the white coat he wore a white shirt with wide blue vertical stripes, and a blue tie with small white polka dots. He had a wedding ring on his left hand. His hands were tanned. His nails were square and neat as if they'd been manicured.
'My name is Phil Marinaro,' he said. 'How do you feel?'
'Like I got shot and fell in the river,' I said.
'Makes sense,' he said. 'You feel like talking?'
'I feel more like listening,' I said.
'Okay,' Marinaro said. 'If the man who shot you had used bigger bullets, you'd be dead.'
'Twenty-two longs,' Quirk said. 'Same as Miller.'
'And you were lucky. The cold water probably slowed down the bleeding a little, and some of the internal swelling. The kids who found you probably saved you from dying of exposure. They covered you with their ski parkas, and one of them, in fact, pressed herself against you until the ambulance came.'
'Who can blame her,' I said.
'By the time the EMTs got there, you didn't have a pulse,' Marinaro said. 'They got you started on the way to the hospital. With all of that, the small caliber gun, the cold water, the resourceful Harvard kids, the professional EMTs, with all of that, if you weren't as big and strong as you are, you'd be dead.'
'Right now I feel about as strong as a chicken,' I said.
'Right now you are about as strong as a chicken,' Marinaro said. 'You are going to need a lot of rehab. Can you move your right arm?'
I couldn't.
'Left leg?'
No.
'How technical do you want this,' Marinaro said.
'Eventually I want it all,' I said. 'But right now all I want is a prognosis.'
'I don't really know,' Marinaro said. 'I'm a good surgeon. The repair job is first-rate. But you were damned near shot to pieces and almost drowned. A bullet fractionally missed your spine. I can make some informed guesses, which is mostly what prognosis is anyway. I think if you are willing to work hard enough you can come back from this. I don't know how far. It is probably a matter of how hard you work.'
'I can work pretty hard,' I said.
'That's what they tell me. Once you're able to get up, we'll start you on some simple exercises with a trainer. It will be a long, slow process.'
'How soon,' I said.
'Don't know. We'll watch you. We'll get you started as early as possible.'
'Not a big rush,' I said.
'No, you're pretty battered, and the amount of anesthesia you've had is debilitating. Captain, do you wish to say anything?'
'Yeah,' Quirk said.
He stood and stepped to my bedside and looked down at me.
'You know who shot you?'
'Gray Man,' I said.
'We figured. Hawk brought me up to date on that.'
'I saw him,' I said.
'Dr. Marinaro knows who you are and why you're here. Everybody else thinks your name is Hickock and you are the victim of a jealous husband. We've told the papers that your lifeless body was recovered from the Charles River. Both papers ran an obit on you. You'll probably enjoy them.'
'Call in some favors, did we?'
'Several,' Quirk said.
'Aren't you a little out of line?' I said.
'Yeah.'
'When you assigned Belson and Farrell to Susan, I said you weren't really in a position to do that, and Hawk said that was true, but you didn't give a shit.'
Quirk shrugged.
'Why you think it took me so long to make captain?' he said.
'I always wondered.'
Quirk grinned.
'Besides, from Hawk that's a compliment.'
'True.'
