Phantoms

“In another year, if Timmy's still in a coma, Bryce might change his mind again. But for the moment, he seems grateful just to be able to sit down there for a while each day, holding his little boy's warm hand.” She looked Tal over and demanded: “What's with the street clothes?”

“I'm being discharged.”

“Fantastic!” Lisa said.

Timmy's roommate these days was an eighty-two-year-old inn who was hooked up to an IV, a beeping cardiac monitor, and a wheezing respirator.

Although Timmy was attached only to an IV, he was in the embrace of an oblivion as complete as the octogenarian's coma.

Once or twice an hour, never more often, never for longer than a minute at a tim, the boy's eyelids fluttered or his lips twitched or a muscle ticked in his cheek. That was all.

Bryce sat beside the bed, his hand through the railing, gently gripping his son's hand. Since Snowfield, just this meager contact was enough to satisfy him. Each day he left the room feeling better.

There wasn't much fight now that evening had come. On the wall at the head of the bed, there was a dim lamp that cast a soft glow only as far as Timmy's shoulders, leaving his sheet-covered body in shadow. In that wan illumination, Bryce could see how his boy had withered, losing weight in spite of the IV solution. The cheekbones were too prominent. There were dark circles around his eyes. His chin and jawline looked pathetically fragile. His son had always been small for his age. But now the hand Bryce held seemed to belong to a much younger child than Timmy; it seemed like the hand of an infant.

But it was warm. It was warm.

After a while, Bryce reluctantly let go. He smoothed the boy's hair, straightened the sheet, fluffed the pillow.

It was time to leave, but he couldn't go; not yet. He was crying. He didn't want to step into the hall with tears on his face.

He pulled a few Kleenex from the box on the nightstand, got up, went to the window, and looked out at Santa Mira.

Although he wept every day when he came here, these were different tears from those he had cried before. These scalded, washed away the misery, and healed. Bit by bit, slowly, they healed him.

“Discharged?” Jenny said, scowling, “Says who?”

Tal grinned. “Says me.”

“Since when have you become your own doctor?”

“I just thought a second opinion seemed called for, so I asked myself in for consultation, and I recommended to me that I go home.”

“Tal—”

“Really, Doc, I feel great. The swelling's gone. Haven't run a temperature in two days. I'm a prime candidate for release. If you try to make me stay here any longer, my death will be on your hands.”

“Death?”

“The hospital food is sure to kill me.”

“He looks ready to go dancing,” Lisa said.

“And when'd you get your medical degree?” Jenny asked. To Tal she said, “Well… let me have a look. Take off your shirt.”

He slipped out of it quickly and easily, not nearly as stiff as he'd been yesterday. Jenny carefully untaped the bandages and found that he was right: no swelling, no breaks in the scabs.

“We've beaten it,” he assured her.

“Usually, we don't discharge a patient in the evening. Orders are written in the morning; release comes between ten o'clock and noon.”

“Rules are made to be broken.”

“What an awful thing for a policeman to say,” she teased. “Look, Tal. I'd prefer you stayed here one more night, just in case. —”

“And I'd prefer I didn't, just in case I go stir crazy.”

“You're really determined?”

“He's really determined,” Lisa said.

Tal said, “Doc, they had my gun in a safe, along with their drug supply. I had to wheedle, beg, plead, and tease a sweet nurse named Paula, so she'd get it for me this afternoon. I told her you'd let me out tonight for sure. Now, see, Paula's a soul sister, a very attractive lady, single, eligible, delicious—”

“Don't get too steamy,” Lisa said, “There's a minor present.”

“I'd like to have a date with Paula,” Tal said, “I'd like to spend eternity with Paula. But now, Doc, if you say I can't go home, then I'll have to put my revolver back in the safe, and maybe Paula's supervisor'll find out she let me have it before my discharge was final, and then Paula might lose her job, and if she loses it because of me, I'll never get a date with her. If I don't get a date with her, I'm not going to be able to marry her, and if I don't marry her, there won't be any little Tal Whitmans running around, not ever, because I'll go away to a monastery and become celibate, seeing as how I've made up my mind that Paula's the only woman for me. So if you won't discharge me, then you'll not only be ruining my life but depriving the world of a little black Einstein or maybe a little black Beethoven.”

Jenny laughed and shook her head. “Okay, okay. I'll write a discharge order, and you can leave tonight.”

He hugged her and quickly began putting on his shirt.

“Paula better watch out,” Lisa said, “You're too smooth to be left loose among women without a bell around your neck.”

“Me? Smooth?” He buckled his holster around his waist. “I'm just good old Tal Whitman, sort of bashful. Been shy all my life.”

“Oh, sure,” Lisa said.

Jenny said, “If you—”

And suddenly Tal went berserk. He shoved Jenny aside, knocked her down. She struck the footboard of the bed with her shoulder and hit the floor hard. She heard gunfire and saw Lisa falling and didn't know if the girl had been hit or was just diving for cover; and for an instant she thought Tal was shooting at them. Then she saw he was still pulling his revolver out of his holster.

Even as the sound of the shot slammed through the room, glass shattered. It was the window behind Tal.

“Drop it!” Tal shouted.

Jenny turned her head, saw Gene Teer standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the brighter light in the hospital corridor behind him.

Standing in the deep shadows by the window, Bryce finished drying his tears and wadded up the damp Kleenex. He heard a soft noise in the room behind him, thought it was a nurse, turned — and saw Fletcher Kale. For a moment Bryce was frozen by disbelief.

Kale was standing at the foot of Timmy's bed, barely identifiable in the weak light. He hadn't seen Bryce. He was watching the boy — and grinning. Madness knotted his face. He was holding a gun.

Bryce stepped away from the window, reaching for his own revolver. Too late, he realized he wasn't in uniform, wasn't wearing a sidearm. He had an off-duty snubnose.38 in an ankle holster; he stooped to get it.

But Kale had seen him. The gun in Kale's hand snapped up, barked once, twice, three times in rapid succession.

Bryce felt a sledgehammer hit him high and on the left side, and pain flashed across his entire chest. As he crumpled to the floor, he heard the killer's gun roar three more times.

“Drop it!” Tal shouted, and Jenny saw Jeeter, and another shot ricocheted off the bed rail and must have gone through the ceiling because a couple of squares of acoustic tile fell down.

Crouching, Tal fired two rounds. The first shot took Jeeter in the left thigh. The second struck him in the gut, lifted him, and threw him backwards, into the corner, where he landed in a spray of blood. He didn't move.

Tal said, “What the hell?”