California Girl

31

ANDY GOT KATY and the kids to the hospital in Chula Vista first. Nick was in surgery and the waiting room desk nurse said it might go long.

He took her aside.

“Is he going to be all right?” asked Andy.

“He’s in surgery, Mr. Becker. That’s all we can say right now.”

“But what’s his condition? This is a hospital, you must know what his condition is. If you don’t, who does? Is he going to make it?”

“That’s all we can say right now. Please sit down, or maybe take a walk.”

Andy started toward Nick’s partner, Al Lobdell. Lobdell was standing with a group of what could only be plainclothes cops. He appeared to be explaining something very intense and complex, his hands out for emphasis, his big head forward.

Lobdell broke away and took Andy outside. Told him about the arrest warrant and the tip and waiting for Bonnett at the border. Pulling over his car in National City. Three guys with him. Bonnett making them, the foot chase, gunshots, the knife. Bonnett was critical, too. Shot up. Nick’s car shot up, too, two blown-out windows. But Lobdell had brought Nick and Bonnett both right here to the same damned hospital in Nick’s car, believe it or not. Faster than waiting for an ambulance.

When Andy had enough for a story he called it in to Teresa from a waiting room phone, dictating from his notes.

“My God, Andy. Is he going to make it?”

“They won’t tell me anything.”

“Are you okay? Are you coming home tonight?”

“It might be a couple of days. I’ll call you later tonight.”

He sat with Katy on a yellow sofa. No expression on her big pretty face. Willie and Stevie on either side of her with their feet swinging back and forth. Katherine sat on the carpet finding the hidden pictures in a Highlights magazine.

Andy had never seen them this quiet.

DAVID CAME into the waiting room half an hour later with Max and Monika.

Andy thought his brother looked pale and thin but somehow strong, too. Like rope. Like a man who had gone through bad things and survived.

His mother wore a hopeless expression. His father stared at the other people in the waiting room as if daring them to give him bad news.

Just then a doctor pushed hurriedly through the back doors and waved the adults into a prayer room. He shut the door.

“I’m sorry but Nick has died.”

Andy felt his body tilting back into the earth. Sensed the deep black hole into which he was falling. Stared into the doctor’s pained brown eyes, and opened his mouth but couldn’t speak.

“I need to see him,” said David.

“You can’t.”

“Of course I can. I’m his brother and an ordained minister. Take me to him immediately.”

Andy saw the strength gathered in his brother’s eyes. The same strength Andy had always seen there, but it was focused now. It was narrow and intense. Not broad and radiant. Looked more like fury than love. Ferocious and irresistible.

The doctor nodded, turned, and led the way.

DAVID’S WORLD tunneled down tighter with every step. He knew that his God and his faith and his brother would be salvaged or destroyed in the next minute.

He had never been in an operating room. The light was dim. He could sense that a fierce battle had just been lost here. Nick was under a bloody white blanket. A surgery nurse with her back to him was clanking implements from a stand into a stainless steel tray. The heart monitor showed a steady green horizontal line unbroken by life. A man in green scrubs and rubber gloves bloody to the wrists padded in, saw David, immediately turned and walked back out. The nurse folded back the blanket and revealed Nick’s face. David’s heart dropped and kept dropping. He touched his brother’s forehead. Not warm, really, but not yet cool.

David closed his eyes. Felt nothing of his own body now except for his hand on Nick’s head. Heard the clink of tools in the tray. Heard the human murmur outside the room. Heard the hum of lifesaving machines and waiting room music sneaking through the ducts and airwaves. He silently told his God that now was the time to answer his prayer. Now was the time for God to reveal Himself in a visible and useful way. Now was the time to break the indifferent silence. A miracle was required. This modest miracle would be a declaration of His being and His caring. Simple gratitude, not to all mankind but to one man and his family. A way to acknowledge the bottomless love that David had always felt for Him, his God, who had remained reluctant and unavailable for so long.

Your humble servant, David.

Amen.

David heard the breath catch in the nurse’s throat.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

Opened his eyes and followed hers to the rhythm on the scope. Then the pulse within the rhythm.