Those were the last things I thought before the drugs pushed me down into a heavy, dream-haunted sleep. And they were the first things I thought when I woke up again at three o’clock, dehydrated, with hunger pangs and the pain pulsing away in my shoulder.
Angry, damn it. Angry.
Three
They let Kerry visit me at five o’clock. Bella fed me soup and Jell-o first and then changed the dressing on my shoulder. I saw the wound; it was ugly and bluish, and they had painted it with some sort of dark red antiseptic, and the stitches stood out stark and white. Red, white, and blue. Looking at it made me even more angry. So did the nurse’s grave pronouncement that there had been no change in Eberhardt’s condition. I was seething inside, but keeping myself tightly wrapped, when Kerry walked into the room.
She came in smiling, but the smile had been pasted on for my benefit; her eyes were solemn and worried, and her face was pale in the auburn frame of her hair. She was wearing an emerald-green dress and a matching coat, as if she had decided bright colors would be more appropriate than mourning gray or black. In one hand she carried a paper sack: present for the patient, a little gesture of her affection for the poor bastard confined to a hospital bed.
The smile faded when she came close enough to take a good look at me. “Hi,” she said. “How do you feel?”
“I’m all right.”
“Do you... does it hurt much? Your shoulder?”
“No.”
She stood there looking at me. She had chameleon eyes, the kind that change color with strong rushes of emotion; they were very dark now, an almost black-green.
“God,” she said, “I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything. There’s nothing to say.”
“I was sick when I heard about it. I came right here to the hospital, but they wouldn’t let me see you.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m glad you came.”
She sat down in one of the metal chairs. “I went by your flat this morning,” she said. “I still have the key you gave me and I thought you might want a few things. You don’t mind, do you?”
“No. What did you bring?”
By way of answering, she opened up the paper sack and let me see what it contained. Some toilet articles and half a dozen pulp magazines. She put it all on the nightstand, folded the sack, and tucked it away in her purse. Then she reached out and touched my right hand, let her fingers rest on it. They were cold and slightly damp, her fingers. I did not move my hand under them.
“I feel terrible about Eberhardt,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“He’s going to die, isn’t he.”
I gave her a sharp look. “What makes you say that?”
“I heard two of the nurses talking. They said his chances of regaining consciousness were slim.”
“He’s not going to die.”
“Well... I hope you’re right.”
“He’s not going to die,” I said again.
She was silent for a time. I kept my eyes away from her face because I did not want her to see the anger in them. But she was a perceptive woman; I could feel her watching me.
“You’re different,” she said after a while.
“My best friend got shot and he’s in a coma. I got shot. Yeah, I’m different.”
“That’s not what I mean. I look at you and I’m not sure I know you anymore. You look the same, but I don’t think you are.”
“Maybe not,” I said.
“Seeing you this way... it scares me.”
“Why should it scare you?”
“I don’t know. But it does.”
“Forget it. It’s nothing for you to worry about.”
“Yes, it is. I care for you, you know that.”
“Sure.”
“Don’t you believe me?”
“I believe you.”
She took her hand away from mine, brushed the back of it across my cheek. When I looked at her I saw that there were tears in her eyes.
“It’s so damned unfair,” she said. “What’s happened these past few weeks, what people have done to you. What I’ve done to you.”
Same words I had said to Eberhardt on Sunday. But they did not seem to mean much anymore; they were just words. I stared up at the flourescent ceiling lights, not saying anything.
“I’m sorry,” Kerry said. “I really am.”
“All right.”
“I’ll make it up to you. Will you let me do that?”
“How?”
“By being with you. By not running away from you anymore.”
“I don’t want your pity,” I said.
“I don’t pity you. That’s not it.”
“You don’t love me either. Do you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I can.”
“And maybe you can’t.”
“Don’t you want me to try?”
“I’m not sure what I want right now. Except to see the bastard who shot Eb and me behind bars.”
“There’s nothing you can do about that.”
“No,” I said, “I guess there isn’t.”
More silence. She got a handkerchief out of her purse and wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Then she said, “Do you want me to go?”
“No.”
“But you don’t seem to want to talk...”
“Not right now. Just sit here with me for a while.”
“Yes. All right.”
So she sat there and we looked at each other from time to time and the silence grew heavy, a little awkward. I tried to dredge up some of the old feelings for her — the tenderness, the warmth, the love. They were still there but they would not come to the surface; anger and bitterness sealed them off like an iron door. I needed her, I wanted to believe what she’d said to me, and yet the needing was not central. Too many things had happened. Too many things.
At least ten minutes passed without either of us saying a word. Finally she got up and leaned over and kissed me gently on the mouth; her lips, like her fingers, were damp and cold. “I think I’d better leave now,” she said.
“Will you come back tomorrow?”
“If you want me to.”
“Yes,” I said, “I want you to.”
“Can I bring you anything else?”
“There’s nothing else I need.”
She tried the smile again; it was a little wobbly but it stayed in place. “It’ll be all right,” she said. “You’ll see.”
“What will?”
“Everything. You, me — Eberhardt.”
“Sure.”
She seemed to want to kiss me again, but she didn’t do it. She said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” and gathered up her purse and went to the door. I got one more look from there, the poignant kind. Then she was gone.
I spent some more time staring up at the ceiling, not thinking about much. But my mind wasn’t blank; I kept getting little blips of memory, scenes from Eberhardt’s living room yesterday. Eb lying bloody and twisted on the floor. The Chinese gunman backlit by the sun. The glistening red smears on my hand when I swiped it across my chest. The way the shadows came into the room and swallowed the sunlight. I felt a sudden pain in my right palm, and when I turned the hand over and looked at it I saw little gouged half-moons where I had dug my nails into the skin.