Trophies And Dead Things

Twenty

Anne-Marie and I sat in the fluorescent glare of the nearly empty waiting room at San Francisco General's trauma center. Her face was pale and tense; her fingers twitched convulsively as they clutched at my hand. Hank was in surgery, had been for quite some time. The bullet had entered the right side of his chest; the doctor had told us there was no way of assessing the internal damage until they did an exploratory.

Greg had driven me here from All Souls, taking my statement on tape in the car. Ostensibly his purpose in coming was to interview the sniper, John Weldon-upon whom I had inflicted only a shoulder wound-but I knew that his major concern was for Hank. Reporters had arrived at the same time we did; Greg had given them a brief statement, but I'd refused to talk with them at all. Now they were gone, and Greg and Hank were both somewhere beyond a pair of swinging doors that gave admittance to the hospital proper. Anne-Marie and I waited alone.

By now I felt mostly numb. My guilt at failing to protect Hank had dulled; nobody-not the folks at All Souls, Greg, Anne-Marie herself-blamed me. Even my dread at what the outcome of his surgery might be was curiously deadened. In spite of the people around us and the occasional arrival of other victims of crime or accident, it was as if we were trapped in an emotional vacuum, deprived of all but the slightest of sensory stimuli.

At around three-fifteen Greg came through the swinging doors. He didn't look much better than Anne-Marie; his impassive cop's facade had cracked, leaving his face ashen, his eyes worried. He sat down next to me and took the hand Anne-Marie wasn't holding, then put his arm around me so he could pat her on the shoulder.

"Any word?"

I shook my head.

"Chest wounds-sometimes they look worse than they are."

"He's been in there a long time."

Anne-Marie's fingers tightened again, and I realized what I'd said wasn't helping her any. "I'm sure he's going to be okay, though," I added. "It's just that there was so much blood, and Hank-well, unconscious isn't a state you associate with him." Oh, God, I was only making it worse! Shut up! I told myself.

Anne-Marie said, "Stop worrying about me, Shar. I know it's bad, but I can handle it. You've got every right to be shaken up. You love Hank, too."

We fell silent then. Behind us a baby began to cry. Its screams rose to a crescendo that made me want to scream, too. Finally the mother took it outside.

I realized Greg hadn't mentioned the sniper. "Were you able to talk to him?"

He didn't have to ask who I meant. "Briefly. He was conscious and lucid; you shot him high up in the shoulder, no serious damage done. From what he admitted to me, it was pretty much as you theorized, and what he wouldn't tell me I'd already gotten from Letterman." Greg had received the information on John Weldon only minutes before he'd caught the call about Hank's shooting.

Odd that I felt so little curiosity about the man I'd pursued and wounded. It took an effort to say, "Tell me about him."

"He's a superpatriot. Was an army CID officer in 'Nam. Apparently he developed a James Bond complex, spied on people he considered subversive or disloyal. From what he admitted to me, he became obsessed-'justifiably concerned' is how he put it-with the 'peacenik' group that hung out at the Rouge et Noir. Followed them, documented what he considered their transgressions."

"But he wasn't doing that officially?"

"No. When he tried to pass the information along to his superior officers, he was told to stick to his job. That only made him more fanatical, and eventually they decided to transfer him stateside. He was discharged in seventy-two, and shortly afterward he suffered the first of several breakdowns. Since then he's spent most of his life in V.A. hospitals, but six months ago he seemed to be cured, and was released on the condition that he continue with outpatient counseling at Letterman. From there it happened just about the way you thought it might have."

For a while I didn't speak, staring down at the checkerboard pattern of the linoleum. Anne-Marie's hand was limp; for all I knew she might not have been listening to Greg's description of the man who had shot her husband.

Finally I said, "We're only now beginning to fully realize what that war did to us. It destroyed a lot more people than those who died in Asia. And it didn't discriminate-dove, hawk, civilian, military, American, Vietnamese. All of us were wounded one way or another-"

Suddenly Anne-Marie's fingers clenched mine. I looked at her and saw she was staring at a surgeon in blood-spattered scrubs who had come through the doors and was conferring with the nurse at the desk. She motioned toward us, and he started over, but Anne-Marie stood and hurried to him. They spoke briefly, then she turned to Greg and me, her face, if anything, more drawn.

"He's out of surgery," she said. "They're going to let me see him."

I asked, "Will he be-"

"They don't know yet. It could be hours. Why don't you and Greg go home, get some rest."

"No, we'll-"

"Please, Shar. After I see him, I think I want to be alone for a while."

I nodded, feeling unreasonably shut out and rejected. Anne-Marie followed the surgeon out of the waiting room.

She does blame me, I thought.

After a bit Greg asked, "You okay?"

I made a motion with my hand that was meant to indicate yes. What it said was "only marginally."

"Come on." He stood, tugging at my other hand. "I'll drive you home."

"No, to All Souls. My car's still there."

He pulled me from the chair, put both hands on my shoulders, and looked into my eyes for a long moment. Whatever he saw there seemed to satisfy him, because he nodded and led me out to his unmarked car.

Whenever I am very upset, I head for water. In fact, the one and only time I ran away from home, I packed a small wicker basket with my stuffed kangaroo, some Uncle Scrooge comic books, and three peanut-butter sandwiches and took the bus-transferring twice-to a beach my family frequented. My father found me there hours later and drove me home.

So at four-thirty that morning-driven by depression and a fear of finding reporters camped on my doorstep-I went to Point Lobos and sat in the foggy pre-dawn on the edge of the ruins of the old Sutro Baths, staring to sea at the hazy outlines of the Seal Rocks.

The area out there between Land's End and Ocean Beach is normally infested with tour buses and RVs-which in my opinion take up far more than their fair share of God's earth-but at that hour on a foggy, drizzly morning it was deserted except for a few early joggers, dog walkers, and me. I could smell the sea odors, hear the sea lions; foghorns up by the Gate answered their cries. Sitting on the wet foundations of what was once an aquatic playground on the edge of the Pacific, unheedful of the chill and dampness of the seat of my pants, I gave some thought to the way that things should be, and the way that they are.

People should lead productive lives, pursuing-if never catching-the myth of happiness. They should not be made to feel so powerless and victimized that in turn they attempt to become the powerful, the victimizers. They should not die senselessly-either on the battlefield or the city streets. And they should not be driven so insane that they either become an attacker or self-destruct.

Of course I knew that the way things are is an entirely different matter. All of those should-nots happen, over and over again. As a people we profess to hold lofty ideals- equality, peace, stop the killing, save the whales-but given what I'd seen in my career, I'd begun to wonder how many of us truly believe them. Or believe in their feasibility, the human animal being what it is…

The sky was lighter now, but the fog showed no signs of lifting. I could make out the rocks where the sea lions raised their heads and bellowed, but not the line of the horizon. Although it promised to be a gray Friday, I kept sitting there, waiting for some hopeful sign. After a while, when none was forthcoming, I got up and took myself home for a couple hours of sleep.

My sleep was restless and when I woke around nine, I felt even more depressed-a victim both of the persistent fog and the dreadful events of the night before. Unlike last Saturday morning, the dream I'd had before waking came back immediately, with disturbing clarity.

I'd been seated among a crowd in a large auditorium, and on the stage a distinguished man in scholar's robes was giving out diplomas. Perry Hilderly stepped up to the podium, dressed not in the traditional cap and gown, but in a glittering suit of gilt armor. The man presented his piece of parchment, praising Perry's intelligence. Then Perry faced the crowd and held the diploma aloft; the parchment was tattered around its edges. Instantly I knew it had been gnawed by rats.

As I recalled the dream, my flesh rippled unpleasantly, and I drew my quilts higher against the chill in the room and within myself. I ought to check my paperback on dreams to figure out what this one was all about. But did I really want to know?

Fortunately I had little time to dwell on dreams this morning. It was already late, and I wanted to call the hospital to check on Hank. Then I needed to go to the Hall of Justice and sign the statement I'd given Greg in the car the night before; he'd said it would be ready by ten. And after that I wanted to track down my private investigator friend, to see if he had indeed been the one who looked into Jenny Ruhl's background for Jess Goodhue.

So many places to go, so many things to do. So many ways to keep my mind off worrying about Hank.