Robert took a couple of deep breaths and then put the mask down. “Hey, Kimo,” he said weakly. The hospital gown looked even worse on him than it did on Gunter, and somewhere along the way his eye makeup had gotten badly smudged. I thought if he could see himself in the mirror he’d take a terrible turn.
“Hey, Mr. Hero,” I said. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw you running into that building last night. I was like, hey, isn’t he going the wrong way?”
Robert smiled. “I didn’t do much, not rescue any babies or women or anything.”
Harry said, “He did a hell of a lot. He managed to save all the membership lists, all the legal research on precedents, all the testimonials they had from supporters. Years worth of work that would have burned up otherwise.”
“And then Gunter had to come and pull me out.” Robert tried to sit up and look around the curtain but he was too weak. “How’s he doing?”
“He looks great,” I said. “And his personality came through undamaged.”
Robert smiled. “Good. I like his personality.”
“I’ve got a couple questions to ask you, buddy,” I said, pulling my chair up close to the bed. “We think somebody planted a bomb in the rest room. Did you see anybody suspicious last night?”
He tried to shake his head, but grimaced. “No. I was too busy making sure everything was organized to pay attention.”
“Gunter said he saw a sweaty, nervous-looking guy come out of the bathroom. Were you with him then?”
He frowned. “I don’t think so. I just don’t remember.”
I patted his arm, one of the few places that wasn’t wrapped in gauze. “That’s okay. Listen, you gotta get yourself better, all right? You know that place can’t function without you.”
“There isn’t a place any more.”
“There will be. You and Sandra are gonna get out of here and start things up again. After all, you saved those records. You gotta do something with them, right?”
“I guess.” He smiled, and then dozed off again.
When I looked up, Harry was napping in the easy chair by the window, and Gunter was still asleep, too. I looked back from the doorway at the three of them, the sterile light green walls and the array of monitoring equipment. I was going to get the bastards who did this.
FIGHTING BACK
Sandra Guarino was in a private room on the same floor. When I looked inside, the first thing I saw was a big red floral arrangement sent by her law firm. Sandra was lying in the bed very still, IV tubes in her arms and the mask of a respirator over her face. Her gown was a brighter shade of green than the ones the boys had been wearing, but it still looked like crap.
Then I saw Cathy Selkirk sitting by the window, her tiny frame dwarfed by the oversized chair. She had her knees pulled up to her and was staring out at the highway beyond.
“Hey. How’s Sandra?”
“Kimo.” Cathy got up and came over to me. Her head barely reached my breastbone. I held on to her as she started to cry. I felt my own tears welling up, but I pushed them back down.
I let her cry for a minute or two and then pulled back. “Come on, everything’s going to work out.” I sat on the window ledge. “Tell me about Sandra.”
“She hasn’t recovered consciousness yet.” She pulled a linen handkerchief from the pocket of her dress and I realized she was still wearing what she had worn to the party. She dried her eyes. “The doctors don’t know what to expect. They notified her parents and they’re flying in this afternoon from Oregon.”
“That’s good, right? You’ll have somebody here with you.”
“They never approved of me and Sandy. I’m afraid, Kimo. I’m afraid Sandy won’t wake up. I’m afraid her parents will come and they won’t let me see her. That they’ll-make decisions-that aren’t-what she’d want.”
“You don’t have a power of attorney, or medical authorizations or anything like that?”
“I have it all. You know how Sandy is-everything’s organized. But that doesn’t mean they’ll pay attention to it. I’m not strong like she is. I can’t stand up to her parents, the doctors-it’s too hard.” She sat in the big chair again, and she was so tiny that she looked like a small child. “It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it? If we were able to get married then I wouldn’t have a lot of these problems.”
“I’ve got an idea.” I reached for the phone and called my brother’s office. After a couple of minutes on hold, listening to the weather guy’s pre-recorded voice promising sunshine and breezes, Lui came on. “Hey, brah. I’ve got a story for you.” I ran down Cathy’s situation for him. “It’s got a hook for you, tied into the bombing last night. You can keep running all that footage. You guys love all those explosions and fires and shit, don’t you?”
“Thanks for your high opinion of my job,” my brother said. “Let me talk to Cathy.”
They spoke for a couple of minutes and then she handed the phone back to me. “How’s Dad?” Lui asked.
“I haven’t gotten there yet. He’s next on my list.”
“Jeez, and they say I’m the son that doesn’t care. You’re in the goddamned hospital and you don’t even go to see him.”
“I’m getting there, I’m getting there.”
“Call me and let me know what you think.” He hung up and I turned back to Cathy.
“He’s going to send a crew to interview me,” she said. “I hate the thought of having our private lives on television, though.”
“Tell me about it.” I reached over and took her hand. “It’s what Sandra would do, though, isn’t it? Fight back?”
She smiled. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
I leaned back against the window and told Cathy what I had discovered so far. “Did you see anybody suspicious? Any sweaty-looking guy going into or coming out of the men’s room?”
She shook her head. “I was way too busy talking to people. You know how that goes. Sandy and I were trying to chat up the donors, make sure everybody was having a good time.”
Cathy smiled, and I looked at my watch. I’d been away from my desk for almost an hour, and I still had to see my father. “I’ve gotta go, sweetie. You have anybody to come stay with you?”
“Maria Luisa, Sandy’s secretary, she’s going to come over and sit with me for a while this afternoon, once she gets Sandy’s calendar cleared. The doctors are going to come back later for some more tests.”
I scribbled the number of my cell phone on a piece of paper and handed it to Cathy. “You need anything, you call me.” I handed her the number and then took her hand. “You know Sandra’s a fighter. She’s not going to let this get her down. You’ve just got to hold on, okay?”
It was good advice for all of us, I thought.
My father’s room was one floor up, and I climbed the stairs figuring I’d pop in, say my hellos, make sure nobody in the family had seen anything, and get back to work. But I couldn’t find his room number, and had to ask an orderly. “That’s in Intensive Care,” he said. “Through those double doors.”
As soon as I walked in I saw my mother and Aunt Mei-Mei, sitting together holding hands behind the glass wall of my father’s room. My mother had exchanged her fancy holoku from the night before for a pair of navy slacks and a magenta and white hibiscus-print blouse. Aunt Mei-Mei wore the same kind of modified cheongsam she always did, this one in a red silk print. I was struck by how much they looked alike, my father’s wife and the wife of his long-time best friend. Both of them were petite, with an elegant, china-doll beauty. And both of them were strong as steel underneath the pretty exterior.
My father was in an elevated bed, surrounded by high-tech monitoring equipment. His gown was open at the neck so that wires could connect to his chest. A single bony hand rested outside the beige spread, with a plastic tube tied into it. I stopped just outside the room and stared.
He had been kind of a mythical figure to us as kids. At six feet, he seemed like a giant, with broad shoulders and strong hands, scarred from years of hanging drywall, laying roofing tiles, digging ditches, whatever he had to do to get his buildings finished. He had a temper as strong as the sea on a blustery day, and yet I remember when I broke my arm surfing when I was eight how gently he’d carried me from the ocean to the car, and then into the hospital emergency room.