“State your name and the words I understand and agree.”
I did not understand, nor did I agree. “What if I refuse?”
“Then our interview changes its nature.”
Her fingers hovered over her tablet. I had no doubt she could summon reinforcements with a single tap. Reinforcements who would transport me to a different kind of hospital, with more guards and fewer windows.
“Fine,” I rasped. “I understand and I agree.”
Davidsson smiled. “Thank you. Let us proceed.”
She told me that it was understood I had not fully recovered, so our interview would take place over several days. She began with an overview of my activities starting on August 20. The reason for my appointment at VA headquarters, more specifically why I came to DC and not one of the regional branches. She did not question me about my decision to remain in DC, but she did inquire about every mundane detail associated with that decision. The name and address of the hostel. The number of jobs I applied for. The various shops I frequented during that interval, from the hole-in-the-wall deli to the used-book store. I was reminded of Sara’s comment about sending out a hundred bots to confuse our watchers about her true intent.
“What about Alton?” I said at last. “Don’t you want to know those details?”
Davidsson shrugged. “That is not the purpose of this interview.”
“It should be. All this . . .” I attempted to wave my arm. “This is all about Alton and Jonesboro and all the rest.”
My mention of Jonesboro provoked the barest flicker of those eyebrows. “We are not ignorant of our own affairs,” she said. “But those questions are for later.”
Right. I shut down after that. Let them lock me away in one of those invisible prisons. I no longer cared. When Davidsson tried to insist, I slammed my head against my pillow. Slammed it again and again until my vital signs jumped and RN Kirby burst into the room. Kirby grabbed hold of my head with both hands. I tried to fight her, but then what little strength I had vanished. I collapsed against my pillow, weeping.
* * *
Davidsson had vanished, but I knew she would return. Meanwhile, the nurses kept me sedated, and an anonymous doctor made hourly visits to adjust my pain medication. I overheard enough to catch another handful of clues. The bullet had penetrated my left lumbar region. The ache I felt was the result of a rib deliberately broken to help them operate. The bullet had not shattered, but there was damage to the kidney.
“Why am I alive?” I asked the nurse on night shift. rn cho, said her name tag.
“That sounds like a philosophical question,” she said.
“That sounds like an evasion,” I replied.
She laughed but did not answer my question. Just as well. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the real answer.
* * *
Agent Davidsson returned the following afternoon.
“Tell me about your encounter with Agent Holmes.”
“Tell me about Jonesboro,” I said. I was still fuzzy from the sedatives and my words came out slurred.
Davidsson made a pointed gesture toward her tablet.
I sighed. Such an eloquent threat. But effective. “Fine. I met her August thirtieth, in the National Gallery of Art. Dalí’s Last Supper, if that makes a difference. She wanted a partner to share the rent. I wanted out of that damned hostel. My friend Jacob Bell—”
I stopped. Wished I could snatch Jacob’s name back. But of course they already knew about Jacob from our military records and my journal.
“He introduced us,” I said.
“A fortunate coincidence.”
“I’m not so sure.” I made an abortive gesture to take in the hospital room and the IVs still plugged into my body. Davidsson’s mouth tilted into the barest of smiles, which vanished almost immediately.
“Tell me more about that introduction,” she said. “How soon did that take place after your first encounter with Bell?”
We continued with more questions about that day, that week. Davidsson was especially interested in Sara’s recommendation that I take the job at the VA Medical Center, and our arrangements for rent at 2809 Q Street. I wondered if Davidsson had read my journal, then realized of course she had. She knew about those eight days when I nearly succumbed to drugs and despair. She had read my rants about the VA Medical Center, my rage and grief about my lost arm that evening when I vowed to take back my life.
I am naked, undone. My heart lies open like a bloody jewel.
Fragments of a poem Angela had loved to recite. I remembered how I told her the poet needed a good dose of reality, or they wouldn’t write such nonsense. Angela had shrugged and said occasional extravagance was good for the soul. I wondered what she would say about Sara, who was nothing but extravagant—the way she spoke, her sprawling script across the page, the glittering lace gloves she wore.
Davidsson had asked me another question, which I had missed. I shook my head. “Where is Sara? Is she safe?”
No answer.
“What about Jacob? What about Calloway?”
Still no answer.
“It is about Jonesboro. And Alton. Calloway told us that much. You know it.”
“We are not here to dissect what I know. Now, I would like to hear more about your financial arrangements with Sara Holmes.”
“Fuck those arrangements. Let me tell you about Belinda Díaz, about Geller, Molina, and Walker. Let me tell you about Saúl Martínez.”
On and on I rambled, telling her everything I knew or suspected. Davidsson simply listened without any trace of compassion or concern. Eventually I ran out of words and strength and sank back into my pillow, eyes shut and my heart fluttering strangely in my chest.
* * *
Four more sessions, each much shorter and less dramatic. Davidsson never declared our interview finished, but after two days passed and she did not make an appearance, I gathered she had either collected enough evidence or she was tired of my rants.
Truth be told, I was tired of my rants.
“How am I doing?” I asked Kirby the next morning.
“Better than you ought to.” She had brought me a breakfast tray with oatmeal and stewed fruit that looked as though someone has resurrected the products from the late 1950s. My first solid meal since I could remember. “No peritonitis. No bullet fragments wandering around ready to make trouble. We’re keeping an eye on your kidney function, of course.”
“Of course.”
There were other nurses on the day shift, but Kirby was my favorite. Ever since she realized I would not argue about medical treatment, she’d answered all my questions. So, when she insisted I eat this miserable gray goop that passed for nutrients, I didn’t resist. Much.
“All done?” she said at last.
“Done enough, sunshine.”
Kirby laughed. “They told me you were a right tartar.”
“Who are ‘they’? And do you even know what that word means?”
She laughed again and exited with the tray. I cursed softly and steadily. It wasn’t as though I could do more. Simply eating had drained me. The surgeon part of me calculated how much longer I needed to recover. At least three, four more weeks, until they discharged me, based on what Kirby told me. Several more weeks until I could call myself whole.
And meanwhile?
But meanwhile was too vague a term.
I was dozing when the door clicked open an hour or two later. I started, then saw one of the regular janitors. He gave me a perfunctory smile as he emptied out the trash can into one bin, the medical waste into another. He replaced the plastic liners, made a note on his log. Then with a few swift steps, he stood next to my bed. “They said you might like these,” he said softly as he deposited a sheaf of paper, clipped together and folded in half lengthwise, underneath my right hand.
I waited through a count of ten after he left before I dared to examine this gift.
The paper was thick and rough, with a faint gray cast, like the stuff used by cheap
newsfeed printers. The outer sheet was blank, but the rest were covered with dense lines of print, the ink faintly smeared, as though these pages had been plucked only a few moments ago from the machine. I took a moment to bring my pulse and breathing under control before I unfolded the printout.
Washington Post. Morning Edition, November 5.
The headlines were almost enough to send my vitals into overdrive. Donnovan the next president. Stock exchange ricocheting from bull to bear. A positive response from Europe, a more ambiguous one from Africa, South America, and Asia. Yeah, well, I could understand that with Donnovan’s record.
A part of me, the illogical angry part, wished Donnovan had lost. Not to Jeb Foley, that miserable toad, but to someone worthy of the title. Sanches had done her best, given the legacy of Bush and Trump, and those who followed that same creed. Her best was damned good. And yet, here we were, with yet another white man to rule over us.
The headlines talked about the continuing difficulties for the professional sports industry, the wrangling between Congress and the president over military funding. The pages were creased and rumpled, as if handled by several careless people, and I nearly missed the first clue.
November 4. Lieutenant Colonel Regina Wells Vandermay has received a Meritorious Service Medal for her tireless service in Afghanistan, Syria, and the Crimea, and most recently in the Fourth Combat Brigade of the First Infantry Division, including several key actions in Jonesboro and Little Rock. She received the medal from Major General Patricia Bennett in a ceremony at Fort Campbell in Tennessee. Vandermay will retire from active service in December this same year, but will continue to serve her country in an advisory position.
I wanted to punch my bed. Damn that Vandermay. She was as guilty as Nadine Adler. She had agreed to experiment on her own soldiers—not once, but half a dozen times. She had taken credit for their impossible victories. She had covered up the aftermath. The government might not see things my way, however. Vandermay’s crimes had led directly to those victories in Jonesboro and Little Rock. Perhaps they’d had nothing to do with those crimes, but they sure liked to take credit for what went right. Perhaps they considered her early retirement punishment enough.
Or a bribe for her to keep silent.
Oh, Sara. Is that what you wanted? Justice served as long as it was convenient?
Sara Holmes was not here. But I suspected she was the agent behind this mysterious gift. Were there any more clues? I scanned through several articles about returning veterans, funding difficulties with the VA, a pious speech from Jeb Foley about the ravages of an unnecessary war . . .
And there I found my second clue. Underneath Foley’s useless blathering, the paper was double-creased, making the shape of an arrow, for anyone of a suspicious mind. I followed that arrow and turned the page . . .
Adler Industries in Turmoil, read the headline.
The paragraphs that followed were hardly less sensational. Nadine Adler, former CEO of Adler Industries, had vanished from the country twelve days ago, only hours after a warrant was issued for her arrest. The details of that warrant remained obscure, but various news squirts listed rumors about misuse of corporate funds and possible corruption charges concerning various government contracts. Rose Adler, older sister to Nadine Adler and a board member of Adler Industries, had come out of her self-imposed retirement to assume the CEO position until the board of directors could vote on a replacement. Even then, the company faced a series of crippling fines and the loss of their military contracts.
Nothing about FBI involvement, however.
Nothing about Agent Sara Holmes.
I lay back against my pillow and stared at the ceiling above. The stark white paint. The loops of cables and tubes off to one side that snaked down to connections along the floor, ready for any doctor or nurse to save my life, barring cases of national security.
So. My enemy had a face at last. Several. Nadine Adler, who had used her research companies to construct the drugs that drove soldiers onward past reason, and later killed them. Lieutenant Colonel Vandermay, who used those drugs to further her own career. Maybe Sanches and Donnovan weren’t explicitly involved, but neither had questioned these impossible victories. Neither had investigated what lay behind Alton, Illinois.
Neither had cared about Private Belinda Díaz and her comrades.
Only Sara had cared, in her own strange way.
And she isn’t here.
I remembered back when Alida Sanches had won her first election. We had us some dark days back in 2017, my mother had said. All those mainstream newspapers talking about white people this, and white people that, and woe, their lives were so hard. As if only white people needed jobs, as if only white people could be Americans. But we got past those dark days. The sun did rise again. Maybe it wasn’t as bright as we liked, but there it was.
So maybe the sun wasn’t as bright as I liked, but at least we had a sun. And maybe, someday soon, if we didn’t give up, we’d get us a bright bold sun shining down on every citizen of the country.
There was a pattern of dots imprinted on each page. I pressed my thumb on the topmost one. Once the paper had shivered to miniature black flakes, I pressed the next and the next, until they all turned into dust.
Interstitial
November 11.
I have my journal. My real journal. And my favorite pen. Only one bottle of ink, though. I shall have to ration my words, unless the single bottle is a signal that my stay won’t last much longer. Or my mysterious benefactor chooses to gift me with another.
Mysterious, yes. Because the journal and pen materialized overnight, wrapped in crumbling newspapers dated 2013 and tied with a silk cord. Kirby claimed the package was in my room when she arrived on shift. Cho, the senior night nurse, said she didn’t know anything about any packages. I bet they were both telling the truth. I bet I know who retrieved my pens and journal from the apartment and infiltrated the hospital as easily as she once infiltrated my trust.
If I write her name three times, will she magically appear?
19
December 1. RN Frances Cho brought me the news during the eleven p.m. rounds that I would get my walking papers today. She made a show of checking my blood pressure and oxygen levels—a totally unnecessary chore, and I told her as much—while the trainee she had in tow turned off lights and lowered the volume of the TV. They tried to take away my pen and journal. I told them to stuff it. Frances smiled and said she would miss me. Dammit, I’ll miss her, too.
Frances was right. By eight a.m., the nurses had restored my long-absent device. At nine a.m., the patient services administrator appeared with a binder of paperwork and an electronic slate. His badge read m. k. whittaker. He looked seventeen, or perhaps that was me feeling aged beyond my ordinary years.
“You’ve been cleared for discharge,” he told me.
Whittaker led me through all the signatures and the releases. There were fewer than I expected, and more than I thought necessary. The binder was mine to keep, he told me, and contained photocopies of everything.
My next visitor was RN Kirby, who checked over the electronic clipboard at the foot of my bed before she set a familiar duffel bag on the chair. She had a new tattoo over one wrist and her hair was edged in purple. Just barely within regulation. I was going to miss her, too.
Kirby smiled at me. “A friend left you a change of clothes. Just press the button there when you’re ready.”
Before she had shut the door, I had the bag unzipped and its contents poured onto my hospital bed.
It was a mass of dark gray wool, shot through with gold and crimson thread. Like the skies at sunrise. I separated one item from its fellows—a jacket cut long and loose, with sleeves that belled out. The second item was matching trousers. I sorted through the rest and found a black silk tunic and everything else I would need, from skin outward. There was even a small jar of oil for my hair.
One last gift, I thought. She’s saying good-bye.
Und
erneath everything I found a wine-colored down coat with a hood. And yes, there were black wool gloves in the pockets. It was the same coat she had lent to me on our mission from Florida to Michigan.
This was most certainly a good-bye.
I had the sudden urge to stuff this gift into the trash bin. I had a second, equally strong urge to bury my face in the cloth. Both of them inappropriate and sure to bring Kirby running. Instead, I breathed slowly and carefully until my pulse no longer thundered in my skull. Then, with great care, I dressed in that exquisite suit, which of course fit me as though Sara had measured my body herself. I rubbed the oil into my scalp and hair, working any tangles free. Then I packed my journal into the duffel bag and rang the bell.
It was at the exit where I had my next surprise.
Jacob Bell waited for me outside. He was dressed in a military surplus jacket, patched with mismatched fabric, and a black knit cap pulled low over his forehead. His arms were crossed tightly, and he was scowling.
“You don’t want to be here,” I said.
“No, I don’t.”
The next moment we were hugging each other fiercely.
“God, I missed you,” I said. “Jacob—”
“Shut up. I know, Captain. I . . . Never mind what I know.”
I started to laugh, couldn’t stop. Jacob held me tighter. He was weeping, too, but deep inside where no one could see it. Oh, Jacob, we hurt you, Sara and I. We had no choice, but that doesn’t make it better. It doesn’t make it okay.
“I’m going away,” he said. “I have a cousin up in Maine. He runs a news squirt, or maybe it’s as respectable as a feed these days, with local news, politics, and such. He says he’s getting enough contributions to hire some staff, and he wants me to write about the war. It won’t pay much, but I still have my pension.”
A Study in Honor Page 25
