"I want to. I was sort of surprised that you weren't here."
"I'm sorry. I thought it-might be better if I spent some time alone. I just started feeling as if I was growing to depend on you too much."
"Laura," he said.,I'm depending on you too.
Believe me I am. There're some things I need to tell You about.
When I do, I think you'll see that in some ways I have as much at stake in getting to the bottom Of all this as you do. I'd really like-to come over now."
"What things?"
"Face to face?"
She hesitated."
"I'll be here," she said finally.
Laura sat cross-legged on the bed and listened impassively as Eric recounted in detail his actions and thoughts on the morning the derelict was brought in.
"I knew," she said, when he had finished. — "That first night we were together, I could see a shadow cross your face every time you talked about that resuscitation."
"For what it's worth, I'm sorry. We see so many cardiac arrest so many People brought in essentially dead after a coronary-that unless a case is strikingly different from all the others, we don't have even the slightest suspicion that something other than natural causes might be involved."
"Should you?"
"Well, I guess if we're perfect we should."
"I didn't mean it like that, and you know it," she snapped. "Eric, please. I just want to understand." He looked at her sheepishly.
"Sorry," he said. "Let me think how to explain this… Okay.
There's a concept in diagnostic medicine called index of suspicion. put in simplest terms, means, if YOU don't think of it, index of suspicion and it. The better a physician is, the more you'll never diagnostic Possibilities he considers and sifts through in a case. If you think every case of middle-aged cardiac arrest had a coronary occlusion you'll never diagnose a cocaine overdose in a fifty-five-Year-old corporation president."
"Believe it or not, the worst Physician can usually do the right thing, or at least not do something harmful, or even. eighty-five percent of the time. It's that other five or ten percent that separates great from run-of-the-mill in our business."
"most of us think of doctors so differently from that." know. And the misconceptions-the lofty expectations that the public has of us-are largely our own doing. For we as physicians have fostered the notion that things are or aren't, simply because we say SO. And the public buys into it-or at least a large segment of it does-because people want the security of knowing that there's someone they can Turn to who has all the answers. But please don't think I'm copping out or trying to make excuses for my actions last February.
I'm just trying to help you understand what was ahead. I… I just didn't have a clue or suspicion that something might might be going on.
She ached to hold him, to tell him that she understood. But. she felt unable to get past the life had been in his hands that brother… that the man whose winter morning was, in all likelihood, him.
Suddenly she found herself thinking she had once been in with a diver whose skill and competence. she had misjudged. He ended up wedged in a narrow tunnel with his air supPly all but used up. Luckily, she had sensed trouble and located him just a minute or two from disaster.
She was able to buddy-breathe him up to the surface, but the outcome could easily have gone the other way.
She wondered how her life would have changed, how she would have responded had he not made it out of that tunnel affve. The manager of her club, People diving with her day after day-they had more interest in seeing her as human, as fallible, than she did Eric.
When she finally turned back to him, tears glistened in her eyes.
"i wish you hadn't stopped trying," she said.
"I know. I wish he could have that morning back. Believe me "
I do. And I know it doesn't help Scott, but I'm determined never to make judgments on the value of anyone's life again."
"And never to ignore the Possibility that what seems ordinary may not be true. "That too." She put her arms around him and touched her lips to his ear.
"Fair enough," she whispered.
"There it is, pal. Cleveland, Ohio.
Eddie Garcia swigged down the last of a thermos of coffee and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He was glad to be nearing the end of the run but was anxious about his passenger.
Soon, he would have to drop Bob off, in the econ of the dirty bus terminal, and go about unloading his rig. The man was no more prepared or equipped to strike out on his own than a kindergartener.
For a time during the journey, Eddie had tried to help him remember something, anything. But beyond recurring references to East Boston, a woman named Gideon, and her horse, he got nowhere. He Pressed questions about Bob's limp and about his family, his service record. and he asked about other things minor. Connections to his past. He guided the semi off the interstate an working his way through darkened, successively narrower streets. he would spring-for one last meal, — . and give him directions to the bus terminal. He'd also give him forty bucks to get him to East Boston.
"You feel okay?" Eddie asked.
"Uh-huh."
Scott squinted as his mind. tried to put together the images swirlin but Nothing connected.
Nothing at all. They turned onto a side street barely wide enough for driving. A man was waving a stop sign at them. He was dressed in work clothes and a plaid hunting overshirt. Garcia brought the semi to a stop and rolled down the window.
"Mornin," he said. "what's up?"
The man, husky, with close-cropped hair, walked to the window, pulled a revolver from his waistband, and held it pointed at Eddie's face.
"Open the door," he growled. "No sudden moves."
A second man, brandishing a shotgun, appeared by the passenger door, and a third stepped just in front of them.
"Hey, wait a minute," Eddie said. "I'm just hauling beef.
There's nothing of any-"
"We know what you have," the man said. "Now just get out or you're dead."
Eddie turned to his passenger.
"Bob," he said evenly, "we're being hijacked. Just open your door and do what these fuckers say. Without this rig and this load, I'm busted, but I don't know what the fuck else we can do, goddam it."
Slowly, the two of them opened their doors and dropped to the pavement.
The man who had stopped them, clearly the leader of the three, motioned them together and then pointed to an alley between buildings.
"In there," he ordered. "Do as I say and neither of you gets hurt."
"Hey, look," one of the others said. "This guy's a gimp. What are you, some kind of war hero?"
Scott merely looked at him.
"Do what the man says, Bob," Eddie whispered.
"Hey guys, please. This rig's all I have."
"In the alley," the man barked.
For Eddie Garcia, the half-minute or so that followed was little more than a blur. It began with Bob bending over, ostensibly to tie his shoe. Suddenly, and with vicious force, he swung his arm backhand, catching one of the hijackers across the throat, and dropping him like a stone. In virtually the same motion, he whipped his good leg around, sweeping the second man to the ground and stunning him with a glancing right, palm up under his chin. The shotgun clattered to the pavement, but the man, not immobilized, lashed out with his feet, knocking Bob over.
The leader of the group, a beat slow to react, was raising his revolver when Eddie kicked him in the groin. The man doubled over as Eddie kicked him again, catching him on the upper arm and sending him sprawling.
To Garcia's left, the first man hit was stumbling to his feet while the second had grabbed Bob by the throat and was beginning to pummel him. In that instant, Eddie saw the look on his passenger's face. It was an expression he would never forget as long as he lived-not one of panic or rage or fear, and certainly not the blank stare he had grown so used to over the miles. Rather, Bob appeared almost serene, removed from what was happening to him, oblivious to the pain. He seemed to be completely ignoring the man on top of him in order to focus in on something else.