"Vision blurred?"
Archie shook his head very slightly, the turban resisting the pillowcase.
"Color?"
Archie nodded.
"How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Two," he said. It seemed like such a long word, stretching on for miles, like a beach.
"You can obviously hear me. How's your head feel?"
Archie nodded again. He watched the doctor's eyes move to the monitor, then back to him.
"Look at the ceiling, please. I'm going to touch you with a pen. When I do, just raise a finger for me. Okay?
"The nodding was wearing him out. He looked up. He felt something touch his toe. Ankle. Kneecap. Fingertip. Stomach. Thigh. Hip. Chest. Upper arm. Palm.
"Move your right foot. Good. Left. Good. Raise your right kneethat's enough. Now the left. Fine. Raise your right hand. From the shoulder now-excellent. Can you smile?"
Archie tried to smile but his lips were tight and his teeth felt huge and dry.
"Fine," he said. "Welcome back."
Archie just stared at him: a pale blue man with peaceful eyes and a tight mouth.
"How much Decadron is he taking?"
A nurse said something and Stebbins nodded. "And how much Tegretol?"
Archie heard her answer but couldn't calculate what it meant.
"Seizures?"
"A sharp decline, Doctor. None for four hours."
Dr. Stebbins turned to one of the nurses and ordered a spiral CT scan immediately, tell Bixton it was priority and call me as soon as they're ready.
They parted and the doctor left in a comet of trailing red. All four stared at him like he was the most interesting thing they'd ever seen. A fifth person craned her neck from the doorway.
"Soup," said Archie.
He drank three cups of broth and fell deeply asleep. Then they were trying to wake him and he was able to come up through the clear warm water and join them.
One nurse wheeled his bed from the room and the other pushed the drip trolley.
"You be very famous when you get out," said the nurse, the one who had called him her miracle. "Reporter all want talk to you."
Her face was enameled yellow. Orange hair, an indigo uniform that he knew was either white or blue. He saw these colors clearly even though he knew they were wrong.
"Did they bury her?" he heard himself ask.
"I don't know. You think of life, Mr. Wyocraff. You don't think of death."
But that was almost all Archie thought about while they ran the CT on him. Death and Gwen. Gwen and death, now together. He tried pull them apart but they wouldn't come. And he still couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her face. He knew he loved her. He knew she was gone forever. He knew that she was the largest thing in his heart, his life, his history. Why couldn't he see her?
Would she talk to him again?
The scan was painless. The doctors hovered a few yards away a talked about things inside his brain that he couldn't see. He wondered if they could see what he was thinking. Then the one called Stebbi told him all sorts of information about what might be happening to his brain, about fragmentation and edema and infection and amnesia a pain, about the thalamus and the amygdala and the pyramidal tract, and colors and confusion and the emotional components of memory.
Back in his room in the ICU he closed his eyes hard and tried burst out of his nightmare. He used to do this when he was a boy a having a bad dream-just scrunch his eyelids down hard and blast out of it and into the comfort of his bed. It was like space travel. But didn't work because this was not a dream.
So he tried to transport himself back to that night. To get himself onto the walkway under the Chinese flame trees just one second before the bright light hit his eyes. To change what happened.
God, what I could have done, he thought.
But Archie couldn't take himself back. And he wondered what good it would do if he could. He knew he'd come up that walkway again, be caught in the light again, take a bullet in his head again.
And what had happened to Gwen would happen to Gwen again
He'd have no power to stop it, really. Because he didn't know why. He didn't know why any of this had happened. Until you understood why, what was the point of going back?
Archie twisted quickly to the side and vomited the meager content of his stomach. Tears burned from his eyes and the catheter pulled a green arrow of pain through him. He smelled the foul aroma of his body. He heard a buzzer go off, and another.
Then the crimson rush of motion again, and hands upon him, voices bubbling forth. More of this horseshit about being someone's miracle. He lay back and shut his eyes tight and tried to go under to the warm deep water where he was safe and invisible. But he couldn't get there. Just couldn't slip beneath himself.
Then her voice again, ordering him not to descend, not to go down.
Up, Archie… that's where I'll be. Free and open in the sky.
So Archie lay on the bed while they handled him and imagined himself in a beautiful blue sky. So hard to go there, though, with the noise and activity all around him. And he realized this was his world now. It was the only place that would have him. Loud and painful and shot with colors that made no sense. Gwenless and loveless and stripped of everything that was valuable. Indifferent, needle-happy and catheter-mad. Urgent but pointless. This is the world he was part of now.
There was nothing he could do about that. It was like being born again.
Then, in his nauseous despair, Archie heard Gwen's voice again.
I love you, Arch. I'm still your girl.
I want to be with you, he thought to her. I want to be with you so badly.
Be with me. I'm up here waiting.
If I can find out why, maybe I can go back and make it all come out right. If I understand it I can make it go our way.
Find out why, Arch. Make it go our way.
I will. I can.
When Archie woke up again it was early afternoon and Sergeant Rayborn was sitting next to his bed. Again-though for only a split second-he thought she was Gwen, that this whole stupid thing was only a nightmare and everything was really very okay. But it was just the sergeant. She didn't look as angry as before, but she had the kind of face that could get that way fast. Standing back near the wall was her partner, Zamorra, the Golden Gloves guy who dressed like an undertaker. More history, coming back to his mind one image, one memory at a time.
He let his eyes roam to the small framed picture on his bed traydark-haired beauty with smart eyes. That's her, he thought.
Gwen.
"How are you feeling?" the detective asked.
Archie raised his eyebrows and let them fall. "Good," he whispered. He wasn't trying to whisper, it just came out that way.
"Can we talk for a few minutes?"
Archie nodded. He saw her little notebook and her pen. He remembered wanting to be a homicide investigator someday. She had tough eyes and a pale blue face. Zamorra's was pink.
"May I have your full name?"
"Archibald Franklin Wildcraft."
"Address?"
He gave it. It was strange, bringing up this bit of information, was inside him and true but not substantial.
"What did you do in college, Archie?"
"Played baseball. All my life." This was a much heavier memory.
He looked again at the little picture on his stand.
"What's your rank, Archie?"
"Deputy Two."
"What's your assignment?"
"Patrol. Days."
"Can you tell me the name of your partner?"
"Damon Reese."
"Describe him to me, can you?"
"Six feet, one-ninety. Brown and brown, big nose."
Rayborn waited. Then nodded and wrote.
"Archie, what happened the night that Gwen was killed?"
It took him a moment to think of the words, order them, then gather his strength to form them. His memory of that night was filled with gaps. Chasms. With the same black nothingness that was now Gwen He thought he could fall right in. The older stuff, like playing baseball was clear.