An Educated Death (28 page)

"It never was a simple consulting thing," I muttered.

"Can't you see she's exhausted?" Dorrie said.

"This is police business," he said. "After she answers my questions she can settle down for a nice, long sleep." He pulled up a chair and sat down, while his underling fetched a second chair from somewhere and sat down behind him, notebook ready. It was clear that whatever the reason, whether it was because I'd had the nerve to collapse in his office or just because I'd had the nerve to get involved in the first place, Rocky Miller was cutting me no slack.

I wasn't surprised. It wasn't even the first time I'd had to deal with obnoxious cops while I was helpless in a hospital bed. Once it had even been Andre. So I mentally girded myself for battle, a pathetic little David in a flimsy johnny against a healthy and belligerent Goliath. I didn't have a slingshot but I could always just close my eyes and refuse to open them. "Dorrie, could you find me some tea, please." She nodded and left the room, glad to escape a situation where she'd felt helpless. Dorrie doesn't like feeling helpless any more than I do.

The nurse was still hovering in the background, obviously intimidated by the presence of the police chief. "Nurse," I said, "could I have a few minutes alone with you?"

It took her a minute to grasp my meaning but then she timidly cleared the room. "Would you like the bedpan?" she asked as the door closed behind Rocky and his minion.

"I do have a bathroom, don't I?"

"Yes, but..." she began.

I sat up slowly and swung my legs over the side of the bed. Long white rubber noodles between me and the floor. "If you could help me..." She shook her head. Probably she rarely had to deal with as many strong-willed people as she'd seen tonight. She propelled my IV pole and gave me her arm and soon I was back in bed, propped up on the pillows, ready to receive company. Then she ushered Rocky back in and, with the restorative help of the tea Dorrie brought, I tried to tell him everything I knew. The problem was that all I could tell him were my questions, my suspicions, the paths I'd decided needed further exploration.

Once we ended our battle of wills and he saw that I was willing to cooperate, he calmed down. And I tried hard to cooperate, since I didn't like the idea of someone trying to kill me any more than he did. It took a tremendous effort to stay coherent, to keep my thoughts organized, even to speak. He was a strange man. The more we talked, the gentler he became. Soon he was helping me drink my tea, smoothing the hair back from my face, patting my hand.

"I tried to call your boyfriend, but I couldn't find him," he said. "I figured he'd want to know."

"Oh no!" I said, sitting up. "He can't know! I hope you didn't leave a message."

"I don't understand," he said. "I would think you'd want him with you at a time like this."

"I do want him with me, but I don't want to worry him. Not now. He's had enough death and near death in his life recently. Besides, I promised him I'd stay away from anything dangerous." Maybe it was cowardly of me, cowering before Andre's imagined disapproval like this. It wasn't that I was ready to let him run my life. He'd tried that before and I'd had to back him off. He knew me well enough to know that I had to do what I had to do, just like he did. But this would have been the third time he'd found me in the hospital and I wasn't sure he could take it. I wanted to explain that to Rocky, to make him promise that he wouldn't do anything rash, but exhaustion lay on me like a lead apron. My eyelids were coming down and they were too heavy to lift. "Pomise you won't call him," I said.

He patted my hand. "You get some rest. I'll see you in the morning." He pulled up the covers, turned off the light, and left me alone. I wanted to stay awake and think through what had happened, but I couldn't. My thoughts were little spots of light spinning in a huge black centrifuge. They spun out to the sides, became a bright, circular blur, and then spun away into space, while I fell down into the whirling black center. I stayed there for a long time.

 

 

 

Chapter 14

 

I was having a lovely dream. I was home in my wonderful sleigh bed, cuddled up next to Andre. In the dream I was going to sleep until noon, take a long hot bath and then Andre was going to fix me breakfast. Though I often had extremely vivid dreams, they were not normally this pleasant. Usually I dreamed about work and my dreams were peopled by the difficult characters I dealt with during the day. Sometimes my sister, Carrie, would still appear in my dreams. At first it was always the way she'd looked in the police photos of the murder scene, but lately that image had been fading and I could see Carrie as she'd been when she was alive.

I turned over, looking for a more comfortable position, and my sore muscles were quick to protest. I moaned and lay still. In my dream, Andre put an arm around me and pulled me close. I snuggled into his warmth. He was so real I could feel his breath on my neck. So real that I felt safe. "Don't let them get me," I said.

"I won't let anyone hurt you." Dreams can be very sensuous experiences. When he said that I could practically feel the rumble of his voice through his body. Even in my debilitated state, I felt my body responding. Just thinking about him does that to me. Then I slipped into a heavier sleep, a sleep too deep even for dreams.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I heard the sound of the door opening. I sprang upright, staring at the slice of light the door admitted. Andre put a comforting arm around me. "It's okay, Thea," he said, "it's just the cop on duty, checking on you. Your bodyguard."

"I thought you were my bodyguard."

"Looked like the job was taken."

"You're not a dream?" I said.

"Some people think I am. There was this girl once who—"

"I don't want to hear it, Lemieux," I said. "Just shut up and hold me."

"Anytime." He kissed me and he didn't even seem to mind that I hadn't brushed my teeth. I had managed a little mouthwash in honor of the police chief. It was one of those kisses that starts out saying Glad to see you, and progresses rapidly to breathless passion. When we finally came up for air, he said, "Just wanted you to know that I'm glad you're alive."

"We've got to stop meeting like this."

"You're telling me?" he said. "We spend more time in hospitals than some doctors."

"And have less fun, too. At least we don't have to do the paperwork."

"I'm giving you a nurse's kit for Christmas."

"If I can't be a doctor, I won't play."

"Oho," he said. "The girl wants to play doctor."

"Woman," I said.

"You want to play woman?"

"Please," I said, putting a hand over his mouth. "Please, please, please don't make me laugh. You know what stomach muscles feel like after you've been poisoned? You know what chest muscles feel like when you've been struggling to breathe?"

He put a hand on a very personal part of my body. "You know what Theadora Kozak feels like when she's too weak to resist?" I yawned. "I'm not sure I've ever had a woman respond to me that way," he said.

"Don't take it personally. I'm not at my best. Another time I'm sure desire would course through me like waves of lava from an active volcano."

"I love it when you talk dirty."

"That's not dirty. That's poetic. Did you bring anything to eat?"

"Sorry. In my haste to reach your side I forgot to stop at Dunkin' Donuts."

"I forgive you. I wonder if the cafeteria here is open at night. If they even have a cafeteria."

"Don't ask me to go and get you something."

"Why not? Afraid it would be bad for me? Nothing could be worse than hospital food. Cold wet cereal. Soggy toast. Congealed overcooked eggs. Coffee without caffeine. Flat ginger ale. Warm juice."

"You're telling me?" he said. "I had a couple weeks of it, remember?"

"How could I forget? I lost eight pounds hanging around there myself, worrying about you."

He nuzzled the top of my head with his chin. "I'm not going to get you something because I'm not leaving you. Even though you are in serious need of a shower and shampoo, ma'am, I am sticking to you like glue."

A few hours ago I'd felt all alone in the world, longing for someone to come and take care of me. Now I had someone. And I was afraid I was losing some of my protective shell because I wasn't bristling at the notion of being watched over, I was enjoying it. I didn't want him to leave. "Hospitals should have room service, like hotels. Champagne and fresh dressings to Room three oh two. Chicken salad on rye and Demerol to two ten. Maybe my bodyguard could go?"

"I can ask. He seems to have been very intimidated by his boss. He may be afraid to leave."

"Tell him you promise to keep me safe."

"I do. I do," he said. He went to the door and spoke briefly with someone I couldn't see.

Alone in the bed, even briefly, I felt bereft. When he came back and reported success, I burrowed into his woolly sweater and clung to him. "Don't leave me again," I said.

He pulled me close. "So, something finally scared the indomitable Thea Kozak," he said.

"It's not the first time," I told his chest. "I'll get over it."

"I know you will. You are too brave and too stubborn to stay intimidated for long."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

"Did Rocky call you?"

"Everyone called me."

"What do you mean?" Morpheus was reaching for me and I was ready to tumble back into his arms, but first I needed to know what Andre meant.

"Rocky. Dorrie. Suzanne. They all said you'd be furious if you knew they'd called. I half expected your mother to call, but I don't think she knows you're here."

"She doesn't. And don't you dare tell her. Not even if I relapse and it looks like I'm going to die. I'm going to sleep now. Wake me when the food comes." I closed my eyes and drifted away. A while later he woke me up and spooned chicken soup into my mouth like I was a baby bird. I think I thanked him. I don't remember. Then he tucked me in and I went back to sleep. Sometime around the crack of dawn a nurse woke me to establish for the record that I was still alive. That's one of the things hospitals do best—disturbing you when you're trying to rest in order to help you get better. So far this place had been better than most. She and Andre eyed each other warily but didn't exchange words.

The next exciting event in the life of Thea Kozak, girl detective, was the arrival of a bona fide physician. She was small, sandy haired, freckled, and totally without a bedside manner. She had a plastic name tag on her chest identifying her as Dr. Banter. Hell of a name for a person who looked as though she'd eaten bird gravel for breakfast. She asked me how I was feeling, agreed that it was perfectly normal that I should feel awful, informed me that I'd had a very close call, and lectured me sternly about the dangers of ingesting wild plants without sufficient knowledge of their danger. "You're not the first person to mistake water hemlock for ginseng but it's a dangerous mistake," she said.

Across the room, Andre was standing by the window, his arms folded, his face impassive. It was only from his eyes that I could read his amusement as he watched to see what I would do. "Excuse me?" I said in my best affronted matron's voice.

"It was a stupid thing to do," she said.

"You should save that lecture for the person who put the stuff in my sandwich," I said.

Now it was her turn to be puzzled. "I'm sorry. I'm afraid I'm not following you," she said. She snapped my chart shut. "You'll be fine. Just get plenty of rest. Fluids. Eat lightly for the next few days. You may experience some residual anxiety and restlessness from traces of the chemical still in your body. Maybe you can get your boyfriend," she nodded in Andre's direction, "to make you some soup. You can leave as soon as the police chief has had a chance to talk to you."

It was the way she said "police chief" that explained it all. She didn't have the story straight, but her abrasiveness wasn't really directed at me. I was just another warm body laid out for her tender ministrations. Maybe she had had something going with Rocky and it hadn't gone well.

"From what I've seen," I told her, "he's no loss."

She stared at me. "How did you—"

"And for the record, Doctor, I was poisoned. Someone put that stuff in my food to try and kill me. I don't know whether you like to keep track of things like that or not, but it's bad form to lecture a poisoning victim about carelessness, don't you think, particularly in an age when we don't use personal tasters?" She didn't know what to say, so she didn't say anything, just turned on her heel and left.

"My, my, my," Andre said. "Aren't you in a sweet mood this morning."

"If I have ever said or done anything to mislead you into thinking I'm sweet, I apologize. And while I'm apologizing, I also apologize for being here and for dragging you away from work in the middle of the night and for getting poisoned. I honestly didn't think I was in any danger... I promised to be careful and I was careful."

"Hey, hey, hold it," he said. "You don't owe me any apologies."

I stared down at the ugly blue-and-white garment I was wearing. I was feeling weepy again. I knew it was only weakness. I was not turning into some soft, sweet, dependent woman just because this guy was being nice to me. I was just glad the guy was here. "How are you?" I said. His face was finally healed. He looked good. No. He looked better than good. He looked almost cheerful. As cheerful as a guy with an impassive face can look. A guy who's just had two brushes with death, has just lost a good friend, and who has a significant other who keeps getting into awful scrapes. Now that I know him well, I read his eyes. He can shut them down if he wants to. He has a terrifying ability to lock emotion off his face, but today he wasn't doing that.