Cowboy Ending - Overdrive: Book One by Adam Knight

of my red
stuff spilled out onto the sidewalk in front of Cowboy Shotz . Made quite a mess I was
told.
     
    Surgeons called
me lucky. Damage to my guts was bad but repairable. Sure, they had
to remove about a foot of my intestine that was beyond stitching.
That left a pretty scar just below my ribs a good 6 inches long. My
right lung was grazed but not punctured. Two millimeters to the
right and “death by sucking chest wound” would’ve been the opening
line of my obituary.
     
    I didn’t feel
lucky. Hospital rehabilitation exercises with nurses and therapists
all around were rather humiliating. So was needing two one-hundred
pound girls to hold my arms as I stood up out of a wheelchair to
take some handrail assisted steps like a ninety year old man.
Thankfully after the first day I was able to walk unassisted.
     
    Plus, the TV in
my room didn’t work so I missed the final Jets games of the season.
Though since they missed the playoffs again I probably didn’t miss
that much.
     
    Flowers
overflowed the tiny table in my surprisingly private room. Given
the perpetual overcrowding of Winnipeg’s hospitals I figured for
sure I’d be sharing the room with an octogenarian emphysemic who
wheezed into an air mask all night. But I guess being a front page
news gunshot survivor had some perks.
     
    A copy of the
Winnipeg Sun sat on my bed. I grimaced re-reading the splash page
headline.
     
    BOUNCING
BACK
    Nightclub
Security Survives Gangland Shooting
     
    There was a
story on the inside flap with lots of pictures from the scene and
more. I couldn’t bring myself to read it.
     
    Outside on the
street I could make out a Global TV van and a few other people
hanging around conspicuously holding cameras and chatting. The
hospital had acquiesced to my insistence on privacy, though I’d
been approached directly by one of the Regional Health Authority
vice presidents of the asking me to reconsider.
     
    Hey, I was
exceptionally grateful for the hard work and medical expertise of
the personnel responsible for my being able to stand and breathe
without assistance. But I wasn’t a side show freak for people to
take pictures of and gawk at. No matter how crazy the story might
be.
     
    I snatched the
paper off the bed and folded it up, tucking it into the gym bag
Mark had brought me from home. A few extra shirts and my toiletries
were already packed in there so it took some jostling.
     
    Absently I
pulled out the belt tucked in under my skivvies and started
threading it through the loops on my Old Navy brand jeans, pleased
that I was able to notch it a bit tighter than usual. Turns out
recovering in a hospital is an unknown weight loss method.
     
    ‘Course I don’t
think Dr. Oz would recommend “intestinal reduction” on his
show.
     
    Not without a
significant sponsorship of course.
     
    I used the tiny
hospital bathroom and washed my face, trying to shake some cobwebs
from my brain. My knees were bent slightly in order to get myself
in frame as I gave my reflection the once over.
     
    My beard was in
serious need of a trim. Despite my deep seated fatigue the bags
under my eyes actually looked smaller than I’d seen in recent
months. Amazing what days of nothing but rest and recovery will do
for you. My arms had the usual bandages at my elbows where tubes
for saline and blood transfusions had done their work. There was
slight bruising underneath those bandages and in various other
spots, specifically on the right side of my chest. I peeled off my
shirt to check on their progress.
     
    Compression
bruising from CPR can stick around for weeks according to the
nurses, but already the deep purple just to the left of my sternum
was a faded yellow. The bandages covering my abdominal scar and my
entry wounds had been freshly applied this morning. There were two
matching bandages on my back that I couldn’t see. I was under
strict orders not to get them wet no matter how well the wounds
were healing.
     
    I looked leaner
than