Next Bed Man was now muttering about whose turn it was to do the dishes. Such prosaic dreams the man was having. I should be so lucky.
In the crack in the curtains the night sky began to lighten, turning oyster grey. I could hear the hospital stirring and waking up — hushed voices, squeaky footfalls in corridors, things being placed clatteringly on trays. Soon, daylight was silvering the snow-laced branches of the tree immediately outside the ward window — some species of evergreen. The zigzag redbrick horizons of a northern city stretched beyond.
At about half past seven, as breakfast was being brought round, Abortion came skidding into the ward, all flushed and excited.
"Gid! Gid! You're awake. Good. You've got to see this."
"'How are you doing, Gid?' 'Oh, fine, mate, thanks for asking. Not too badly injured in the crash you caused.' 'Yeah, sorry about that. A thousand pardons.' 'That's all right. You came out of it unscathed, that's all that matters.' 'Yeah, that was pretty lucky, I thought.'"
"Later," Abortion said blithely. "You can have a go at me later, any time. Right now, you have to see the news. I was watching in the waiting lounge, where I've been all night, incidentally, sitting up while you've been all cosy in bed."
"You can't guilt me, so don't even try."
He grabbed the bedside TV set, swung it round on its arm, and switched it on.
"Whoa, steady," I said. "They charge a fortune for that."
"I know, but this is big."
And it was big. Every channel was carrying the story. All other programming had been suspended.
"…and once again, our breaking news this morning," said a sombre newscaster. "Lois Keener, President of the United States of America, has suddenly and unexpectedly died. Mrs Keener was at work in the Oval Office when she suffered what appears to have been a massive stroke. In a statement, Vice-President Bennewitz — now acting president — has confirmed that this was the probable cause of death, pending an official autopsy report. Beyond that, few details are known."
I watched with widening eyes… and a strange sensation in the pit of my stomach.
"Mrs Keener, a colourful and controversial figure on the world stage, had shown no previous signs of ill health. In fact, at the age of forty-two, she appeared to be in the prime of life, making her death all the more surprising. We can cross over now to our Washington correspondent for the latest."
"America is in shock and mourning," said the Washington correspondent. "It's the early hours of the morning here, but nobody has gone to bed. People are up and about. Many are glued to their TV sets. Nobody can quite believe it. I've seen strangers hugging one another in the street. Grown men weeping. There's a sense of… numbness, I suppose you could say. It's surreal. Comparisons could be drawn with the shooting of John F. Kennedy."
"What do we know about the circumstances of Mrs Keener's death?"
"Very little so far, beyond what the vice-president revealed in his statement earlier. Yesterday afternoon, at approximately three p.m., Mrs Keener was in discussions with military advisors and the Joint Chiefs of Staff when all of a sudden she slumped in her chair and collapsed to the floor. Paramedics were on the scene within minutes and applied emergency resuscitation methods, but without success. She was pronounced dead on arrival at George Washington University Hospital thirty-five minutes later. The cause of death is reported as 'catastrophic intracranial haemorrhage': in effect, a blood vessel in her brain ruptured, resulting in a build-up of fluid that ravaged vital brain tissue. Messages of support and sympathy for her family have been coming in from other world leaders, including our own Prime Minister Clasen. However, there have also been jubilant public celebrations in certain countries, people taking to the streets to express their joy that someone they regard as a national enemy, an oppressor, is no more."
"Fuck," I breathed.
"I know!" said Abortion. "Who saw that coming?"
"Not her, that's for sure," I said.
And a thought flashed into my head.
Heimdall's bullet.
Could it have been…? Was it conceivable…?
The newscaster droned on — a moment in history, a terrible tragedy for Mrs Keener's husband, son and daughter, an abrupt end to the remarkable rise to power of the self-professed "soccer mom from Wonder Springs," blah blah blah. Abortion plumped himself down on the end of my bed and helped himself to my breakfast, starting with the carton of orange juice. I turned away from the TV and stared out of the window.
She'd died at almost the exact same time I was tangled up in the car.
Coincidence, surely. That was all. A case of life imitating "art." To read anything more into it than that would be a great mistake. That way madness lay.
The tree outside, I noticed, had honeycomb-like bark. An ash.
Coincidence too, of course.
I was about to turn back to the TV and rescue my breakfast from Abortion's clutches when, all at once, a grey squirrel popped out from amongst the tree's foliage. It scampered to the very tip of a branch, until it was level with the window ledge. It stopped there, peeping around inquisitively, then swivelled its head and looked straight at me through the glass. Beady black little rodent eyes met my gaze, held it for several heartbeats. A brush of a tail twitched and fluffed. A nose quivered.
And then — swear to God — the squirrel raised one ratty-clawed forepaw in the air, level with its ear.
The fucking thing saluted me.
And then it was gone, dashing back into the snowy darkness of the tree's heart.
In that moment, I knew.
Not a sliver of doubt in my mind any more.
I knew.
And, knowing, wise at last, I smiled.