Detective Cross

Chapter 28

It was abnormally chilly and drizzling when Mickey climbed aboard the Hospital Center bus, taking his favorite seat at the window toward the back. He readjusted his windbreaker and the hoodie and vest beneath it so that he could breathe easier.

He wanted to explode. All day, the Senators talked and talked, and did jack shit. That one over-educated idiot from Texas talked for hours and said nothing.

How can that be? That’s gotta change. It’s gonna change. And I’m gonna be the one to change it. They’re gonna talk all night, right? I got all night, don’t I?

Mickey had watched the floor debate from the first gavel, growing increasingly angry. As his bus left Union Station and headed north, he felt woozy and suddenly exhausted. Being angry for hours and days on end was draining. Knowing he’d need his energy, he closed his eyes and drifted off.

In Mickey’s dreams, an elevator door opened, revealing a scary, antiseptic hallway inside Landstuhl Regional Medical Center next to the US air base at Ramstein, Germany. Men were moaning. Other men were crying. Outside a room, a priest was bent over in prayer with a woman.

The beautiful brunette woman next to Mickey trembled. She looked over at him, on the verge of tears. “I’m gonna need to hold your hand, Mick, or I swear to you I’ll fall down.”

“I won’t let you,” Mickey said, and took her hand.

He walked with her resolutely until they found the room number they’d been given at reception, and stopped. The door was closed.

“You want me to go in first?” he asked.

She shook her head. “It has to be me. He’s expecting me.”

She fumbled in her purse, came up with a nip bottle of vodka she’d bought in the duty free shop, and twisted off the cap.

“You don’t need that.”

“Oh, yes, I do,” she said, and drank it down.

Dropping the empty in her purse, she turned the handle and pushed open the door into a room that held a single patient lying in bed and facing a screen showing CNN. He was in a body cast with a neck halo. Bandages swathed his head. His left arm was gone. Both lower legs were missing above the knee. His eyes were closed.

“Hawkes?” she said in a quavering voice. “It’s me.”

The man inside the bandages opened his eyes and rolled them her way. “Deb?”

He grunted it more than said it. His jaw was wired shut.

Deb started crying. Shoulders hunched, clutching her purse like a life preserver, she moved uncertainly toward the foot of the bed, where Hawkes could see her better. “I’m right here, baby. So is Mickey.”

Mickey came into the room, feeling more frightened than anything. He waved at the legless creature inside the bandages and said, “Hi—”

Hawkes screamed. “Get him out! I told you not to bring him! Get him out, Deb!”

“But he’s—”

“Get him out!” Hawkes screeched. Monitors began to buzz and whine in alarm.

Shocked, feeling rejected, Mickey started toward the door. Then the tears came and his own anger flared.

Mickey spun and shouted. “Why didn’t you leave when you said you would? You left when you said you would, we never would have been blown up! Never!”

Somebody nudged him.

Mickey jerked awake, realized he’d been yelling in his sleep. He looked around, saw a kindly older man with a cane.

“Nightmare, son?” the old man said.

Mickey nodded, realizing how sweaty he felt under the windbreaker, the hoodie, and the vest, and then how close he was to his stop. Glancing past the older man, he scanned a woman reading a magazine, while the six or seven other passengers at the far back of the bus stared off into space with work-glazed expressions.

Time to really wake them up, Mickey thought when the bus pulled over across from Veterans Affairs Medical Center. This soldier’s done fooling around.

Already late and not wanting to miss any more of the evening meeting, Mickey got up, waited until the rear doors opened with a whoosh, and hurried off the bus.

He didn’t notice that the woman reading the magazine was now staring after him. He didn’t look back to see her get off the bus and trail him at a distance.