"Jesus."
Brad sank down onto the single bed. When he'd recaptured his breath, he reached over and snapped on the bedside lamp.
The naked man had no arms. Short stumps jutted out at rigid right angles to his body. He was not more than forty, with shoulder-length black hair and a small goatee and a Marine Corps tattoo on his white and hairless chest. A bra dangled over his head, one of the cups partially hiding his eyes.
He'd used an electrical cord, tying it to the base of the Hunter fan in the ceiling. The noose knot was carefully made, as if he'd practiced it for years.
A chair was toppled beneath him, and next to it was a mound of shit, some of it smeared across the wood floor. One at a time Brad lifted his cordovans. It was his left shoe that was coated thick with the dead man's shit, his last offering to that grim world.
***
"You find Randy?" Ginny said as Brad passed through the TV room.
"You need to call 911."
"Why?" she said. "They got drugs for that now, bringing people back from the dead?"
Ginny gave him a flirty smile and turned back to the endless destruction of Tokyo.
CHAPTER 11
Thorn spent Thursday and Friday at Baptist Hospital in Miami, sliding in and out of tight metal tubes, high-tech chrome caskets that permitted the bright young doctors to shine magnetic lights through his body. All the nurses complimented him on how well he stayed still.
"It's one of my few skills," he told them. "I'm a slow-twitch kind of guy. Years of bone fishing."
Lying in his room between tests, he exhausted himself trying to send signals to the muscles in his legs. Move, move, move. Twitch, wiggle, anything, goddamn it. Lying there, sweating as he strained to fire even the faintest nerve impulses through the old pathways. But everything was dead, switched off. His lower body was as dark and empty as the cold depths of the sea.
Monica was there for all of it. A brave smile as she massaged his inert legs, his cold empty toes. He watched her fingers digging into his body as if his flesh were putty she was trying to keep from hardening.
Dr. Wilson came the first day and got Thorn's permission to insert a catheter into the base of his spine to make it easier to inject the twice daily dose of steroids, methylprednisolone. He returned Thursday night and Friday morning to administer the drug himself. Thorn lay still, feeling no pain, just that strange vacant coolness of flesh.
Something about Bean Wilson's boyish bow ties, his ramrod carriage, and his shy smile was deeply soothing in that frantic hospital. Wilson had been a devout widower for almost forty years. Thorn imagined him still having cheerful conversations with his dead wife, discussing his daily encounters around the island. Maybe it was those regular visits to the spirit world of his departed lover that kept him youthful—his romantic heart had not aged.
Mrs. Wilson was an elegant and cultivated woman. A lady who read poetry and arranged flowers and wore lacy dresses in a town where cutoff jeans and bikini tops were considered formal wear. The two of them had been so passionate for each other, it was sometimes embarrassing to be around them. Their devotion for each other left them little time for Bean junior. Thorn always assumed Bean junior was a late-in-life mistake—a kid whose major boyhood challenge was to find ways to insert himself into his parents' fierce love affair.
Though he'd been a widower for nearly forty years, as far as Thorn knew, Wilson had never come close to remarrying. On the surface he seemed available enough, no moody griever, no hermit. Out and about at the local restaurants and social events, tirelessly amiable. In the small society of Key Largo, he drove the widows crazy—such a catch, so elusive. Thorn suspected Wilson considered himself still married, ever faithful to the woman who had shown him a brand of love he must have believed he'd never duplicate. It would be dishonest of such a man to become betrothed again—nothing less than bigamy.
***
All day Thursday and Friday a steady stream of specialists came and went from Thorn's hospital room. Many of them knew Bean Wilson, shared a joke with him out of earshot, but no one gave Thorn any words to hang on to. He watched their poker faces as they stared at the X rays, checked his chart.
Through both afternoons, Monica massaged his legs while Thorn practiced breathing. At times he found himself floating a few hundred yards above, watching somebody else's body getting a nice loving massage. The play was into a third act, heading for a fourth, but Thorn's mind was still vacant, as if the blow to his spine had numbed his emotions as well, allowing only the vaguest sense of dread to seep through. He had been snatched from his life, dropped into a body not his own, lying on a white bed in a foreign room. He heard the strange voice coming from his throat, he felt the air entering and leaving his alien lungs, the unfamiliar rhythms of the heart beating in his chest. This was not Thorn. Thorn was back in Key Largo tying flies, or poling his skiff across the dazzling flats. But this nameless creature lying half paralyzed in a hospital room in Miami was someone else entirely. Someone with a dull, blank, empty mind. A senseless hunk of beef who was doing a very bad impersonation of a shiftless but engaging fellow that everyone knew as Thorn.
One of the neurologists, a handsome black woman named Roosevelt, had been there from the moment he'd first arrived. After taking his blood pressure late Friday afternoon, she lingered to ask if his legs were in any pain.
"I wish," Thorn said.
She patted him on the thigh and told him not to worry, they were getting there.
"Where is that?" Thorn said.
"Finish line, honey. We're almost done."
"So, you know what it is?" Monica said.
"I didn't say that."
"Then how the hell can you say you're almost finished?"
"Because"—the doctor rested a hand on Monica's shoulder—"we're running out of tests."
"And you still don't have an idea? How can that be?"
"We know Mr. Thorn has a ding on his spinal cord."
"A ding!" Monica balled her hands, shrugged away from the doctor's touch.
"Bull riders get them, rodeo people, and football players. We see a lot of wide receivers. Dolphins, Hurricanes. Those hard tackles."
"A ding," Thorn said. "Is there maybe another word for it? Something a little fancier?"
"A bruise, a swelling."
"But it's temporary. Right?" Monica was at the doctor's shoulder. She looked like she might do something physical if the doctor responded incorrectly. The woman took a half step back.
"When all the tests are completed, Dr. Wilson will sit down and explain everything."
"And in the meantime," Monica said, "we're waiting here, nobody's telling us anything. People coming and going, doing all this shit, everybody with their mouths shut. This is outrageous."
Thorn cleared his throat.
"Well, at least now we know it's a ding."
The doctor squeezed out a smile, then headed for the door. She gave them both a look she must have intended to be sympathetic, then eased the door shut behind her.
"D minus on bedside manner," Thorn said.
"I want to shoot these goddamn people."
"That's liable to be counterproductive."
"I mean it, Thorn. This is shit. Wilson says these are the best in Miami. Neurologists, orthopedists. And look at them. They're walking around, hands over their asses, not going to make a mistake. No, sir. Playing it very goddamn cool. Don't want to stir up the malpractice gremlins."
"How much is this costing, Monica?"
"Don't worry about it."
"I can't let you do this."
"You have any medical insurance, Thorn?"
He looked at her blankly.
"Okay," she said. "So you damn well have to let me do this. We're in this together, you idiot. This is our problem." She blinked, eyes turning hazy.
She walked over to the window, squinted out into the bright sunlight. She'd been wearing the same pair of jeans and long-sleeve white T-shirt for the last two days. Thrown it on as the Keys amb
ulance pulled down his drive. One of the three outfits of hers hanging in his closet. She hadn't had a shower, as far as Thorn knew. Hadn't slept more than an hour or two. In the middle of the night he had woken several times to find her bent over him, kneading his legs with hushed ferocity.
"This is your father's money? Your inheritance?"
"Yes," she said. "Good riddance."
He watched her stare out into the bright daylight, breathing through her mouth. The room at Baptist Hospital was on the fifth floor. Beside his bed a window looked out at Kendall Drive. He had spent a few hours watching the endless flow of traffic, all that quiet desperation locked in aluminum. And the joggers making their steady circuits around the lake, the ducks on parade.
The walls of his room were a buttery yellow and there was an imitation Monet on the wall across from him. He'd had lots of time to study the painting. Two women in bonnets and parasols walking through a field of blue and green wildflowers. It looked like a mother and her twenty-something daughter. Thorn wasn't sure why, but he thought they were on a Sunday stroll, the men left behind at home with their cigars, brandy, and ribald talk while the women walked through the shadows of late afternoon in what looked like early spring somewhere in the northern hemisphere. A mother and daughter discussing some deeply personal issue. The mother's sadness or boredom, the daughter's approaching marriage. In their long dresses with many petticoats, they seemed to be floating a few inches above the field of wildflowers, an effortless glide across the beautiful earth. It was not a painting any new paralytic should be forced to study.
But Thorn was holding on. There was no pain. Only the dull absence of what should have been there. A coolness below the waist as if he were lolling in a tub of bathwater that was steadily losing its heat.
The worst thing had been the nights. He'd been dreaming of running. Loping down hard-packed beaches, flushing seagulls into flight, an effortless glide, his legs churning beneath him, carrying him lightly and quickly across the earth. Not running away from anything or toward anything, just racing along, limitless energy flowing. Both times he'd awoken breathless and sweating, his legs still dead beneath the sheets.
Monica coughed, turned from the harsh light, drew in a chestful of air.
"What's going on with you, Thorn?"
"How do you mean?"
"I mean, what's going on with you? Level with me."
"What? You think I'm faking?" He smiled. "Like I secretly wiggle my toes when everybody is looking the other way?"
"I mean the way you're taking this."
"What way is that?"
"You're not reacting. You're holding it in. Joking around."
"Well, hey. I haven't had much practice yet. Maybe a few more days, I'll figure out how a good paralytic acts."
She swung away as if he'd cursed her.
"Monica, look, it's okay. This is temporary. It has to be. Any second those steroids are going to shrink my spinal cord back to normal, I'll be up and going full speed. Find the asshole who did this."
When she turned back her eyes were muddy. A single sleek trail wandered down her right cheek. She took a breath, got control of her mouth.
"It wasn't any prowler, was it? All that bullshit you told the sheriff. You don't believe that, do you? Come on, Thorn. Somebody breaking in to steal what? Fishing flies?"
"I didn't see who it was."
"But you're thinking about it. You've got some idea."
"Maybe those muscle guys from Sundowners, the comedy troupe."
"Stop it, Thorn. The flippant bullshit."
"What do you want me to say?"
She nailed him with a look, then returned to the view out the window.
"I know what you were doing Wednesday."
Thorn looked up at the white ceiling.
"I bumped into Roy and he told me you stopped by. That you were investigating the dolphin thing. That's the word he used. Investigating. So tell me, Thorn, maybe I should know for my own safety. What else did you poke around in?"
He hauled himself an inch or two higher against the pillows.
While Monica hugged herself tight and kept her eyes on the view, Thorn told her about his day on Wednesday. He described the dolphin pools, told her what Roy had said about the torture, the spines and brains. He repeated his questions to Dr. Wilson and Wilson's answers. That there was no value to dolphin carcasses that he knew. His promise to look into it further. Even Brad Madison's warning to him out in the parking lot.
Her voice blank, Monica said, "Goddamn it. What's going on?"
"Look, I poked around a little. I found out next to nothing, and on the same night somebody comes around to see what they can rip off. I walk outside and the guy knocks me out. As I fall I hit my spine against a rock. Before he can do anything more, you come outside, he hears your voice and runs off. That's all it is. A stupid goddamn set of coincidences. Random chaos. Bad luck."
"But you don't believe that. You don't believe in random chaos, do you?"
She held his eyes, wouldn't let him look away.
"Sure I do."
She shook her head.
"You're a shitty liar, Thorn."
"All I know is someone attacked me and you came out at the right time before he had a chance to do anything more. You probably saved my life."
"Maybe," she said. Then she said, "I tried Sugarman again."
Thorn's closest friend was island-hopping in the Caribbean—a final fling before he and Jeannie became parents. Jeannie was five months pregnant with twins. Two boys, the ultrasound had told them.
She said, "Apparently they're not following their itinerary. Nevis, Anguilla, I've left messages everywhere."
"It's okay. There isn't anything he could do here anyway. We'd interrupt their vacation for nothing. How about Rover?"
"Janine from work is feeding him. He's fine. His poop is fine too."
She glanced at him, then back out the window. She swallowed.
"Is there anything I can get you? Anything you need?"
Thorn said no, there wasn't.
She'd asked the same thing a dozen times and he'd manufactured a handful of assignments to allow her some escape from that room. He'd sent her on missions for magazines and ice cream and was considering asking her to drive back down to Key Largo and fetch his fly-tying gear. Not that he really cared about any of it, or needed any distractions. He was plenty busy going over and over it in his head, trying to re-create that Wednesday night, his walk down the stairs, the final millisecond after Rover's growl as Thorn spun around to confront his attacker. He'd glimpsed something, but wasn't sure what. Something yellow or gold. A cap perhaps, a shaggy wig. The image wouldn't coalesce.
He'd also been hard at work picturing a future in a wheelchair. He knew a couple of people who lived in them, who adapted to their new conditions. A special boat ramp, a customized platform on their skiffs. One of his old high school friends down in Lower Matecumbe had come home from Vietnam a quadriplegic, but that wasn't keeping the guy from trying like hell to break the light tackle record for tarpon, using a special rod he'd designed that was operated by blowing in a tube.
Thorn had been very busy conceiving that new life, fitting a wheelchair into his old habits, keeping his mind on the technical problems of adapting his house and boat. When he grew tired of that, he'd been spending the empty hours staring at the painting on the far wall, or watching Monica, or listening to the never-ending squeaks and gongs and voices of the hospital. He damn well didn't want to drift. Didn't want to start asking the long unanswerable questions. The ones with why. He wouldn't even let his mind form the words. He knew the questions were in there lurking, hungering for voice, but he was all too acquainted with the rush of chemicals those considerations released. He'd wallowed in the caustic bath of mourning and despair before, knew how deep and airless the gloom could grow, what an immeasurable weight it could lay on his chest. So he was keeping his eyes focused on the tangible world—on the shadows and slashes of light that played on th
e far wall, on the eyes and timbre of voice of the nurses, on the topography of the sheets that covered him. He was not cheerful, but he refused to go the other way. He'd been down there, seen how little that world had to offer.
***
At eight that evening Dr. Wilson returned for another steroid injection. He was wearing a pink shirt and white cotton trousers and a dark green bow tie with tiny red fish printed on it. He looked like he was about to pledge to a fraternity.
"How's our patient?" He opened his small medical bag and took out the vial of steroids and filled his syringe.
Thorn said he was fine. Thinking of going for a jog a little later.
Doc Wilson smiled politely. Monica helped Thorn sit up and bend forward. It took only a few seconds for Dr. Wilson to fill his catheter with the solution.
"Feel good enough to visit with an old friend?"
"Oh, Christ." Thorn frowned. "Don't tell me I ruined Sugarman's vacation."
"No, you ruined mine."
It took Thorn a few awkward seconds to recognize the man who stepped into the room. He was just under six feet, trim, with skin so fresh and untanned it looked like he'd been marinating in milk. His hair was as thick as it had been thirty years ago and as blond, though now he obviously paid someone with an expensive education to cut it. He wore dark unpressed corduroy jeans and a blousy white casual shirt with a very uncasual red and gold crest on the left breast.
He stood for a moment basking in Thorn's confusion, then walked over to the edge of the bed in the stiff-legged gait of a man with steel rods holding his spine together. Thorn wasn't sure about the steel rods, but it was clear that something catastrophic had happened to Bean junior's body. The calamity was also in his eyes. They were still the innocent blue of his youth, but Thorn could see in the quick flick of attention he gave Monica, and the peripheral awareness he had of his own father, that Bean's eyes were far busier than they'd once been. Thorn had seen eyes like that before in men who'd once been ambushed, and never, by god, were going to be ambushed again.
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