by R. J. Blain
“Janette?”
“Are you really sure I’m not going to lose my foot? It got shot.”
My doctor laughed. “I’m sure. I can’t promise you’ll walk without some form of limp, but one day, you will not even need a medical boot. Hell, at the rate you’re beating the odds, you might even become a sprinter if you want. It depends on a lot of factors. But by the time you’re discharged, you’ll be back in a medical boot, and you’ll find your discomfort levels will be substantially decreased.”
“Well, painkillers do tend to help with that.”
“Without needing painkillers at all,” my doctor clarified.
“Didn’t your parents teach you lying was bad?” I complained. “There is no way this stupid foot will ever be in a pain-free state. We agreed on that years ago.”
“In this case, I’m all right with admitting I’m wrong. I’m fairly confident I can get you to a pain-free state after the latest operation. It’ll take time, but it’s a strong possibility.”
“Are you really sure you’re not telling me that to lull me into a sense of security before informing me you’re actually going to cut it off?”
“Why are you convinced I’m going to cut your foot off?” Dr. Mansfield asked, her tone exasperated.
“I don’t actually know,” I confessed.
“I knew there had to be something wrong with the damned medication,” she muttered. “I think I preferred the anxiety and panic.”
“Thank you for not cutting my foot off yet.”
“You’re welcome. Would you like visitors in the morning?”
“Are the visitors bringing me some books and my cat?”
“Unfortunately, your cat is not allowed to visit you, but there are some books here for you to read.” Dr. Mansfield went to the foot of my bed, stooped down, and lifted up my purse, which she brought to me. “It was cleaned, and your fiancé checked the interior. Nothing inside broke, and he took home the more fragile pieces and exchanged them for a few books and some other things for you. He was concerned you might turn the hospital upside down if you become bored.”
“I don’t know why he thinks that.” Careful to keep the damned catheter from pricking my arm again, I reached for my purse, set it on my lap, and dug through it. The velvet-wrapped box with the rosary was inside along with my bookmarks and five new novels in addition to the books I’d brought with me. The shine of plastic at the bottom drew my attention, and I dug for it, revealing a new e-reader in its original packaging with a gift card for the bookstore taped to it. “Please tell me cell phones aren’t barred in this section of the hospital.”
“Cell phones aren’t barred in this section of the hospital, and you don’t have any sensitive equipment in here with you. Do you need anything plugged in?”
I tore into the e-reader’s package, retrieved its charge cable, and handed it to her while I examined my new toy. To my endless amusement, the hospital bed had a USB port, and after digging through my purse, I found the charger for my phone, which I handed over as well. Once both devices were plugged in, I resumed exploring.
Hidden beneath everything else, I discovered a chocolate bar, and I snatched my prize. “I have found the holiest of grails in the abyss of my purse.”
“I see your fiancé has slipped an illicit substance into the hospital for you. I’ll ignore it due to your good behavior.”
I hugged the chocolate bar. “I’ve never had a chocolate bar while in a hospital before. I bet hospital stays would be so much more enjoyable if we were bribed with chocolate bars. Does that mean I should keep him? He smuggled chocolate into the hospital for me.”
“That is usually a good sign, that he took the care to send something nice for you to enjoy while he’s unable to visit.”
“Why isn’t he able to visit, anyway?”
“He was giving himself anxiety attacks every time the machine beeped.”
I eyed the machine in question, which had a beep to go along with the beating of my heart. “So, you’re saying he had a continuous anxiety attack?”
“Precisely.”
“Tell him he can’t visit unless he behaves. Once he’s ready to behave, he can bring me some orange chicken and more chocolate. I could really use some orange chicken right now, and I bet it’s healthier than hospital food.”
“I’ll make sure the nurses know I approve of your various indulgences in exchange for your good behavior.”
“I’ve never gotten to negotiate anything with a doctor before. I could almost like this, except the catheter keeps pricking, I hate it, and wish you would remove it.”
“Unfortunately, it needs to stay. You’re on intravenous antibiotics until your next operation.”
“Operations suck.”
“I could cut your foot off instead.”
“Operations still suck, but I will accept them if they do not involve the amputation of my foot.”
“Excellent. Now that you’re awake, I’ll leave you in the care of the other staff here and go home. I’ll be back tomorrow unless there are any complications with your recovery so I can monitor how your foot is healing. With a little luck, you’ll be headed home in the next three or four days.”
I could work with three or four days—maybe. Being bedridden sucked, I hated everything about being stuck in a hospital bed and at the mercy of those around me, and I’d start going mad by the end of the day, but I would tolerate the situation the best I could.
Three or four days wasn’t that long. I’d survive.
“I’ll behave,” I promised.
“Good. Before I leave, I’ll notify your family that visitation is opened, but if any of them bother you, tell one of the nurses, and they’ll take care of it.”
“Okay. Thank you, Dr. Mansfield.”
“You’re welcome. Try your best to rest, but if you can’t, relax as much as you can. You’ll be out of here before you know it.”
The police had a field day questioning me. They took my statement, listened to my accounting of the incident, during which I confessed I wasn’t really sure who had gotten shot first, although I thought she’d been shot first, as I didn’t comprehend any pain until after she’d fallen. The session took less than an hour, with local police and the FBI taking turns grilling me over what I remembered.
I thought they’d confiscate everything I’d purchased, but they lost interest in me after confirming what I’d told them five times over.
All in all, I found the whole thing to be a puzzling affair.
Thirty minutes after my favorite Chinese restaurant opened, Bradley, his parents, and my parents invaded my room. I locked onto the takeout bag, held out my hands, and waggled my fingers. “They fed me the scariest pancakes I’ve ever seen in my life this morning. In good news for them, I had the presence of mind to get sick in the trash can rather than on one of them. If I’m going to get sick again, I will do so because I ate something I like. I had three whole bites before I expelled that horror show. It tasted beyond rancid. I may refuse to eat hospital food altogether if it tries to rise up and kill me again.”
With a soft chuckle, Bradley set the bag down, picked one of the containers and set it on the hospital tray within my reach. “Mother made me put somewhat healthy things into the container rather than just meat. I’m sorry. I did try, but I was overridden.”
“Well, that wasn’t very nice,” I complained, peeking inside the container to discover some token vegetables and rice occupied a corner. I admired the restaurant’s dedication to my happiness; they’d slapped the extras on top of my orange chicken to appease Mrs. Hampton without sacrificing any of my treasured food. “I will even eat a few bites of the crappy vegetable stuff so my doctor isn’t offended, as she’d probably side with your mother.”
Bradley offered me a pair of chopsticks, and I attacked my food without a single care if it rose up and tried to kill me later. Unlike the vicious pancakes, the orange chicken stayed where it belonged. While I tamed my unhappy stomach, my parents dragged in pla
stic chairs from the hallway and sat by the door, safely out of my reach.
Right. I bit when I got excessively hungry—or I had as a child. “I probably won’t nip. I’ve been offered food.”
“One can never be too careful,” my father replied with a smile. “How are you feeling?”
“I was cruelly betrayed by really awful pancakes this morning. Otherwise, I’m horribly bored, although I do like this e-reader I found in the depths of my purse. Thank you to whomever brought me books and chocolate. That chocolate likely saved me from starvation following the pancake assault.”
Bradley’s mother raised her hand. “I’m responsible for the chocolate.”
“Thank you for the chocolate, and thank you for doing the lawyering so I wasn’t charged with mutilation of a corpse or whatever they’d charge me for taking a corpse’s blood and making better use of it. I’m on drugs right now, so please do not hold anything I say against me later,” I added, as one of the morning nurses had taken the time to explain my current combination of medications might result in my mouth going on an adventure without the input of my brain.
At least the hospital staff seemed prepared to handle me at my worst and didn’t seem to mind the possibility I might be a menace for a few days.
“You’re welcome. It was very simple. I simply asked if they really wanted to shame Senator Maybelle’s final moments by pressing charges against someone who saved at least one life following the shooting. I may have promised I would make certain Senator Maybelle’s legacy was her greed in death.”
“That is startlingly ruthless,” I muttered.
“I have my moments, and I was a little annoyed they’d barred visitation. Then to find out her family was going to push the issue? They saw things my way, especially when I explained how Senator Maybelle’s reputation would be irrevocably damaged.”
Wonderful. I’d be sleeping with one eye open for a while, at least until the family of the deceased senator either forgot I existed or accepted her blood did her no good after death. I pointed at Bradley. “If the beeps didn’t make him panic, visitation wouldn’t have been barred.”
Bradley sighed. “I’ve been informed I require therapy to address my issues with monitoring equipment when the equipment happens to be attached to you.”
“I need therapy to address my panic regarding the damned beeps associated with equipment attached to me, too. Maybe we could go together. That’d make it a little less awful. I’m not sure how they’ll give me therapy, though. I only panic while I’m semi-conscious. I’m okay once I figure out what I’m hearing. I don’t know what your problem is. If the beeping stops, that’s when you should worry. Or the beeping gets particularly shrill, or you hear that flat-line beep. That beep is not a good beep.”
“Can we not discuss the beeps?” he asked in a strained voice.
I pointed at my foot. “I’ve been told it’s not going to be amputated yet.”
Everyone in the room sighed.
“What?” I demanded. “It’s important. I’ve kept it around this long, and I’ll be pretty miffed if I lose it because of a damned bullet. Of all the places to hit, why the hell did it have to hit my poor foot? Hasn’t it been through enough?”
My mother scowled and stared at the floor, my father heaved a sigh, and the Hampton family exchanged glances.
“That reaction is not filling me with confidence,” I mumbled.
“Your foot is perfectly safe,” Bradley’s father said, gesturing to my cast. “We’re just at a loss about the shooter. There’s no one theory we can all agree on, although we’re mostly in agreement they have zero skill with a firearm.”
I could think of a few reasons the shooter might want to inflict collateral damage, but after I considered what had happened, I wondered. “It could have been a botch. They used the usual method.”
“You remember what happened?” Bradley asked.
“I remember. The mender closed the entry hole in the head shot but left the heart shot open. The illusionist botched it, too. It’s like the shooter pulled the trigger a little too early, the illusionist wasn’t ready and scrambled to do the job as a result. I think there is an exsanguinator working with the outfit, too, and he’s not all that skilled. He couldn’t clean everything up, especially when the shooter hit others and he had to contend with multiple blood sources.”
“That matched the recordings we’ve seen,” Bradley’s mother said. “We were worried about how much you remembered. You were really close when the shooting happened.”
“Front-row seat close, yeah. It wasn’t a good moment. But the lady with the torn aorta got lucky Senator Maybelle was her blood type, otherwise, she would have died. I wasn’t her blood type, and I can’t make someone’s body accept an incompatible blood type in that sort of situation. There are limits to what I can do. If they hadn’t matched, she would have died, too. Is she recovering all right?”
“She’s doing great. They’ll be releasing her soon, as the menders couldn’t afford to leave that to heal naturally, so they did a lot of restorative work. She’s going to recover first, although she’ll have to do some physical therapy to rebuild her strength. They don’t want her to be very active for a few weeks just in case. You’ll recover last, as you can’t seem to keep from injuring your foot.”
I wrinkled my nose and stared at the offensive cast, which would keep me contained until Dr. Mansfield cut it open again and had her way with my foot again. “How is Mickey doing? If you have videos, you have videos containing a great deal of blood.”
Bradley snickered before clearing his throat. “Sorry. Better than expected, really. It turns out if you fascinate him enough with magic, the presence of blood can become a more academic presence. The last I checked, Beatrice had to tear him away from the recordings because he absolutely cannot figure out how you managed to treat three people at the same time. Four if you count yourself. He wasn’t sure if you did anything to yourself from the video.”
“I paid my foot token attention before getting to the serious work, because bleeding to death means I can’t stop others from bleeding to death. Were you able to learn anything important?”
Bradley shook his head. “Not anything substantial. The government is all over this because it’s the first time there were other injuries, so they’re viewing it as a terrorist attack rather than solely an assassination. There are some benefits to this situation, however.”
“There are? What benefits?”
“Mickey has been cleared because he can’t be at two places at the same time. When the shooting occurred, he was at a police station answering questions. The ability to use him as a scapegoat has been closed in other ways, too, as he has verifiable alibis for most of the other killings. The recordings make it pretty clear you were stunned when the shooting happened, and most experts have agreed you wouldn’t have been capable of working your magic until after the other exsanguinator finished their work. You’re also far more skilled with exsanguination, and just about everyone agreed it’s almost impossible for someone to go from utterly sloppy to as refined as you are with your magic. Now, there has been a lot of scrutiny over your methods, but that’s of the academic sort, especially from members of the medical field.” According to Bradley’s tone, the attention focused on me annoyed him. “I was on the other side of the park when the shooting happened. The gunfire made most people panic. I was one of the few who was trying to go towards the sound rather than away from it, so it took me a while to get to you. Then the police wouldn’t let me get close, not until I called Mom for the paperwork and pulled some strings with some cop friends.”
“You’ve been busy.”
“The doctor kicked me out of the hospital because of the damned beeps,” he complained.
“You have issues,” I informed him. “What’s next?”
“You get discharged from the hospital, we review the tapes as a group, and figure out what’s next. Frankly, we’re stuck. Why kill her then, before her speech? Why not shoot after
everyone could witness it?”
“We have no idea,” Bradley’s father replied. “That’s part of the problem. We just have no idea why. For now, the only thing you need to worry about is getting better. It’s not like we can do anything anyway. The investigators have the site locked down tighter than Fort Knox, and the last thing we need is to draw additional attention to ourselves. We have no choice but to wait.”
“I’ll wait, but you better be coming by with breakfast, lunch, or dinner, else the hospital food might kill me. I learned my lesson this morning. Bring me orange chicken.”
“You can’t eat just orange chicken,” Bradley’s mother scolded.
“Why not?”
“It’s not healthy.”
“There are vegetables and rice in the container. It’s healthy.”
“You can have orange chicken no more than once per day,” she replied.
“Mom, tell her she’s being mean.”
My mother rolled her eyes. “She may be being mean, but she’s right. You don’t need orange chicken daily.”
“That’s not fair.”
“If you keep complaining, you’re not getting it again until you’re out of the hospital,” my mother warned.
Bradley laughed. “I should withhold orange chicken so you’re motivated to get out of the hospital faster.”
“Don’t you dare. If I have to eat hospital food, I might be stuck here for longer.”
“You’ll be fine,” he promised.
Twenty-Three
I see your sarcasm is in good form.
As promised, Dr. Mansfield exchanged my cast for a boot, and to make my life a lot nicer, she confiscated my wheelchair and ordered me to learn how to walk without limping. A mild case of pancake-induced food poisoning delayed my operation by a day, but I emerged on the other side with an intact foot.
Despite my foot not hurting, I found I did have a tendency to avoid putting weight on it, a force of habit I wondered if I would ever break. “This sucks less than being in a wheelchair. It doesn’t hurt, but I’m still limping.”
