Chapter 2: A Matter of Timing and Incompetence

Santa Barbara, California

October 18, 2000

Three days after being shot in the chest by Jenny Johansen and rushed into emergency surgery, Jake was moved from the Trauma ICU to the Progressive Care Unit on the fifth floor of Cottage Hospital of Santa Barbara. The PCU was what was called a step-down unit, meaning it was a step down from intensive care for patients that were no longer considered critical but not quite non-critical enough to be cared for on the regular post-surgical unit or telemetry unit. He now had his own private room with a door that actually closed instead of being one of twenty patients in a large open ward.

He was in a considerable amount of pain and discomfort, much more so than he had been in immediately after being shot. Dr. Owens and his team had saved Jake’s ass (after Trower, the paramedic, had saved it first) but they had hacked and broken his body doing so. They had cut open his chest on the right side, just under his armpit, and apparently used a mechanical tool to spread the ribs apart so they could get in and repair the vascular and lung damage done by the bullet. Now, his ribs had been released without breaking any of them (other than the one that had been shattered by the bullet) but the muscles that moved those ribs had been stretched and damaged during the procedure and every breath he took, every cough (and he had to cough a lot) was an exercise in pain. The skin itself was closed with stitches but he still had a five inch laceration running from his armpit down to his nipple line that produced another kind of constant pain. In addition, he had a chest tube in his right side that was attached by a half-inch plastic hose to a clear plastic box that was hung near the floor at the foot of his bed and was attached to the suction on the wall behind him. Any movement of the torso caused that insult to flare with pain as well. And then there was the lung itself. Dr. Owens had not had to remove any of the upper lobe of his right lung since the bullet had passed straight through, but there were a lot of nerves in the lung lining it would seem. This caused yet another type of pain with each breath, an underlying burning pain that felt like something was stretching to its limit. And, as if that was not enough, his third rib was fractured where the bullet passed through it and every breath, every movement caused sharp pain there as well. And then there was his scapula. The bullet had passed through the bottom of the right shoulder blade on its way out, knocking a chunk out of it. This one did not hurt more when he breathed, it just hurt—a dull throb that just sat there all the time. At least they had taken the fucking urinary catheter out on the second day. They had wanted to keep it in for a full seventy-two hours post-op, but Jake had demanded that it go and they had finally acquiesced to those demands. It did still hurt when he pissed though.

It was 7:05 AM and Jake had been awake for three hours now, ever since the cute lab girl had come in to poke his arm and draw his morning labs so the doctors taking care of him could review them before they made their morning rounds. He was not typically awake during this part of the day unless he was working, but his sleep schedule had been severely disrupted since the bullet had passed through him and he had ended up here. He went through cycles of pain that ebbed and flowed in relationship to the pain medications they gave him. At first he had tried to refuse the opioids they offered due to his fear of becoming addicted to them like Darren had and then heading down Darren’s road once he was finally released from this place (and he was now pretty certain he was going to be released from this place eventually, and not taken down to the refrigerated room in the basement instead). He had made it less than six hours after awakening in the Trauma ICU before agreeing to take the stuff. He had been in agony and, more significantly, he had been unable to take anything resembling a proper breath due to the pain. His oxygen saturation kept dropping and he was warned that he would develop pneumonia if he could not expand his lungs a bit. And so, they had given him some Dilaudid in one of his many IVs (he had one in his neck and one in each arm) and that pain had faded down to a tolerable level. For the next twenty-four hours, they had given him more Dilaudid every four hours. Once they moved him to the PCU, they changed up the pain management routine to a smaller dose of Dilaudid every six hours augmented by a Norco-10 taken by mouth.

Though the opioids did a good job of controlling the pain, Jake did not like the way they made him feel. He was mystified as to why Darren, Coop, and every other narcotic addict even liked the shit. It made his head feel swimmy and imparted an unpleasant underlying nausea. He could not think straight while under their influence, could not concentrate on anything. If he tried to read, he would not be able to remember the paragraph he had just completed, could not hold anything in his memory long enough to process it. The same thing happened when he tried to watch TV. He would not be able to follow the plot of whatever he was watching. Most of the time when he was under the initial influence, he would just lay there in bed in a state somewhere between sleep and lucidity. He would hear what was going on around him but his brain would go into a strange dream-like state where strange images and thoughts would constantly cycle through.

The moment I don’t need this shit anymore, it’s gone from my life, he often thought, looking forward to that almost as much as he looked forward to going home.

Jake was near the end of his pain cycle when Joe, the Filipino day shift nurse who had just come on duty for the day, came into his room. He was short, maybe five-feet five inches, kind of chubby, and dressed in dark blue scrubs. He was hard to understand at times—English was most definitely not his first language—but an excellent nurse. He carried a basin full of stuff in his hands. “Good morning, Mr. Kingsley,” he told Jake in his thick accent. “Time for first of morning medications.”

“Good morning, Joe,” Jake returned. “And please, call me Jake.” This was at least the third time that Jake had asked him this.

“Jake ... yes,” he said doubtfully. Jake was sure that Joe knew who he was but so far he had made no mention of it, not even when Celia was in the room with him. “How are you feeling this morning?”

“Like a bundle of pain and misery,” Jake replied honestly.

Joe nodded sympathetically. He was pretty good at the compassion bit—or at least he faked it well. “I will give you pain shot first,” he said. “After it kick in, we get you over to chair for your antibiotics.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jake agreed. They made him sit in the chair at least four hours a day (not all at one time) to promote healing. It had been extremely uncomfortable at first but was starting to get more tolerable, particularly if they gave him the Dilaudid before making the transition.

“I see you have urine for me,” Joe said, seeing the half-full urinal sitting on a stand next to the bed. He pronounced it ‘your-ine’.

“Yeah,” Jake said. “That’s the four o’clock piss and the six-forty-five piss there.”

“Very good,” the nurse said. He quickly put on a pair of gloves and picked up the urinal. He peered at it carefully, looking at the measuring marks. “Five hundred twenty milliliters,” he said. “Very good. Normal output.”

“I try,” Jake said. The nurses, for whatever reason, were very interested in how much urine he produced, measuring and charting for the record each milliliter he squeaked out. They also kept track of how much water he drank, how much food he ate, and were always asking if he was passing gas or not.

The first thing Joe did after emptying the urinal in the toilet and washing his hands was perform a complete assessment on Jake. He looked under all of his bandages, examined his sutures and the incision they held closed, examined the site of the drain tubes and the chest tube itself. He emptied the drainage containers and charted how much had been in them.

“Very little drainage this morning,” Joe told him. “Maybe drains come out today.”

“That would be nice,” Jake said. “Does it hurt when they take them out?”

“Yes,” Joe said simply.

Jake sighed. “Something to look forward to, I guess.”

After listening to Jake’s lungs with a stethoscope, Joe pulled the covers down to the foot of the bed. Jake was wearing a hospital gown and a pair of black sweat pants that Laura had bought for him at a nearby Target store. Beneath the sweats he had on a pair of dark blue boxer briefs she had also bought. Joe pulled the sweats and the underwear down past Jake’s knees, baring all there was to bare. He then told Jake to roll up on his left side. Once Jake did this (and it was quite painful to do so) he began examining his bare ass, occasionally poking and prodding in places.

“What exactly are you looking for back there?” Jake asked him. “I was shot in the chest. Nothing happened to my ass.”

“Make sure you get no bedsores,” Joe told him. “When laying in bed as much as you do, they can start, especially on top of butt. Very hard to get rid of once there. That is why we make you roll up to left or right every few hours.”

“A bedsore at forty years old, huh?” Jake said, shuddering a little. “How’s it looking back there?”

“Look good,” Joe assured him. “No non-blanchable erythema, no chafing.”

“Good to know,” Jake said.

He was allowed to roll back to center and pull up his underwear and sweats. Joe then took off his yellow non-slip hospital socks, examined Jake’s feet and heels for a few moments, and then replaced the socks with a fresh pair. “All right,” Joe told him. “Look good, Mr. Jake. Maybe be out of here in few more days.”

“I can’t wait,” Jake said.

Joe next went through a ritual of asking Jake his full name, his date of birth, and if he had any allergies to medication. Jake had been annoyed with this ritual at first but now simply cooperated. One of the other nurses had made the analogy that the ritual was like the checklist that Jake went through before taking off in his airplane, it’s purpose to avoid mistakenly giving a patient the wrong medication or giving the patient some other patient’s medication.

“Okay,” Joe said when the checklist was complete. “I give you Dilaudid now.”

“Bring it,” Jake told him.

He injected the narcotic into the IV line in Jake’s neck, the one where the maintenance fluid was running at fifty milliliters per hour. Jake immediately felt the unpleasant head rush that came along with the initial blast of the medication hitting the opioid receptors. He rode it out and it faded some. At the same time, so did the pain. It did not go away, but became less important, a mere annoyance instead of a constantly nagging thing.

After that, he gave Jake his ten milligram Norco and a single Tylenol pill. Jake swallowed them down using the room temperature water from his little pitcher. Now it was time to get out of bed and into the chair next to it. Carefully, being mindful of the IV tubing and the chest tube hose, he rocked until he could get into a sitting position. He then slowly got to his feet, Joe keeping a hand on his arm the entire time, ready to catch him if he started to fall. Jake did not fall. He took a few steps forward, turned, and then carefully lowered his butt into the seat of the chair. He took a few deep breaths once this was accomplished, amazed and concerned about how much that simple act had taken out of him.

“When tubes come out, we get you walking,” Joe said. “You start to get strength back then. Shouldn’t take long. You look in good shape.”

“Yeah,” Jake agreed. “I run five miles at least three times a week. And before that, I spent five months jumping around on a stage for two and a half hours night after night.”

Joe nodded. “I see your concert show when you play in Los Angeles,” Joe told him. “My wife and I enjoy very much.”

“Thanks,” Jake said, pleased. “I’m glad you liked the show.”

“Tickets very expensive though,” Joe pointed out.

“But you were willing to pay the price, right?”

Joe nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Wife very big fan. She want to go as soon as she hear about you playing in Forum.”

“And so, you pulled out the old credit card and bought the tickets,” Jake told him. “And I got paid. Capitalism works, huh?”

Joe had no argument against this position. He started the first of three antibiotic infusions that Jake would receive that day, plugging it into the neck line and hooking it up to a pump. It would run for the next hour.

Breakfast was terrible. It consisted of a square egg patty, a stale bagel with low-fat cream cheese, a syrupy sweet fruit cup, a tiny hard granola bar, a carton of orange juice, a carton of low fat milk, and a cup of lukewarm instant coffee. Jake, still sitting in the chair, ate and drank everything on the platter, even the milk and the coffee. There was little to look forward to in a hospital so meals were greatly anticipated events, even if they sucked (the only thing remotely appetizing he had had so far had been the beef tips and noodles they had served him for dinner the night before). Soon after Joe took the meal tray away (after charting how much Jake had eaten and drank) there was a little knock at the door.

“Is your little amigo stowed away?” a female voice asked.

Jake smiled. It was Celia out there. When she and Laura showed up yesterday morning they had just walked in without knocking and caught him in the act of pissing into the urinal. Jake had not been terribly embarrassed by this—after all, both women had seen his little amigo many times—but it had been a bit awkward.

“He’s safe and sound at the moment,” Jake called back. “Come on in.”

The door opened and Celia came in, followed by Laura. The two of them were staying at the Ritz-Carlton of Santa Barbara, which had just opened for business two months before, sharing a suite on the top floor. They showed up each morning at the start of visiting hours at 8:00 AM. Celia, who came in her own car, usually left some time after lunch. Laura stayed until the close of visiting hours at 8:00 PM, eating her lunch and dinner in the cafeteria. Laura had told him that she and the beautiful Venezuelan singer who had been their lover for three years had renewed their friendship quite easily, but not the physical relationship. They slept in separate beds and the only affection they showed each other was the occasional hug. A pity. Jake had hoped that perhaps his wounding would maybe bring them back together in that special way.

“Good morning, sweetie,” Laura greeted cheerfully. She was always in a good mood these days since she found out her husband was likely not going to die.

“Hey, hon,” he greeted. “It’s okay to hug and kiss me. The nurse gave me a sponge bath last night and I brushed my teeth once they got me in the chair.”

“Fair enough,” she said. She came over and leaned down. She put her arms around him and hugged him as tight as she dared before kissing him soundly on the mouth. Jake quite enjoyed the feel of her in his arms and the smell of her freshly showered body.

“Good morning, Rev,” Celia greeted next. She too came over and hugged him and then kissed him on the cheek—a brief, sisterly peck. Nevertheless, he was thrilled at feeling her body against his. She also smelled quite appealing.

“Is the circus still out there?” he asked, referring to the crowd of media people, paparazzi, videographers, and just plain curious who gathered at the entrance to the hospital every morning just before the start of visiting hours and usually stayed until sunset. It was now known that Jake Kingsley had indeed been shot, that he was not dead, was in guarded condition currently, and that Jenny Johansen, an obsessed fan—the same obsessed fan who had allegedly tried to kidnap his former girlfriend back in 1989—had been arrested for the shooting and was currently being held at the San Luis Obispo County jail.

“They’re still there,” Laura confirmed. “I think we managed to slip by them today, right C?”

“I’m pretty sure we did,” Celia agreed. “No one shoved a camera or a microphone in my face, no one shouted a question at me. If they saw us, they didn’t catch up to us in time.”

They had caught up to the two of them the day before. A whole gaggle had accosted them as they made their way to the main entrance of the hospital, shouting out their questions, demanding to know why Celia was here, trying to ask about Jake’s condition, wanting to know if Jake had been having an affair with Johansen (that was the most asinine suggestion of them all—after all, Johansen’s mugshot was now public record and had been published far and wide). Laura and Celia had ‘no comment’ed their way into the building, giving no information whatsoever. That had not stopped their visit from being nationwide news, broadcast on every channel throughout the rest of the day.

Celia sat down on the edge of his bed and Laura sat in the chair next to him. They talked a little about how he was doing.

“I still hurt everywhere when the pain medicine wears off,” he told her. “And the hospital doc, that Indian guy...” he could not remember his name. The narcotics were at work on him.

Laura did, however. “Dr. Singh,” she reminded.

“Right, Singh,” Jake said, shaking his head a little. “I should remember that. I’m a fuckin’ singer, after all. Anyway, he told me last night that all my labs look good. Hemoglobin is back to almost normal after the blood they gave me and my own body making more.”

“That’s good to hear,” Laura said. They had had to give Jake two units of crossmatched O-negative blood after his surgery to replace the estimated two units he had lost due to the internal bleeding and the surgery itself. Jake was now grateful he had donated blood after Celia’s ectopic pregnancy. He didn’t feel like a mooch on the system now.

“He also says I can’t leave until I poop,” Jake added sourly. “He was very firm on that fact.”

“Still no movement?” Celia asked.

“Not a crumble,” Jake said. “It feels like I have to, but every time I try—and it is rather undignified sitting on that portable commode next to the bed knowing there is a nurse out there waiting to see how it goes—nothing happens. They say it’s the trauma, the surgery, and the pain medications that are causing it. They’ve been giving me those stool softener things with each round of pills, but no results yet.”

“I had that problem in the week before Caydee was born,” Laura said. “It is miserable. I’d rather have the opposite problem than constipation.”

“Amen to that shit,” Jake agreed.

“Literally,” Celia added, giving them all a little chuckle.

“Speaking of Caydee,” Laura said, “I’m going to have Meghan drive her down here tomorrow.”

“Oh yeah?” Jake asked.

“Yeah,” Laura confirmed. “She misses us and she’s very worried about you. I want to bring her here to the hospital so she can see you’re all right. She can stay in the hotel room with me and C until we go home.”

“I actually can’t wait to see her,” Celia said with a smile. “I’ve so missed that little ginger girl.”

“She’s missed you too,” Laura said.

“Do you think it’ll be okay though,” Jake asked, “her seeing me like this? She still thinks I’m just sick, right?”

“Right,” Laura said, “but she’s not even three years old. She doesn’t know the difference between a sick person and a gunshot victim. She’ll just be glad to see her daddy talking and feeling him hug her and kiss her. Trust me. This is for the best.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Besides, Meghan wants to see you too. She’s also worried about you. She’ll stay the night with us on the couch in the sitting room and then drive back home in the morning.”

“What about you, C?” Jake asked carefully. “Are you heading back to LA soon?”

She shook her head. “No,” she told him. “I’m staying until they cut you loose from this place. I’ll go back home then.”

Jake smiled. “Thanks,” he said. “It’s nice having you here.”

“What are friends for?” she asked.

Jake went into one of his narcotic dozes a few minutes later. His eyes closed and his breathing became slow and regular. He continued to hear what was going on around him. He heard Celia and Laura discussing him for a few moments and then setting up a game of rummy on his dinner table and starting to play. He paid little attention to this, however. His mind was occupied with a little movie playing inside his brain. It had something to do with space travel, and the currency of the future space travelers, and how they would take a piss in zero gravity. Was there some kind of device available for that? There had to be, right? But what would it look like? How would it work? Where would the urine go? Would they have artificial gravity? How would it work if they did? These seemed like the most important questions in life at the moment.

He was jerked out of these ponderings some undeterminable time later by the sound of a knock at the door. His eyes opened and his mind cleared reluctantly as he heard Laura tell the knocker to come in. He looked up and saw a man he did not know. He was a bald man, in good shape, wearing a suit and a tie. Jake could see that he had a gun strapped to his right hip. There was a gold San Luis Obispo County sheriff’s department badge clipped just in front of the gun.

Laura knew the man. “Detective Falck,” she greeted with a smile. “Come on in.” She turned to Jake. “Sweetie? Are you awake?”

“I think so,” Jake said slowly.

“This is Detective Falck from the sheriff’s department,” Laura said. “He’s the one in charge of the case. He interviewed me about everything before I drove up here that day.”

“How are you doing, Mr. Kingsley?” Falck asked politely.

“Please, call me Jake,” Jake told him. “And it looks like I’m going to live.”

“That is good news indeed,” Falck said. He turned back to Laura. “And how are you doing, Laura? That was quite the traumatic experience you had the other day.”

“I’m much better now that I know Jake is going to make it,” she said.

“I understand completely,” Falck said. “You’re a very lucky man, Jake.”

“Am I?” he asked. “I don’t feel so lucky at the moment.”

“But you are,” Falck said. “The reason I’m here is to give you some official updates on the case and share some information with you. We’ve been working pretty hard these last few days, running down all the leads, looking at all the evidence, putting everything together. We now have a pretty good idea of what led to Johansen walking into that store and trying to shoot Laura.”

“Oh?” Laura asked. “Do tell.”

“I will,” Falck said. “First, the lucky part. We ran the gun that Johansen used to shoot you, Jake. It’s a SIG Sauer P220 chambered for 9mm ammunition.”

“How did she get it?” Celia asked. “She has a restraining order in place. Aren’t they not supposed to sell guns to someone with a restraining order in place against them?”

“Legitimate gun stores are not supposed to do that,” Falck confirmed, “but Ms. Johansen did not acquire that weapon from a legitimate gun store. She got it from “some guy” who lives in the apartment complex where she has been living the last two years. We ran the serial number and found the weapon had been reported stolen from a house in West Hollywood three years ago. God only knows how many hands it has passed through since then. It was sold to Ms. Johansen for the price of forty dollars, cash, four weeks before she showed up in San Luis Obispo County.”

“How nice,” Jake said sourly.

“Isn’t it?” Falck replied. “She apparently bought the weapon early last month.”

“Did she tell you all this?” Jake asked.

“She did,” Falck said. “She gave us a complete rundown on everything. A full confession. We didn’t even have to prompt her much. She waived her right to an attorney during questioning and she waived her right to remain silent. She wanted to tell her story. She seemed to think that we would sympathize with her and drop the charges once we heard why she thought Laura had to die.”

“So ... she’s further around the bend than she was in 1989 when she tried to kidnap Helen?” Jake asked.

“Considerably further,” Falck agreed. “I have no doubt that her lawyer—she finally got a public defender assigned to her yesterday now that she is formally charged with attempted first-degree murder—will utilize the insanity defense. I don’t think it will work though. Yes, she’s coo-coo for Coco Puffs without a doubt, but the amount of planning that she put into this thing strongly suggests someone who was aware that her actions were criminal and wrong.”

“You don’t think she’ll walk then?” Laura asked.

“No way she is going to walk,” Falck said. “If we convict her of all charges—attempted first-degree murder, illegal possession of a firearm, possession of a stolen firearm, violation of a permanent restraining order, and even burglary since she entered that grocery store with the intent to commit a felony—she’ll do ten years minimum, probably at least fifteen. And even if, by some miracle, her PD succeeds in having her declared legally insane, she’ll spend at least ten years in a state psych hospital—probably the one in Coalinga since the one over by your recording studio is male only—before anyone would even think about letting her out.”

“Then we won’t have to worry about her trying to kill me again for at least ten years?” Laura said with a frown.

Falck simply shrugged. “You can look at the glass as half empty or half full,” he said. “I’m just laying down the facts.”

“I understand,” Laura said. “You’ve been doing a great job. I’m sorry if I sound ungrateful.”

“I understand, Laura,” he said. He then turned and looked at Celia. “May I say that it is an honor to meet you, Ms. Valdez? My wife and I are big fans of your music. We saw you play in Los Angeles the last time you were there. An incredible show.”

“Thank you,” Celia said. “And you can call me Celia.”

“I appreciate that, Celia,” Falck said. “Those were the most expensive concert tickets I’ve ever bought before, but well worth the price.”

“Capitalism works,” Jake said for the second time that day.

“Indeed, it does,” Falck said. “Anyway, we were talking about your luck in this thing, Jake. As it turns out, though Ms. Johansen knew where to get her crazy-ass hands on a firearm, she does not know much about them. She did take the time to practice with her new piece, however. She told us that she made at least five trips to the gun range in Los Feliz before heading out on her mission to San Luis Obispo to free you from the evil red-headed temptress you are married to. We checked in with the gun range in question and they did have record of her visits and her purchases there.”

“They had record of it?” Celia asked.

“Yes,” Falck said. “You have to present ID at every visit. Those records are kept.”

“And ... again, no one realized that she was using a stolen gun and that she had a restraining order against her?” Celia asked.

“They did not,” Falck confirmed. “Although the range does sell firearms and would have done the background check had Johansen attempted to purchase one, she brought her own gun and only purchased target ammunition. The store does not run the serial numbers of guns their customers bring, they only check the weapons for safety. And they do not run background checks on customers who are only purchasing ammunition. There is no way Johansen would be flagged there.”

“I see,” Celia said with a grunt.

“In any case, we have documentation of five visits to the range between September 12 and October 11. At the first four visits, she bought two boxes of target ammo—a hundred rounds—and stayed for almost an hour. On the fifth visit, however, she bought three boxes of target ammo but still only stayed for an hour. She confirmed for us that during her practice sessions she would fire off a hundred rounds at the targets she bought. On the fifth visit, she also fired off a hundred rounds and took the third box home with her. She called this third box her ‘mission ammo’ and it was from this box that she loaded up the magazine in the P220 with. This is very fortunate for you, Jake.”

“How so?” Jake asked, not understanding where the detective was going with this. He had fired guns a few times with the Best family when visiting them in Pocatello, but he knew next to nothing about them otherwise.

Falck explained. “She shot you with target ammunition instead of hollow-points, which is what someone who knew guns would have used for such a mission when the mission involved killing someone.”

“Hollow-points,” Jake said. “I’ve heard the term before, but I’m not entirely sure what it means.”

“Hollow-points are just that,” Falck explained. “The point of the bullet is hollow. That makes it mushroom out to twice the diameter it was in the barrel when it hits a soft target like a human chest. It slows the penetration down and rips up the area around its path much more extensively and raggedly. Jacketed hollow-points are what me and all the other cops in this state carry in our pistols because they have stopping power. If Johansen would have known to buy hollow-point ammo for her mission, you very likely would have died right there in the grocery store aisle before the paramedics could get to you. Even if you hadn’t, it is unlikely that you would have made it here to the trauma center.”