“I wish the boy luck. He’s sure gonna need it.”
“Frank, I need to ask you something.”
“Shoot.”
“Well, tell me if this is too personal, but do you believe in God?”
Frank didn’t respond.
“I never did either,” Sharon continued. “Not really, I mean. But when I saw Jim pray for those people—the kid with the grape stuck in his throat, and the girl who tried to kill herself—it was like I was witnessing real miracles. You wouldn’t have believed it. It was—”
“Sharon, you asked me if I believe in God.”
“Well do you?”
“Of course I do, but not the same way Jim does, or Sid, or maybe even you. I don’t believe it’s possible for us to talk to him.”
“But when Jim prayed—”
“Sharon.” Frank shook his head and gestured toward the sky. “Look up there. All those stars we were just talking about? God made those with his own hands. Billions and billions of them. The entire universe and everything in it. He doesn’t have the time or inclination to talk to us, and any man who thinks he does is a fool.”
“You think Jim’s a fool?”
“God is not like us, Sharon. He’s omnipotent. Omniscient. He has about as much time for human beings as we would for an ant, or any other insect. We’re just specks to him.”
“And what about Sid? You saying, he was a fool too?”
“No man can, or ever will, understand God. He’s just too vast. Now Sid probably meant well, and I’m sure Jim does too, but all this evangelism crap? And all this talk about miracles in the back of the truck? Yeah. Fools. Both of ‘em. Some people, what they believe, it’s beyond me.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Look, I shouldn’t be bashing them, especially Sid, but you asked me, and this is something I feel very strongly about, Sharon. Some people believe they can just snap their fingers and God answers. It’s not true. He is not interested in us. We cannot, as you say, know him. It’s just not possible.” Frank picked up a seashell and flung it into the waves. “Look, I’ve said too much already. Take as long as you like. I’ll be in the truck.”
“Frank, wait.”
Frank turned around and trudged through the sand to the short wooden stairway that led to the public parking area.
“I’m sorry,” Sharon yelled.
Frank didn’t respond. He climbed the stairs and disappeared down the boardwalk through the dunes. A moment later Sharon heard the muted sound of a truck door slam. She glanced back up at the stars…and cried.
Chapter 40
The end of Jim’s first conscious day in ICU had ended and he was already as bored as a man could get. He ignored the pain in his belly and propped himself up on his cast, then gingerly pulled back the covers with his uninjured arm. What he saw made him sick. His legs looked the same—as strong as ever, with thick calves that tapered down into stout ankles and tanned feet—but the only movement he saw came from within his body, a slow, snail-like procession of a yellowish fluid that worked through the internal lumen of a thin tube to fill a bag hanging somewhere over the side of the bed. He strained and pulled to move his legs. They wouldn’t budge.
Oh, man!
“Helga,” he shouted. “Hey, where’s my nurse?”
A young nurse Jim had never seen walked from behind the nurses’ station and rushed over. “Ssshhhh…Mr. Stockbridge. You can’t be shouting like that, sir. The other patients need their rest.”
“I didn’t call you.”
“But, sir—”
“Where’s Helga?”
“I’m sorry, but you—”
“Helgaaaa!”
“Sir, stop shouting! You need to calm down!”
“I don’t need to calm down, I need Helga. Where is she?”
“She’s with another patient. What do you want?”
“It’s all right, Karen.”
Jim glanced to his right. Helga Baird waddled around the corner shaking her head. She had an IV bag in one hand and a syringe with some kind of medication in the other. To the casual observer she would have looked like any other nurse on the job, busy and caring, serious but calm. To Jim she looked like a guardian angel.
“Helga, thank goodness!”
“I’ll handle this one,” Helga said with a smile. The nurse named Karen cast Jim an angry glance and walked away. Helga dropped the blanket and picked up the call button attached to the rail of the bed. “Is this broken?”
“Helga, I can’t take this anymore.”
“I don’t see that you have much of a choice.”
“I need to get up. I need to walk and run. I need to swim!”
“Well, you can’t.”
Jim fell back onto his pillow. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”
“Well—” Helga injected a fresh dose of morphine into Jim’s IV. “I could call an orderly and have you rolled up and down the hall a couple of times, but I don’t think that would give you what you’re looking for.”
“Very funny.” Jim emitted a long deep sigh. He pressed his palms against his eyes. “I cannot do this!”
“You have another idea, do you?”
“I’m going insane!”
“I’m disappointed in you. I thought you were tougher than this.”
“I guess you were wrong.”
Jim watched Helga spike and hang a new bag of IV antibiotics.
“Another one? I thought I was going to a private room today. When am I getting out of here?”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Jim swung his arm around and knocked the call button to the floor. “What time is it?”
“It’s almost midnight. Is there someplace you need to be?”
“Yeah.” Jim banged the bedside table with his fist. “I’ve got a hot date.”
Helga grinned. It made him angrier.
“You’re a monster, aren’t you?”
“I’m all you’ve got, aren’t I?”
“Oh, God,” Jim murmured. “It’s bad enough that I’m crippled, why’d you have to put me in here with her?”
Helga kept smiling, kept moving, slowly and deliberately with a definite purpose but with no apparent hurry to get anywhere, and that made Jim furious. He slapped the mattress with his hand and closed his eyes.
“God, you’re driving me insane!”
“You called me, remember? Be quite and lie still.”
Jim gave up and settled back into his pillow. He couldn’t win. Helga was a demon sent from below to torture him to the end, and she was winning. “It’s no use,” he murmured, “no use.” But deep down inside he knew that wasn’t true. Helga Baird was, indeed, the best friend he had in the world, and at that moment he felt guilty for the way he’d treated her. But somehow, he knew, his veteran nurse would understand. She was a warrior. He was a warrior. And true warriors could not be caged. Not without a fight.
Jim felt Helga grab his arm and wrap a cuff around his bicep. He heard a beep, followed by the mechanical hum of the machine located just behind his bed. The cuff tightened. A strong pulsing sensation began to beat within his arm. It grew to a crescendo and then dissipated again as the cuff deflated.
“How’s my pressure?” he asked, as the remaining air hissed out of the cuff.
“One oh-eight over sixty-eight.”
“My heart’s still strong. Too bad.”
Helga chuckled. Jim’s next sensation was one of warm water against his chin and neck. He opened his eyes, startled to see the corpulent nurse leaning over him with a yellow sponge in one hand and a dishpan in the other.
“What are you doing?”
“Giving you a bath.”
Jim felt himself tighten with embarrassment.
“Relax, hon. Old Helga’s seen it all. You ain’t got nothing I haven’t washed before.”
Helga scrubbed his chest and arms and moved lower to reach his abdomen and sides. Sensation came and went with each stroke until at last she wor
ked below the point of injury and he felt nothing at all.
“Man, oh man,” Jim grumbled, “if the guys could see me now.”
Helga chuckled again. Jim looked away as she wiped a particularly private part of his front side. She squeezed out the sponge and started on his legs. “So, sailor, tell me about your boat.”
“My boat?”
“The one your daddy used to teach you how to sail.”
“That little thing? It was just a Sunfish. A little boat. Great for a kid.”
“Still got it?”
“Nah, I’ve been through several boats since then. Got me a Bristol 29.9 now. Keep her out at Core Creek at Pair-A-Docks Marina.”
“You live on Core Creek Island?”
“Have since 2003. I bought the old Rusty Anchor Bar shortly after I moved down from NY. It’d been sitting unused since ’99 when Hurricane Floyd tore it up. The 120 mile an hour winds and 10 foot sea surge left the joint pretty much totaled. But my friend, Sid, and I worked for over two years to fix it up. Got burgundy carpets now, rich wood paneling, and, Helga, the most beautiful bar you’ve ever seen. Red brass-studded leather. Polished teak surface.”
“It all sounds very manly.”
“The whole place smells like wood. And the sun rises in my front windows every morning of the year.”
“Mmmm.”
“On a clear day I can see all the way to Shackelford Banks. And beyond that, the most beautiful blue water on the planet.”
“It sounds like a wonderful home. How often do you go sailing?”
“Whenever possible.”
Helga grabbed a towel. Jim watched her dry his legs. He couldn’t feel a thing.
“Shoot, I’ve been known to break ice with a bamboo pole just to get out of the marina. Most people out there think I’m crazy. I think they are. Wimps. I’m not going to let a little cold weather stop me.”
“That’s the spirit! Now why don’t use that same determination to beat this thing? Don’t let this stop you either.”
Jim held on to the happy thoughts as long as he could, but as he watched Helga dry his feet he realized it was just a matter of time before those powerful swimmer’s legs would become weak and shriveled. He felt an overwhelming urge to scream at the top of his lungs until someone either knocked him out or he died of lung collapse. The anger he had been feeling all day came in waves, but the one rolling over him at that moment was a true tsunami. He closed his eyes as tightly as possible, clinched his fist, and forced himself to swallow the pain.
When he finally opened his eyes, Helga was standing in her usual spot beside the bed, her arms folded loosely across her chest, her eyes patient and understanding.
“Helga, what am I going to do?”
“Well, when you finish whining you’re going to pray. We’re going to thank God for what you’ve got—for life, and breath, and a clear mind able to think and reason—and then we’re going to ask him for a miracle.”
“We are?”
“Jesus said, we don’t have because we don’t ask. And, hon, we’re not going to make that mistake.”
Jim lay in bed for the next three hours using the time to think, to piece together his emotions and to try to make some sense of all that had just happened. Helga’s prayer had left him astonished. The confidence in her voice. The personal connection she seemed to have with the Almighty. He wanted it so badly, to feel an end to his bitterness, and to his pain, and the numbness that left his legs so useless.
“God,” he whispered. “Show me the way. I want to walk again. I want to follow you. Please show me the way.”
Jim forced himself to relax. He gave in to the mentally numbing effect of the morphine and fell into a long restless sleep, a confusing sleep haunted by a stream of seemingly endless nightmares. In a state of cloudy confusion he looked around his room, his pupils fully dilated, his heart pounding, and a million tiny arrector pili muscles pulling every hair on his neck and back and arms to the standing position. His gut wrenched with premonition. Something terrible was about to happen. He needed to blink but he didn’t dare close his eyes. He couldn’t. To lose the light would be to let the monster in. Finally his eyes were on fire. He closed them for a nanosecond then reopened them to stare into total darkness. Something covered his face. A cold hand gripped his mouth. He tried to scream but the shriek dissipated into a garbled moan that returned to his gut and loosed his bowels. The darkness lifted. Jim stared into the face of his enemy. Mercifully he was able to rise up over the bed and look down at the tall, dark, powerful form looming over his bed taunting him, hauntingly laughing at him, and then suddenly speaking in a voice overflowing with hatred. “I just wanted you to know I’ll be there waiting for you. You’ll never know when, you’ll never know where, but one day while you’re resting in the sun, sitting in your wheelchair with a blanket over your shriveled legs, I’ll be there, and then you’ll find out what real pain is all about.” Jim watched with horror as the huge black form turned his body over and stabbed him, again and again, without mercy, each wound deeper than the last, slicing the soft tissues of his back to shreds. Jim had never felt such intense pain. Hot burning impulses shot down his spine, exploded in the small of his back, and then continued down his legs to the bottoms of his feet, a million tiny pieces of hot burning shrapnel...
He awoke on the edge of his bed panting, foaming at the mouth and screaming, the pain unbearable and his mind screaming for an explanation.
“Helga! Helga! Helga!”
Helga Baird rushed into the room and froze. Her droll little mouth dropped open in surprise. She stood there staring at him with a dumb gaze.
“What are you waiting for?” Jim shouted. “Can’t you see I’m in pain? Get morphine!”
“Jim!” Helga held her hands to her mouth and started jumping, finally leaping off the floor and bouncing like a large rubber ball. “Jim,” she shouted. “Look at yourself!”
“Huh?”
“You’re standing, Jim! You’re standing!”
Chapter 41
Rico walked to the fax machine in the corner of his office and pulled off the printout as it fed from the spool. He studied it. It surprised him. The number of hideouts frequented by the Posse filled the entire page. He counted over thirty in the Havelock area alone. Ten more locations were listed with question marks. He shuffled through his notes and came up with similar lists sent by Lance’s contacts in New Bern, Swansboro, Vanceboro, Harker’s Island, and even as far south as Wilmington. Altogether, he counted over sixty-five possible locations. The Posse was everywhere. He shook his head, tossed the stack of papers onto his desk, and then flopped down and leaned back in a squeaky wooden chair that threatened to fall apart at any minute.
The phone rang. Rico answered it. The man on the other end sounded tired, and like Rico, unsure as to the feasibility of finding a needle in a haystack.
“We received your photos, Sergeant Rivetti, and I’ve put out the word on this ‘J-Rock’ character. If he’s in Havelock or Jacksonville there’s a good chance we’ll find him, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. We’ve been putting a lot of pressure on the Posse down here lately, and I can’t see one of your gang boys showing up for a weekend getaway. It just doesn’t add up.”
“Can you tell me anything about the Posse’s drug supply?”
“We’ve collected a truckload of coke and crystal meth, probably very similar to what you got. Things have started drying up for sure, but the Posse is far too widespread for us to shut them down altogether. There’s enough backwoods between Cherry Point and Camp LeJeune to hide an army. Those guys could be anywhere.”
Rico asked a few more questions and then thanked his contact and hung up the phone. He glanced at Jimmy Little, shook his head, and leaned back in his chair. “Nobody’s seen him, Jimmy. Not in Havelock, Durham, New Bern, nowhere. Guy’s a ghost. He’s too smart.”
Jimmy Little frowned. “Sarge, when’s the last time you got sleep? You look like you’re about to drop.”
Rico swallowed the remaining dregs in his coffee cup and tossed it into the corner next to the trash can. “We know he’s not on the street. That means he’s either split the Morehead area altogether or he’s gone under, but I’m telling you, Jimmy, my gut tells me he’s still here, reassembling his gang, maybe even setting up a new shop.”
“A new meth-lab?”
“I’m willing to bet.”
“But where? We’ve got surveillance all over the place. We’ve checked all his family connections. The Commons is clear.”
“Seems to be. So what are we missing?” Rico paused and thought for a moment then went back to his notes, mumbling and thinking, thinking and mumbling. “What are we missing, Jimmy? What are we missing? He needs drugs. Drugs are his business. His supply just dried up and he needs drugs. Where’s he gonna set up a new lab without us finding out? Where’s J-Rock doing business? Where have we not looked?”
“We’ve looked everywhere, sarge. He’s not in East Beach or Morehead.”
“So, where is he? Where’s he setting up shop? Where is J-Rock building a meth-lab? Where on God’s green earth is...hey, wait a minute!”
Rico grabbed the phone.
“Sarge, who are you calling?”
“An old friend, Jimmy. An old friend with Morehead City PD. I have a feeling he might be able to help us find what we’re looking for.”
Chapter 42
Jim sat on the edge of his bed with his eyes closed, anxiously awaiting his next command, hoping beyond hope that it was real but frightened beyond words that it was just another weird dream. But it was no dream. He could feel everything from the top of his head to the tip of each toe. And everything hurt—his right side, his arm, his abdomen and his back. His legs and feet tingled as if attached to live wires. It felt magnificent. He felt like laughing as Dr. Ronald Webber touched the soles of his feet and toes. His touch felt soft, his hands warm and dry.
“Okay, Jim,” Webber said, “what am I touching now?”
“Big toe. Right foot.”
“And now?”
“My left ankle.”
“Wiggle your toes.”
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