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Jason fucked up. Badly. He knows better than this.
He knew
way
better than to mess with that restaurant owner after the dozens of times the grouchy man warned Jason to stay out of his dumpster. Jason knew it would be a risk, yet he went and did it anyway. He was just so
hungry.
He’d have done anything for some food, even if it meant feasting on the leftovers of rich people who could afford to take every orphan off the streets and set them up with a roof over their heads and some good food, but who can’t be bothered to donate more than five bucks at a time when the Salvation Army bells come a’ringing.
Jason did what he had to, and now he’s being chased through Gotham’s alleyways, the restaurant owner yelling that he’s “gonna call the fucking cops and have them ship your thieving ass to juvie!” Yeah, right.
Jason turns down a weaving alley and is almost home free until he trips over a plank of wood sticking out behind a garbage can. The street is too dark to see it until it’s too late. Jason lets out a yelp, crashing to the filthy ground. His hand skids along something sharp, slicing through the flesh of his palm and making him hiss.
Footsteps approach behind him. Jason quickly pulls himself behind the garbage can, holding his breath and making himself as small as possible. The restaurant owner runs past him, completely unaware of his hiding place.
Jason exhales. Thank god for shitty street lamps. He lifts his hand to inspect the wound, already grimacing at the thought of what he’ll find.
“Shit.”
Whoever dumped the wood here must not have been paying attention, because they missed the huge fucking nail sticking out of one of the planks. It tore right through the side of Jason’s left hand, the wound deep and jagged. The lighting is horrid, but even Jason can tell that the dark fluid coating his hand is blood—so much that the sight alone makes him queasy.
Fuck. Fuckety fucking shit. This is going to need a fuck ton of stitches, and Jason can officially cross hand model off his list of potential careers.
At least he made off with a handful of whatever prize he stole from the dumpster. It looks like some kind of meat—pork, maybe? Whatever it is, it’s the most protein Jason has gotten in weeks. He’d sell his soul to Satan for a goddamn
steak
if he could.
Jason drags himself back to his sorry excuse for an apartment building, dripping a breadcrumb trail of blood in his path. The pain gets worse with every throb of his pulse, the adrenaline wearing off and leaving him without a life vest. Jason is beyond relieved when he finally reaches his shitty apartment, uncaring as he drips blood all over the stained carpet on his way to the bathroom.
He washes the wound with his pathetically tiny bar of soap and water that’s only one step above polluted, seeping into the gash and turning the basin pink. It hurts like hell.
God, what Jason wouldn’t give to be able to afford a visit to the clinic four blocks down the road, but he can barely afford rent as it is. Lucky for him, the landlady here has a soft spot for homeless runts. For a small fee, Jason gets this shoebox paradise with two gallons of (cold) running water per week and no heat.
Home sweet home.
Jason digs up his loose definition of a first-aid kit and takes out a sewing needle and thread. No anesthetic, obviously. Fucking lovely.
Jason tries not to shake as he gets everything set up on the milk crate he uses for a coffee table. He angles his hand so he can use what little light comes in through the window next to the closest street light. It’s not enough, but it’s as good as he can expect to get.
He takes a deep breath once he gets the needle threaded, steeling his nerves. Just do it fast. Get it over with.
Jason pierces the skin and smothers a scream in his elbow. He doesn’t dare stop, no matter how badly it hurts. If he lets himself take a break, he’ll never get this done. He pushes the needle through the cut, over and over, biting down on the fabric of his hoodie until his head swims and he prays he doesn’t pass out before he finishes this.
It takes a million years for him to tie off the last stitch, the scent of blood thick in his nostrils and making him lightheaded. He’s trembling, his sleeve wet with saliva and tears. The stitches are crooked and would make any doctor wince, but they’re good enough by Jason’s standards. It’s going to be a gnarly scar either way.
Jason spends the rest of the night huddled by the tiny fireplace he constructed out of an old washing machine drum. He tries to ignore the lingering pain in his hand as he eats his pathetic excuse for dinner. It’s not enough—it never is. Jason falls asleep hours later with his stomach growling and his hand stinging, the chattering of the fire his only company.
His hand isn’t getting any better.
The gash is closed, but pus seeps from the gaps in the stitches, and the skin surrounding it is red and tender. Definitely infected, which Jason should have seen coming. That’s what he gets for rinsing it out with dirty water and disinfecting it with half a bottle of beer he swiped from a sleeping drunk weeks ago.
This isn’t good. Jason couldn’t afford antibiotics even if he skimped on rent and didn’t eat for a month. He only has twenty bucks saved up under his mattress, which won’t be
nearly
enough to deal with this. He’s fucked.
Unless.
There is one thing he could do. Something that pays well and would solve his problems in one night. But Jason promised himself he would never do that again, no matter how bad things got. He can’t. He won’t.
Jason hasn’t done
that
since his mom died and stopped needing drugs to keep her numb. The little life insurance money Jason received after her death dried up weeks ago, but he never let himself take that step. Not again.
He remembers when he was younger, too young to understand why Mom would come home some mornings covered in bruises and hickeys that she couldn’t explain if she wanted to. She would head straight for the bathroom and spend the rest of the day on the floor in a drug-hazed stupor. Then she got too sick to do much of anything anymore, and Jason knew he had to do something if they were going to pay the bills.
So he did what he had to. He did the job, no matter how much it hurt. No matter how badly his body would ache at the end of the day, covered in bite marks and scratches from some of the rougher clients. He would cry silently into his pillow night after night, not bothering to explain to his mother exactly where their income came from. She hardly noticed, anyway.
He was only ten years old.
Jason can’t go back to that, no matter how much he knows he probably should. It’s either do the deed or die once the infection catches up with him. He can’t go back to scrubbing his skin raw every night, to envying his mom for being able to block out the world and forget the horrors of life. He can’t.
But days pass, and the infection only gets worse.
The area around the wound is inflamed, leaking pus and feeling like he just shoved his hand into a fireplace. Then the fever starts. Jason becomes too sick to scavenge for food, let alone stand, so he lives solely on the two cans of room-temperature Chef Boyardee he had saved strictly for life-or-death emergencies.
He spends the following afternoon vomiting, purging his emergency rations into what used to be someone’s cooking pot, and it makes him want to cry. He just wasted two cans of food that he
can’t
afford to waste. And he’s only going to get sicker. It’s a matter of time before sepsis kicks in and pulls the trigger for him. Will anyone even know he’s gone? Maybe the landlady, once she gets impatient waiting for her rent money and comes up here to find his decaying body.
Days go by. Jason clings to the feeble hope that the infection might magically get better on its own, but he knows better. He knows he’s reaching the point of no return. He needs medicine.
Fuck it.
The night air is cold on Jason’s clammy skin as he stands on a street corner, trying not to shiver. He cleaned up as best he could earlier and dressed in the only unstained shirt he owns. He pushes down the nausea that threatens to overwhelm him, taking deep breaths. His hand is wrapped in a strip of fabric he tore from an old dish towel, hiding the disgusting wound from view. Clients don’t like slovenly merchandise.
It takes less time than it should for a black car to pull up on the curb in front of him. The vehicle is sleek, too fancy for this side of town. The window rolls down. “How much?”
Jason blinks back the feverish haze, tries to keep his voice steady. “A hundred for an hour.” That should be enough to get him through the week, even after buying the medicine.
He can’t see the man’s face, but he can feel the eyes on him, roaming greedily over his body. “Hop in, baby.”
Jason swallows nervously, but he opens the car door and gets in.