A Memory Away by Taylor Lewis

grabbed Dex’s arm and shoved him out of the small bathroom, ignoring his protests and the way he tried to dig his heels in. “You go start clearing up that mess and I’ll clear up the one in here. We’re out when I think he’s ready.”
“ Gina!” Dex spun and tried to get back in but she was too quick for him and slammed the door in his face, flipping the lock and effectively shutting him out. Dex hammered on the door. “Gina! I think he’d be more comfortable with me helping him. It’s my job!”
Lopez rolled her eyes as she turned back to Jonah, slouched dangerously on his precarious perch, grey skinned and red eyed. “He’s not exactly in a condition to care, Randall!” She stripped out of her shirt leaving her in just a vest top and moved forward with purpose. “And you’re an E.M.T not Nurse Betty. He’s not bleeding, unconscious or in need of oxygen – I think I can handle this.” She bent, grabbed Jonah’s ankles and lifted to tip him unceremoniously backwards into the tub.
“ Gina!” Dex hammered on the door again in response to the heavy thud of Jonah’s body hitting porcelain and his agonised grunt when his head bounced off a tap on the way down. “Gina, what’s going on? Is he alright?”
Ignoring Jonah struggling to grip the side of the tub and haul himself up, Gina reached for the shower head, flicked on the water and swung one leg over the side of the bath to plant a booted foot in the middle of Jonah’s soiled chest and pin him down hard. Not bothering to wait for the water to heat to a comfortable temperature she pointed the shower head directly at his face and let him have it. “He’s fine!” She answered Dex cheerfully as Jonah spluttered and cursed and tried to flail free. “Looking better already. Go get cleared up and put some coffee on, he’ll be needing it in a few.”  Taking pity for a moment she directed the spray away from his head and thoroughly soaked his filthy t-shirt and jeans before spitefully turning the water directly onto his face again, cooing, “There, baby, you good now?”
Jonah responded with a garbled string of threats and curses that earned him another two minute blasting with water that was now just the right side of scalding and nearly drowned him in the process.
Lopez grinned. “Tough love, you’ll thank me for it one day.”
~*~*~*~
An hour later and Jonah, Lopez and Dex were sat in strained silence around Jonah’s small kitchen table with coffee and scrambled eggs and toast arrayed before them. Jonah was looking considerably cleaner although his skin still held more of a grey tinge to it than tan and his eyes were half slits in his face, edged in sore red.
Lopez was just pleased that being in his immediate vicinity was no longer making her want to hurl the contents of her own s tomach in response to the smell and was calling their intervention a win.
Spearing the last slice of toast with the prongs of his fork, Dex slapped a lavish amount of butter on it and nodded to Jonah’s nearly untouched plate. “You’ve gotta eat something, dude. You look like shit.”
Jonah lifted his pounding head and squinted at his friend fiercely before propping his elbows either side of his plate and dropping his head to rub the heels of his hands into his aching eyes. “Fuck off and leave me alone. I’m alive, you’ve done your job, now get the hell out.”
Narrowing her eyes, Lopez flicked a look at Dex’s face and then back at the top of her partner’s head – clearly tough love alone wasn’t going to cut it. She was going to have to bring out the emotional equivalent of invading a third world country and practising genocide on its religious and ethnic undesirables. “Nice. You’d think now you got a kid you’d start watching your mouth.” She raised an eyebrow when Jonah jerked his head up and stared at her, saying, “What? You think I wouldn’t figure it out?”
“You know?” Jonah felt the rage that had been simmering under his skin since