Sophie disappeared from the room, leaving her mothers staring at each other. Val couldn’t remember getting orders from Sophie before. It reminded her of the Sophie she’d seen at the FreerMind meetings: confident, in control, correct in her assessment of the situation. She’d realized something midsentence, but whatever it was, she wasn’t hiding it, just acting on it. Val and Julie wordlessly stood to get dressed and do exactly as their daughter said.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
DAVID
The nurse who changed his dressings told David there were people downstairs waiting to talk with him. Did he want visitors?
“You mean my family?”
“No. That’s why I’m asking.”
“My friend Milo?” Milo hadn’t visited yet, but he’d called. David assumed it’d be a while before he came; he was solid in emergencies, but squeamish in other medical situations.
“No. Sorry—I think they’re all reporters.”
The nurse reached the bottom layers of bandage and David started counting dots on the ceiling tiles. He had never been squeamish himself, had watched his sister’s procedures with avid interest, but he wasn’t ready to look yet. “All?”
“There are a bunch of them. I didn’t see how many.”
“Why?”
“Maybe because Man Versus Train is an exciting story? I don’t know. It’s been a busy shift. I haven’t actually talked to them.”
“Ah. Um, I don’t think I want to talk to them, either.”
“Cool. I’ll let the desk know. This wound is looking good, by the way.”
“Thank you. Wait, ‘thank you’ is a weird thing to say. I’m glad it looks good?”
“I took ‘thank you’ to mean ‘thank you for doing such a nice job keeping infection out.’”
“That, too.” David laughed. Whatever painkiller they had him on made him giddier than Quiet. It did the same job, so he wasn’t complaining. Without either, this place would drive him out of his mind: the machines monitoring him, each with its own cadence; someone else’s machines, on the other side of the wall; a smell he couldn’t identify, and another smell; the television; the ticking clock behind the television; the nurses’ station outside his door, with its laughter and alarms and telephone; the forced air through the vent; the running toilet.
As it was, he catalogued each of those things separately, with great focus, to avoid paying attention to whatever the nurse was doing at the foot of the bed, where he would not look, even if it looked good and uninfected, which he would not think about, even if it would matter soon, because right now it hurt only very far away. It might be smart to ask what they had him on, to take a more active role in his care, to pay attention; he’d do that sometime soon, maybe.
The nurse left, and he watched television for a while, some combination home improvement and paranormal show, where people renovated purportedly haunted mansions during the day and slept in them at night. Everyone on the show had a Pilot, the better to keep an eye out for ghosts while stripping linoleum and exposing the hardwood underneath. The house had good bones, the host said without a trace of irony, or maybe it was irony and David was standing outside of irony right now, unable to recognize it.
He had never cared for television. He’d watched when they had family movie night, but otherwise he preferred games. Games let him be part of the plot, but also occupied more parts of his brain than TV. TV was usually background as far as he was concerned, one of too many inputs. Except this show was funny, whether or not it was meant to be, and without noise he found himself able to enjoy it in a way he hadn’t for years.
The renovators found actual bones in the wall, and the show upped the drama factor by ten. Could this be the earthly remains of the ghost that had kept them from their sleep? Find out after the break. David was pretty sure the bones belonged to a dead squirrel, not a person. The thought of a TV production plagued by a ghost squirrel had him gasping with laughter.
A phone beside the bed rang, surprising him. He hadn’t noticed the room had a phone. Who would know where to call him, and why hadn’t they called his cell phone, and where was his cell phone? He tried to remember where he’d seen it last. He remembered a flash in the dark, grainy footage, something else, but maybe that was just the television show, and wow they were keeping him really high.
The phone rang again and he answered it. “BNL, this is David Geller-Bradley,” he said, though that wasn’t quite right.
“Um.” He’d confused the voice on the other end. “This is the visitor desk downstairs. Your nurse said not to let in any reporters, but I have someone here who says she works with your sister?”
He looked at the clock. Seven minutes left in Haunted House Hunters. “Send her up in eight minutes.”
“Fucking celebrities,” the voice muttered as he hung up.
David turned his attention back to the television. They were replaying the moments leading to the discovery of the bones.
“Knock knock?” a voice called from the hall.
He turned, annoyed.
“Can I come in? The receptionist said it was okay.”
It had been a while since he’d had any use for his Pilot, but David wished he had enough brain to finish his show and talk to whoever was standing in the doorway.
He sighed. “Come in.”
The woman who entered wore a navy business suit and a pale blue silk blouse. Her makeup was porcelain-doll pale except for blue lipstick, an intimidating look. He checked for her Pilot automatically, but didn’t see it. Oh. His sister’s coworker. She looked more put-together than he’d pictured for an activist; maybe he was being narrow in his stereotype.
“My name is Lana Robinson. Has Sophie mentioned me before?”
David tried to look through her head to the television. “No.”
“I work for the FreerMind
