"Look at de bright side, Neek. After dis, I bet you're never going to want to smoke anodder cigarette again."
"— roop."
12
“You see that?" a U.S. park policeman said to his partner as they sat in their cruiser on Constitution Avenue near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
"Late for joggers," the other yawned.
"Better check it out." They got out and walked toward Constitution Gardens and shone their flashlights at the object of their curiosity. It was a male, Caucasian — though the skin had a strange, lifeless hue and texture to it — six feet, 170 pounds, brown hair, athletic build. He was stumbling at the edge of the lagoon. Doper, for sure.
"Sir. SIR. Stop and turn around, please."
"Did you see his face?"
"Yeah. Like a deer on speed. What's that all over his body?"
"Bandages?"
"Anything about any escapees from Saint E's?"
"Nothing. Son of a bitch is fast. Look at him go."
"Coke?"
"Nah, that's angel dust."
They cornered him on the small island in Constitution Gardens, where the preamble to the Declaration of Independence is carved into granite beneath your feet, along with the signers' names.
"Sir?"
"Get away from me! I don't even like your movies! I hated Casablanca1."
"What's he talking about?"
"Easy does it, buddy. No one's going to hurt you."
"Get me the surgeon general! I have urgent information for the surgeon general]"
"Okay, pal, we'll go see the surgeon general."
"No one must know but her!"
"That's right, buddy. What's that around your neck?"
"It's a sign."
" 'Executed for crimes against hominy.' "
" 'Humanity.' "
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I don't know, but for someone who's been executed, he's moving pretty fast."
"He looks like he's been executed."
"Oh boy, stand back."
"That's okay, pal. Take a deep breath. I never saw anyone spew like that."
"He's on some dope. Better call the medics. Whup, stand back, there he goes again."
"What's the matter, pal, something you ate?"
"You know what they look like — those smokers' things, the patches."
"Joe Rinckhouse tried those things. He's still smoking."
"I bet he didn't put on that many. Hey buddy, you okay?"
"No, he's not okay. Look at him."
"Think we oughta do CPR on him."
"Be my guest."
"Uh-uh. It's your turn."
"Let's wait for the medics. I don't like this. It could be some new sex thing."
"Good thinking."
"Coming through!"
"What do we have?"
"John Doe, four plus agitated, vomiting, dry as a bone. BP two-forty over one-twenty. Vomiting, erythema. Pulse one-eighty and regular. Looks like PAT."
"Sir? Sir, can you hear me? SIR? Okay, let's get a Nipride drip going. Get up verapamil, ten milligrams IV push. Today, please."
"Coming."
"What are those things all over him?"
"Looks like nicotine patches, a lot of them."
"Maybe it's the new suicide of the nineties."
"Let's get them off him. Fast. There's enough here to kill a horse."
"Ouch, this poor guy is going to be sore."
"This guy is going to be dead. Sir? SIR? What is your name?"
"Uh-oh. V-fib!!"
"Okay, he's going to have to ride the lightning. Crank it up to max. Gimme the paddles. Ready? Stand back." Vvvvwvvwu mp. "Again. Clear." Vwvwvvvvump.
"I like it! I like it! Back on sinus rhythm. Start the lidocaine drip."
Nick awoke to the sound of bleeping machines and a headache that made him wish that he had not survived. His mouth tasted like it had been filled with hot tar and pigeon droppings. His hands, feet, and nose were cold as ice. He was conscious of wires leading to his chest and tubes leading in and out of every bodily orifice but one, thank God.
He'd had this very strange dream. Dr. Wheat had gone bonkers while Nick was on the table hooked up to the DC current machine. He increased the voltage enough to power the Washington Metrorail system, while cackling maniacally to Nick that this was his big opportunity of getting into The New England Journal of Medicine.
"Ohhh," he groaned, alerting a nurse, who scurried off for a doctor. People in white came and hovered. There were hushed conversations. A voice addressed him.
"Mr. Naylor?"
"Urrr."
He heard dimly the word morphine, followed by a warm sensation in his arm, followed by… visions of a voluptuous red-haired woman, with glasses, naked, on a horse.
Horse?
Suits entered the room.
"Mr. Naylor? I'm Special Agent Monmaney, FBI. This is Special Agent Allman. We've been assigned to your case. Can you tell us what happened?"
Nick peered through the druggy haze at the cavalry. Monmaney was tall, rangy, with intense, pale, timber wolf eyes. Graying at the temples. Good, a G-man with experience. Allman was stocky, built like a fireplug. Excellent. He could be the one to beat Peter Lorre's face into rennet custard. He had a ruddy, almost jovial sort of face that made him look Eke everyone's favorite high school teacher. Nick would have preferred him to look leaner and meaner, like Monmaney, but that was all right, as long as they functioned like a team and their guns were oiled. He saw Peter Lorre, on his knees, begging them for mercy as they emptied their 9mms into his chest.
A tsunami-sized wave of nausea rolled through him. Nick's eyes went groggily back to Monmaney, who was peering at him without sympathy. Yes, a real killer, this one, looked like he flossed with piano wire.
They asked questions. Many questions. The same questions, over and over and over. Nick told them what he knew, which was that he had been abducted and tortured by a dead Hungarian movie star. He told them about hurling his cappuccinos at the bum. Surely someone on K Street had witnessed that. His last memory? Feeling like his heart was trying very urgently to exit his body, along with everything he had eaten in the last two years. Speaking of which, boy was he hungry. Gazelle had brought him Double-Stuff Oreo cookies, the kind with extra cream filling inside, but the nurses took one look at it and carried the bag out of the room like it was toxic waste.
Agent Monmaney made him go over it again and again and again, until he was tempted to start making things up just out of sheer boredom. Agent Allman merely stood by, nodding pleasantly, looking jovial. A little sympathy would have been nice. But it was all detail, detail, detail. Nick became annoyed. He was tempted to ask them what was their last assignment, driving tanks in Waco?
Mercifully, Dr. Williams came in and they left. As soon as they were gone he started telling jokes about J. Edgar Hoover wearing pink tutus. Dr. Williams was Nick's new cardiologist, a very pleasant fellow in his early fifties with a hearing aid that was the result of having served as a navy doctor aboard destroyers during Vietnam.
The idea of being in the care of a cardiologist at only age forty alarmed Nick, but Dr. Williams set him at ease by explaining in a clear and friendly way exactly what had happened.
He had had a very close call. The massive dosage of nicotine had caused a condition called paroxysmal atrial tachycardia, which he likened to driving along at sixty miles per hour and suddenly shifting into first gear. The heart is asked to do things it wasn't made to do, namely pump at an insanely fast rate. In the Emergency Room, the PAT had degenerated into ventricular fibrillation, where the fibers of the heart muscles go wormy and stop pumping blood efficiently, thus depriving his brain of oxygen. The massive electrical charge administered, in microseconds, through the defibrillator paddles arrested all the heart's own electrical activity and permitted its own pacemaker to restore vital functions as a pump. Nick took it all in, struggling against great weariness. It occurred to him, during the portion of the lecture on defibrillation, that between Dr. Wheat and now this, he had spent a lot of his life being electrocuted. Dr. Williams said that, ironically, it was his smoking that had probably saved him. That many patches on a non-smoker would almost certainly have brought about cardiac arrest sooner.