“No.”
“I need something.”
“Only on schedule.” Chandler said it firmly, no mention that stock was running low.
“I remember a hospital … at least I think I do. Now I’m in a beach house?”
He had heard the surf yesterday, and she’d admitted that much. “I told you, it’s complicated. I’ll explain everything when you’re stronger. For now you’re safe, you’re recovering. What’s the last thing you do remember?”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“Obviously.”
Trey DeBolt smiled, another first. “I remember reporting for work at the station … Kodiak, Alaska.” His eyes went far away, something new recollected. “Then we got scrambled for a mission. There was a rescue.” After a lengthy pause, he shook his head. “I can’t remember where we went, or what we were after. A foundering ship, a lost crewman. It was a dire situation, I know that much. The weather was awful, but … no, I can’t remember anything else.”
“Parts are coming back — that’s good. I can’t tell you any details of the accident. I only know that when they brought you into surgery you were in bad shape.”
“What about my crew, Lieutenant Morgan and Adams? Mikey?”
“You were the only survivor, Trey — I’m sorry.”
He was silent for a time. “That’s a Class-A mishap. There will be an investigation. Has anyone come to interview me?”
“I’m sure they will. In time.”
“When?” he demanded. His first touch of impatience.
“I don’t know.”
He looked out the window. “This isn’t Alaska.”
“You’re in Maine.”
“Maine?”
“You were brought here because you needed our doctors. They specialize in head trauma, the best in the world. Tell me — who will be wondering about you?”
“Wondering? What do you mean — like my commander?”
“No, he’s been notified.”
DeBolt’s eyes narrowed. “She.”
“Sorry — I was only told it had been done. I was thinking more along the lines of family.”
“It’s all in my personnel file.”
She waited.
“My father is dead. Mom is in Colorado Springs, but she’s got early-onset Alzheimer’s, so I doubt she’s been told anything.”
“Brothers or sisters?”
“None.”
“Significant other?”
“I’m between relationships — isn’t that what everyone says these days? I’ve been stationed on an island in the Aleutians for a year, and the guy-to-girl ratio is pretty bleak.”
“All right.”
“I’m taking classes, an online program. At some point my professor will wonder what became of me.”
“What are you studying?”
“I’m halfway to my bachelor’s degree in biology. I like the Coast Guard, but I’m not sure I’ll last twenty years.”
She stood abruptly. “Your appetite is improving. I should go for provisions. Is there anything you’d like?”
“Drugs.”
She frowned.
“Maybe an omelet. And some OJ.”
“That I can manage.” She was out the door.
The room fell quiet. DeBolt looked all around. He tried to remember more about what had happened in Alaska. A small engine kick to life, followed by tires crunching over gravel.
He fell fast asleep.
It was sleep in only the roughest sense, troubled dreams jolting him in and out of consciousness. Shooting images, angular shapes, letters and numbers, all colliding in his battered brain as he drifted just beyond the grip of consciousness. He was rescued by a noise, a sharp wooden creak. DeBolt opened his eyes and looked around the room. He saw no one.
“Joan?”
No reply.
He wondered how long he’d been out, but there was no way to tell. Not a clock anywhere. He turned his head gingerly, examining the place in detail, and found every limit of movement a new adventure in pain.
What was it about this room?
Then it struck him. It was completely devoid of anything electronic. No television, no computer, not even a microwave in the tiny kitchen. He had yet to see Joan use a cell phone, which in this day and age was striking. Was the place that remote, completely beyond cell coverage? Or was his nurse an antitechnology type, a back-to-basics pioneer with a vegetable garden and two chickens out back, a wind generator on the chimney?
Whatever.
He sat up straight, fighting a stab of pain in his skull. Never one to sit still, DeBolt began moving his arms, up and down, rotating in expanding circles. Not bad. He graduated to leg lifts, but that somehow involved the muscles in his upper back, and a bolt of lightning struck the base of his neck. He lay back down.
A car crunched closer on gravel outside. DeBolt heard the engine die, a door open and close. Then an unfamiliar voice as Joan Chandler began conversing with someone — apparently a neighbor. Most of it he didn’t catch. But he heard enough.
Soon she was inside with an armload of groceries, the visitor having been sent packing.
“Who was that?” he asked.
She busied herself unloading two paper sacks. DeBolt would have thought her a reusable-bag sort.
“Bob Denton, lives in town. He does a bit of handiwork for me now and again. Said he was in the neighborhood, and he wondered how my weather stripping was holding up.”
“You told him my name was Michael.”
A lengthy pause. “I have a nephew by that name.”
“You have a patient named Trey.”
She slammed a can of beans on the counter, her face tightening as she fought … what? Anger?
“Look,” said DeBolt, “I don’t mean to be ungracious. I appreciate all you’ve done for me. But this is no hospital. I’ve seen no doctors, and haven’t been allowed to contact anyone I know. What the hell is going on?”
She came to his bed and sat down on the edge. Instead of answering, she began unwrapping the wide bandage on his head. Once done, she took the old gauze to the bathroom and returned with two hand mirrors. She held them so he could see the wounds on the back of his skull. What he saw took his breath away. Two deep scars formed a V, joining near the base of his scalp, and three smaller wounds were evident elsewhere. There had to be a hundred stitches, but it all seemed to be healing; hair was beginning to grow back where his head had been shaved, covering the damage.
She turned the mirrors away.
After a long silence, he asked, “Will there be any long-term effects?”
“Some scarring of course, but the damage to your scalp was minimal. As long as you keep your hair a certain length, your appearance will be unchanged.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
She met his gaze. “The trauma to your brain was significant, but so far I see no evidence of cognitive impairment. Your speech and movement seem normal, which is a very good sign. But then, I’m no expert.”
“But I will see them at some point — the experts.”
“Of course you will. Tell me, do you notice anything different?”
“In what way?”
“Mental processes, I suppose. Have you had any unusual thoughts or sensations?”
“I’m hungry, but that’s hardly unusual.”
She waited.
“No,” he finally said, “although I’m really not sure what you’re asking. There is something when I sleep, I suppose. I see things — angular shapes, light on dark.”
The nurse almost said something, but instead launched into a series of cognitive exams. She made him calculate a tip for a restaurant bill, spell a given word forward then backward, arrange historical events in chronological order. When she asked him to draw a picture of his childhood home, an increasingly irritated DeBolt said, “If I earn a passing grade, will I be allowed out of the house?”