“God, McCain, are you all right?” Lynn said.
“Doesn’t look like your savior’s going to save you.” Adair vised her neck even tighter.
The worst of the cold was gone, one large convulsion of it that had nearly knocked me down. My palm was so sweaty, I had to squeeze the gun so tight that it hurt. I was still dizzy. I needed to move with great deliberation.
Adair started moving again. They went three or four steps and she kicked him. Both his face and his voice registered the pain. For a millisecond his grip loosened, just enough time to take a single unencumbered step. But he was quick and he was pissed. He swung her back to him and smashed the side of her head with the bottom of his gun. She slumped in his arm. Blood snaked down from her temple. He was better coordinated than I’d guessed. His eyes had never left me.
But he paid a price for knocking her out, and as he started moving again, he discovered what the cost was. Conscious, she walked with him. Unconscious, she was dead weight. An ungainly hundredpound bag of flesh, bone, blood, and water. He cursed. He couldn’t just hold her now, he had to hold her and drag her.
Another convulsion rocked me. I needed to reach out for something to lean against, but there was nothing. A drunkard’s walk as I tried to move forward. One step, two steps, three-
This time I couldn’t stop myself from starting to fall. I didn’t sprawl, though. I was able to hold my descent to one knee.
And that was when it happened. I wasn’t sure of anything until it was over. Instinct guided me. I was too weak to think anything through.
When I dropped to my knee, he opened fire. But he hadn’t been fast enough to follow me down. Two blasts went over my head and tore into some kind of glass in the living room.
He got so intent on killing me that he loosened the arm that held Lynn. She slipped from his grasp to the floor, leaving him unprotected.
I fell sideways because of sheer weakness. He blasted at me again but again he wasn’t quick enough. He’d fired just as I slumped over.
I had a target and I took it. Somehow before it all came crashing down, I got a shot off. I was conscious long enough to see him start to crumble, an expression of complete surprise on his face.
Then Linda Raines called my name and I was gone.
THREE DAYS LATER
The second day, the doc let me have roast beef and mashed potatoes for dinner. My mother visited twice and told me that my father was a bit stronger than when I’d last seen him. Molly and Doran stopped by to tell me that they were off to New York to meet his editor and to find the nastiest lawyer available for his false-arrest suit against Cliffie. Jamie brought me the new issue of Ellery Queen and informed me that Turk wouldn’t be suing me after all, because his lawyer wouldn’t do anything until Turk paid off his bill. And since Turk was broke and Jamie wouldn’t loan him any money, the suit was off.
Judge Whitney appeared all imperious and immediately began telling the nurses on the floor how to rearrange my room and complained that they weren’t stopping in to check on me often enough. And Wendy brought me the newspaper that told of Reverend Cartwright’s second failed attempt to destroy Beatles records.
LOCAL PASTOR NEARLY DROWNS; SAVED BY PROTESTOR
Yes, it seemed that Cartwright’s attempt to start tossing albums and 45s off Indian Creek Hill turned disastrous when a strong wind came up and blew him right off the cliff and into the water sixty feet below. The only person thinking quickly and clearly enough to help him turned out to be one of the high-school boys who’d shown up to taunt him. The fifteen-year-old dove off the cliff, located the drowning pastor in the choppy water, and then swam him to the narrow shoreline, where he administered CPR. All that would be left for Cartwright now would be to order a nuclear attack on his ever-increasing mountain of Beatles material.
The third night, Wendy snuck in a sausage pizza and two cans of beer inside a shopping bag. It was fun hiding it all from the nurses. Wendy was really good at playing innocent, even though the two nurses who came by sniffed the air and looked at her suspiciously. Around eight thirty when one of the nurses popped back in to tell her that visiting hours were over, Wendy said that since we were getting married this coming weekend, she would appreciate it if she could stay in my room all night.
The nurse, an older sentimental soul, gave one of those smiles contestants on quiz shows do when they’ve just won a new Chevrolet. “That’s very nice, miss. I’ll tell the people at the desk so they’ll let the night nurses know.”
When she left I said, “That’s a pretty expensive pizza. Marriage.”
“Don’t worry. I don’t want to get married any more than you do, Sam. But I like having a boyfriend.”
“So you wouldn’t marry me even if I asked you?”
“Oh, God, you’re not one of those, are you?”
“‘One of those’?”
“You know. You don’t want to marry me until I say that I don’t want to marry you, and then you want to marry me just so you can prove that I really wanted to marry you in the first place.”
“Gee, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about but, it sounds kinda fun.”
“You know damned well what I’m talking about.”
The nurse was back with half a dozen roses in a white glass vase. She placed it without ceremony on my rolling table. She plucked the tiny white card from it and handed it to me.
I scanned the words. I laughed so hard it hurt.
“Who’s it from?” Wendy asked.
“Molly. She must’ve snuck off to send the flowers and write the card.”
“What’s it say?”
“‘Maybe I made a mistake. Last night he told me he knows John Lennon.’”
“That poor girl. He’s probably an axe murderer.”
Every few minutes I had to adjust my position in the bed. The pain from the wound wasn’t as bad as it had been the first two days, but it helped to keep shifting the shoulder slightly.
She leaned forward in her chair and touched my hip. “Don’t you see, Sam? All those serious affairs you had and nothing came of them? You got hurt or they got hurt or you both got hurt. I think you went at them too hard. I just want us to have the kind of thing we would’ve had in high school if I hadn’t thought you were kind of a dork.”
“You really thought I was a dork?”
“Well, Sam, you knew I was a snob. I was a cheerleader, for God’s sake.” She stood up then and leaned over so she could see me better. “You’re not over loving Jane, and I’m not over being Bryce’s second choice. We have to face it, so we may as well face it together. But we’ve got to take it slow. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Dear Abby’s got nothing on you.”
“I’ll bet Dear Abby never snuck a sausage pizza into a hospital.”
Then she kissed me and said, “Will you be mad if I change my mind about staying all night? I just realized that that chair will cripple me for life if I try to sleep in it.”
“You mean you wouldn’t wrench your back out of shape even for love?”
She poked me in the chest and grinned. “Not even for love, bozo.”
On the fourth day, they started me walking up and down the hall three times before dinner. On my second trip, I decided to do something useful. I stopped in to see William Hughes. His room was seven down from mine.
According to Wendy, he’d been shot in the chest and the left side. Lying in his hospital bed, reading a paperback copy of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, his open blue pajama shirt revealed white tape around his chest and an IV drip positioned on his left arm. The room was bright with the Indian summer afternoon. Two small monitors sat on a tall thin table next to his bed. They made tiny bleating noises every five seconds or so. The medicinal smell was sharp but clean.
Hughes showed no particular interest when he looked up and saw me crossing from the doorway to his bed. He closed his paperback, stretched his arm across to the rolling table where he took his meals and kept his personal items. He grabbed a Zippo and a pack of Pall Malls. “The doctor comes in and gives me the big speech every time he sees the smokes.” He had a grin that made you feel better about the world. He lighted his cigarette and clanked shut the top of his Zippo. In the sunlight I could see how much of his gray hair was turning white. I could also see that his burnished skin was more wrinkled than I’d realized. He was getting old.