Chapter 3

Susan—since she'd said she preferred it I chose to think of her that way still rather than as Ariel—wouldn't let me just leave out the front of the building as I usually did. Instead she told me to take the back fire exit and get to the garage that way. I thought she was overdoing her caution, but given that what she'd told me about this Walter person had been borne out so far I went along.

We got to the car without incident, though, and were on our way. Again at her insistence I drove cautiously, keeping a weather eye out for cars that might be following me, but I saw none.

Along the way I struggled for some kind of understanding of what the hell was going on. I'd always had a pretty strong disbelief in ghosts, or spirits, or whatever you want to call them. And if that call from the hospital was to be believed, she was neither anyway. So who, or more precisely what, was this disembodied manifestation of my beloved that I was spending all this quality time with? I tried to get her to tell me her feelings, but that went nowhere; so far as she was concerned she'd simply leaped instantaneously from being run down on the street to appearing in my apartment with a pressing urge to protect me. There was no transition, no "light" from which she'd retreated, nothing. One second on the street, the next waking me up. Nothing in between.

Well, there'd come a time for sorting this out. Meantime I had other concerns. The nurse had sounded pretty grim on the phone, and my priority was to do everything I could to keep her alive.

The hospital e.r. was quiet when I got there, but when I told the desk nurse who I was and who I wanted to see I got kind of a funny look. "Sir, I'll need to see some i.d., please," she told me brusquely. Without thinking much about it I whipped out my wallet and showed her my driver's license. She gave it a careful going over and then called a colleague—apparently her boss—to look at it, too.

The second woman also studied it, glancing back and forth to compare me with the photo. Finally she nodded, apparently satisfied at last.

"Why?" came Susan's voice suddenly in my head. "Why are they being so careful?"

It seemed a fair question, so I asked it. The two nurses looked at each other for a minute. "Sir, you're the second man to identify himself as Lawrence Costain in the last ten minutes," the supervisor finally told me. "When we asked the other one for identification, just routinely, he said he'd left it in his car and would go get it. He hasn't been back, and now you show up, so..."

"Shit!" I could hear Susan exclaim. "Ask her what the other guy looked like."

"Can you describe the other man?" I asked.

"Well ... he was tall, taller than you. And he had very short light-colored hair, kind of a buzz-cut. His eyes were blue, very piercing. That's about all I can remember. Do you know him?"

"Walter," I could hear Susan say. "Dammit, he knows I'm alive still."

It jarred me, but I focused on the nurse. "No, I don't know him," I said. "Maybe some reporter, or just a thrill-seeker. Look, can you take me back to Susan now?"

"The doctor's with her just now, you'll have to wait," she said. "She'll be out to talk to you as soon as she's free, the doctor I mean. Just take a seat, Mr. Costain. It shouldn't be too long."

"Can you tell me how bad Susan's hurt?" I persisted.

"There's really nothing I can say, sir. You'll have to wait and talk to the doctor."

It was the usual medical runaround. Hospitals get obsessive about patient privacy; only doctors are allowed to say squat about the patient and even they're pretty cautious about how much they'll say and to whom they'll say it. Nurses and other functionaries are told to keep their mouths shut to everybody, no exceptions. Like it or not, there was nothing I could do but wait.

And wait. And wait. I'd glanced at the clock on the wall when I'd walked in, it had read 12:10. When I finally saw some bustle going on behind the desk and a woman wearing medical scrubs started over to me, it was going on 1:00.

"Mr. Costain?" she asked. I stood up, nodding my head. "Would you come with me please?"

She took me into the back, past a couple of curtained-off areas to an empty consultation room. The moment we were in I asked her how Susan was.

"She has some serious injuries. At the moment—"

"Can I see her?" I interrupted.

"She's in surgery right now. If you'll allow, I'll try to tell you as much as I can."

"Go ahead."

"Ms. Malone was brought in unconscious with numerous lesions and abrasions as well as multiple fractures. She had apparently been struck by an automobile moving at what I would estimate was a fairly high rate of speed, perhaps thirty or thirty-five miles an hour. Her worst injuries were to her limbs and her lower torso. Both legs were broken in several places, one arm suffered a compound fracture, her pelvis was broken, and there was some trauma to her head, which I would suspect occurred when she struck the pavement."

It sounded grim. "What are her chances?" I asked.

She shook her head. "At this juncture it's impossible for me to tell you. All I can say is that I'd judge her condition to be critical. We'll know more after the surgery."

That wasn't good enough. "Doctor, ma'am, you've seen a lot of patients, I'm sure. If you had a hundred of them in the shape Susan is in, how many would you expect to live? Eighty? Sixty? Fifty? Fewer?" I went on when she hesitated.

"When you put it that way ... I don't know. More than half, I think. But please, I'm only giving you my best guess," she protested when I broke out in a smile. "If you hadn't phrased your question as you did, I wouldn't have said that much. She's a very sick young woman right now. They'll be able to tell you a little more when surgery is finished, I'll let the o.r. nurse know you're here."

We went back and forth a bit more, but she was clearly itching to get away—there were, I knew from my time in the lobby, more patients to be seen—and I'd got as much out of her as I could.

The nurses took over as soon as the doctor had left; there were forms, and more forms, and still more forms that had to be completed. The first ones, the ones to which they gave the highest priority, were of course financial—doctors and hospitals want to get paid above all—and then there were stacks of additional forms asking for her entire medical history.