Because she moves towards me in the white room, her black hair stunning and shimmering against the backdrop of heaven, the sleek lines of her soft chin and high cheekbones tracing perfection. Her skin creamy white, flawless. Black lipstick in the soft, sweet shape of a heart as she speaks her vows to me, telling me that it was destiny, that it was fate, that she will never leave me in a million years, even if she does. She tells me we are bonded by so much more than flesh and blood. So much more than the idle promises human beings make when they think they can. In this room, there is no one else, just the two of us. And I hold her in my arms and I feel the perfection of her flesh, the swell of her breasts, the slope of her waist and the canyons of her back, my hands running deep there. And I see the years that will come after our wedding superimposed on the fluttering silk walls, like movies: all the hard times and the good times and the jobs we do together, every moment brought back in one single burst, like a doctor administering a shot of something heavy. Someone tells me it’s okay as I lie there and watch it all. Someone says I’m going to be all right, and I believe him, because I can die now, watching the memories, the images of Toni, fully formed and smiling at me, exploding in layer upon layer. I’m on a stretcher, and I can tell we’re moving fast, inside a moving vehicle. But the memories jet over me faster, still superimposed over my sight, and Toni says she loves me again. A siren overhead, screaming back into the street behind us. I can’t move and I don’t feel anything. Toni smiles and her smile is more beautiful than anything. I expected to be handcuffed but I’m not. There’s no cop in here, nobody to tell me I’m in deep shit or asking me questions I don’t have to answer because I have the right to remain silent. The room we were married in hovers just out of sight now, years down the line. David Hartman is in the room now, killing Axl, and he has no idea that we gave our vows there, and I never tell him, because that would give him everything. I beat you in the end, David. I avenged everyone you ever murdered in that white room. And I got her back. She’s mine again. As I lie here, unable to move. As the EMS guy hovers over me with the defib paddles, telling me it’s all okay.
“Nobody dies in my fucking ambulance,” he says.
Something punches into me like a fist, and I go back to the white room again.
18
00000-18
THE TWO TONIS
One more time, back from the dead.
They’re rolling me down a long back tunnel.
Jumbled voices.
People crying.
The smell of sterile things, like scalpels and rubbing alcohol.
I feel the grinding vibration of wheels just under my body.
I decide it’s a comfort.
Even though I’m 100 percent screwed.
• • •
The next few moments may happen over a few hours, a few days, a few weeks, a few years. It’s a mosaic scattered in front of me. Shattered bits of images, people. No memories. No emotions. No Toni. Just the here and now, whatever it is, wherever it is. The beeping of a life-support monitor. The clinking of metal instruments. The cursing of professionals. The scent of blood, crawling up my nose like salt water dripping from a rusty razor. Something I never got used to.
Things that are inevitable.
• • •
Back.
For keeps now.
I peel my eyes open and there’s another white room all around me. I know this can’t be heaven, because I’m pretty sure that heaven doesn’t exist. I know this isn’t the bridal suite of the Driskill Hotel, because that all happened a million years ago. My arms move on their own, and I feel my face, making sure I’m still all there. I feel no pain, but I see tubes and wires attached to me. An IV feeding my bloodstream saline and a drug pump doing something sleepy to my mind. There’s a blue-and-white smock covering my chest, a sheet and a thin blanket over me. I’m in a bed with steel rails along either side. My wrists aren’t handcuffed to anything. I decide I’m not dreaming.
My legs.
I can’t feel my legs.
An old nurse sits near me in a chair, next to the life-support devices. She looks up from her newspaper, her expression neutral.
“Hello there,” she says to me.
I’m surprised to find that making my own voice happen is easy, though it sounds like a gravel road. “Where am I?”
“Ben Taub Trauma Center. You’re okay. You had to have emergency surgery.”
Ben Taub. This place is notorious. A charity drop. A drug lord sent his posse to shoot the place up a few years back. Said it was revenge for something bad.
“I can’t remember . . . how I got here.”
“You’ve been here three days.” That’s all she says. She gets up and folds her paper under her arm. Turns sharply and leaves me in the room. Thanks a lot, lady.
I sit and I try to organize my thoughts.
Three days.
Does Jenison know I’m here?
Does anyone know I’m here?
They have me on a morphine drip, or maybe something stronger. I can tell that because my thoughts are damn hard to organize. The room is small, private. The door is wide open and the hall outside is dark. They have the lights on in here to wake me up. I wonder if they figured on me ever waking up at all.
My legs.
I can’t feel them, not at all down there.
I look to see if they’re still attached, and they are.
But I can’t feel them.
I can’t move them.
Ben Taub is part of the Hermann Healthcare Center, near the Fourth Ward barrio just past the Montrose area, just a few miles from where the bad business went down. I can hardly remember getting here.
I just remember being in the bridal suite again.
I remember Toni’s face now.
Clear in my head, like the smell of roses on our wedding day.
Like the scents she mixed herself—the scents that fooled me later.
And, yeah, I see that other version of her, too . . . still vaguely assigned to my memories. That girl who tried to be Toni. She remains in my head as a sort of reminder. She snipes at me and laughs that I was ever such an idiot.
The two Tonis are a lot alike, actually.
They both have long black hair.
They both smell like roses.
They are both strong, powerful.
But the real Toni is taller, blacker. Like a sleek bird traced in neon, her face angled upward, elegantly like an empress or a rock star, her skin so white you can see through the empty space and into your own soul. Her body is slim and corded, wide shoulders cascading into a creamy canyon, flowing into her hips and legs like a liquid metal goddess in perpetual motion, a statue carved in flowing milk and muscle, like rivers leading downward and downward, the sleek curves of her waist and the soft innocence of her naval so white and so washed in sin and wisdom . . .
Before I can think about it anymore, I hear the sharp clock of expensive shoes in the hallway outside, and they enter the room, attached to a guy in a black suit and a thin white coat. I always wonder why they make doctors wear those. I think it’s to sell the lie that they know what the hell they’re doing half the time.
“Hi guy,” he says, a little too cheerfully. He’s not an old man, but not quite young anymore. He could be anybody.
Have to play this careful.
“Hello,” I say to him, sounding as confused as I can. It isn’t hard.
“How are we feeling?”
Terrible. I have no idea how you’re feeling.
I don’t say that out loud. Instead, I open my mouth and words come out that sound like this:
“Where am I?”
“Hermann Hospital. You had emergency surgery two days ago.” Then he gives me the edge I need: “Do you remember anything? Can you tell me your name?”
“I . . . don’t know. You have my ID, don’t you?”
“There was nothing in your pockets. You were admitted as a John Doe. We found the cell phone you called the ambulance with. You
were still holding it when the EMS techs got to you.”
“Ambulance?”
“You had a close call, guy. They had to zap you on the way here.”
“What happened to me?”
“Looks like you were mugged. Beaten and shot. My guess is that they left you for dead.”
“I can’t remember anything.”
“Can you remember your name?”
“No.”
I let the lie drift across in a pathetic croak. Looks like he buys it. I can tell from the dull snort and shake of his head. Like this happens all the time.
“Doesn’t surprise me,” he says. “You were in a coma for several hours before you stabilized. Had a pretty severe head concussion. Someone hit you real hard, maybe with a pipe. You have a small plate in your head, also. Looks like it could be the result of a gunshot wound. Do you remember how you got that?”
“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.
• • •
“The 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.
• • •
Finally . . . 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.
• • •
It takes a few minutes to calm myself again.
Must not let this break me.
The mind is the most powerful weapon.
Focus.
• • •
What 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.
• • •
The 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.
• • •
In 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 wir
e 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.
• • •
They 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.
Resurrection Express Page 30
