Chapter 76
THIS PATIENT IS IN TROUBLE. She could die… Everybody knows she's a saint.
I spent the next three hours in the waiting room, alone and without any further word about Kayla. My head was filled with disturbing ironies: Two of my kids had been born at St. Anthony's. Maria had been pronounced dead here. And now Kayla.
Then Annie Falk was with me again, down on one knee, speaking in a quiet, respectful voice that scared me like nothing else could right then.
'Come with me, Alex. Come, please. Hurry. I'll take you to her. She's out of the OR.'
At first, I thought Kayla was still asleep in the recovery room, but she stirred when I came near. Her eyes opened, and she saw me – recognized me an instant later.
'Alex?' she whispered.
'Hey there, you,' I whispered back, and gently took her hand in both of mine.
She looked very confused and lost for a moment; then she squeezed her eyes shut. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and I almost started up myself, but I thought if Kayla saw me that way it might scare her.
'It's okay,' I said. 'It's over now. You're in recovery.'
'I was… so scared,' she said, sounding like a young girl, an endearing part of Kayla I had never seen before.
'I'll bet you were,' I said, and I pulled over a chair without letting go of her hand. 'Did you really drive yourself here?'
She actually smiled, though her eyes stayed slightly unfocused. 'I know how long it can take to get an ambulance in this neighborhood.'
'Who did this to you?' I asked then. 'Do you know who it was, Kayla?'
In response to the question, she shut her eyes again. My free hand tightened into a fist. Did she know who attacked her, and was she afraid to say? Had Kayla been warned not to talk?
We sat quietly for a moment – until she felt ready to say more. I wouldn't push her on this, the way I had pushed poor Mena Sunderland.
'I was on a house call,' she finally said, eyes still closed. 'This guy's sister called. He's a junkie. He was trying to detox at home. When I got there, he was just about out of his mind. I don't know who he thought I was. He stabbed me…'
Her voice trailed off. I smoothed her hair and put the back of my hand against her cheek. I've seen how fragile life can be, but it's not something you ever get used to, and it's different when it's somebody you care for, when it sticks this close to home.
'Will you stay with me, Alex? Until I fall asleep? Don't go.'
It was her young girl's voice again. Kayla had never seemed as vulnerable to me as she did right then, in that fleeting moment in the recovery room. My heart broke for her and what had happened when she was trying to do some good out there.
'Of course,' I said. 'I'll be right here. I'm not going anywhere.'
Chapter 77
'I'VE BEEN DEPRESSED for a while, as you know. You of all people know this.'
'More than ten years. That's a while, I guess, Alex.'
I sat across from my favorite doctor, my personal shrink, Adele Finaly. Adele is also my mentor from time to time. She's the one who encouraged me to start up my practice again, and she even got me a couple of patients. 'Guinea pigs,' she likes to call them.
'I need to tell you a few things that are bothering me a lot, Adele. This may require several hours.'
'No problem.' She shrugged. Adele has light-brown hair and is in her early forties, but she doesn't seem to have aged since we met. She isn't married right now, and every so often I think about the two of us together, but then I push it out of my mind. Way too dumb, too crazy.
'As long as you can fit several hours of your bullshit into fifty minutes,' she continued, ever the wise girl, which is exactly the right tone to take with me.
'I can do that.'
She nodded. 'Better get going, then. I have the clock on you. It's ticking.'
I started by telling her what had happened to Kayla and how I felt about it, including the fact that she had gone to her parents' home in North Carolina to recuperate. 'I don't think it's my fault. So I'm not feeling guilty about the attack on Kayla… not directly anyway.'
Adele couldn't help it, good as she is – her eyebrows rose and betrayed her inner thoughts. 'And indirectly?'
My head moved up and down. 'I do feel this generalized guilt – like I could have done something to stop the attack from happening.'
'For instance?'
I smiled. Then so did Adele.
'Just to use one example, eliminating all of the crime in the DC area,' I said.
'You're hiding behind your sense of humor again.'
'Sure I am, and here's the really bad part. Rational as I make myself out to be, I am feeling some guilt over the fact that I could have protected Kayla somehow. And yes, I know how ridiculous that is, Adele. To think. And to say it out loud. But there it is anyway.'
'Tell me more about this 'protection' you could have afforded to Kayla Coles somehow. I need to hear this, Alex.'
'Don't rub it in. And I don't think I used the word protection.'
'Actually, you did. Anyway, talk it out for me, please. You said you wanted to tell me everything. This is probably more important than you think.'
'I couldn't have done a damn thing to help Kayla. Happy now?'
'I'm getting there,' Adele said – then she waited for more from me.
'It all goes back to that night with Maria, of course. I was there. I watched her die in my arms. I couldn't do anything to save the woman I loved. I didn't do anything. I never even caught the son of a bitch who killed her.'
Adele still said nothing.
'You know the worst thing? I'll always wonder if that bullet was meant for me. Maria turned into my arms… then she was hit.'
We sat in silence for a long time then, even for us, and we're pretty good at enduring silences. I had never admitted that last part to Adele until now, never said it out loud to anybody.
'Adele, I'm going to change my life somehow.'
She didn't say anything to that, either. Smart and tough, the way I like my shrinks, and what I aspire to be myself someday, when I grow the hell up.
'Don't you believe me?' I asked.
She finally spoke. 'I want to believe you, Alex. Of course I do.' Then she added, 'Do you believe yourself? Do you think any of us can really change? Can you?'
'Yes,' I told Adele. 'I do believe I can change. But I get fooled a lot.'
She laughed. We both did.
'I can't believe I pay for this shit,' I finally said.
'Me either,' said Adele. 'But your time is up.'
