by Lee Child
Vaughan nodded but didn’t look at the guy or reply. She just walked to the back of the hall and turned into a large room that in the old days might have served any one of a number of different purposes. It might have been a waiting room, or a reception lounge, or an officers’ club. Now it was different. It was dirty and badly maintained. Stained walls, dull floor, dust all over it. Cobwebs on the ceiling. It smelled faintly of antiseptic and urine. It had big red waist-high panic buttons wired through more plastic conduit. It was completely empty, except for two men strapped into wheelchairs. Both men were young, both were entirely slack and still, both had open mouths, both had empty gazes focused a thousand miles in front of them.
Both had shaved heads, and misshapen skulls, and wicked scars.
Reacher stood still.
Looked at the panic buttons.
Thought back to the medical files.
He was in a clinic.
He looked at the guys in the wheelchairs.
He was in a residential home.
He looked at the dust and the dirt.
He was in a dumping ground.
He thought back to the initials on the billboard.
TBI.
Traumatic Brain Injury.
Vaughan had moved on, into a corridor. He caught up with her, halfway along its length.
“Your husband had an accident?” he said.
“Not exactly,” she said.
“Then what?”
“Figure it out.”
Reacher stopped again.
Both men were young.
An old army building, mothballed and then reused.
“War wounds,” he said. “Your husband is military. He went to Iraq.”
Vaughan nodded as she walked.
“National Guard,” she said. “His second tour. They extended his deployment. Didn’t armor his Humvee. He was blown up by an IED in Ramadi.”
She turned into another corridor. It was dirty. Dust balls had collected against the baseboards. Some were peppered with mouse droppings. The lightbulbs were dim, to save money on electricity. Some were out and had not been changed, to save money on labor.
Reacher asked, “Is this a VA facility?”
Vaughan shook her head.
“Private contractor,” she said. “Political connections. A sweetheart deal. Free real estate and big appropriations.”
She stopped at a dull green door. No doubt fifty years earlier it had been painted by a private soldier, in a color and in a manner specified by the Pentagon, with materials drawn from a quartermaster’s stores. Then the private soldier’s workmanship had been inspected by an NCO, and the NCO’s approval had been validated by an officer’s. Since then the door had received no further attention. It had dulled and faded and gotten battered and scratched. Now it had a wax pencil scrawl on it: D. R. Vaughan, and a string of digits that might have been his service number, or his case number.
“Ready?” Vaughan asked.
“When you are,” Reacher said.
“I’m never ready,” she said.
She turned the handle and opened the door.
50
David Robert Vaughan’s room was a twelve-foot cube, painted dark green below a narrow cream waist-high band, and light green above. It was warm. It had a small sooty window. It had a green metal cabinet and a green metal footlocker. The footlocker was open and held a single pair of clean pajamas. The cabinet was stacked with file folders and oversized brown envelopes. The envelopes were old and torn and frayed and held X-ray films.
The room had a bed. It was a narrow hospital cot with locked wheels and a hand-wound tilting mechanism that raised the head at an angle. It was set to a forty-five-degree slope. In it, under a tented sheet, leaning back in repose like he was relaxing, was a guy Reacher took to be David Robert Vaughan himself. He was a compact, narrow-shouldered man. The tented sheet made it hard to estimate his size. Maybe five-ten, maybe a hundred and eighty pounds. His skin was pink. He had blond stubble on his chin and his cheeks. He had a straight nose and blue eyes. His eyes were wide open.
Part of his skull was missing.
A saucer-sized piece of bone wasn’t there. It left a wide hole above his forehead. Like he had been wearing a small cap at a jaunty angle, and someone had cut all around the edge of it with a saw.
His brain was protruding.
It swelled out like an inflated balloon, dark and purple and corrugated. It looked dry and angry. It was draped with a thin manmade membrane that stuck to the shaved skin around the hole. Like Saran Wrap.
Vaughan said, “Hello, David.”
There was no response from the guy in the bed. Four IV lines snaked down toward him and disappeared under the tented sheet. They were fed from four clear plastic bags hung high on chromium stands next to the bed. A colostomy line and a urinary catheter led away to bottles mounted on a low cart parked under the bed. A breathing tube was taped to his cheek. It curved neatly into his mouth. It was connected to a small respirator that hissed and blew with a slow, regular rhythm. There was a clock on the wall above the respirator. Original army issue, from way back. White Bakelite rim, white face, black hands, a firm, quiet, mechanical tick once a second.
Vaughan said, “David, I brought a friend to see you.”
No response. And there never would be, Reacher guessed. The guy in the bed was completely inert. Not asleep, not awake. Not anything.
Vaughan bent and kissed her husband on the forehead.
Then she stepped over to the cabinet and tugged an X-ray envelope out of the pile. It was marked Vaughan, D. R. in faded ink. It was creased and furred. It had been handled many times. She pulled the film out of the envelope and held it up against the light from the window. It was a composite image that showed her husband’s head from four different directions. Front, right side, back, left side. White skull, blurred gray brain matter, a matrix of bright pinpoints scattered all through it.
“Iraq’s signature injury,” Vaughan said. “Blast damage to the human brain. Severe physical trauma. Compression, decompression, twisting, shearing, tearing, impact with the wall of the skull, penetration by shrapnel. David got it all. His skull was shattered, and they cut the worst of it away. That was supposed to be a good thing. It relieves the pressure. They give them a plastic plate later, when the swelling goes down. But David’s swelling never went down.”
She put the film back in the envelope, and shuffled the envelope back into the pile. She pulled another one out. It was a chest film. White ribs, gray organs, a blinding shape that was clearly someone else’s wristwatch, and small bright pinpoints that looked like drops of liquid.
“That’s why I don’t wear my wedding band,” Vaughan said. “He wanted to take it with him, on a chain around his neck. The heat melted it and the blast drove it into his lungs.”
She put the film back in the stack.
“He wore it for good luck,” she said.
She butted the paperwork into a neat pile and moved to the foot of the bed. Reacher asked, “What was he?”
“Infantry, assigned to the First Armored Division.”
“And this was IED versus Humvee?”
She nodded. “An improvised explosive device against a tin can. He might as well have been on foot in his bathrobe. I don’t know why they call them improvised. They seem pretty damn professional to me.”
“When was this?”
“Almost two years ago.”
The respirator hissed on.
Reacher asked, “What was his day job?”
“He was a mechanic. For farm equipment, mostly.”
The clock ticked, relentlessly.
Reacher asked, “What’s the prognosis?”
Vaughan said, “At first it was reasonable, in theory. They thought he would be confused and uncoordinated, you know, and perhaps a little unstable and aggressive, and certainly lacking all his basic life and motor skills.”
“So you moved house,” Reacher said. “You were thinking about a wheelchair. Y
ou bought a one-story and took the door off the living room. You put three chairs in the kitchen, not four. To leave a space.”
She nodded. “I wanted to be ready. But he never woke up. The swelling never went away.”
“Why not?”
“Make a fist.”
“A what?”
“Make a fist and hold it up.”
Reacher made a fist and held it up.
Vaughan said, “OK, your forearm is your spinal cord and your fist is a bump on the end called your brain stem. Some places in the animal kingdom, that’s as good as it gets. But humans grew brains. Imagine I scooped out a pumpkin and fitted it over your fist. That’s your brain. Imagine the pumpkin goo was kind of bonded with your skin. This is how it was explained to me. I could hit the pumpkin or you could shake it a little and you’d be OK. But imagine suddenly twisting your wrist, very violently. What’s going to happen?”
“The bond is going to shear,” Reacher said. “The pumpkin goo is going to unstick from my skin.”
Vaughan nodded again. “That’s what happened to David’s head. A shearing injury. The very worst kind. His brain stem is OK but the rest of his brain doesn’t even know it’s there. It doesn’t know there’s a problem.”
“Will the bond re-form?”
“Never. That just doesn’t happen. Brains have spare capacity, but neuron cells can’t regenerate. This is all he will ever be. He’s like a brain-damaged lizard. He’s got the IQ of a goldfish. He can’t move and he can’t see and he can’t hear and he can’t think.”
Reacher said nothing.
Vaughan said, “Battlefield medicine is very good now. He was stable and in Germany within thirteen hours. In Korea or Vietnam he would have died at the scene, no question.”
She moved to the head of the bed and laid her hand on her husband’s cheek, very gently, very tenderly. Said, “We think his spinal cord is severed too, as far as we can tell. But that doesn’t really matter now, does it?”
The respirator hissed and the clock ticked and the IV lines made tiny liquid sounds and Vaughan stood quietly and then she said, “You don’t shave very often, do you?”
“Sometimes,” Reacher said.
“But you know how?”
“I learned at my daddy’s knee.”
“Will you shave David?”
“Don’t the orderlies do that?”
“They should, but they don’t. And I like him to look decent. It seems like the least I can do.” She took a supermarket carrier bag out of the green metal cabinet. It held men’s toiletries. Shaving gel, a half-used pack of disposable razors, soap, a washcloth. Reacher found a bathroom across the hall and stepped back and forth with the wet cloth, soaping the guy’s face, rinsing it, wetting it again. He smoothed blue gel over the guy’s chin and cheeks and lathered it with his fingertips and then set about using the razor. It was difficult. A completely instinctive sequence of actions when applied to himself became awkward on a third party. Especially on a third party who had a breathing tube in his mouth and a large part of his skull missing.
While he worked with the razor, Vaughan cleaned the room. She had a second supermarket bag in the cabinet that held cloths and sprays and a dustpan and brush. She stretched high and bent low and went through the whole twelve-foot cube very thoroughly. Her husband stared on at a point miles beyond the ceiling and the respirator hissed and blew. Reacher finished up and Vaughan stopped a minute later and stood back and looked.
“Good work,” she said.
“You too. Although you shouldn’t have to do that yourself.”
“I know.”
They repacked the supermarket bags and put them away in the cabinet. Reacher asked, “How often do you come?”
“Not very often,” Vaughan said. “It’s a Zen thing, really. If I visit and he doesn’t know I’ve visited, have I really visited at all? It’s self-indulgent to come here just to make myself feel like a good wife. So I prefer to visit him in my memory. He’s much more real there.”
“How long were you married?”
“We’re still married.”
“I’m sorry. How long?”
“Twelve years. Eight together, then he spent two in Iraq, and the last two have been like this.”
“How old is he?”
“Thirty-four. He could live another sixty years. Me too.”
“Were you happy?”
“Yes and no, like everyone.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Now?”
“Long term.”
“I don’t know. People say I should move on. And maybe I should. Maybe I should accept destiny, like Zeno. Like a true Stoic. I feel like that, sometimes. But then I panic and get defensive. I feel, first they do this to him, and now I should divorce him? But he wouldn’t know anyway. So it’s back to the Zen thing. What do you think I should do?”
“I think you should take a walk,” Reacher said. “Right now. Alone. Walking by yourself is always good. Get some fresh air. See some trees. I’ll bring the car and pick you up before you hit the four-lane.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ll find some way to pass the time.”
51
Vaughan said goodbye to her husband and she and Reacher walked back along the dirty corridors and through the dismal lounge to the entrance hall. The guy in the gray sweatshirt said, “Goodbye, Mrs. Vaughan.” They walked out to the carriage circle and headed for the car. Reacher leaned against its flank and Vaughan kept on going. He waited until she was small in the distance and then he pushed off the car and headed back to the entrance. Up the steps, in the door. He crossed to the hutch and asked, “Who’s in charge here?”
The guy in the gray sweatshirt said, “I am, I guess. I’m the shift supervisor.”
Reacher asked, “How many patients here?”
“Seventeen,” the guy said.
“Who are they?”
“Just patients, man. Whatever they send us.”
“You run this place according to a manual?”
“Sure. It’s a bureaucracy, like everywhere.”
“You got a copy of the manual available?”
“Somewhere.”
“You want to show me the part where it says it’s OK to keep the rooms dirty and have mouse shit in the corridors?”
The guy blinked and swallowed and said, “There’s no point cleaning, man. They wouldn’t know. How could they? This is the vegetable patch.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“It’s what it is, man.”
“Wrong answer,” Reacher said. “This is not the vegetable patch. This is a veterans’ clinic. And you’re a piece of shit.”
“Hey, lighten up, dude. What’s it to you?”
“David Robert Vaughan is my brother.”
“Really?”
“All veterans are my brothers.”
“He’s brain dead, man.”
“Are you?”
“No.”
“Then listen up. And listen very carefully. A person less fortunate than yourself deserves the best you can give. Because of duty, and honor, and service. You understand those words? You should do your job right, and you should do it well, simply because you can, without looking for notice or reward. The people here deserve your best, and I’m damn sure their relatives deserve it.”
“Who are you anyway?”
“I’m a concerned citizen,” Reacher said. “With a number of options. I could embarrass your corporate parent, I could call the newspapers or the TV, I could come in here with a hidden camera, I could get you fired. But I don’t do stuff like that. I offer personal choices instead, face-to-face. You want to know what your choice is?”
“What?”
“Do what I tell you, with a cheery smile.”
“Or?”
“Or become patient number eighteen.”
The guy went pale.
Reacher said, “Stand up.”
“What?”
“On
your feet. Now.”
“What?”
Reacher said, “Stand up, now, or I’ll make it so you never stand up again.”
The guy paused a beat and got to his feet.
“At attention,” Reacher said. “Feet together, shoulders back, head up, gaze level, arms straight, hands by your sides, thumbs in line with the seams of your pants.” Some officers of his acquaintance had barked and yelled and shouted. He had always found it more effective to speak low and quiet, enunciating clearly and precisely as if to an idiot child, bearing down with an icy stare. That way he had found the implied menace to be unmistakable. Calm, patient voice, huge physique. The dissonance was striking. It was a case of whatever worked. It had worked then, and it was working now. The guy in the sweatshirt was swallowing hard and blinking and standing in a rough approximation of parade-ground order.
Reacher said, “Your patients are not just whatever they send you. Your patients are people. They served their country with honor and distinction. They deserve your utmost care and respect.”
The guy said nothing.
Reacher said, “This place is a disgrace. It’s filthy and chaotic. So listen up. You’re going to get off your skinny ass and you’re going to organize your people and you’re going to get it cleaned up. Starting right now. I’m going to come back, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe next month, and if I can’t see my face in the floor I’m going to turn you upside down and use you like a mop. Then I’m going to kick your ass so hard your colon is going to get tangled up in your teeth. Are we clear?”
The guy paused and shuffled and blinked. Then he said, “OK.”
“With a cheery smile,” Reacher said.
The guy forced a smile.
“Bigger,” Reacher said.
The guy forced dry lips over dry teeth.
“That’s good,” Reacher said. “And you’re going to get a haircut, and every day you’re going to shower, and every time Mrs. Vaughan comes by you’re going to stand up and welcome her warmly and you’re going to personally escort her to her husband’s room, and her husband’s room is going to be clean, and her husband is going to be shaved, and the window is going to be sparkling, and the room is going to be full of sunbeams, and the floor is going to be so shiny Mrs. Vaughan is going to be in serious danger of slipping on it and hurting herself. Are we clear?”