The words sounded awkward to me, unfamiliar and slightly juvenile. I was angered at my own lack of eloquence, knowing without being told of the hours she must have spent by my bed, putting aside her own pain so she could accompany me through mine.
“I guess it worked” was what she said, but the smile lingered in her eyes.
I wanted to ask her how she was doing, if her own suffering at the hand of our mutual nemesis had eased any since we’d last visited. I wanted to find out what had happened to Bob Vogel, and what her reaction was to that. But it was all beyond me. My vision closed in again, I saw my hand fall away from her arm, and this time I couldn’t bring myself to move. Just as I shut down, I saw Gail lean forward to kiss me.
The next visitor I knew about was Leo, my brother, who woke me up as any truly professional butcher might-by getting a firm grip on the meat of my upper arm.
He smiled as I opened my eyes. “Jesus, Joey, you’re scrawnier’n hell.”
I focused on his tired face-broader and darker than Gail’s. “You don’t look so hot yourself,” I croaked, clearing my throat.
He slipped his arm behind my neck and tilted my head up to receive some cool water from a cup with a bent straw hanging out of it-his years of tending our invalid mother showing in his gentle dexterity. “I knew you’d want some of this-all that crap they had stuffed down your throat. I couldn’t believe it.”
I finished sipping and he laid me back, suddenly peeling back my upper lip and looking at my teeth. “Boy, we ought to do something about that, too. I brought a toothbrush, okay?”
I stared in wordless amazement at the brush he whipped out of his shirt pocket, his tired eyes gleaming with the bright glow of success. “That’s another thing I knew they wouldn’t think of. Has Gail tried to kiss you yet?”
“I don’t… I think so. I’ve been kind of groggy.”
He burst out laughing and produced a crumpled tube from another pocket, from which he slathered a thick dollop onto the brush. “God, no wonder she hasn’t said much-must still be catching her breath.”
I blinked a couple of times, trying to banish the tendrils of a deep sleep from my brain. “Leo, what’s been going on? Where am I?”
He raised his eyebrows and dipped the brush into the cup. “You don’t know? Open your mouth.”
I raised a hand to hold him off. “Don’t. I can do it.”
He handed it over cheerfully. “I doubt it.”
I took the brush and tried to use it, my fingers trembling with the effort. After only a couple of strokes, my entire arm felt heavy, and I missed my teeth completely, delivering a swatch of foam across my chin.
Leo shook his head, satisfied by his foresight. “Give me that. You’re making a mess.” He took it away and set to work, neatly and gently. “You’re in Lebanon, New Hampshire-the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center-and you’ve been under for three weeks, Joey-gram-negative septicemia-that’s what they said you had. Fancy for blood poisoning. What the knife started, your own guts spilling into the rest of you almost finished. You had the docs scrambling a couple of times. Bad fevers, seizures, times you were delirious-you gave ’em a run for their money. They tell me you lost forty pounds just lying here. By the way, who’s paying for all this?”
I gurgled something, and he shrugged, “Oh, right. Sorry. Here-” He brandished the all-purpose cup. “Spit.”
I spat.
“The reason I ask, you got first-class all the way-police escort for the ambulance from the dam; helicopter ride up from Brattleboro; the best surgical team they had to offer here… You know how long they worked on you?”
I knew better than to try to answer. When Leo was on a roll, there was no point trying to stop him.
“Eight hours. Gail and I were sitting outside the whole time. They tried getting us to go home, but forget that. Anyway, it was the same bunch working on you the whole night. I thought docs were a little overpaid, you know? But when I saw the head guy-when he came out to tell us you’d pulled through the operation-he looked like he’d earned his keep. That son of a gun looked beat. You know what I mean?”
He punched me gently on the shoulder and then immediately leaned over me, his eyes inches from mine. “Damn, you okay? Got a little carried away. That didn’t hurt, did it?”
“It’s okay, Leo.”
He was already massaging the shoulder with his big paw, doing far more damage than he had with the punch. He suddenly stopped again and took my face in his hands, as he might a small child’s. His face was serious and troubled, in abrupt contrast to the beaming expression he’d been showering on me so far. “You’re doing okay now, aren’t you? Feeling better?”
I tried to nod between his hands and muttered through puckered lips, “Fine-a little tired.”
“I know you’ve been banged up before-even out like a light for a couple of days-but this time… I don’t know… You really had me scared. You actually died a couple of times, you know that?”
I tried shaking my head politely, with less success.
He glanced up at the machines crowded around me. “Hadn’t been for all this stuff-and all the people here-you would’ve been history.” He paused, his eyes gleaming brightly. “You scared the shit out of me.”
He gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, said, “Don’t do it again,” and disappeared as magically as he’d appeared.
My days became more normal after that. I woke up when most people normally do, I had conversations with beginnings, middles, and ends, and I began to feel more a part of, if not the regular world, then at least a highly regimented corner of it. Then I was moved from Intensive Care to a regular room and introduced to the far less pleasant realities of physical therapy-a harsh enough contrast to make me yearn for the good old days of suspended animation.
I was in the rehab gym, bathed in sweat from both exertion and pain, when I got my first news of what had been happening outside the hospital walls. Tony Brandt appeared on the threshold one day and came over to where I was sitting slumped on the bench of a Universal weight machine, trying to catch my breath.
He perched trimly on a barbell rack and smiled at me. “Lifting your own weight already?”
I answered with a short, exasperated laugh. “More like the weight of three gerbils-if that.”
He tilted his head and looked at me appraisingly. “You look pretty good. Some guys would kill to lose forty pounds in their sleep.”
I just looked at him sourly.
His voice softened subtly. “How are you?”
Ever since I’d woken up, that had been the topic-for me, for the doctors, nurses, therapists, for my friends. I spent so much time either responding to that question or pondering it myself-my fingers gingerly running along the long tender scar that extended from where Vogel had stuck me in the side, right across my belly to where the surgeons had gone in to patch me up-that I was beginning to wonder whether obsessions could be picked up like germs. I didn’t want to leave this hospital feeling like every bowel movement should be up for appraisal.
“I’m getting better,” I answered blandly and changed the subject. “I heard we got Vogel, but nobody around here knows the details.”
Brandt gave me a rueful glance. “Has Sammie been by?”
I reached back into my catalogue of mental snapshots. “Yeah, but before I was conversational. Why?”
“There’s some controversy about whether Vogel gave up before she nailed him with her flashlight, or the other way around. According to him, he thought just the two of you were behind him-that the rest were coming from the other end-and that he might be able to get around you. But he said after he knifed you, supposedly in a panic, by the way-hear the insanity plea coming? — that he realized you two had reinforcements, so he gave up, raised his hands, and then got nailed by Sammie. She put him in the hospital, too, but just overnight.”
I wiped my face with a small hand towel and straightened up, feeling a little stronger after my rest. “Tell her thanks when you see her. You realize the rest of his story is total bullshit. He knew we weren’t alone. Sammie shouted up the ladder to the others just before he stuck me. He heard them as clearly as I did. Is that how he’s trying to weasel out of this? That he gave up and we creamed him?”