Invasive Procedures by Aaron Johnston

mean a hill a beans to nobody.”
    Monica stared at her, suddenly feeling sad. Dolores spoke with such simple conviction that it was clear she believed what she said. She wasn’t looking for pity. She was simply stating fact, as if reading from a textbook of her own life.
    “I care,” Monica found herself saying. And she meant it.
    Dolores looked at her oddly, as if Monica had spoken Chinese, then shrugged. “Ask away.”
    “Okay. Do you exercise?”
    “Oh, we’re getting right to it, are we? I mean, I know I could lose a few pounds. And I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking how can a homeless woman have a belly at all, right? I should be skinny as a rail, right?”
    Monica cocked her head. “Homeless?”
    “Homeless,” repeated Dolores. “As in without a home. I live on the street. We all do, except Byron over there. He’s a big-shot lawyer, only Galen thought he was a drifter and picked him up same as the rest of us. He needed people who wouldn’t be missed, know what I mean? Who’s gonna miss a few homeless, right? Answer: nobody. Only Byron
isn’t
homeless. Or at least so he says, and I believe him even if Hal doesn’t. You see, Byron’s car broke down. I used to own me a Chevy Nova, but the man who ran the trailer park, he had it towed after my Earl burned himself.”
    “All of you are homeless?” Monica said.
    “You got wax in your ears? Galen picked us up
because
we’re homeless. Nick over there thinks Galen’s got something in store for us. Something bad. Otherwise, why wouldn’t he just let us go?”
    Monica’s head was spinning. What did Galen want with five homeless people, or at least five people he
thought
were homeless? Why was he holding them here? Why was he holding
her
here? None of it made sense.
    She asked Dolores more questions and concluded that she had a good heart. So it couldn’t be Dolores that needed the transplant.
    She politely dismissed Dolores without giving her a full examination, and Dolores went back to bed.
    No one was waiting to take her place. In fact, neither Nick nor Hal moved from his bed or showed any desire to be examined at all.
    “So who’s next?” Monica asked.
    No answer.
    “It doesn’t hurt one bit,” said Dolores. “I don’t know what y’all are afraid of.”
    “Shut up,” said Hal. “Nobody asked you.”
    “You shut up,” Dolores said, her smile replaced with a snarl. “You keep barking like you own the place. But you’re just mad because you don’t have a bottle of liquor to suck on.”
    Hal hopped out of bed with clenched fists. “You’re going to have a fat lip if you don’t shut your mouth.”
    Lichen rose to his feet, and the mere movement of his massive frame changed the mood of the room immediately. Hal lowered his fists, and Dolores lay on her bed, deliberately turning her back to Hal.
    Monica stood. “It’s all right. I’ll check Jonathan. They can relax for now. I’ll examine them afterward.”
    Lichen considered this a moment before finally sitting back down.
    Monica relaxed and took her bag to Jonathan’s bedside. She rolled up his sleeve and saw over a dozen needle wounds. Most of them were swollen, and many of them had been scratched to the point of bleeding. Heroin.
    She glanced at Nick, who was watching her closely now.
    “Jonathan is a friend of yours?”
    “What do you care?”
    “I just ask because you seemed eager to help him before.”
    Nick said nothing.
    Monica checked Jonathan’s temperature and blood pressure. “He has a fever. Was he hot like this before he tried to run?”
    Nick wouldn’t look at her.
    “I need to know because he may be having a reaction to the tranquilizer.
    No response.
    She pulled back Jonathan’s eyelids and saw that his pupils were highly dilated. Lichen had given him quite a dose of ketamine, no question.
    “He gets the shakes at night,” Nick said softly. “Sweats a lot, too. He’s been hot for two days now.”
    Monica nodded and took out her pad and wrote a