Cosmo looked over at Lucy, precariously perched on the window sill, hastily scribbling notes.
"But you said this whole nightmare transpired in an underground cavern. How could you see daylight in an underground cavern?"
"Damn it, Cosmo, where have you been? Haven't you been listening? I told you the explosion turned out to be a lot bigger than any of us intended. It blew the top right out of that cavern, clean through to the surface. It was one helluva hole."
"It must have been a very large explosion," he repeated sarcastically.
"It was big," I sighed, "B-I-G, big." The fact that my voice elevated an octave or two tickled him, and a sneaky little smile worked at the corners of his mouth. He sauntered away from the side of the bed, took out his pipe and went through the whole maddening ritual. A cloud of billowy white encased his gnomelike face before he started in on me again.
"Then you came to and crawled out," he repeated, as though he had to remind me where I was in the stream of events.
"You got it," I snapped.
"Go on," he urged.
Time out. Let me draw you a somewhat clearer picture of my predicament. I am still battered, still bruised and still beaten. My face is a swollen montage of cuts, abrasions and tiny little sores where the good staff of the hospital have deemed fit to dig razorlike slivers of flint from my epidermis. There is an IV in my right arm, and my left arm, starting at the shoulder, is encased in miles of gauze and adhesive because of damage inflicted during my impromptu fireworks display. For four days I've had nothing but water and a paste the staff of this miserable hospital assures me is oatmeal. I am, to coin a phrase, not a happy person.
Now that you have that image securely tucked away, picture a bucolic old geezer with a crusty, somewhat impish manner, an individual devoid of the human response known as sympathy, browbeating a helpless patient — and you have some idea why I m a trifle testy.
Add one grinning, gum-popping blonde graduate assistant who seemingly shares the old bastard's delight in my discomfort, and testy suddenly evolves into downright unpleasant.
There was, under the circumstances, nowhere for me to retreat, no place to hide and no sympathy. No cigarettes. No Black and White.
"Go on," he repeated.
"Go on where?" I grunted.
Cosmo gave me a glowering look. "It's quite obvious you were able to get out of your predicament, Elliott, so why don't you tell us about it?"
"Damn it, Cosmo, I already told you that story half a dozen times."
"Then once more won't hurt, will it?"
Lucy snickered.
Finally, I gave in. "In all honesty, I don't remember much detail. I do remember I was surprised at the degree of destruction and all those creatures buried under tons of rubble. They were just blown away."
"Go on," he insisted.
"Somehow I managed to crawl out of that tomb." My mind reluctantly began to pull back the curtain, and I started to relive the nightmare. I could again see myself standing amidst the carnage, living with the paradox of the lifting fog, listening to the ominous sound of an approaching storm, felling the fresh breeze coming in off the lake and rushing down into the abysmal pit. Then my mind leapfrogged ahead to the devastation in the village itself when I realized that the collapsing caves had swallowed up most of the village in the chain of explosions. It was like I was suddenly catapulted into a surrealistic painting.
"You said the town itself was gone?"
"Most of it." I nodded. "There were just a few stunned villagers stumbling around in a daze. They said the earth just opened up and swallowed most of them."
The smile had faded from Lucy's now sober face.
"Did you tell the people what happened?"
"There wasn't anybody to tell."
This time Cosmo had no comeback.
"When the disaster teams finally got there, I told them there had been an explosion and that there were only a few survivors, most of whom had no idea what had happened."
"Did you tell them everything?"
"I told them nothing. If you arrived on the scene of a catastrophe like that and some half-crazed man started telling you about apelike creatures with two thumbs and three fingers that ate people, what would you do?"
"I'd lock him up so he wouldn't hurt himself," Cosmo acknowledged.
"Precisely. That's why I couldn't tell them what really happened at Chambers Bay."
"What about the woman?" Lucy asked. "You haven't told us about her."
The words had to snake around the lump in my throat. The price to bring an end to centuries of nightmare had come high. In a matter of a few short days I had developed a real fondness for the man called Jake Madden — and in the case of Brenda Cashman, it was something even more than that. It would be a long time before I forgot the woman-girl with the jeans with the hole in the knee. I closed my eyes and hoped against hope that the thought would somehow hurt a little less in the darkness.
"I suppose she suffered the same fate as the rest of them," I whispered.
Lucy drifted over to the side of my bed, shuffling through a fistful of scraps of paper. "I know you don't want to get into all of this now, but there are a lot of loose ends we need to take care of."
I nodded my understanding, but for the moment, as far as I was concerned, the world outside that hospital door could go straight to hell on a unicycle. It was going to be a while before E.G. Wages gave the matters of the living a high priority.
Lucy was more pragmatic. "I called Milt and told him the Z was blown up in an accident. He wanted some details, so I made some up. He'll send you a check in the next couple of days."
"No hurry," I said, somewhat ascerbically.
Lucy was undaunted. "I called the Dean. He'll rearrange your lecture schedule." She finished and graced me with a cherubic grin. "Now you're supposed to say 'nicely done, good and faithful graduate assistant'."
"Nicely done," I muttered. Under the layers of gauze I was appreciating all her efforts. "Don't know what I'd do without you," I managed.
Lucy's smile intensified. Suddenly she glanced at her watch, and the smile curdled into a frown. "Oh, good grief," she sputtered, "I was supposed to be in Doctor Carlson's office twenty minutes ago." She picked up her jacket, blew me a kiss and started for the door. "Don't wait up on me," she said grinning.
Cosmo waited for the door to close then propped his slightly stooped frame up against the wall next to the bed. "Man to man, Elliott, how do you feel? I mean inside, where it counts."
In all the years I had known Cosmo Leach, I had never known the man to be so solicitous. So I took it for an honest question and decided it deserved something more than the standard flip repartee that tended to dominate our mentor-student conversations.
It seemed appropriate to preface my confession with a sigh. "It's gonna hurt for a while," I admitted. "I feel especially bad about Brenda Cashman. I knew from the start that I shouldn't have taken her with me. If I'd have followed through on all of this like a sane man instead of dragging her out to Chambers Bay with me, she'd still be alive. Maybe I'll get smart one of these days and take your advice. Get myself a little hideaway on some pristine little pond and spend the rest of my days contemplating my inverted navel."
"So that's what's at the bottom of all this," Cosmo grunted. "A woman! It had to be more than you were telling us. You've been through worse."
I nodded.
Still, Cosmo lingered, and I knew from experience that there was even more on his mind, maybe something he hadn't told me. Finally he harumphed and pushed himself away from the wall. "Even if you're not ready for this, I still think you should know." He walked solemnly to the door, opened it and spoke to someone standing in the hall. "Would you come in now?"