“Okay. If you feel that way. But don’t jump at it. Feel your way along. Hell, you’re juicy meat for somebody hungry to get hold of. I’m supposed to protect your interest. Will you do this for me? If you decide you want to help, let me get a separate release form signed. In addition to the ones André will get if he can make out-of-court settlements.”
“What would it say?”
“Something like this, only in attorney talk. I hereby state that I clearly understand that any monies I accept from Devlin Jamison after this date are to be construed as gifts to me and in no way do they imply any obligation on the part of Mr. Jamison to continue such gifts. Nor does my acceptance of said gifts infer any continuing liability as the result of accident on blah blah blah and so forth.”
“Suppose I want to accept responsibility?”
“Suppose I want to jump out yon window?”
Jamison was silent for a long time. “They’re going to let me see them this afternoon. Miss Aller and the Scholl girl. I’d like to get back.”
“I’ve got to get back to my office, Dev. Promise me you won’t do anything until you check with me.”
Jamison sighed heavily. “You’re damn persistent. Okay. I promise.”
“Now you’re using the old head!”
They shook hands in front of the hotel. When Jamison looked back out of the taxi window he saw Seiver standing there, hands on his hips, looking after the cab with an expression of veiled irritation.
As Jamison walked toward the front door of the hospital, he saw André sitting on a bench in the side yard talking earnestly with a stranger in a black hat.
It was the neurologist, a tall, young-faced, gray-haired man named Dilby, who took Jamison in to see Kathryn Aller. Dr. Dilby had a strong enthusiastic voice. The polished lenses of his glasses reflected the lights from the windows. It was obvious that he took a special pride and interest in the motionless figure of Kathryn Aller.
Her face shocked Jamison. The purple eye, puffed shut, looked less than human. Her skin had a saffron tinge against the white of the head bandage. Some tangled dark blonde hair protruded from the top of the bandage that encircled her head. She breathed heavily through her mouth. She lay straight in the bed, her arms at her sides, straight on her back with her legs close together, the coverings molded to the long classic lines of her body. The bed looked unused.
“Yes, I think it’s a safe guess to say that we won’t find any permanent damage here, Mr. Jamison. Now watch this.”
He brushed her closed eyelid with his fingertip. The woman squinted her eye. The reflex ceased as soon as he took his finger away, occurred again when he touched her eye again. “See?” Dilby said proudly. He bent over and put his lips close to her ear. “Kathryn! Kathryn!” The steady breathing changed. “Kathryn! Open your mouth, Kathryn!” The parted lips opened wider. Dilby straightened up and the slack mouth changed to its original position and the breathing continued.
“This is just an impairment of consciousness, Mr. Jamison. It’s not as deep as it was when they brought her in. You saw how I could get some response. That’s a good sign.”
“Will she continue to come out of it?”
“Oh, I imagine so. Some of them come out of it all at once. Others come back slowly. She may go through a period when she’ll do just about anything you tell her, but not know she’s doing it. And there may be some traumatic amnesia.”
“Could that last long?”
“I’ve personally treated a case where it lasted seven years. But that was unusual of course. Quite unusual. I anticipate a normal improvement. In three weeks’ time she could be herself again.”
“She could be.”
“In three weeks or three months, returning slowly or all at once. These cases differ. A very mild case would be, for example, the football player in the shower room who suddenly starts asking how the game came out. He played, but after being hit, he played automatically. The worst case is the coma that grows deeper and deeper until the patient just… stops. Then autopsy shows us considerable brain damage, tiny hemorrhages. She doubtless has small brain hemorrhages, but from the way she reacts, I would judge that the pinpoint clots are being reabsorbed. I’m afraid I have to get back to my appointments.”
“Would it be all right if I stayed here a little while?”
“Well… I guess so. If you want to. But…”
“Is she aware of what goes on around her?”
“Oh, I doubt that very much. She’s just this much this side of complete unconsciousness.” The doctor held up thumb and finger, a millimeter apart. He looked uncertainly at Jamison, hesitated in the doorway, then nodded and hurried off. Jamison picked up a chair and put it close to the bed. He sat and looked at her still face, listened to her breathing.
After a time he was able to look at her face without seeing merely the bruise and the bandage. He saw, almost with astonishment, that the configuration of her face was good, a noble height of brow, a Grecian symmetry. She reminded him of someone he had seen long, long ago. It took him a long time to remember, and then it came to him. A movie actress named Ann Harding.
She breathed through her mouth and her lips were dry and cracked. Her breath was slightly unpleasant. Sitting there, looking at her, he remembered the times he had watched Gina’s sleeping face. In sleep a person went away from you. Their lips became strange. Under the bone of brow moved the unknown thoughts and the far strange images. Yet, even in sleep, Gina’s face had been his—marked by him. Known to him. He remembered the times of awakening her with a kiss, feeling the slackness, the small start of surprise, and the welling response. Gina’s sleep had been of her choosing, and she had welcomed his awakening of her.
This woman was lost and far in a place not of her choosing. He had caused this silence, this cracked mouth, this saffron texture of her skin. The angry bruise lay against the flesh and, far below, she wandered in strange dreams. This face was not dear. This was a mouth which had been used by others. Smudged lids covered eyes he had never seen, eyes that had never looked on him.
Yet, watching her there in the silence, hearing the small distant noises of the hospital, he felt an unexpected closeness, a warmth toward her. She lay helpless because of him. He felt sorrow and pity—and a certain awe. He sensed the great will of the organism to survive. It would go on breathing, and the mind would heal itself and lift itself up out of blackness until a time when the eyes would open and look around with confusion, and the brain would demand to know what had happened. What caused this? Why am I here?
There was a hypnotic quality in the cadence of her breathing. He realized that his imagination was carrying him into strange, perhaps unhealthy regions. He resisted the imagery, and then surrendered himself to it. Gina, badly hurt, had died. This woman, badly hurt, lived. Death, as a force, had taken one and now reluctantly surrendered another. In the body sense the two women were more alike than unlike—a clear similarity of womanness. Breasts and pain and gentle mouth. Could it be that in some wild symbolic way this woman was given him, that this was, in truth, the dedication he had sought?
He was repelled at once by the thought of disloyalty to Gina. It was absurd to think for a moment that in this stranger there was an essence of Gina. There could be no transmigration. This woman could not descend so deeply into a coma like death that she could come back with any trace or tinge of Gina within her.
Jamison knew that he was imagining too much about her by merely watching her unconscious face. Affinities were too rare for that. Unconscious, she could be anything he wished her to be. But, very probably, when the brain regained control, it would be a vapid, stereotyped, irritating mind. One of those minds which, under the iron stamp of convention, were turned out like so many cookies—a mind and a set of reactions desolately predictable, emitting endless clichés in a flat, prim, nasal voice. The body alone would be unique and believable, but the growth of the mind would have ceased at seventeen.
He told himself that, yet could not believe it. He p
ut his lips close to her ear as Dilby had done. “Kathryn!” he said. “Kathryn!” The regular tempo of the breathing changed—evidence of the mind fighting for light.
He spoke her name again, more sharply, and as she exhaled she vocalized a small rusty sound: “Ehhh.” It was such a small tired sound. Such a desperate hidden cry. It touched his heart. He wanted her to know that she was watched over. He wanted her to know the comfort of touch. He thought that would reach her. He glanced guiltily at the open door, and then he turned the corner of the covering back, found her hand, took her arm gently out from under the covers and placed it so that he could hold her hand. Her hand was hot and dry. The fingers were slim, tapering, with tiny pads of callus on the tips of the fingers. He found her pulse with his fingertips. Her heartbeat was a slow strong vital impact.
Holding her hand, he spoke her name again. The second time he said it her fingers flexed against his. He sat there holding her hand for a long time. She made that sound again. She closed her mouth, swallowed, breathed through her nose for a time. Then the lips sagged open as they had been before.
The nurse rustled into the room. Jamison released her hand hastily and stood up. The nurse glanced at the exposed hand and at Jamison. She set her apparatus down and neatly tacked the arm back under the covering.
“I have to give her an intravenous feeding now, sir.”
He left the room.
André sat beside Krissel on the bench in the May sunshine. Krissel refolded a legal paper and put it in his briefcase. “You see, Mr. André, it is all legal. I am the guardian, the executor. I can act in this matter.”
“Subject to the later approval of the probate court.”
“That I will worry about. I can act. But you? Perhaps you have to go running to get permission?”
“I’m not a regional adjuster, Mr. Krissel. I can make decisions.”
“Now let us talk about this poor child.”
“On her bed of pain.”
“Mr. André, I do not like that kind of talk.”
“It is the kind of talk you have been using for the last twenty minutes. I’m willing to talk about her. But let’s accept the fact that it’s a tragic thing and you’re grieving about it, and go on from there.”
“Mr. André, since we must have a starting point, obviously, it will be my intention to bring suit in her name for a death payment of twenty-five thousand each for her mother, her father and her sister, and an additional seventy-five thousand for the care, maintenance and education she would have gotten from her family, plus, of course, all medical expenses and loss of property and so on.”
“That’s quite a starting point.”
“I do not think the child should be too greedy. It makes a bad impression.”
“And lawyer’s fees eat up a lot.”
Krissel shrugged. “But sometimes a jury will even award a judgment in excess of the amount asked for.”
“Rarely.”
“It can happen.”
“Let’s take a look at Mr. Jamison. Good driving record. Not a drinker. No accidents. A tire blew. He’d go on the stand. He’d make a damn fine impression too. Prominent architect. Nice guy. We’d introduce the police investigation in evidence. That investigation of course shows that Scholl’s speed was estimated by witnesses as from seventy to eighty-five miles an hour.”
“Neither of us are attorneys, Mr. André. I can only see this. I can see a happy family going on vacation. A worker driving his car on which he is making monthly payments. They have saved and planned. Who smashes their lives? A man going on a vacation. In a rich convertible, with golf clubs even. Top down, getting a nice tan. A big man. Successful. And what happens to him? A little shaking up. The child’s life is ruined. What is it to him? He has insurance. He can buy a new car. The insurance company has lots of money. Enough to give this poor child the things in life that were taken away from her. Nothing can replace what she lost, of course.”
“That’s right. Let’s see what she lost. She’s seventeen. I don’t think she would be going to college. But let’s give her two years of business school. That’s three more years of education. Then she would get married. I’m just thinking out loud. Let’s say five thousand a year for the three years she’d be on her family’s hands. And another five for incidentals. I think twenty thousand would be fair if, for example, Jamison had been drunk and going a hundred miles an hour and Scholl was stopped for a light. But we’ve got a different situation here.”
“My dear Mr. André, you have a sense of humor that kills me. No matter how you dress it up, my brother-in-law was on his own side of the highway, and Mr. Jamison came across onto the wrong side and hit them and killed them. So if he was going eighty or two hundred, the jury is people. They think of themselves. They say what happens to me, to my loved ones, if somebody jumps over on my side of the road and smashes me?”
“And, my dear Mr. Krissel, the jurors will also wonder if they could get a whopping judgment against them just for having a blowout, a mechanical failure. Anyway, Jamison doesn’t have the kind of insurance in the amount you’re talking about.”
“So he has other property. The insurance pays up to the limit and Jamison pays the rest.”
“I’ll grant you that jurors can get emotional, Mr. Krissel.”
“Of course! And she is a pretty girl. And smart. I think she would cry if she had to testify. And the cast on her arm, it will not be off for a long, long time. Such a big cast.”
“Mr. Krissel, we’re both trying to do the right thing by your niece. I admire you for your… protection of her interests in this matter. We prefer to make out-of-court settlements whenever fair and possible. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll double my estimate. I’ll recommend a settlement in the amount of forty thousand dollars.”
Krissel shook his head sadly. “No, Mr. André. No indeed. I could not shave this face in the mirror every morning if I permitted such a travesty. I would not be living up to my duties as uncle and guardian for the poor child.”
“I think that as an evidence of good faith, you should revise your figures downward. I revised mine upward.”
“That is a hard thing, to make bargains which concern the future of Suzie. I am reluctant. I will go this far only, Mr. André. One hundred and twenty-five thousand.”
André leaned back and lighted a cigarette. “Let me see now. With that money you could give Suzie a good home. You’d have to buy one, of course. In a nice neighborhood. And you could give her the benefits of travel. You would go along as her guardian, naturally.”
“It would take her mind off her sorrow,” Krissel said.
“I think you better sue, Mr. Krissel.”
“Of course the suit would be in the amount I originally mentioned.”
“Of course.”
“I had hoped we would reach a meeting of the minds, Mr. André. Court costs will take money that should go to Suzie.”
“We have our own legal staff.”
“Forgive me for saying this, Mr. André, but are you using good judgment? As you said, juries are unpredictable.”
André smiled sadly. “We’ll just have to take our chances, I guess. Sometimes it works out that way. But believe me, we will be fair. Should the judgment go against us, we shall ask the permission of the court to set the total amount of the judgment up as a trust fund in Suzie’s name, to provide ample income for her education, with the amount remaining in the fund to revert to her when she reaches her majority. They generally go along with us on such arrangements where a minor is concerned. It keeps relatives from dissipating the funds through faulty judgment.”
Krissel looked out across the green lawn. The two men sat side by side in silence. Krissel said, “I am her uncle. I am her guardian. My judgment would be good.”
“Of course. You can advise her as to how to spend the income from the trust fund. Say a hundred dollars a week until she is twenty-one. She’ll need your advice, I’m sure.”
“But you would prefer to make a se
ttlement?”
“A reasonable one.”
“That would not be a trust fund?”
“Not with the confidence I have in you, Mr. Krissel.”
“Perhaps our minds could meet on one hundred thousand.”
“No, Mr. Krissel.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Then do you know where they could meet, maybe?”
“At fifty thousand, Mr. Krissel. That is the top offer. The final offer. I can have the papers ready for your signature tomorrow.”
“Seventy-five thousand. Remember what she has lost.”
“No, Mr. Krissel.”
“Since we still do not have a meeting of the minds, maybe we could be fair with each other and split the difference.”
André bit his lip. “I’ve gone too far offering fifty.”
“Seventy.”
“Mr. Krissel, I am going to lean way over backward. I’ll probably be criticized for it. I will offer a flat sixty, and we will not pay any additional expenses. The check will be here the day after tomorrow.”
Krissel waited a long time. “I understand your position. It is a hard thing. I cannot take a chance on what a jury might do with the future of the poor child. I guess that is it, sir.” He held his hand out.
André hesitated and took it. He stood up. “I’ll get to work on the papers.”
chapter 15
IN the late afternoon they told her that the man who had been driving the blue car wanted to see her. During the afternoon she had drifted warm on a sea of tears, suspended, misted. A tide of tears, that had ebbed and left her back in the world, drowsy, sated.
“Why?” she asked.
“You don’t have to see him if you don’t want to.”
“I guess I’d just as soon. But why does he want to see me?”
“I really don’t know, dear.”
The man came in. Suzie decided at once that he acted sort of cute and shy. He was a big man. Old. In his thirties, maybe. His face had a tough look, but his eyes and his mouth weren’t tough at all. Soft. He sat on the chair beside the bed and then turned and just looked at the nurse. She stood and stared back and then turned suddenly and left the room. You could kind of feel the strength of him, the way he made her leave.
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