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They wouldn't let him see the body.
His eyes burned and he argued hoarsely with the doctors in the ER, trying to get past them, trying to see Dex one last time. Before they took him away forever.
The orderly gently led him away, sat him down and spoke quietly to him, squeezing his shoulder. "He's gone."
He couldn't stop shivering, even when the nurse wrapped the blanket around him and helped him hold and drink a cup of hot tea, trying to raise his core temperature.
"Is there anyone we can call, Mr. Burke? Someone to come pick you up and take you home?"
T.J. shook his head. There was no one to call. There was no home to go to.
He left the hospital, numb, not feeling the cuts and welts on his face, the bruises, the sprained wrist, the soreness in his back. He couldn't feel much of anything other than an empty space to the left of where his heart was.
-fin-