Burning Time

Epilogue

By April’s watch it was nearly eleven o’clock. The lights were on in the two-patient room, and her hospital bed was still cranked up in a sitting position. A male nurse had been in a few minutes before to tell her not to push the button that made it go down. They wanted her to sleep sitting up. Several pillows served as a prop for her ankle, which had a small makeshift splint on it instead of a heavy cast, because of the burns. Puffy bandages covered patches of her feet, ankles, hands, wrists, and head. There were none on her face but two on the top of her head, where the odds were good, she’d been told, that her hair would eventually grow back.

The other bed as empty. There was no way of telling if the lights were on for the expected arrival of another patient sometime soon, or simply because no one had thought of turning them off. April wanted out. She felt as naked without her gun as she did without her clothes. For four hours different doctors and technicians had poked and prodded and x-rayed her. An Indian with a turban had covered her burns with various kinds of antibiotic grease and dressed them with the special gauze pads that weren’t supposed to stick. There was an IV needle embedded in her arm. She saw no reason for the IV, or for staying the night, and told the balding doctor whose ID tag said he was the orthopedist that all she needed was a cane and a release. But he had not been interested in her opinion.

In fact, she was all too well aware that the hospital staff could do anything to her, and no one from the department would stop them or complain. The police yielded their authority in hospital zones. They stood outside doors marked Do Not Enter, waiting endlessly for treatment and information just like anybody else. It really pissed her off.

Who had taken her things away and locked them up—her badge, her gun, her handbag? Her notebook with her important telephone numbers? She didn’t like this. The steady ache of the burns made her feel feverish, but that didn’t bother her as much as the pulsating pain in her ankle. The ankle was badly swollen and couldn’t support any weight at all. She didn’t have the feeling she’d be using it anytime soon.

Outside in the hall it had grown quiet. April knew that quiet, when the hospital carts had finished dispensing juice and medication and the graveyard shift was about to come on. When she’d been in uniform, she had guarded suspects in hospitals, sat outside their doors all night long. She’d taken people to emergency rooms for any number of reasons many times over the years, even crazies to Bellevue to be locked up in the middle of the night. It always took hours. This was the first time she had been in the hospital as a patient. She didn’t like it.

Twelve o’clock was shift change in the precinct. She wondered what was happening in the squad room now. Probably everybody, except Mike and her, was cleaning things up, typing reports, congratulating themselves for getting the hostage out unharmed. Blaming them for the damage. April was upset because the car she had signed out was a blackened burned-out wreck. But that was the least of it.

She turned her head toward the window. The shade was down, so she couldn’t even see what side of the building she was on. She knew she was in Queens, had been taken to the nearest hospital. Her mother had been notified and, driven by the need to scream at her for a while for being a cop and not a smart one, had managed to find her way to the hospital.

Why did April have to get blown up, Sai Woo had wanted to know. A smart cop would have been outside, not inside. No way to tell her that the hostage had been inside, so inside was where she had to go. Sai Woo left her daughter some oranges in a string bag, even though it was clear April couldn’t use her hands to peel them.

She closed her eyes agianst the memory. Moments later she heard a shuffling in the doorway but didn’t turn her head, in case it was a mouse.

“Hey, querida.” It wasn’t a mouse.

“Wrong room, buster. Beat it.” April tried to sit up higher, turning her upper body toward the door. Then she sank back in shock.

What the—? The man who stood in the doorway was wearing paper slippers, pale blue hospital pajamas, and a matching robe. Half of his face was swathed in bandages.

“Oh God, Mike, is that you?” April said softly.

“As far as I know. How are you doing?”

“Oh, I’m fine. I shouldn’t even be here.…” The words trailed off. He could walk, but he looked bad. “They can give you something to make you sleep,” she said slowly. “The nurses don’t tell you, but there’s lots of stuff you can have.” He had called her querida. He must be in a lot of pain.

He lifted his shoulders, then winced. “An ugly little guy told me they’re real good with plastic surgery these days. I wondered if he was an example of their work.… Anyway, my eye’s all right, and the rest of the body still works.”

April guessed he was more worried about his looks than he was about the pain. She didn’t know what to say.

He shuffled over and sat in the chair. “How do you feel?”

“I want to go home. Can you get me out of here?”

“And miss spending the night with you, are you kidding?” He leaned over, searching for the TV monitor.

“Forget it. It’s not hooked up. You have to give them a certified check or something.” April wanted to put her hand out on the bed, maybe touch him.

Sanchez had put his body in front of hers. He had saved her face. Her human face and her Chinese face, too. Now she would always see him lunging through that curtain of smoke, through the fire, coming back for her, risking his life to get her out of the way of what hit him. Then he told her it was nothing. It was what a rabbi does.

So now Sanchez was her rabbi as well as her supervisor. And he called her querida. No one in her whole life had ever used such an endearment in connection with her. She believed the word meant darling or sweetheart. Sanchez probably had a fever.

“I’ll order out, we’ll watch a little TV … maybe fall asleep after a while. Then tomorrow you can tell the world you slept with me.” He laughed, then grimaced.

“Anybody ever tell you you can’t sleep with the person you’re supervising?” April murmured. “Rabbi-ing.”

“Nope.” He punched the button and the TV came on.

“I thought it wasn’t—”

“Stick with me, I have special powers.”

“Oh, come on, Mike, I don’t want to watch TV, I want to go home.”

He checked his watch. “Tomorrow, maybe you’ll go home. Tonight we’ll watch this.”

He pushed the buttons, looking for the station he wanted. April allowed her eyelids to droop. Suddenly a voice she knew came out of the speaker.

Her eyes popped open in time to see Sergeant Joyce’s image jump out at them from the screen. She was standing with Arnold Diaz in front of the smoldering wreckage on Hoyt Avenue, surrounded by a gawking crowd. Powerful lights had been turned on the area, but it was impossible to see very much except for the sergeant.

“Look at her!” April shrieked. She couldn’t believe it. Joyce’s hair was combed and she looked extraordinarily good. Her voice was confident and professional and warm as she told the tristate area how she personally had located the abducted actress, Emma Chapman. How her detective squad’s operation from the Twentieth Precinct on Manhattan’s Upper West Side had succeeded in freeing the hostage unharmed.

“Miss Chapman has been reunited with her family and is reported to be in good condition,” she said, smiling widely, implying that New York’s Finest were very, very fine.

She did not mention Emma’s body art, but just before the microphone was whisked away from her face, she did take a moment to mention the hospitalization of two unnamed squad detectives for the minor injuries they sustained during the rescue of the abducted woman.

The two nameless detectives were happy to hear that the hospital had listed them in stable condition and that they were expected to be released soon.