“That would be easy to do if my life weren’t at stake.” To Carol I said, “Can you call Lou Kelly for me?” Lou was my right-hand man. His office was on the other end of the building.
“Why don’t you go get him in person, Carol,” Dr. Howard said. “It’s probably a good idea you leave us alone a few minutes.”
She hooked the door to the wall so it would stay open, and headed down the corridor to fetch Lou.
Dr. Howard tried to beat McCauley Culkin’s question record in the movie Uncle Buck, and I answered them the same way. Yes, I felt that, yes, I can focus; no, not dizzy, yes, I’m thirsty, yes, yes, yes.
I had to know something. “Doc, what kind of machines have you got me hooked up to? I know I came in with a chest pain, but that’s psychosomatic. You can call my shrink on that, you don’t believe me.”
“Mr. Creed,” he said. “You’re hooked up to these machines because you’ve been in a coma for the past three years.”
Chapter 40
In a coma? Three years?
I was, as the British say, gobsmacked.
Gobsmacked is much stronger than being surprised. It’s a term used to describe something that stuns you speechless and stops you dead in your tracks.
That’s what I was, gobsmacked.
I thought about eating live scorpions, or smearing cattle dung all over my body. Maybe I’ll become a Whig, I thought, or take up phrenology. Every one of those things made more sense than what he’d said to me.
“Could you repeat that?” I said.
“You’ve been lying in this bed, unresponsive, for…” he consulted a chart. “Three years, two months and five days.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“You know me better than that.”
I did. But it still didn’t make any sense.
“Why am I so lucid?” I asked.
“Psychosomatic comas are different than those caused by direct physical injury.”
“Come again?”
“You didn’t suffer any physical trauma to the brain or brain stem. Basically, your brain took a three-year vacation.”
The room seemed to swirl around me as the significance of my situation hit home. There were a million questions I probably should have asked. But the first thing that popped out of my mouth was “When can I get up?”
In the movies, when the beautiful starlet opens her eyes and comes out of her coma, she does so in full makeup, with every hair in place. By the end of the scene she’s out of bed, drinking champagne, dancing, and lives happily ever after. In real life it’s not as easy as you think to get out of a hospital bed after three years of hibernation.
While Dr. Howard explained all this, he addressed some other aspects of my medical condition. He said there’d be weeks of tests and physical therapy before I could safely be released. He said I could get off the feeding tube, and they would gradually introduce real food into my diet, and see how I responded.
Three years?
That means Kimberly was half-way through college! Afaya could have blown up the airports years ago. Callie, Quinn, Alison…could all be dead by now. And what had happened to Kathleen? I must have scared her to death being unconscious all this time. And Addie must be what, eight years old?
And Darwin. Why hadn’t he killed me already? His people could have waltzed into this cracker box medical room and snuffed me faster than Monika Lewinski blowing out the candle on a one-candle cake. Wait, I thought. Is that reference dated now?
I had to get up and out of here before Darwin got the news of my resurrection. I had to get my cell phone working, had to make some calls and get some help. I didn’t want to involve Kathleen in all this, but I had no choice. Unless the world had turned completely upside down during the past three years, Darwin would know my condition within hours, and my life expectancy would be about as long as a Twinkie in Kirstie Alley’s pantry. Wait. Three years has passed. Maybe she’s lost the weight again. I made a note to catch up on my pop culture first thing.
“Donovan, thank God!”
I looked up and saw Lou Kelly entering the room, followed closely by Nurse Carol.
“Nice haircut,” I said.
“Wait till you see yours!” he said.
“Lou. Turn your back to the doctor and look at me.”
He shrugged. “Okay…”
“Have I been in a coma?”
He nodded.
“How long?”
“Three years, give or take.”
The nurse joined us. Lou said, “Right. Carol, could you get me a newspaper and a magazine and anything else you can find with a recent date on it?”
“How about a movie ticket stub?” she said.
“Perfect.”
“Lou, this is crazy,” I said.
“I know, buddy. But it is what it is. At least you’re back with us. How do you feel?”
“Pissed.”
He laughed. “Same old Creed,” he said.
Dr. Howard continued his examination. The thermometer went in, then out. Th e little thing with the light went in my ears. Then he felt my lymph nodes, checked my pulse, pushed on my stomach, looked up my nose and in my mouth.
Nurse Carol returned with enough evidence to convince me I’d been Rip Van Winkled for more than three years. I tried to get to my feet.
“Whoa,” said the doctor. “You’re still on life support. You can’t get up yet.”
Lou moved to hold me down, but I waved him off .
“Can I at least sit up?”
Lou and the doctor exchanged a look. Lou nodded.
“Lie still a minute,” he said. Th e nurse helped the doctor remove several tubes. She held some gauze against the wounds to stop the bleeding.
“I think you’re out of the woods,” my doctor said, “but I’ll need to keep the rest of the equipment hooked up for twenty-four hours. It’ll help us monitor your brain activity and let us know if you start experiencing seizures.”
“Why am I still alive?” I said.
“Because you’re receiving the best medical care in the world,” Lou said.
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
“Why hasn’t Darwin killed me yet?”
Dr. Howard said, “Let us finish up so you can speak freely. Carol and I don’t want to hear anything that’s unrelated to Mr. Creed’s treatment.”
Five minutes later it was just Lou and me, with the door closed.
“Catch me up,” I said, “starting with last night.”
“You mean—”
“Yeah, I mean the last night I can remember. The night Tara got shot.”
Lou took a deep breath. “Okay. Look, I’ll try to keep everything in chronological order, but I might miss a detail here and there.”
“Just do your best. We can fill in later.”
“Okay.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Before you start, tell me this: is Kathleen okay?”
“She is.”
“Addie?”
“Yes, she’s fine. She’s winding up second grade.”
“Shit. I can’t believe I’ve missed her formative years. She and Kathleen must be devastated. What about Kimberly?”
“Let me save you some time,” he said. “Kimberly, Janet, Callie, Quinn—they’re all alive and well. You want me to go into detail about them now, or you want to hear about that night?”
“Both. But let’s start with Afaya. Did Darwin get him?”
“No, he never showed.”
“Alison?”
“I never thought to ask,” Lou said, “but I’ll find out and let you know.”
“Okay, so tell me about that night. I need to know if my life is in danger.”
Lou said, “I’m the one Callie called when you had the heart thing that night. She told me she’d just shot Tara, and you were having a heart attack.”
“She tell you the details about shooting Tara?”
“Later on, yes, but at that moment she was in a panic. She thought you were dying, but she couldn’t call 911 because there was no time to hide Tara’s body or clean up the crime scene. Blood spatter was everywhere, including your clothes.”