Given her attitude, I did notmention anything about Nef being a witch, assuming that the meds and treatmentplan already reflected that. Instead, I played up the bit about the brave ladycop wounded in the line of duty and showed my maybe-legal badge. I went on toexplain that my broken leg came from an attack by the same rogue wizard. Thatsmoothed the waters some.
Some.
And after that, I was pretty sure that all the medical typeswould at least knock before barging through Nef’s door. Knowing that a touchywizard sat behind it, a touchy nervous hurtwizard with a gun, cranks up the politeness factor a few notches.
Nef seemed to be sleeping. I say seemed, because I remembered how she jumped my blood pressure backin the recovery room. They had her strapped down on the hospital bed, with theside guards up and her left arm locked in place to the bars with a drip stillplugged into her vein. That whole picture made me wince, until I factored Nef’spersonality into the equation.
I muttered under my breath. Most likely, she’d tried to getout of bed or unhook her hurt arm or leg from those hoists that held them aboveher body or some other damnfool Nef-move. Hence the straps making sure that shestayed put. At least she hadn’t signed herself out of the hospital. Yet.
“I’m back.” I whispered, not wanting to wake her if she was sleeping.
Her color looked better, darker, still not the Nef walnut butalmost there. And she was breathing, I could see the sheet rise and fall overher chest. She looked like a woman who might live.
The room had a recliner chair in one corner by the window. Idon’t know if all of the rooms offered such luxuries for visitors or if thestaff had moved it in because they knew someone would be staying the night withher. Anyway, I dumped bags and leaned my crutches into the corner and settledmy bulk in the chair and promptly fell asleep.
Damn poor guard.
Nurses rousted me out in the dark hours of next morning,bedpan time and a sponge bath and other medical indignities, so I hauled mybutt down to some public toilets and thence to the hospital cafeteria. Gah.That place was not going on my listof hidden culinary gems — the scrambled eggs were both rubbery and runny, adifficult combination to achieve, the sausage offered bits of bone and gristleas nutritional supplements, and the coffee had been festering in its bulk urnsince maybe the Civil War. Even the mini-package cereal tasted stale.
They all counted as calories. I ate the fodder anyway, doublehelpings, and the cashier lady at the end of the buffet line looked at my trayand at my waistline and almost started in on a nutritionist lecture until Iglared at her. A wedge of under-ripe cantaloupe is just not going to make abreakfast for me.
Back upstairs, I was still personanon grata in Nef’s room. Medical care folks don’t like an audience. Bythen, the sun was up and I had things to do. I checked out at the nurses’station, reminding them that they were supposed to move Nef when I was gone.They allowed as how they might, but that it wouldn’t happen this bleepinginstant because that would screw up the doctors’ rounds and besides they didn’thave empty hospital rooms floating around loose all day.
I grumbled. I left.
I drew a different taxi guy on the morning shift but stillfriendly and competent and helpful. I went back to my apartment, stopping at aWal-Mart along the way for several pairs of those size XL sweat pants, showeredwith a bunch of Saran Wrap around the cast to keep it dry, changed, and had theguy drive me over to police HQ.
I was treating him like my personal chauffeur, I guess, havinghim park and wait while I did things, but he didn’t complain. Maybe that wasnormal with handicap passengers. And the meter kept ticking. And maybe theprevious guy had mentioned the size of the tip I gave him. The old song saysmoney can’t buy love, but it sure can buy good service.
I picked up copies of the preliminary crime scene reports atthe cop shop. Quick chats confirmed my hunch about the sizes of the bombs.Looked like the same explosives in each case, labs would say if tags andchemical analysis pointed to the same batch. Preliminary postmortems said thewoman and kid died instantly of blast injuries, not the fires. That made them aslightly less nightmare-inducing addition to my bad memories.
Back to my apartment. I paid off and tipped the driver — I’dneed a ride again, but after the end of his shift. Upstairs, Sandy had stoppedby, saw that I’d been in, and left me a note and a fresh French-bread subsandwich in the refrigerator, whole loaf sourdough and home-baked, the kind wecalled 3-P — provolone, prosciutto and pepperoni with onions and Dijon mustardand stuff. Wiped the memory of that breakfast off my palate.
I sat and ate and studied the preliminary reports, getting afew drips of olive oil dressing on the paper. Just copies, no loss. And nothinguseful in those copies.
We’d hit noon, so I turned on the TV for the news and weather.I wanted to see if I’d become a media star, with that camera crew out back andall, but I left the audio muted. And the tube switched to a telephoto shot of abuilding wall with a smoking window, sans glass and with black scorch-marks onthe brick above, typical apartment fire footage, but the cameraman zoomed outto a wide-angle shot and panned and I recognized St. Joe’s Hospital.
Nef’s hospital. Nef’s building of the complex, Nef’s floor, as best as I could tell. And thestaff weren’t gonna rush to move her. I hit the sound.
“. . . fifth floor of the Mahaney building,damage limited to the single room, but police and hospital spokesmen are notreleasing any further details. Again,
