The Terravicious family was one of those Southern Californian legends, like the Chandlers or the Hearsts. Vic's grandfather had been a successful gold prospector in the 1890s. The family mined its gold on Wall Street now. Victor had elected not to go into their huge investment banking firm, opting instead for police work. He finally pulled the pin in the late nineties due to a diseased kidney, and moved into an expensive senior citizen community in Santa Barbara. A quarter of a million got you a casita and full medical care for life. It turned out that was where I was.
Casa Dorinda, or 'The Casa' as everyone here seemed to prefer calling it, was forty Spanish-style casitas and a four-story medical center complete with ICU, operating theaters, and a physical therapy wing, all of it nestled in amongst twenty rolling acres of tennis and shuffleboard courts with a nine-hole pitch and putt golf course.
Over the next two days, Alexa and I skated cautiously across the thin ice of our faltering marriage. Even though I had done nothing with Secada that I wouldn't have been willing for her to observe, the potential had been there. The desire. I knew that in this, I had failed us.
To her credit, I could see she accepted her share of responsibility. Alexa knew her lack of physical interest in me had strained our bond. There was plenty of fault on both sides. So we sat across from each other in this sterile environment, choosing our words with extreme care.
Alexa had also arranged to have Tru Hickman moved to a more secure wing of the Corcoran prison hospital, which was a bit like saying a chicken had been moved to the secure wing of the coyote compound. But she hadn't given up on trying to get Tru transferred to USC County and several times when I woke up, she was on her cell phone trying to get the CDC to approve the move. She didn't seem to be having much luck.
There are some unwritten rules in police work. One of them is you always go to your wounded partner. When I learned that Secada was breathing on a ventilator only a few yards down the hall I knew that I had to see her.
I owed Scout the visit no matter the stress it might put on my relationship with my wife.
'I need to see Secada,' I told Alexa one morning after a particularly long and weighty silence. 'I want to go now.'
'Okay,' she said abruptly, and without comment walked out of the hospital room to arrange it.
Secada's parents were expected shortly. It had taken time to reach them because they'd gone to Midland, Texas, to visit relatives.
Alexa told me all this as she helped me into a wheelchair. Then she watched from the door of my room as a nurse pushed me down the hall. I was told I could not enter the critical care ward, but was parked where I could look through the glass into Secada's room. Scout's once beautiful body was now pillaged by drains and tubes. Her eyes were open and she looked across the room through the observation window at me. I saw bravery and resolve. She smiled and waved one hand feebly. We looked at each other through that glass until the nurse said I had to return to my room.
Later that afternoon, while Chooch, Alexa, and Delfina waited outside, I endured a scrupulous physical exam by one of the Casa's chief physicians whose nametag identified him as Thomas Briggs, M. D. After it was completed, Chooch and Alexa hovered at my bedside as the doctor gave me the results of the exam.
'You're a lucky man,' he started out by saying. 'The gunshot wounds didn't hit anything vital, so barring infection, those will heal up nicely. You were underwater for quite a while. Your brain was deprived of oxygen. The mild heart attack and mini-stroke came as a delayed result of that.'
'When can I get out of here?' I asked.
'When there is heart muscle damage during a coronary attack, a specific protein is released into the blood,' Briggs continued. 'If we see that protein, we know a serious event has occurred, one that will require extensive rehabilitation. If we don't see it, and in your case, we didn't, then a full and quick recovery is usually expected.' I liked the sound of that. 'From the neurological tests I've done, we can tell the feeling is already coming back to your left side. If that tingling keeps up it means the nerves are reviving. You should be ready to leave here in a week. I'm going to have our physical therapist get started with you immediately.'
After the doctor left, Alexa, Chooch, and Delfina pushed my wheelchair outside and parked me on the patio. Several other infirm, elderly people were parked out here as well. Most of them had paper-thin, blue-white skin and wispy tufts of spun silver hair. We all sat blinking and squinting like zombies caught in sunlight.
'This is too much for me,' Chooch finally blurted. 'First Mom, now you.' He stood between us. 'Why do you two have to be cops? Can't you do something less scary?'
'It's what we do, honey,' Alexa said simply.
'It's too dangerous,' Chooch persisted.
'So is football,' Delfina said, her voice gentle but firm. 'Everyone has to do what's right for them, querido.' Chooch didn't react, but Alexa and I both nodded.
Later, we had dinner in my room. McDonald's catered the event. When visiting hours ended at ten, Chooch and Delfina said goodbye before driving back to USC. He had football, Del had summer school.
'You sure you're okay, Dad? I won't go if you need me.' He held my hand.
'Yeff,' I told him.
'Yeff? What kind of answer is yeff?' He was grinning.
'Yes,' I said carefully, and smiled for him.
After they left, Alexa and I again sat in silence.
The silence was becoming painful. It was more painful than the gunshot wounds, more annoying than my tingling left side.
'Do you love her?' she finally asked, interrupting this thought.
'Huh?'
'When you were unconscious you kept saying Secada's name.'
Chapter 35
'I was never unfaithful,' I dodged.
'That wasn't my question.'
'I needed something. Somebody.'
She sat in silence, looking at me pensively.
'I was always right here,' she finally said.
'I know.'
'But I've changed. I'm not me anymore. That's your point, isn't it?'
'I don't know.' I looked over at her and tried to find the right way to say all this. I was working with a brain full of mashed potatoes and was afraid I was going to screw this up, but the time to discuss it was now. We'd been putting it off for almost a year.
'Go on. Whatever the truth is, you can say it,' she prompted.
Speaking slowly, I began. 'Before you came into my life I had nothing. I was barely functioning. On the street I was turning into a thug. Then you and Chooch changed everything. The problem is, I can't go back and live my life the way it was before. These last months, I've been trying to understand what's been happening with us, trying to be supportive of you. But slowly all the darkness has been leaking back-all the angry thoughts that made me so negative to begin with. I can't return to that place. But I also can't leave you behind. I'm stuck somewhere in between.'
'Do you love her?' Alexa pressed. 'It's okay to be honest, Shane. If we're ever going to fix this, I need to find out.'
'I love you, Alexa. Do you still love me?' I asked her. 'Do you still want and need me? If the answer is yes, then you have nothing to worry about with Secada.'
She got up and came across the room, knelt down beside the chair I was in, and put her arms around me.
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'This is my fault.'
'How can it be anybody's fault? It's just something that happened.'
'We'll find our way back to that other place,' she said softly.
