groaned and covered his face with his hands for a moment, ashamed to be relieved by Ty’s self-diagnosis. “And you know this from experience, I take it?”



Ty practically fell into the wheelchair that was brought to him, and he leaned over and began the incessant rocking again. “Last time was like the most pain I’ve ever been in . . . in my life,” he told Zane haltingly. His eyes were watering; he was very nearly in tears. He was smiling, though.



Zane leaned over and put one hand on each of the arms of the wheelchair so he could look Ty in the eyes. “Considering I know what sort of injuries you’ve had, that doesn’t make me feel better. At all.” He stood up and gestured for the orderly to push Ty inside.



“At least it won’t kill me,” Ty replied as he was pushed away.



Ty stared at the ceiling tile and the block of light above him. The nurse had put something he couldn’t pronounce into the IV in his arm about two minutes ago, and the space-time continuum had opened up shortly thereafter. His ears buzzed, his eyes wouldn’t blink, he couldn’t feel his extremities, and there was a low sound in the distance that might have been his own breathing.



But he no longer hurt.



The lady who’d taken his insurance information had promised to go retrieve Zane, and Ty was simply reminding himself to continue breathing until he got there.



“Hey, how are you doing?” It was Zane, finally. Nick and Digger were with him, looking more bemused than worried.



Ty turned his head slowly, his eyes focusing on Zane with what he could only consider utter contentment. “Better,” he managed to answer. “Kidney stone.”



“Yeah, somebody’s stoned,” Digger said with a laugh.



Zane stopped at the bedside, hands in his pockets. “Did they give you something for the pain?”



“Oh yeah,” Ty practically crooned. He shifted on the narrow hospital bed, pulling the blankets around him to ward off the chill caused by the saline being pumped into him. There was still discomfort all through his lower half, but it was dull enough that he didn’t care. He had even welcomed the catheter they put in because it had been less painful than what he’d been going through. “They took a CT and said it should pass soon.” He held out his hand. “Can I have the bag?”



“What bag?” Digger asked. He and Nick still hung back by the door.



Zane looked reluctant to hand it over as he pulled it out of his pocket, pinched between two fingers.



“Oh, son of a bitch,” Digger said, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he dug around in a pocket.



Nick held out one hand, and Digger slapped a twenty dollar bill onto his palm. “Never bet against the crazy hoodoo ex,” Nick said as he folded the money into his own pocket.



“You’re both assholes,” Ty told them.



Zane turned to look at them, and he was still glaring when he met Ty’s eyes again. He held the bag up. “Don’t scare the doctors with this voodoo stuff, huh?” he said after too long of a pause. “I don’t want you hurting.”



“What are you talking about?” Ty asked as he took the bag with clumsy fingers.



Zane motioned to the bag. “This superstition stuff. The doctors might take you seriously and kick you out of here. That nurse has voodoo dolls at her station out there.” He sounded a little unnerved, which was unusual.



“Voodoo dolls are usually used for good things, you know,” Ty said. He frowned as his fingers began working on the string of the bag. “It’s a religion, Zane. Nothing sinister.”



“Sure.”



Digger grunted. “You sound like a skeptic.”



“I am a skeptic,” Zane confirmed.



“Well,” Ty murmured as he tried to find a more comfortable position. He settled on instructing Zane to lift the head of his bed so he could recline and still inspect the gris-gris bag without too much discomfort. “You might think it’s just fairy-tale stuff, but this is serious. Serious business.”



Zane frowned. “So what is that thing?”



“It’s gris-gris,” Ty answered slowly. He was probably slurring, but as far as he knew he was still making sense.



“Yes, dear, we got that part,” Nick said. He and Digger came closer, and Digger sat on the end of Ty’s bed, jarring it. Ty didn’t care.



Zane nodded, glancing at the others again. “You asked specifically about the color,” Zane prompted.



Ty gazed up at him, wishing he had the ability to convince Zane to take him seriously. He knew Nick, and probably Zane, thought all of it was stupid. A least Digger believed.



“He’s so fucking stoned,” Digger said, laughing as he patted Ty’s leg.



“His mind is processing at turtle speed,” Nick added, snickering behind his hand.



Zane placed a hand on Ty’s forehead, and Ty’s eyes fell shut. The warmth of Zane’s palm was like heaven.



“You know about this voodoo stuff, right?” Zane asked.



“Yeah,” Digger answered. Ty felt him shift on the bed. “The color and material of the bag are just as important to its purpose as the contents. I’m not an expert, but I’m betting if we get it open, Grady and I can tell you what it was meant to do.”



Ty opened his eyes at the sound of his name.



“You want me to open it?” Ty asked. Zane and Nick both nodded. “Are y’all going to freak out if I open it?” He held up the bag gingerly. He wasn’t an expert by any means, but he knew enough about the purposes and the ingredients to get a good idea of what the bag had been intended to do. And what he didn’t know, Digger probably did.



“Why would we freak out?” Zane pulled the little rolling table over to the bedside and turned it so Ty had a flat surface in front of him.



“You freak out over things like that,” Ty mumbled. He pulled at the opening to the bag but couldn’t get the string loose. His fingers weren’t working. Digger finally took it from him and carefully poured the contents onto the shiny surface of the table.



Ty looked up and around the room, his mind chugging to work. Finally he pointed at the boxes of sterile gloves that were attached to the wall. “Hand me some of those, please.”



Zane amiably nabbed a couple of pairs and brought them back. “Things like that,” he repeated.



“What?”



“You said I freak out over things like that.”



Ty pulled on one of the gloves. “You just . . . don’t believe in them.”



“You’re right,” Zane said with a shrug.



“Ty don’t touch home plate before the first pitch,” Digger added. “He believes in everything.”



“Shut up,” Ty muttered. He poked through the contents as Digger and Nick laughed at him. He began to separate the different things, making little piles, forgetting what he was doing.



“Hey Ty? Buddy?” Nick finally said gently. “Time to stop organizing and get back on task.”



Ty looked up at him. Nick was smiling fondly.



“Sorry.”



“It’s okay. You can straighten them later.”



Ty nodded. He knew they were humoring him, but he also didn’t give a fuck. He bent his attention back to the gris-gris bag. There was a small roll of parchment, a sprig of crushed juniper, a mossy substance he couldn’t identify, a root of some sort, what appeared to be iron shavings, and two large teeth. Ty pushed them around the table, tidying up his little piles.



“How do you connect not believing in something with freaking out about it?” Zane asked. He’d pulled one of the chairs over to the side of the bed and was now sitting at Ty’s side.



“I meant, are you going to make me feel stupid for believing this was put under my mattress to kill me?”



“Is that what you believe?” Zane sat and leaned back in the chair, right ankle propped on his left knee.



Ty narrowed his eyes, recognizing Zane’s interrogation posture.



Nick leaned forward. “Is that what he does when he’s questioning suspects?”



“Yes,” Ty groused.



“Well hello, Agent Garrett,” Nick said, laughing.



“Behave yourself,” Zane grumbled. He looked back to Ty. “Is that what you believe?”



“Yes,” Ty answered after a moment of thought.



Zane was watching him intently despite his casual pose. “Can you explain to me why?”



Ty looked back down at the assortment of items that had been in the gris-gris bag. He was blushing, but during the course of his time in New Orleans, he’d seen and learned things that made it impossible to dismiss the power of simple faith.



“Ty?” Zane sounded more curious than anything. Not amused, and certainly not angry or frustrated like he got when he couldn’t figure out a puzzle by logical means. He was probably still humoring Ty, but hopefully he wouldn’t dismiss any of this, thinking the drugs were making Ty goofy.



“It’s about faith,” Ty finally said, looking first at Zane and then at Nick and Digger. Nick was frowning now, and Digger was nodding. Ty met Zane’s eyes again. “I’ve seen things I can’t explain. And I believe in things I can’t see. I believe in fate and luck and curses.”



Zane crossed his arms. “Really?”



Nick nodded. “Really.”



Digger was nodding too. “So do I. I also know that people around here don’t take this stuff lightly. And this bag here is quality work; it’s no tourist prank.”



Ty took a deep breath. “It’s a murder weapon. Just like a gun or knife. It’s poison. It was put in our room by someone with knowledge and belief in the power to cause us harm.”



Nick turned to whisper into Digger’s ear, but Ty heard his words anyway. “Goddamn, I hate it when he uses real logic.”



Digger made a dismissive noise and shivered.



Zane didn’t speak for a long moment as he studied Ty, and then he abruptly nodded. “All right.”



Ty watched him with narrowed eyes. Zane never agreed with him that easily. Maybe he was just taking pity on him since he was in pain and medicated and planned to continue the conversation later. Ty nodded, though, willing to accept it for now.