“My lung…”
“You have two cracked ribs, sir, and a slightly punctured lung. You suffered a fifteen percent collapse. Anything more than ten is serious enough to use this machine. Right now, there is a balloon inside the upper chamber of your right lung. We need to keep the lung inflated for a couple of days to let the ribs heal.”
“Wonderful,” I said.
“You also suffered a slight concussion,” he said. “As well as a cut above your left eye that required fifteen stitches.”
I felt the bandage on my eyebrow.
“In addition to all of these injuries,” he said, holding up an X ray toward the ceiling light, “were you aware that you have a bullet in your chest?”
“You found the bullet,” I said. “I looked everywhere for that thing.”
He looked down at me and smiled for the first time. The serious doctor routine was gone. “Seriously,” he said. “What the hell happened to you?”
“You mean with the bullet or with everything else?”
“Start with the bullet.”
“It was fourteen years ago,” I said. “I took three in the chest. The doctors left that one in.”
He nodded and looked at the X ray again. “Inferior media stinum,” he said. “It wouldn’t have been worth the risk to go get it.”
“That’s what they told me.”
“I’m sure they also told you that there will always be a danger of the bullet migrating closer to the spinal cord, right? Which is why you have a chest X ray every year to make sure it hasn’t moved?”
“Uh… I don’t seem to recall them saying anything like that”
“The hell you don’t,” he said. He looked at me and waited for me to confess. When I didn’t, he held the X ray up again. “I’ve never seen this in person before,” he said. “Around here, the gunshots are always hunters. They’re not little bullets like this one. What is that, a twenty-two?”
“Yes,” I said. “From an Uzi.”
“You must lead a very interesting life,” he said. “Now about this business-”
“Which business?”
“This business that brings you to my hospital with a collapsed lung and more braises than I can count.”
“I was sledding,” I said. “I hit a tree.”
He smiled again. “There are rope burns on your wrists and ankles,” he said. “Do you always have somebody tie you up when you go sledding?”
I looked at my wrists. The ropes had left a three-inch band of red, raw skin. “I need to talk to the sheriff, Doctor.”
“He was here. I’ll call him, have him come back, now that you’re awake. There were two men here, too. The two men who came here with the ambulance.”
“Vinnie and Leon,” I said. And then I remembered the face I had seen, or thought I had seen, in the doorway. “Doctor, were there any men with hunting caps out in the hallway?”
“Hunting caps? You mean with the flaps? I don’t know. I mean, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed. A lot of men wear hunting caps around here.”
“How long do I have to stay here?”
“It’s going to be at least two days before we take you off that machine,” he said. “Then at least another day after that We’ll do X rays every day to see how the ribs look.”
“That’s great news,” I said. “I’ve always loved hospitals.”
When the doctor left, I sat there listening to the machine for a long while. Now that I knew what was happening, I could feel the balloon inside me. For a moment the thought of it was too much and I had to fight the urge to rip the tube out. But then the balloon would still be inside me. In fact, if I pulled out the tube, what would stop me from flying around the room as the air escaped from the balloon, just like in the cartoons?
A nurse came and gave me some pills. When I took them, the pain in my side started to soften again. I took another little ride in the clouds. When I woke up this time, Leon was sitting in a chair next to the bed.
“Hey, partner,” he said.
“What time is it?” I said. “How long did I sleep?”
“It’s about five P.M., ” he said. “You’ve been here about twenty-four hours now.”
“What happened?” I said. “Where did you… How did you… The last time I saw you, we were both at Mrs. Hudson’s house. You were on your way home.”
“You told me you were being followed,” he said. “So I decided to investigate.”
“You followed me home?”
“I followed the men who were following you,” I said. He pulled out a notebook. “Jeep Grand Cherokee, dark green…”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “The guys who were following me were driving a green Taurus.”
“Two Caucasian men,” he said. “Late forties, wearing hunting caps
…”
“One red, one blue,” I said. “That’s them. I helped them get their car out of the snow. They must have wised up and switched to a four-wheel drive.”
Leon looked at me. “You helped them.”
“Yes.”
“Get their car out of the snow.”
“They were stuck,” I said. “It was the neighborly thing to do.”
“And you got a good look at them,” he said. “I like it, partner.”
“Leon…,” I said, but then I didn’t have the strength to finish the sentence. “Just tell me what else happened. What did the two men in the car do?”
“I followed them all the way into Paradise. They pulled into one of those little tourist motels on the south end of town, the Brass Anchor. You know it?”
“Yeah, I think I’ve seen the owner around town,” I said. “Those two guys are staying there?”
“It makes sense,” he said. “North of you, it’s a dead end. All they have to do is sit and wait for you to come down that road, then pick up the tail again.”
“So then what?”
“So then after I watched them go into the motel, I came up to your place. I figured you’d want to know. Your truck was there, and the door was open, but you weren’t home. I saw a lot of footprints in the snow, and the snowmobile tracks. I wasn’t sure what had happened, but it didn’t look good. I tried calling the sheriff on my cellular, but it wasn’t going through. When the regular phone lines go down, all the cellular channels get jammed. Anyway, I went back down your road, saw Mr. LeBlanc pulling into his place. I tried calling the sheriff again, finally got through, and then we both came back. That’s when we heard the snowmobiles. They were pulling you back down the trail. Vinnie grabbed a big stick. I pulled out my revolver. I still have the carry permit. From before, I mean, when I thought I was a real private investigator.” He looked down at his hands.
“You are,” I said, “You probably saved my life.”
“I panicked, Alex. Vinnie knocked that guy off the snowmobile, and I just stood there watching him. The other snowmobiles came back. I didn’t know what to do. I just fired the gun into the air. Vinnie yelled at me not to shoot him. I fired the gun in the air again. The men turned around and drove away. I was aiming my gun at them. I could have shot them. One of them, anyway. The guy who was dragging you behind his snowmobile. I could have shot him. But I didn’t.”
“You did the right thing,” I said. “What else were you going to do? Shoot him in the back as he drove away?”
“They were trying to kill you,” he said. “They were trying to kill my partner and I let them get away.”
“Leon, I don’t tell many people this, but when I was a police officer in Detroit, my partner and I got into a… well, a bad situation. Both of us got shot. I survived, but my partner didn’t. I’ve replayed that day in my mind a million times, and I always end up feeling responsible for his death. I probably could have drawn my gun in time to stop it. But I didn’t.”
“That’s where the bullet in your chest came from?”
“Yes. The doctor and I were just having some fun with that. Anyway, the difference is, I failed, and my partner died. You didn’t fail. I’m alive. So let’s knock off all this shit about you letting them get away, all right?”
“Okay,” he said. “Thank you for telling me that.”
“It’s probably just the drags I’m on,” I said.
We both stopped talking for a while. There was only the sound of the machine pumping air into me.