Mark didn’t, but he considered the adjective for a moment and then said, “Out of body. Whatever you’re talking about that kept me alive, it came from outside of the body.”
“Indeed. The technique involves oxygenating the patient’s blood outside the body via mechanical means. Where your system stops, ours begins. Consider it a pinch hitter for your circulation. Oxygen-depleted blood — or, in your case, chilled blood — is diverted from the body, rewarmed and enriched with oxygen, then pumped back in. We weaned you from extracorporeal circulation when your own system indicated that it was ready to get back into the game. But you were kept alive thanks to an out-of-body experience.”
Dr. Mehir Desare smiled at that, pleased with the little joke, but Mark was shuffling through some of those out-of-focus snapshots of memory. Shotguns. A van. Walking a plank that couldn’t have been a plank. Then—
The wall was melting.
Then he’d been alone in the dark. Or had he been alone? He felt as if someone had been with him. But the image that came to mind—
Sarah Martin was watching me. She was lit from within and she was watching
— was not one he wanted to dwell on. Or even remember.
He thought then of his mother, of her skin turning blue on the wind-whipped prairie. A spirit quest, she’d told him when she was conscious again. By that point, she was so out of her head that she’d begun to believe her own con. She thought she really was a Nez Perce. You’re fucking German, he’d told her, and when she insisted he was wrong, he’d held up his hands and said, You’re right, Mother. You’re not German. You’re a fraud, that’s all, and then the nurse had asked him to leave, and he never went back to the hospital. Last words. He had a way with them, certainly. He tried to think of the last thing he’d said before he’d ended up in the cave. If they hadn’t gotten him out in time, what would his last words have been? He couldn’t come up with anything.
“We administered some drugs to protect the brain and now you are” — Dr. Desare consulted his watch — “twenty-eight hours into your stay with us.”
More than a day.
“How long was I in the cave?” Mark said.
“You remember the cave? Excellent!” The doctor was jubilant. “Memory function of the kind you’re displaying is exciting. There was some concern about neurologic deficits. We’ll be conducting tests, but at this juncture I’m pleased with your general cognitive ability.”
“Deepest thanks,” Mark said, and the doctor laughed.
“It might not seem like the highest of compliments, but we were worried. As for how long you were in the cave, I can’t say. Are you up to seeing visitors, by the way? There’s one waiting rather impatiently. A man from Florida.”
Jeff London had arrived.
22
Jeff looked good, fit and rested, which came as no surprise. He worked out with religious fervor. He’d probably been doing push-ups in the waiting room. His hair was still thick but starting to go gray. His tan face was weathered. Still, he could have passed for forty without much question, and he was fifty-five.
“Rumor has it someone finally figured out how to thaw you out,” he said.
“They pumped my blood out, warmed it up, and then let me have it back. Pretty good deal, don’t you think?”
“Most people who know you wouldn’t have given your blood back once they took it, that’s for sure.”
The hospital room might have seemed the wrong venue for the exchange of wiseass barbs, but the barbs were needed. From the way Jeff let his eyes drift, though, Mark knew the good humor wouldn’t last long.
“Why in the hell did you force your way into that cave?” Jeff said. “Even in the annals of your decision-making, that one stands out as poor, which is really saying something.”
“Force my way into the cave?” Mark stared at him without comprehension. “You haven’t been told what happened?” He realized then what should have been obvious from the start — nobody had been told what happened. He’d felt it would be clear somehow. He’d been put in the cave and he’d been rescued from it, and so it seemed someone should have understood the basics. The rescue effort had been organized. He had vague flash memories of uniforms and lights and official questions. Amid all the confusion, he’d gotten some comfort in that — the police had been called, and that meant they understood what had happened. The idea that he had gone into the cave willingly was astonishing.
“I’ve been told you pried open an old gate and went wandering,” Jeff said. “I don’t believe that you chose to take your clothes off for the trip, though. It’s been a point of contention between me and your friend the sheriff. The appearance of things suggested you went into the water after something. Your clothes were folded in a tidy pile right beside some sort of underground stream, like you’d taken them off before you waded in so they wouldn’t get wet.”
“Jeff... I was abducted. Three guys with shotguns.”
“They took you to the cave?”
“Yes. Well... not directly. I mean, two of them left. I think. But I had a hood over my head, and I can’t say exactly. But there was... I was somewhere else first.”
“How’d you get into the cave?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean? Did they knock you out?”
“Yes. Well... they must have. Because I don’t remember how I got in there. There’s a gap in my memory for a stretch, so they must have. I was up on the road, I was driving, and they stopped me and put me in this van. All of them had masks. All of them had shotguns. Then they put a hood over my head so I couldn’t see anything, and we went... somewhere. There was one guy asking questions.”
“The hood was on you the whole time?”
“No. It came off, I think.”
“You think?”
“I don’t remember!” He was watching Jeff’s eyes, seeing the skepticism in them, and panic began to rise at the idea that even his friend didn’t believe him. Jeff reached out and put a reassuring hand on his arm.
“All right, Markus. We’ll get it straightened out.”
“Straightened out? Someone tried to kill me! What do people think happened?”
Jeff pulled a plastic chair up close to the bed. “They think you went in there and got lost. The last report of you before that was from Ridley Barnes. He told the police that you came by and kicked the shit out of him. After tying him up with his own rope. That didn’t happen either?”
“That actually did.”
Jeff rubbed his eyes. “Beautiful.”
“But then I left, and there was a truck behind me. It turned and blocked the road, and then the van came. Three people total, two in the van and one in the truck.” Mark sat up with excitement, ignoring the aches that throbbed through his body. “My rental car. They took it. Didn’t it occur to anybody that it would be hard for me to get to the cave without a car?”
Jeff studied him for a few seconds before he said, “Your car was at the cave. Parked up on top, pulled off the side of the road. The caretaker saw it, and that’s when he went looking for you and found the damage to the gate and your clothes in a pile inside. Then he called the police.”
“What?” Mark eased back in the bed in disbelief, grateful that he could lie down. “I was left inside, Jeff. I don’t know how or by who, but I was left inside.”
“What do you remember about it?”
“Waking up in the dark and the cold. I couldn’t just stay there, so I started to crawl. I was looking for a way out. There was no light. I can’t explain just how dark it was.” He remembered seeing the dead girl, Sarah Martin, and he knew that he’d better not tell Jeff about that.