I tucked myself back under covers, comforted by a freshly-emptied bladder, but it would not last. The sound of a soft, steady beeping radiated from out in my living room. I took a deep breath and soaked in the sound, trying to figure out exactly what it was but couldn’t.

I rushed up out of the bed as fast as I could and stomped towards the living room with my hands balled in fists just in case.

The last lingering effects of the whiskey and the further darkness of the living room caused almost temporarily blindness when I walked into the room, but I could still hear the beeping coming from the corner of the room. I staggered towards the corner with my arms waving out in front of me until my eyes finally adjusted.

The sound was coming from the heart monitor I used for work. I forgot to put it back in the closet after I returned from working with Big Jim. Or had I? I thought I remembered putting it in there. Regardless, the neon green of the device’s LED screen glowed back at me in the night, reading a steady pulse.

“What the hell?”

There was no way the device should have been reading a pulse without being hooked up to a patient. I snatched it up and felt something wet slap up against my naked stomach.

I grabbed the object and almost recoiled when I felt a fist-sized, hard, slippery object come into my grasp. I lifted it up and literally jumped up off the floor.