Wonders Never Cease (14 page)

His mind raced, but all he could come up with was: “Greetings, earthling!”

Idiot!
he shouted to himself.
This isn't Star Trek! You're an
angel, remember
? His immediate instinct was to smack himself on the forehead, but it didn't seem the sort of thing an angelic being would do. He took a moment to compose himself. He needed to pull himself together before his “message from above” turned into “The Three Stooges in Orbit.”

He cleared his throat.

“You're probably wondering who I am. I am a messenger, Liv, a messenger sent from a distant dimension to tell you something very important—something that I want you to share with the whole world, preferably in the form of a book. In fact, definitely a book—in hardcover.”

Careful
, he thought.
Don't get ahead of yourself—just stick
to the basics
.

“I have been called by many names in many times and places. Many have attempted to describe the things I am going to tell you, but they all got it wrong. I am here to correct their mistakes—to tell you how things really are and how the universe really works.”

How the universe works? Those two morons had better
come up with something or I'm really overpromising here
.

“Oh—by the way, the message I bring you is the last and most important of all. In other words, this message renders all previous messages null and void. Are we clear on that?”

So much for the competition
.

“There is a great change taking place in the universe,” he went on. “A new awareness, a new consciousness, a new way of thinking—and you have been chosen to communicate this new way to the world. You may wonder, ‘Why me? Why have I been chosen for this task?' The reason is that you are special; your mind is receptive to new ideas; you are spiritually attuned. Plus, you've held up very well for a woman your age, and that doesn't hurt either.”

Hayden's eyes slowly widened as they adjusted to the light. Her pupils were tiny pinpoints—a side effect of the propofol. She never blinked; she just continued to stare up at the heavenly messenger and soak up the words like a sponge.

“Your presence here in this hospital is no accident, Liv. It's all part of a great cosmic plan. There are no accidents. Well—your automobile accident was an accident, but that's different. I think you know what I mean.”

Stop rambling, you fool. Wrap it up
.

“I will appear to you each night about this time and I will reveal my thoughts to you. We will become very close, Liv. You will come to know my voice better than you know your own, until my voice is your voice and my thoughts are your—”

There was a knock on the door.

Kemp whirled around. He fumbled for the switch on the examination light and gave the light a shove, sending it rolling across the room. He ripped open his lab coat and wrestled it off, sending buttons flying like shrapnel, then wadded the coat into a ball and kicked it under the bed. He was just about to reach for the infusion pump when there was a second knock, louder and more insistent than before. There was no time to adjust the propofol; one knock could be ignored, but not two.

He hurried to the door and opened it as casually as possible.

Natalie looked at him. “Did you say good night to Leah?”

Kemp's heart started beating again. “What?”

“When I went to the break room to tuck her in, she said you hadn't been in to see her tonight.”

“I'm working, Natalie. Do you mind?”

Natalie looked past him into the room. “I heard talking in
here.”

“I was talking to Ms. Hayden,” he said. “It's standard practice with comatose patients. You know that.”

“We talk to the ones we're trying to bring out of a coma, not the ones we're trying to keep in. What are you doing in here, sharing your heart with your new movie star friend?”

“I resent the implication and the interruption. Is there anything else?”

“You might try talking to your daughter once in a while—she's actually conscious.”

Kemp was about to say, “She's not my daughter”—but he knew that would only prolong the argument. Instead he diplomatically replied, “You're right. I should have stopped in to tell her good night. I got distracted and I forgot. Let's not make a big deal out of it.”

“It's a big deal to her, Kemp.”

“Maybe.”

“Even if it's not, it's a big deal to me.”

“Okay, point taken. If she's here tomorrow night I'll stop in and see her then.”

“Where else would she be? I can't find a caregiver in the next twenty-four hours—not by myself, anyway.”

Kemp didn't respond.

“Are you still going to be home late?”

“I told you—I have things to do.”

She looked at the figure lying on the bed. “Like talking to movie stars?”

Kemp shut the door halfway. “I tell you what—let's talk about work when we're at work and home when we're at home. Right now I'm working—I have a patient, and if I remember correctly so do you. That may not mean much to you, Natalie, but it does to me. Perhaps an extra five years of education gives one a different attitude toward the practice of medicine. Now if you don't mind, my patient requires my attention. Please don't interrupt me again unless it's work-related.”

He closed the door in her face.

He walked back to the bed and looked down at Liv Hayden. Her eyes were still half open, staring up into empty space. He adjusted the infusion pump and watched as the number on the BIS monitor began to tick down and her eyes slowly closed again.

“Sorry to leave you hanging,” Kemp said. “People like you and me have a lot of demands on us, don't we? If you don't mind, I think I'll take my lunch break now; you seem to be dozing off anyway. Let's pick it up where we left off tomorrow night, shall we? By then I might even have something to say.”

16

M
ind if I join you?”

Kemp looked up from his
LA Times
to see Emmet sliding his cafeteria tray onto the table across from him. Kemp looked at him in disdain. “Don't the janitors have their own tables?”

“The cafeteria's a democracy,” Emmet said. “That's what I like about the place. I'm not allowed in the physicians' lounge, and I don't belong in the nurses' break room unless I'm collecting the trash. But in the cafeteria a man can sit wherever he wants. I can sit right next to a doctor if I want to. I can even sit across from you.”

“Then why did you ask if I mind?”

“Just a courtesy,” he said. “Pass the salt, please.”

Kemp slid the shaker across the table. “Speaking of courtesy, would you mind not talking to me? I'm trying to read here.”

“That's a waste of an opportunity,” Emmet said. “You can read the paper anytime you want. Here in the cafeteria you get a chance to meet people—to learn from somebody different than you.”

“Smarter than you?”

“Maybe; maybe not. I find you can learn from most anybody if you keep an open mind.”

“So this is how janitors spend their breaks—mingling with the hoi polloi.”

“Wrong word,” Emmet said. “‘Hoi polloi'—that's Greek, I believe. Most people think it means ‘the high and mighty,' but it really means ‘the common man.' See there? You learned something new already.”

“Did you learn that from one of the doctors?”

Emmet smiled. “I don't seem to learn much from doctors—truth is, I learn a lot more from the staff. The cafeteria crew, for example—very bright people. Doctors, they seem to have a kind of tunnel vision—ever notice that? They know a lot about science and medicine, but they don't always know much about life. Take you, for instance.”

“Me?”

“You've got a little girl upstairs who needs to be loved, but you're so caught up in your own life right now that you're lookin' right through her. Big mistake, friend.”

“I'm not your friend,” Kemp said, “and she's not my daughter.”

“Does it matter? You're the man in her life right now. Natalie's a good woman. She worries about her little girl the way all mothers do, and let me tell you something: The way to any mother's heart is through her child.”

“Did the cafeteria crew give you that little gem of wisdom?”

“No, but they all know it's true. Funny thing—a man who's paid eight dollars an hour to scrape grease off a plastic tray knows something you don't.”

“I'll tell you what else is funny: A man your age who doesn't know when to mind his own business.”

Emmet shrugged. “Well, you can't blame a man for trying.”

“Can't I?”

“One more thing,” Emmet said, “since I'm out on a limb already: She's not real, you know.”

“Excuse me?”

“That movie star patient of yours—the one you're spending all that time with? She's not real, Mr. Kemp—and when she wakes up in a few days I guarantee she won't give you the time of day. She'll look down her nose at you the same way you're lookin' at me right now.”

Now Kemp smiled. “You never know. You might be surprised.”

“Don't kid yourself. Natalie and Leah—they're real, and they're right in front of you if you'll only look. I think you need to remember that.”

Kemp looked at his watch. “I'll tell you what I think, Emesis. I think I'm on a fifteen-minute break and you just wasted five. It's a big cafeteria—how about celebrating democracy somewhere else?”

Emmet picked up his tray and left without another word.

Kemp buried his face in his newspaper, but a moment later he heard the chair beside him slowly slide out from the table. Without looking up he said, “I thought I told you to get lost.” A much deeper voice replied, “I don't think so—Bobby.” Kemp looked up. The man who sat down beside him was enormous, and the legs of his plastic cafeteria chair bowed slightly under his weight. He was dressed in baggy khakis and an ugly Hawaiian print shirt festooned with badly rendered beach scenes and palm trees. The shirt's pointed collar stretched open across his barrel-like chest, and a tuft of curly black hair bushed out from underneath. His neck was wider than his ears, and his bald head narrowed to a gleaming grapefruit-sized dome; he seemed to taper from the waist up, creating a strange foreshortening effect that made him look towering even when he was sitting down. He wore a simple gold ring in one of his ears and sported no facial hair except for a coal-black soul patch under his rubbery lower lip.

When Kemp saw the man, his face went white.

Tino Gambatti began to take items from his tray one at a time and arrange them neatly on the table in front of him. “It is Bobby, right? Bobby Foscoe from Baltimore? Bobby Foscoe, that whiz-bang medical student from Johns Hopkins I last met in a lounge at Trump Plaza in Atlantic City?”

Kemp almost choked. “Tino,” was all he managed to get out.

The man slid a bowl of lime green Jell-O in front of him and picked up a plastic spoon; it looked like a toy in his chubby fingers. “I'm impressed, Bobby. It's been a long time. But then I suppose doctors have good memories—even doctors who don't turn out to be doctors after all.”

“What are you doing here, Tino?”

He paused to take a spoonful of Jell-O. “I'm here on business. You'll have to excuse my appearance. It's California, after all—I was trying to blend in.”

“If this is about the money—”

“Funny you should mention that. As I recall, you borrowed some money from me once. Correct me if I'm wrong.”

Kemp swallowed hard.

“How much was that again? Refresh my memory.”

“A hundred thousand.”

Tino nodded. “That number sounds vaguely familiar. Remind me again—I don't have your memory—what were the terms of our agreement?”

“Two years,” Kemp said. “Fifty percent interest.”

“Two years,” Tino repeated. “Enough time to let you finish up at Hopkins and set up a nice little practice somewhere. Enough time to let you start putting people to sleep and raking in an easy half million a year. Two years to come up with a measly hundred and fifty grand—that should have been easy for a bright boy like you.”

“I—I screwed up. They didn't let me finish.”

“Yes, I heard about that, and if I was your mother I might even care. But since I'm your business partner, I could care less. I just want my money, Bobby.”

“Sure, Tino, no problem. But—I don't have it right now.”

Tino turned and looked at him for the first time. “What's the matter, Bobby? You look a little pale. Maybe you should get out more—take a little sun.”

Kemp didn't answer.

“Let me explain something to you—something you maybe didn't understand when we made our little agreement. See, I'm a businessman; I'm in the loan business. I loan money to people like you, and people like you pay me back—with interest. That's how I make my living. Only I'm not like a regular bank—I'm more like a convenience store. You need groceries, you go to the grocery store; you want quick and easy, you stop off at 7-Eleven—but you expect to pay more. Me, I'm the same way. You want a conventional loan, you go to Bank of America—only as I recall, you were already up to your eyeballs in debt and your old man wouldn't cosign another loan for you. But you couldn't wait to start living the good life, could you? You wanted that hundred thousand right away, and you didn't want any questions asked. That's why you came to me, and we worked out a deal. Remember?”

“Of course I remember.”

“I wasn't so sure. You seemed to forget all about our agreement. You left town, Bobby; you moved to California; you even changed your name. What is it now? Kemp something-or-other? You know, I went to a lot of trouble to track you down. What was I supposed to think?”