"Buddy. Buddy," someone was saying, shaking his shoulder. "You sick, huh?"
He struggled to his knee twisting his head back and forth, trying to regroup his memories. The sear places were vacant, empty, part of himself cut cleanly away. Immediate memories not yet stored and filed seemed to be floating free, unassociated—too widely spread to have been cut out, not too widely spread to have been mixed and shuffled. He was panting as he struggled with them, capturing them, tying them down, ordering them.
Then he began to vomit.
"You drink too much? Hey, buddy, you drink too much? I guess you drink too much, maybe?"
Understanding—half understanding—came with the words. He scrabbled up the wall until he was erect. His back pressed against the vertical tile for support. He turned and staggered from the stinking rest room, his hands forcing clumsily against the walls.
In the short hallway he could hear voices.
"And when he slumped over...."
"She just sat there like she was thinking...."
"You see the cop shake her?"