That meant she was in a hospital. She was breathing; she could feel the oxygen tickling her nose, the tubes irritating her. But it was reassuring. She was alive. But why shouldn’t she be alive? Why was she surprised?
Her brain felt numb and empty, and even the emptiness was hazy. Maybe she was dying and that’s why they’d left her alone. Where was Tennyson? Oh, yes, he’d gone to Chicago two days before, some sort of medical thing. She’d been glad to see him go, relieved, just plain solidly relieved that she wouldn’t have to hear his calm, soothing voice that drove her nuts.
A white-coated man with a bald head, a stethoscope around his neck, came into the room. He leaned down right into her face. “Mrs. Frasier, can you hear me?”
“Oh, yes. I can even see the hairs in your nose.”
He straightened, laughed. “Oh, that’s too close then. Now that my nose hairs aren’t in the way, how do you feel? Any pain?”
“No, I can barely feel my brain. I feel vague and stupid.”
“That’s because of the morphine. You could be shot in the belly, get enough morphine, and you wouldn’t even be pissed at your mother-in-law. I’m your surgeon, Dr. Ted Larch. Since I had to remove your spleen-and that’s major abdominal surgery-we’ll keep you on a nice, steady dose of morphine until this evening. We’ll begin to lighten up on it after that. Then we’ll get you up to see how you’re doing, get your innards working again.”
“What else is wrong with me?”
“Let me give you the short version. First, let me promise you that you’ll be all right. As for having no spleen, nothing bad should happen in the long run because of that. An adult doesn’t really need his spleen. However, you will have all the discomfort of surgery-pain for several days. You’ll have to be careful about when and what you eat, and as I said, we’ll have to get your system working again.
“You have a concussion, two bruised ribs, some cuts and abrasions, but you’ll live. Nothing that should cause any scarring. You’re doing splendidly, given what happened.”
“What did happen?”
Dr. Larch was silent for a moment, his head tilted a bit to one side. Sun was pouring in through the window and gave his bald head a bright shine. He said slowly, studying her face, “You don’t remember?”
She thought and thought until he lightly touched his fingers to her forearm. “No, don’t try to force it. You’ll just give yourself a headache. What is the last thing you do remember, Mrs. Frasier?”
Again she thought, and finally she said slowly, “I remember leaving my house in Hemlock Bay. That’s where I live, on Crocodile Bayou Avenue. I remember I was going to drive to Ferndale to deliver some medical slides to a Dr. Baker. I remember I didn’t like driving on 211 when it was nearly dark. That road is scary and those redwoods tower over you and surround you and you start feeling like you’re being buried alive.” She stopped, and he saw frustration building and interrupted her.
“No, that’s all right. An interesting metaphor with those redwoods. Now, everything will probably all come back to you in time. You were in an accident, Mrs. Frasier. Your Explorer hit a redwood dead on. Now, I’m going to call in another doctor.”
“What is his specialty?”
“He’s a psychiatrist.”
“Why do I need…” Now she frowned. “I don’t understand. A psychiatrist? Why?”
“Well, it seems that you possibly could have driven into that redwood on purpose. No, don’t panic, don’t worry about a thing. Just rest and build up your strength. I’ll see you later, Mrs. Frasier. If you begin to feel any pain in the next couple of hours, just hit your button and a nurse will pump some more morphine into your IV.”
“I thought the patient could administer the morphine when needed.”
He was stumped for a moment, she saw it clearly. He said, “I’m sorry, but we can’t give you that.”
“Why?” Her voice was very soft.
“Because there is a question of attempted suicide. We can’t take the chance that you’d pump yourself full of morphine and we couldn’t bring you back.”
She looked away from him, toward the window, where the sun was shining in so brightly.
“All I remember is last evening. What day is it? What time of day?”
“It’s late Thursday morning. You’ve been going in and out for a while now. Your accident was last evening.”
“So much missing time.”
“It will be all right, Mrs. Frasier.”
“I wonder about that,” she said, nothing more, and closed her eyes.
• Dr. Russell Rossetti stopped for a moment just inside the doorway and looked at the young woman who lay so still on the narrow hospital bed. She looked like a princess who’d kissed the wrong frog and been beaten up, major league. Her blond hair was mixed with flecks of blood and tangled around bandages. She was thin, too thin, and he wondered what she was thinking right now, right this minute.
Dr. Ted Larch, the surgeon who’d removed her spleen, had told him she didn’t remember a thing about the accident. He’d also said he didn’t think she’d tried to kill herself. She was just too “there,” he’d said. The meathead.
Ted was a romantic, something weird for a surgeon to be. Of course she’d tried to kill herself. Again. No question. It was classic.
“Mrs. Frasier.”
Lily slowly turned her head at the sound of a rather high voice she imagined could whine when he didn’t get his way, a voice that was right now trying to sound soothing, all sorts of inviting, but not succeeding.
She said nothing, just looked at the overweight man-on the tall side, very well dressed in a dark, gray suit, with lots of curly black hair, a double chin, and fat, very white fingers-who walked into the room. He came to stand too close to the bed.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Dr. Rossetti. Dr. Larch told you I would be coming to see you?”
“You’re the psychiatrist?”
“Yes.”
“He told me, but I don’t want to see you. There is no reason.”
Denial, he thought, just splendid. He was bored with the stream of depressed patients who simply started crying and became quickly incoherent and self-pitying, their hands held out for pills to numb them. Although Tennyson had told him that Lily wasn’t like that, he hadn’t been convinced.
He said, all calm and smooth, “Evidently you do need me. You drove your car into a redwood.”
Had she? No, it just didn’t seem right. She said, “The road to Ferndale is very dangerous. Have you ever driven it at dusk, when it’s nearly dark?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t find you had to be very careful?”
“Of course. However, I never wrapped my car around a redwood. The Forestry Service is looking at the tree now, to see how badly it’s hurt.”
“Well, if I’m missing some bark, I’m sure it is, too. I would like you to leave now, Dr. Rossetti.”
Instead of leaving, he pulled a chair close to the bed and sat down. He crossed his legs. He weaved his plump, white fingers together. She hated his hands, soft, puffy hands, but she couldn’t stop looking at them.
“If you’ll give me just a minute, Mrs. Frasier. Do you mind if I call you Lily?”
“Yes, I mind. I don’t know you. Go away.”
He leaned toward her and tried to take her hand, but she pulled it away and stuck it beneath her covers.
“You really should cooperate with me, Lily-”
“My name is Mrs. Frasier.”
He frowned. Usually women-any and all women-liked to be called by their first name. It made them feel that he was more of a confidant, someone they could trust. It also made them more vulnerable, more open to him.
He said, “You tried to kill yourself the first time after the death of your child seven months ago.”
“She didn’t just die. A speeding car hit her and knocked her twenty feet into a ditch. Someone murdered her.”
“And you blamed yourself.”
