In truth, her feelings about Fitzduane were hard to clarify. Indirectly he was the cause of these terrible happenings. He was not responsible but he was directly associated. If she had never met the man, her father might yet be alive and her mother would not have had a nervous breakdown.
"How is he?" she said. She missed him as she spoke and had an overwhelming desire to be with him. She felt confused. Here was a man with a son by another woman, whose life was associated with a level of threat that any sane person, given a choice, would avoid like the plague.
He was also the most attractive and stimulating man she had ever met, and she could not stay away from him. Yet she was scared of being with him and the emotional pain that might ensue. And she was appalled by the latent physical danger. The memory of McGonigal and Sasada was still fresh in her mind. She had trouble sleeping and found it difficult to concentrate. Sometimes, for no specific reason, she felt herself shaking with terror and sweating.
"Grumpy," said Kilmara, in an amused voice, and then he became more serious. "For the last couple of years, Hugo has been focused on Boots and rebuilding Duncleeve and some work for the Rangers — but otherwise skating. He did not seem to be fully engaged. It was as if he needed to rest up for a little time before embarking on something new. He had hung up his wars and his cameras but hadn't found a replacement activity. He seemed to me to lack a purpose in life."
"Looking after a child and building a home is not a purpose?" said Kathleen, a little annoyed.
Kilmara laughed. "Touché!" he said.
Kathleen stopped and stared at some seaweed, kelp, the deep-brown rubbery kind with long stalks and little bubbles on the fronds that you could burst. She was reminded of summers at the seaside with her family and the reassuring feeling of her father's hand in hers, and she was gripped with a sense of loss and desolation. Tears welled from her eyes.
Kilmara looked across at her and saw the tears and put his arm around her, and they walked like that for some distance before either spoke again. The beach seemed endless and the headland in the distance was shrouded in mist. Kathleen imagined that they were walking on clouds. When she spoke again, she picked up the conversation where they had left off. "And his being shot," she said. "Are you implying that this has changed him?"
"Being shot, seriously injured, tends to concentrate the mind," said Kilmara grimly. "You'll have seen it for yourself. Some people fold and die and others draw on all their reserves and seem to get a renewed grip on life, as if they realize just how little time there is and the importance of making the most of what you've got."
"Well, Hugo is a fighter," said Kathleen forcibly.
"And there is the irony," said Kilmara. "He claws his way back into the land of the living, and insofar as it is humanly possible in such a condition, operates flat out..." He paused and laughed.
"And?" said Kathleen impatiently.
"And when something happens that he cannot remotely blame himself for — the attack on the hospital — he gets an acute attack of depression and just does nothing for five days," said Kilmara. He looked at Kathleen. "I think he misses you."
Kathleen did to reply at first. Her cheeks were tingling from the breeze off the sea and the salt spray. She felt defensive about Fitzduane and thought Kilmara was being a little cruel. "He feels responsible," she said slowly. "He was the target and others died. That would hurt him."
"Well, he is back on track now," Kilmara said, "and furious with himself for losing so much time. That is why he's grumpy."
Kathleen started to laugh, and it was infectious. Soon both of them were laughing as they walked arm in arm along the endless curve of the sand.
* * * * *
The most unpleasant initial aftereffect of his injuries, in Fitzduane's opinion — a judgment he felt most qualified to make, since it was his body, after all — was the external fixation the orthopedic team had used to repair his smashed thighbone. Fortunately, it had been a temporary expedient.
They had screwed four pins into the bone, two above and two below the fracture, which protruded through the skin. They had then joined the pins together externally with crossbars. When Fitzduane looked at his leg, the fixation reminded him of a scaffolding construction. He was part bionic. Frankly, he had preferred being all human.
The orthopedic surgeon had been proud of his handiwork. "The advantage of external over internal fixation is that it does not contaminate," he had said, looking at an X ray of Fitzduane's thigh with much the same enthusiasm that a normal male might reserve for a Playboy centerfold.
"Very nice," said Fitzduane, "but it makes me look like part of the EiffelTower. What's the downside?"
The surgeon had smiled reassuringly. "Just a little discomfort," he had said. "Nothing to be concerned about."
"Just a little discomfort," Fitzduane had soon learned, was a relative term. External fixation was extremely uncomfortable. There were four sites of entry in Fitzduane's leg for the pins, and despite regular dressing they were a constant source of pain and irritation. If he accidentally bashed the fixator, the skin tore. To help him sleep, a frame was put over his leg at night.
"You are able to walk almost immediately with external fixation," said the surgeon. "Exercise is very important."
Fitzduane, cursed with an imagination and his mind painting a graphic picture of shattered bone, could not at first even mentally consider walking, but he was given little choice in the matter.
On the fourth day after he had been shot, he had begun dynamic exercises.
On the fifty day, he had been eased out of bed, propped up with a zimmer frame — a walking support — and, to his amazement, made twenty yards. He had felt terrified at first and then ridiculous. He'd still had his chest drains in. He was told that what he was doing was called ‘shadow walking.’ Shadow or not, it was a start.
At the end of the first week, his chest drains had been removed. During the second week, he had been moved from the frame onto crutches. By the third week, he could do fifty yards at a stretch. Day by day after that, his stamina improved.
Not long after the attack on the hospital, he was assessed yet again by the surgeon. The sight of X rays seemed to bring out a certain manic cheeriness in the medic. "You are fortunate, Hugo," he had said, "that your assailant used a subsonic round. The damage to your femur was serious enough, but it could have been a lot worse. You leg is really in quite reasonable shape, all things considered. Boy, did we do a good job!"
"How the fuck do I know?" said Fitzduane in a reasonably good-humored voice. "I don't get shot regularly. I have no basis of comparison."
The surgeon was used to being addressed as some kind of supreme being by nursing staff and patients as he made his rounds, but he enjoyed Fitzduane.
"Ireland is an island behind an island," he had said, "and you were wounded on yet another, even more remote, island. Think yourself lucky you were not just painted with iodine and left to get on with it. Anyway, it's back to surgery for you. The blood flow in your leg is good and there is encouraging new bone in the area of the wound. I'm going to take off your scaffolding."
Three days later, Fitzduane returned to Duncleeve. His leg was now internally fixated. All the external protruding metal had been removed. In its place he wore a brace, both for support and to remind him to take it easy at first. He could now walk with the aid of only one crutch. Soon that would be discarded, and then the brace.