She glances at the emergency button. “They found you floating in the river. That's what I heard them say. The police have been waiting for you to wake up.”
“How long have I been here?”
“Eight days . . . you were in a coma. I thought you might be coming out yesterday. You were talking to yourself.”
“What did I say?”
“You kept asking about a girl—saying you had to find her.”
“Who?”
“You didn't say. Please let go of my arm. You're hurting me.”
My fingers open and she steps well away, rubbing her forearm. She won't come close again.
My heart won't slow down. It is pounding away, getting faster and faster like Chinese drums. How can I have been here eight days?
“What day is it today?”
“October the third.”
“Did you give me drugs? What have you done to me?”
She stammers, “You're on morphine for the pain.”
“What else? What else have you given me?”
“Nothing.” She glances again at the emergency button. “The doctor is coming. Try to stay calm or he'll have to sedate you.”
She's out of the door and won't come back. As it swings closed I notice a uniformed policeman sitting on a chair outside the door, with his legs stretched out like he's been there for a while.
I slump back in bed, smelling bandages and dried blood. Holding up my hand I look at the gauze bandage, trying to wiggle the missing finger. How can I not remember?
For me there has never been such a thing as forgetting, nothing is hazy or vague or frayed at the edges. I hoard memories like a miser counts his gold. Every scrap of a moment is kept as long as it has some value.
I don't see things photographically. Instead I make connections, spinning them together like a spider weaving a web, threading one strand into the next. That's why I can reach back and pluck details of criminal cases from five, ten, fifteen years ago and remember them as if they happened only yesterday. Names, dates, places, witnesses, perpetrators, victims—I can conjure them up and walk through the same streets, have the same conversations, hear the same lies.
Now for the first time I've forgotten something truly important. I can't remember what happened and how I finished up here. There is a black hole in my mind like a dark shadow on a chest X-ray. I've seen those shadows. I lost my first wife to cancer. Black holes suck everything into them. Not even light can escape.
Twenty minutes go by and then Dr. Bennett sweeps through the curtains. He's wearing jeans and a bow tie under his white coat.
“Detective Inspector Ruiz, welcome back to the land of the living and high taxation.” He sounds very public school and has one of those foppish Hugh Grant fringe haircuts that falls across his forehead like a dinner napkin on a thigh.
Shining a penlight in my eyes, he asks, “Can you wiggle your toes?”
“Yes.”
“Any pins and needles?”
“No.”
He pulls back the bedclothes and scrapes a key along the sole of my right foot. “Can you feel that?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent.”
Picking up a clipboard, he scrawls his initials with a flick of the wrist.
“I can't remember anything.”
“About the accident.”
“It was an accident?”
“I have no idea. You were shot.”
“Who shot me?”
“You don't remember?”
“No.”
This conversation is going around in circles.
Dr. Bennett taps the pen against his teeth, contemplating this answer. Then he pulls up a chair and sits on it backward, draping his arms over the backrest.
“You were shot. One bullet entered just above your gracilis muscle on your right leg leaving a quarter-inch hole. It went through the skin, then the fat layer, through the pectineus muscle, just medial to the femoral vessels and nerve, through the quadratus femoris muscle, through the head of the biceps femoris and through the gluteus maximus before exiting through the skin on the other side. The exit wound was far more impressive. It blew a hole four inches across. Gone. No flap. No pieces. Your skin just vaporized.”
He whistles impressively through his teeth. “You had a pulse but you were bleeding out when they found you. Then you stopped breathing. You were dead but we brought you back.”
He holds up his thumb and forefinger. “The bullet missed your femoral artery by this far.” I can barely see a gap between them. “Otherwise you would have bled to death in three minutes. Apart from the bullet we had to deal with infection. Your clothes were filthy. God knows what was in that water. We've been pumping you full of antibiotics. Bottom line, Inspector, you are one lucky puppy.”
Is he kidding? How much luck does it take to get shot?
I hold up my hand. “What about my finger?”
“Gone, I'm afraid, just above the first knuckle.”
A skinny looking intern with a crewcut pokes his head through the curtains. Dr. Bennett lets out a low-pitched growl that only underlings can hear. Rising from the chair, he buries his hands in the pockets of his white coat.
“Will that be all?”
“Why can't I remember?”
“It's not really my field, I'm afraid. We can run some tests. You'll need a CT scan or an MRI to rule out a skull fracture or hemorrhage. I'll call neurology.”
“My leg hurts.”
“Good. It's getting better. You'll need a walker or crutches. A physiotherapist will come and talk to you about a program to help you strengthen your leg.” He flips his bangs and turns to leave. “I'm sorry about your memory, Detective. Be thankful you're alive.”
He's gone, leaving a scent of aftershave and superiority. Why do surgeons cultivate this air of owning the world? I know I should be grateful. Maybe if I could remember what happened I could trust the explanations more.
So I should be dead. I always suspected that I would die suddenly. It's not that I'm particularly foolhardy but I have a knack for taking shortcuts. Most people only die once. Now I've had two lives. Throw in three wives and I've had more than my fair share of living. (I'll definitely forgo the three wives, should someone want them back.)
My Irish nurse is back again. Her name is Maggie and she has one of those reassuring smiles they teach in nursing school. She has a bowl of warm water and a sponge.
“Are you feeling better?”
“I'm sorry I frightened you.”
“That's OK. Time for a bath.”
She pulls back the covers and I drag them up again.
“There's nothing under there I haven't seen,” she says.
“I beg to differ. I have a pretty fair recollection of how many women have danced with old Johnnie One-Eye and unless you were that girl in the back row of the Shepherd's Bush Empire during a Yardbirds concert in 1961, I don't think you're one of them.”
“Johnnie One-Eye?”
“My oldest friend.”
She shakes her head and looks sorry for me.
A familiar figure appears from behind her—a short, square man, with no neck and a five-o'clock shadow. Campbell Smith is a Chief Superintendent, with a crushing handshake and a no-brand smile. He's wearing his uniform, with polished silver buttons and a shirt collar so highly starched it threatens to decapitate him.
Everyone claims to like Campbell—even his enemies—but few people are ever happy to see him. Not me. Not today. I remember him! That's a good sign.
“Christ, Vincent, you gave us a scare!” he booms. “It was touch and go for a while. We were all praying for you—everyone at the station. See all the cards and flowers?”
I turn my head and look at a table piled high with flowers and bowls of fruit.
“Someone shot me,” I say, incredulously.
“Yes,” he replies, pulling up a chair. “We need to know what happened.”
“I don't remember.”