Resurrection Express (39 page)

“No.”

He lets that go. Then summons his courage, looking at the floor.

“I . . . have to
tell you
something. It’s bad news.”

Yeah. I know.

His next words still hit me like a tidal wave.

“You’ve lost the use of your legs. You’re paralyzed from the waist down.”

The wave drowns me.

•  •  •

“T
he damage appears to be the result of something cumulative. Stress factors over a long period of time. When you got banged up, it was sort of the last straw. So to speak. You’re a damn lucky man.”

Yeah. I know.

He gets a little closer to me and I smell his cheap cologne.

Disgusting.

“During surgery, you flatlined, and there were other complications. You almost didn’t make it.”

I know that, too.

I got Toni back when that happened.

I had to die for her.

I always knew it would be that way.

And now I’m half a man because of it.

Half a man.

“You’ve been healing very well,” he says. “The wound in your side is doing fine. It didn’t hurt you that bad. You’ll be out of ICU tomorrow, and we’ll move you next door to the Hermann Medical Center. We have an excellent physical rehabilitation program there. I’m . . . sorry.”

Yeah. I can see how sorry you are.

“A staff member will be in here tomorrow morning to discuss insurance with you. Do you have any questions?”

I shake my head at him.

He snorts and shakes his head again.

“The law requires me to inform you that the police have been notified about your shooting. We’ll also have to inform them about your previous injuries. They may want to ask you some questions, they may not. Most times in situations like this, an investigation doesn’t actually happen, unless the family requests it.”

“I understand.”

“Someone will be in to check on you soon.”

He turns and leaves without another word.

I’m just some broke welfare street scum to him.

I feel a wave of hatred rising in me, and I crush it fast. I have to think about getting out of this place. Can’t think about the finality of what’s happened to me. It’ll kill the only thing I’ve got left to fight with—and that’s my mind.

I’m swimming in the wave, trying to focus.

I traded my manhood for my memories.

I’ll never walk again.

19

00000-19

DAMAGE CONTROL

I
calm myself, breathing hard, closing my eyes, trying to take myself out of the room. Trying to see the leads.

Voices laugh at me.

I try for a long time to see the leads. All I can find is the end of everything.

Have to focus. Take myself out. Guide myself through.

I’ll never walk again.

•  •  •

F
inally . . . my heartbeat slows.

I find calm in the storm.

Damage control, just for a few minutes.

I’m thinking carefully now.

If the cops decide to question me, they might run my prints, too. Right now I’m a John Doe. Right now, Elroy Coffin is officially dead, as far as the books are concerned. Jenison had me killed in the Toy Jam massacre, but a lot of people know different on the street. If the cops run my prints through the system and find out that they match up with a dead man . . . well, this could get really complicated. They’ll start asking a lot more questions. They might connect the dots to everything. The fire at Hartman’s place. The shootout at the strip club and the car bomb that killed
Franklin. It’s only a matter of time before somebody, anybody, shows up looking for me.

Maybe days. Maybe hours.

I’ve been here half a week already, though. That might mean something. Might mean Jenison and her people don’t know where I am, have no idea where to look. Or maybe they just don’t care about me anymore. Maybe I’m no use to them. I blew up the key to their kingdom, after all—blew it up with Franklin. What could they want from me now?

Being dead on the books buys me some time with the cops.

Time I don’t have.

The amnesia bit will only shield me for so long. They’ll want to know how I can pay my way. I don’t have any ID. I could be anyone. And my old scars, from three years ago. That’ll bring the cops faster, too. Maybe.

I try to move my legs—I try damn hard.

And I can’t.

The damage is permanent this time.

Can’t think about it.

I have no legs but I must run.

•  •  •

I
t takes a few minutes to calm myself again.

Must not let this break me.

The mind is the most powerful weapon.

Focus.

•  •  •

W
hat happens next?

They’ll move me to
the Hermann Medical Center next door in the morning. They’ll give me access to a telephone, because they want my money. I have to figure on being interviewed by the cops sooner than later.

The Hermann Medical Center is where they took Gabby Giffords last year, when she was shot in the face. On any other day, the irony might be amusing. Today . . . it’s just another joke I’m not laughing at.

Poor Gabby.

I take myself off the morphine drip, or whatever it is. Disconnect the tube at the heparin lock and inch it out of the apparatus taped to my arm. I do it carefully, tracing each movement, because I’ll have to stick it back eventually.

I let the drug dribble onto the floor.

I wait for a few minutes to see how bad the pain is.

It’s not too bad. My head clears some.

The hole in my side is sutured and bandaged up. Small wound, like he said, well on the road to healed. My training saved me from it being any worse and the patch-up job was good. There was no bullet to dig out. Might have shocked my lung because it hurts to breathe a little. I would have been able to walk away from there if Franklin hadn’t crushed me in half.

I’ll never walk again because of that son of a bitch.

For the first time in my life, I’m completely helpless.

•  •  •

T
he pain creeps up on me—something sharp and scraping in my left side. A throbbing in my head. I put the needle back in the lock, inch it slowly into place. The relief goes down smooth. I can’t rely on it for long. I have to get my head on straight. I have to get out of here. I think about it so hard that I feel my mind give . . . and I cross the terminator into night, swimming in darkness now.

Looking for a way out.

Looking and falling.

Down and down.

•  •  •

I
n this dream, Toni speaks to me. She is no longer a wraith without form, hovering in a black space where my destroyed memories once churned and boiled. No, these are new memories, filled with the new image of her. The sleek, perfect version of her I was robbed of so long ago. It’s really her speaking to me. She’s come back to stay. I am in a room filled with copper wire and glimmering circuitry, the guts of a computer system are laid bare before my eyes, entangling my arms, keeping me still, my legs vanishing forever into a void that yawns below. Toni is telling me secrets, about what’s really going on behind the scenes . . . but her voice is low . . . and soon it fades away . . .

. . . and I see my father on the butcher’s block. His hands tied down and guns held to his head. He is not afraid. He speaks to me like
my father,
like a man with wisdom, not like a killer who is drunk and doomed.

Son. I will resurrect you. Follow me.

Hartman hovers above us somewhere. I can hear the shrill, cold slice of the blade through the air. The salty taste of blood in my mouth. My father’s hand is on the chopping block. His gun hand. The hand with only three fingers left.

Follow me. Follow my words.

The blade, closer now in the dark. Secrets that must be told. I know the answers now. Know all the answers. But it’s fading away, even as I see it all come clear . . .

Come back, son.

Stay with me.

Stay . . .

It’s fading . . .

Fading.

Gone now.

Gone.

•  •  •

T
hey move me to the floor below ICU in the morning. Roll me down a hall, into an elevator, down another hall, into the dark again. I’m almost not there for any of it, they have me so doped up. A couple of shots of something, on top of the drip.

Probably Dilaudid.

Hydromorphone, they also call it.

The last time I was shot, they pumped me full of it. It’s the stuff Matt Dillon and his junkie posse were after in that movie
Drugstore Cowboy
. Synthetic heroin, like Vicodin is synthetic codeine. All the fun and half the addiction, if you’re lucky. I can’t get addicted to this stuff. I just can’t.

My head gets clear, but I can’t tell how long it takes. I end up in a room that looks exactly like the one I was in before. Someone tells me I’m in a different building now. I’m asleep when they tell me that.

My father whispers to me and I can’t hear what he says.

Something that teases me.

Son, follow my voice.

Follow what I’ve said to you.

Follow me.

Toni winks her glittering green eye in the dark and says it’s all gonna be okay.

Somehow, I believe her.

Follow me,
she says.
If you can’t follow Ringo . . . follow me.

•  •  •

S
ure enough, the accounts rep is a hard old lady and she’s right in my face with questions about how I’m gonna pay for my visit to Hermann Hospital. They haven’t even assigned me a social worker. I give her the same dog and pony show I gave the doc. He never comes in to talk to me again.

The rep leaves in a huff. She can tell I’m lying about not knowing who I am. It’s going to be a problem.

I add it to the list.

•  •  •

I
watch the door, all night.

No drug drip anymore. I pulled it again and the pain is dull—not bad, but it doesn’t tickle, either. Have to stay alert. Someone will come through that door sooner or later. I have to get out of here.

I go under for just a few minutes and Toni is there again.

There’s not much time, baby. The wolves are closing in.

Follow me.

I almost hear the rest, almost bring it back to waking world . . . but it escapes me again.

•  •  •

A
peppy young guy in hospital blues comes into my room at seven in the morning and says his name is Richard and he’ll be caring for me. He has dark eyes and brown hair. Well built and beefy in the face. Says he’s a fourth-year medical student but not to worry, I’m in good hands. He tells me about how I’ve been pissing for the last couple of weeks, as if I hadn’t noticed. There’s a tube hooked up to my bladder—direct plumbing, he calls it, then he apologizes for his bad joke. I reach down and feel my upper legs, inspect the tube snaking out of my lower regions, attached by an IV needle and taped there, running to a plastic bag, half full of dark yellow liquid, polluted and milky, all full of dope. You could sell my piss on the street and it would fetch top dollar.

He changes out the bag, talking about how lucky I am.

All of this happens in a sort of waking dream.

I can’t tell if it’s the morphine or not.

Have to get my head clear.

Richard pulls back the sheet and gently grabs hold of my legs, bends them slightly at the knee for me. I don’t trust his hands when he does that. I notice that his hospital blues match my thin
smock and drawstring pants, and for some reason that makes me feel vulnerable. He calls me “buddy” a lot.

Just like David Hartman used to.

He looks at my arm and asks why I pulled my dope drip out. He can tell just by glancing. I say I was delirious, I’m not sure what I was thinking. He looks at me right in my eyes and says nothing.

Right in my eyes.

I don’t like that.

He tells me he can get me on a remote-controlled delivery system for the drip if I want it, one of those hand triggers that administers a dosage from a pump that sits alongside you in the room. I don’t want it. He says it might be just as well. Those things can be dangerous. I tell him I just don’t want to be on dope.

He says good for you, buddy.

He puts back the sheet, makes some more happy noise at me. Points at a wheelchair near my bed, says I’ll be doing back flips on it in no time. Leaves me some food on a rollaway table which arcs over my bed on a long arm. I watch him very carefully as he leaves.

Then I look at the wheelchair.

Very carefully.

•  •  •

T
hat night, I use the stainless-steel bars on either side of my bed to lever myself up, squeezing hard and steady with just my upper-arm strength. Without the morphine drip, it’s agonizing, and I can feel the strain tearing against the wound in my side. I try again and again, getting just a little farther each time. I’m careful not to push it too far. I’m testing my body, seeing what my limits are. Nothing gives anywhere inside me.

The last time I was shot it was much worse. I couldn’t move for a week. They gave me a morphine trigger that time and I used it a lot. Plenty of synthetic heroin. Tried to escape the hospital as soon
as I could. That was when I figured out how to remove a heparin lock without tearing open my vein—the older the lock, the easier it is. They had me handcuffed to the bed back then, but the cuffs were no problem. It was the law that did me in. They didn’t have any guards on the door, but I got nailed coming out of the service entrance into the parking lot. Two plainclothes, drawing down and telling me to freeze, like all cops do.

This place will have its own police division—guys with badges and revolvers. No detectives, just standard flatfoots. My edge is that they have no idea who I am, that I am not under arrest for anything. And cops in medical centers like this one are always busy on the cancer floor, separating families who are fighting over the off switch on life-support systems. They don’t have time for nobodies like me. Not yet anyway. But I have to assume the worst.