Afterparty Part 34

Someone was holding my hand. And as soon I understood that, I recognized the cool, otherworldly touch of Dr. Gloria. I couldn't move and didn't want to; neither was I particularly interested in opening my eyes. But I could feel the doctor's fingers around my own, and I thought, So. I'm dead.

I didn't feel any anger about this, or disappointment. Only relief.

A decade ago I'd woken up in a hospital with Dr. Gloria sitting beside me, her hand in mine as it was now. My mind had been hammered flat by three facts: There was a Higher Power; It loved me; and there was no escaping It.

In the years that followed, I desperately tried to forget this revelation. Write it off. Discredit it with everything I knew about the untrustworthy brain, how NME 110 rewired it even further. Know it's a trick, and don't forget it's a trick.

But I wanted to be wrong. I wanted that ol' white magic. For a brief time, a decade ago, I'd become convinced that there was nothing to be afraid of. I had known that the universe was a living thing, and that it cared for me. But the moment had pa.s.sed, and I'd become convinced that it was all a sham.

Now, finally, that certainty had returned. I could stop struggling now. Give up this body. Surrender.

"Not just yet," Dr. Gloria whispered. I could feel her lips close to my ear. "Shhhh."

I heard the roar of water. No, air. Air hissing into me, out of me.

I did not open my eyes, but the doctor became visible nonetheless. She sat beside me, her left arm in my right, but I could barely feel her. Her touch was light as mist.

I tried to speak, but my throat wouldn't move, and suddenly I was choking. The doctor touched my forehead. "Easy, easy. It's just the trach tube. Don't try to talk out loud."

And then I thought, f.u.c.k. I'm alive.

"You're in the ICU of St. Vincent's, in Sante Fe," Dr. Gloria said. "You're going to be fine."

Oh, I was pretty sure I was not going to be fine. Moments ago I was free, a liberated soul. Now I was caged inside a body, a body which itself was strapped to a bed with a length of plastic jammed down its throat.

"So close," I said to her. I did not have to move my lips to speak with her.

"I'm sorry to do this to you," the doctor said. "But that's the way it has to be."

"Let me go."

"Stop it," Dr. Gloria said. "We have no time for self-pity. There are others you should be concerned with."

Others? Oh G.o.d.

"Sasha is fine," Dr. Gloria said. "Untouched. She was the one who called nine-one-one. Rovil and Esperanza kept you from bleeding out until the ambulance arrived."

I had faint memories of that: Esperanza pressing a towel into my shoulder; Rovil frowning, so scared he looked almost angry.

"And Edo?"

"You already know."

It was true. I'd seen the spray of blood as the bullets left his body, the way his big body fell, slowly, like a century oak cras.h.i.+ng to the ground.

"And me? What about me?"

"You were shot through the chest," she said. "Your right lung collapsed. The bullet did a lot of damage as it tumbled around your chest cavity. You're fighting an infection now."

"So pretty good, then."

She laughed. "You are not allowed to die, do you understand? Not for quite some time. And the man who is responsible for this will not bother you again."

"You saved me."

"That's my job."

"Your job is to tell me what I need to hear. I didn't think you'd come out and stab someone through the chest."

She shrugged. "It was time for me to reveal myself."

"Waited f.u.c.king long enough."

She laughed again. "I work in mysterious ways. Doubt is all well and good, but now it's time, again, to trust me completely."

"One more time," I said.

I slept for what felt like a long time, until gradually I became aware of a splotchy light against my eyelids. News of my body returned to me in stages, like distant armies reporting in: my throat (burning); my left arm (aching); my ribs (whinging like a rusty machine). No word yet from my legs. Pain ma.s.sed at the border, ready to rush in if I let down my guard.

Somewhere two women were speaking, though I couldn't make out their words. I didn't need to open my eyes to know where I was. Hospitals have a scent as complex as any perfume: The sickly sweet tang of Pine-Sol, the floral bombast of antibacterial foam coating a nurse's hands, the pervasive undercoat of bleach like a constant high whine. Baked into the walls and ceilings are lingering notes of inst.i.tutional food-Salisbury steak, chicken broth, burnt coffee-and the effluvia of human bodies. Mop and wipe all you want, but that will only whisk molecules of s.h.i.+t and blood and urine and pus into the air, where they will soak into the paint and infiltrate the acoustic tiles. Connoisseurs of medical establishments-and I consider myself an expert-can detect even the most subtle aromas: the milky odor of drug-resistant bacteria replicating on an IV tube; the fustiness of an old man's flannel s.h.i.+rt hanging in a cabinet two rooms away that will never be worn again; the tears of parents in the pediatric cancer ward.

A voice said, "Lyda?"

I opened my eyes, but the glare was too much. I closed them against the light.

"It's me," the voice said. "Rovil."

Oh, the damaged little shepherd boy. Faithfully standing watch. Was he afraid I'd slip out of reach?

I allowed my eyelids to raise a fraction, a tiny twist of a venetian blind. He sat in a chair beside my bed. Dr. Gloria stood behind him, leaning against the window, scrawling something on her clipboard. What was she always writing on that thing?

Rovil leaned close, his voice low. "I told them I was your boyfriend. It was the only way they'd let me stay in the room. I hope you don't mind." He seemed pleased with himself. "Can I get you anything? Water? Some ice chips?"

I shook my head. Or tried to.

"The surgery went well," Rovil said. "The doctor says you're recovering better than he expected. They've got you on antibiotics, and pain medication of course, and the antiepileptics indicated in your file."

Antiepileptics?

"Hmm," Dr. Gloria said. "We'll consider this a kind of test." There was something off about her. Her lab coat had become the same pale green as the wall, so that she seemed to be disappearing into it.

"Ollie," I said. My voice was a croak.

"I'm sorry, what?" Rovil asked.

I gathered my breath and said it again, and again, until he suddenly understood. "She's in town," he said quietly. "She heard about Edo and ... we've been in touch." He nodded toward the door. "She can't come in to the hospital, though. The police."

Of course. We were wanted felons.

"They've been here several times. Do you remember? There's an officer outside the door now, making sure no reporters get in. The media is camped out in the lobby."

Billionaire white man shot in his own home, I thought. Big news, if it was a slow news day.

"Well, the detectives will be back, now that you're awake. They've questioned me several times, and when I go back to New York tomorrow I have to check in there."

Tomorrow, I thought. Maybe the shepherd was not so faithful after all.

He looked uncomfortable, and leaned forward, hands clasped. "I'd like to ask a favor." His voice was very low; I could barely hear him over the sound of the machines in my room. "I told them that I didn't know that you and Ollie were here illegally. Do you understand? I told them we were just visiting an old coworker. Can you go along with that?"

The room began to swim. I closed my eyes. "Ollie," I said. "Please."

I think I said this aloud. I'm almost sure of it.

"Lyda. Wake up."

The room was dark. It was sometime in the thin hours between midnight and dawn. My skin felt hot. Rovil slumped in the guest chair, dead asleep. I should wake him, tell him the fever is cooking, and that I needed meds. I should call the nurse. I should ...

"It's getting close to my time to leave."

I looked to the right. A few feet away, light and shadows formed the shape of an angel. Her face was the orb of a street lamp glowing through the window; her wings, spread against the wall, were made from the light spilling through the open door.

"You're fading," I said.

"It's the meds," she said. "They're making it hard to get through." Someone pa.s.sed outside my door, and her wings seemed to flutter. "You could have silenced me a long time ago. All those prescriptions from doctors of the NAT ward? But you kept palming those pills, hiding them under the tongue. Strange behavior from a nonbeliever."

"Guardrails," I said. I had wanted to give her up, but I was afraid that without her I'd be dead. And now, finally, the automated delivery system of the IV drip proved to have more willpower than I did.

"You'll need to be stronger than Francine," Dr. Gloria said. "It's the withdrawal that killed her-not the judgment of G.o.d, but My absence."

"Not making any promises," I said.

"I want to tell you: Do not mistake the messenger for the message. Just because you won't be able to hear me soon, don't imagine that I'm gone."

I almost laughed. Oh, the double-talk of a feverish brain yammering to itself.

"I was with you in the beginning," she said. "And I'll be with you always."

In the beginning.

"Tell me," I said.

I didn't remember much from the night of the party. But I remembered the feel of the knife in my hand. And I remembered Gil taking it from me. Which was true?

"Please."

"You did not kill Mikala," the angel said. "And neither did I."

Her head seemed to tilt toward me. "Oh, Lyda. Did you really think that you were the kind of person who could murder your own true love?"

For the sake of our child? I thought. I didn't know. I was afraid that I could, and afraid that I couldn't.

"It's time to abandon your confidence in your own guilt," she said. "Your self-loathing is beginning to look self-serving. For the sake of the child, you've got to protect yourself."

"What are you talking about?"

A figure stepped into the room, blocking the light from the hallway. The movement broke Dr. Gloria into pieces. Where she'd stood had become nothing but patches of light and shadow, and I couldn't make out her pattern for the noise.

"Lyda." The angel's voice whispered like the hiss of an air vent, like the static of a radio. "You have been betrayed."

And then even her voice was lost to me.

A figure in scrubs bent over me. A woman. She touched my cheek. "You're burning up."

"Ollie?"

"I can't stay long," she said.

So clever. Dressing up as a nurse. The old tricks are the best tricks.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have walked out on you. If I'd been with you-"

"If," I said. "Dead." I meant to say, If you'd come you'd have been killed. The cowboy had been hired to kill us all. Or most of us. I finally understood why.

"Has her fever been this high before?" Ollie asked. She was talking to Rovil. He hovered behind her, a worried look on his face.

"She was like this after surgery," he said. "They thought she wouldn't make it, and then her fever suddenly dropped. A little miracle. I was glad to be there when she woke up."

I tried to speak, and Ollie asked, "What is it, Lyda? What do you need?"

"Ganesh," I said. "Where is he?"

"I don't understand," Rovil said.

"It's the fever talking," Ollie said. She straightened, but her eyes held mine. Oh, she was so quick. All she needed was the smallest nod to point her in the right direction.

"Call the nurse," she said to him. "I can't be here. I'll see you outside in a couple hours."