There were nineteen J. Smiths at Walter Reed, but only one with traumatic brain injury similar to Evan's. The nice nurse/receptionist at Neurological Surgery checked her monitor at the desk and told Nolan that his friend was listed as being in Ward 58, the post-op Neuroscience Unit, but that if he was still under observation there-it was only one step removed from the ICU-she didn't think he would be allowed to see visitors.
"That can't be right," Nolan said. "I know his mom and dad have already been in to see him." He gave her a warm smile. "Why do I sense computer issues again?"
"I'm sorry," she said. "I told you it might take a little patience."
He kept smiling, relaxed. "Patience is my middle name. Is there someplace they send brain injury patients when they're starting to get a little better, after this Ward Fifty-eight?"
She screwed her lips in frustration. "I don't really know. But wait." Picking up the telephone, she leaned down to read something from the computer monitor, then punched in some numbers. "Hi. This is Iris Simms at Neurosurgery reception. I've got a guest here to visit one of your patients, Jarrod Smith, and the computer's still got him in your unit, and the guest doesn't think he could still be there. In which case, where would he be?"
She covered the phone and conveyed the message to Nolan. "There's a lot of overflow, but they're saying maybe you could check the upper floors of the Pediatric ICU building, but wait…"
She raised a finger, went back to listening. "He is? Oh, I see. But I understand his parents were able to see him." She waited for the reply. "Okay, thank you. I'll let him know."
Hanging up, shaking her head in continued frustration, she came back to Nolan. "I'm afraid Jarrod is still in Ward Fifty-eight, but they say he's still pretty incoherent. And they don't allow nonfamily guests in that unit. I'm sorry."
"Nothing to be sorry about," Nolan said. "You gave it a good try. I'll call first before I come next time. Thanks for all your help."
"No problem," she said, "anytime."
Evan might be recovering faster than most, but to him it was still agonizingly slow going. This morning, he'd tried to get once through all of his flash cards-he had six hundred of them now in a shoe box next to his bed-but by about number two hundred his head felt as though it was going to explode, so he'd closed his eyes just for a minute.
And opened them more than two hours later. All of his three roommates were gone, out with their rehab or other therapies. Outside, the snow was falling in heavy clumps, which he found depressing-so depressing, in fact, along with his failure to succeed earlier with his flash cards, that for a moment he succumbed to the blind hopelessness of his situation here. He was never going to recover, in spite of what they said. He'd never really be normal again. People would notice the dent in his head, even after they put his skull back together. He'd never again talk like a regular person. He'd never have another relationship like the one he had had with Tara. He wished the shrapnel had just cut a little deeper and had killed him, the way it had his troops.
So many of them gone now. So many gone. Regular guys. And he'd been leading them. To their deaths.
Sitting up in his bed, he closed his eyes against the unexpected sting of unwelcome tears. Bringing both hands to his face, he pressed hard against his eyelids, willing himself to stop. In an instant, before he was even aware of it, the self-flagellation and depression had turned, as it often did, to fury. He was goddamned if he was going to cry. But why had this happened to him? Why wouldn't they let him out of here? Why were we having this fucking stupid war anyway? Who cared if he ever learned his fucking flash cards? He turned his head, ready to slap the damn box of the things to the ground, when his eyes grazed the wall again, stopped for a second at the new decorations. Santa and…
Reindeer!
Those flying animals pulling the sled were reindeer. That was the word.
He started to laugh. At first it was just a small chuckle emanating from his throat, but it soon swelled to something completely out of his control, paroxysms that violently shook him until he could no longer catch his breath. His shoulders heaved and heaved some more as he tried to grab air into his lungs and now suddenly he was crying again, crying for real. Exhausted, his body shaking with the release of so much that he'd kept pent up, he collapsed back into his pillows, tears flowing unabated in a steady stream down his face.
Stephan was wiping his face with a warm towel. "What happened here?"
"Nothing. What do you mean?"
"I mean, your face is wet. Are you all right?"
"I got frustrated. Then the reindeer."
"Right." Stephan, perhaps more attuned to absurdist dialogue than most people, nodded as if he understood the meaning of what Evan had just said. "But you're all right now?"
"Fine."
"You're sure?"
"Sure."
"Because I've got a staff meeting in ten minutes, but I'll bail on it if you need me here. Even just to talk."
"No. I'm good. Really, Stephan. Everything's okay."
Nolan was thinking that this was why you didn't waste too much thought on what could go wrong. You just kept moving forward, you kept your goal in your sights, you pushed the niggling doubts out of your mind.
Walter Reed wasn't wallowing in chaos by any means, but clearly it was an understaffed and overburdened institution. In theory, maybe somebody was supposed to inquire whom he had come to visit, somebody should have checked his ID-he had almost hoped for that, since he had a Canadian passport in his pocket that identified him as Trevor Lennon-but no one had. Beyond those oversights, the crowding had become so serious that in many areas, and specifically on the upper floors of the Pediatric ICU building that had been pressed into service for recovering brain trauma patients, there was no video surveillance.
He was invisible.
There was no need to be impatient. The building had six stories and he'd covered floors two and three already, walking the hallways with a purposeful stride, as though he knew exactly where he was going. He stepped into each room on both floors, checking for Evan. As he walked the halls between rooms, he nodded to patients lying on their gurneys, or shuffling with their walkers; gave a brisk hello to anyone who looked like a doctor or nurse or staffer. He even had a name, Jarrod Smith, if anyone asked him who he was coming to visit, but he didn't think that was going to prove necessary.
Turning into the third door down on the fourth floor, he saw Evan in the bed across the room, over by the window. The three other beds in the room were all unoccupied. He walked into the room and closed the door behind him, checking the terrain, thinking on his feet that the best way to do it would be out the window.
Depressed brain-injured guy, left alone by a high window. An obvious suicide.
"Dude."
For some reason, Evan found himself tempted to laugh. Inappropriate laughter, Stephan called it, a normal symptom of his kind of brain injury-this time he was able to resist the impulse. "I know you," he said after a moment.
"Of course you know me. I'm Ron Nolan."
Evan nodded. "That's it. Ron. How you doin', Ron?"
"I'm good. The question is, how are you doing?"
"They tell me I'm a miracle in progress, but I don't much feel like it. What are you doing here?"
"I was in town and found out you were too. I thought I'd come by and say hi."
"What town?" Evan asked.
" Washington, D.C., or close enough. They don't tell you where you are?"