Legs and other things you miss when you don’t have them

I woke up with tubes in my nose and other orifices and a weight on my chest that was unfamiliar. I was getting oxygen through the tubes, but my breathing was shallow.

The weight on my chest was Riley’s head.

Apparently she’d crawled up on the bed during the night and went to sleep with her head on my chest. Boney pillow if you ask me. She was wearing a white silk blouse that in her present position gaped open showing rather more than she usually exposed.

All right. A lot more.

I could see the bandage above her right breast under her arm where Oksamma’s bullet had struck. The bastard. If he weren’t dead, I’d get out of this bed and go kill him. To harm that beautiful woman. She was lucky it had hit at the angle it did.

I know that you want me to say that I covered her and restored her modesty, and that is just what I did.

After about ten minutes.

I wasn’t dead yet.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her soft smooth skin until I felt tears running from them and down my cheeks. Afraid that I would sob and wake her, I gently reached over and pulled her blouse closed.

Damn.

What a lousy time to be old. I just wanted to hold her and protect her. The bruises on her cheek had changed to that horrid yellow color that, in spite of how bad it looks, signifies healing. I wanted to kiss that cheek, but settled for letting my fingers glide softly across her skin.

She fluttered her eyelids open and smiled at me. She reached for my hand and held the palm against her cheek and closed her eyes gently again. We stayed that way for several minutes.

All night I’d had dreams filled with memories. Simon and Brenda and I in college. My marriage and her betrayal. The years I’d missed with them and the different people they had become. What drove people who have it all to think they don’t have enough? Maybe it was me who changed. What was Brenda really peddling? Sex? Influence? Ways to wealth? The secret had to be on Simon’s thumb drive, if there was only a way to crack the encryption code on it.

The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that the tattooed words on Simon and Angel held a key. F8ed2d1e36B00Bs. It was suddenly looking a lot more feasible. I reached for the piece of paper on which I’d written Angel’s tattooed message and in so doing wakened Riley. She stretched luxuriously threatening to undo the modesty covering that I’d put in place a few minutes ago. A sudden wince as she reached the point of flexion where it pulled on her wound stopped the stretch with a wince of pain. Yes, that would take a while to heal.

“Good morning, partner,” she said. “Sorry I borrowed a corner of your bed last night.”

“Anytime you want, Riley,” I said.

“I’m going to count on that,” she replied.

We were interrupted by a small voice from the door. “Excuse me; is this Mr. Håmar’s room?” We looked over at the door and little Billie was sitting there in a wheelchair pushed by her mother.

“If it’s not convenient, we’ll come back some other time,” Wanda said.

“No, no,” I answered. “Come in. Billie, this is my partner, Deb Riley. Deb, this is Billie and Wanda Martin. It’s good to see you Billie.”

“Nice to meet you, Billie,” Riley said extending a hand to her.

“Wow! You’re beautiful!” was Billie’s spontaneous response.

“It’s nice to meet you Miss Riley,” Wanda said as they shook hands. “We heard Mr. Håmar was in the hospital and Billie wanted to come to see him.”

“I’ve got a new heart, Mr. Håmar.” Billie said smiling. “I’m getting better now. Have you moved into the hospital so you can get yours?”

“Yes, Billie. It’s best to be prepared, don’t you think?”

“Are you a private investigator, too?” Billie asked Riley. She nodded. “That’s what I’m going to be when I grow up. I’m going to investigate things and solve mysteries.”

“You’ve made a big impression on my daughter,” Wanda said to me. “I know we aren’t supposed to know this, but I saw you talking to the same lawyer that told us about Billie’s trust. Whatever part you played, I wanted to say thank you.”

“I don’t know that I played a very big part,” I answered. “Sometimes if there is a flood in one place, you just need to dig a little channel and the water will flow where it belongs.”

“Thank you anyway,” she said. “And good luck.”

“Thank you,” I said, “and thank you, Billie for being such a great inspiration to me to get my new heart and get well.”

“Honey,” Wanda said to Billie, “we don’t want to tire Mr. Håmar out. I’ll bring you back to see him tomorrow.”

“I’m going home next week,” Billie said. “I hope you get to go home soon!”

I waved and Riley and I watched them leave. We sat in silence for a few minutes.

“Riley,” I said.

“I’m not leaving,” she answered quickly.

“You can’t stay here forever, kiddo,” I replied.

“Dag, I can’t. I won’t say goodbye.” I could see tears in her eyes and I could feel them building again in my own. Billie’s visit had brought the reality of my situation home for both of us. That beeping machine next to me was a constant reminder that my life was holding on by a thread. Even the little conversation I’d had in the past few minutes was tiring.

“I’m not asking you to say good-bye, Riley,” I said. She fell on me—gently—and hugged me as well as she could. I stroked her back and patted her. This wasn’t going to get easier. “You know what I need?” I asked.

“What Dag?”

“I need a pair of legs.”

“You can have mine anytime you want them,” she said, and brought them up onto the bed beside me. So help me, I let my hand fall on the perfect smooth skin of one of her legs and just rest there. My catheter suddenly felt uncomfortable. I removed my hand and reached for the pad of paper by my bedside. I handed the paper to Riley. She looked at it and then at me.

“36DB00BS,” she said. “You are obviously not referring to me.”

“Angel told me in Atlanta that she and Simon and Bradley had gotten drunk one night and had tattoos done. All three of them. Simon’s was F8ed2d1e. Angel told me hers was 36DB00BS,” I lied just a little. She hadn’t actually told me. “I think if we had Bradley’s tattoo, we might have the final pieces to the puzzle. Simon found out Brenda was blackmailing a lot of people. He put the necessary information on his thumb drive and encrypted it. I’m betting that with the three of these together, we’d have the 24 characters of an encryption code. What we don’t have is Bradley’s tattoo.”

“You want me to go to the morgue, examine the dead body of the man who kidnapped me and held me captive, and copy down his tattoo?” she said to me in a threatening tone.

“Well, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” I said. “Only, I’m guessing that either the body is here where they harvested the organs, or the police have it sealed at the morgue and you won’t be allowed to see it. I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Don’t tell me anything more,” Riley said. Now I was definitely seeing a vengeful glint in her eye. “I know how to get to the body. And if there is a scalpel handy when I get there, I’ll cut the tattoo off and bring it to you.”

“Uh just copying down the word should be adequate, Riley,” I said. I had a feeling that if she started cutting at Bradley’s body there wouldn’t be anything recognizable left of it in the morning.

“You got it, Dag.” She slid off the bed and gathered her things.

“I love you, Riley,” I said softly as she prepared to go. She turned and looked at me.

“You’d damned well better mean that,” she said. She kissed me and left the room. She didn’t turn back or she’d have seen the tears rolling down my cheek. I had a heartache of a kind I’d never had. I looked down the front of the hospital gown at my bare chest under it with the two diodes connected to the heart monitor. Beneath the orange stain of iodine, I thought I saw a darker area. My heart had begun to leak.

I napped. It was afternoon when I woke up again. My meals were coming in a bottle this week. I was feeling edgy. I looked at my surroundings. Did I mention that I hate hospitals? The constant beeping of the heart monitor had almost become a background white noise over the three days I’d been here. But now it was an irritating reminder of my weakening heart. I took my time—used the controls on the bed to change my position. This was going to be hard. I assessed the things I was attached to.

First, the drip. That was the least likely to create problems. I loosened the tape and pulled the needle out of my arm. I quickly slapped a piece of the tape back over the hole and clamped my arm shut. That wasn’t so bad. I rested a few minutes and reached under the covers. I didn’t even want to look at what I was doing. I untapped the tube from my leg and slowly inched the catheter out of my penis. Oh god. The beeps sped up slightly, but I focused on my breathing and in a moment it was out. It was a strange feeling. If I had the opportunity, I was going to pee sometime soon, just for the pleasure of it. I left the oxygen tubes in my nose for as long as I could. It helped to steady my breathing.

Now I had to deal with the heart monitor. A heart monitor is a computer with a network connection. It beeps in the room, but on the monitor at the nurses’ station, it just shows the constant wave and signals an audible alert only if the patient is in distress. There was no way I could learn enough about it to hack it in the time I had before nurses would be prowling the halls again. But Riley had left my laptop and it would only take a few minutes to jury-rig an intercept program to record the signal from the machine. I checked the connections and plugged my laptop into an open network slot. I set it to record and waited. I didn’t dare wait to long, but if I set too short a cycle, it might be spotted before I was safely away. I forced myself to wait five minutes before I disconnected the computer and set it to playback what it had recorded in a continuous loop. Then I set it on top of the monitor and quickly unplugged the network connection from the monitor and put it into my computer. The signal was instantly picked up and continued the playback. I turned off the heart monitor and tore the contacts off my skin. I could see that the dark spot had spread and was darker. There just wasn’t much time.

I was free, but naked. Remembering what Doctor Roberts had told me about light-headedness, I rose very slowly from the bed until I was upright. Finally, I had to leave the oxygen behind in order to walk to the closet. Once there I dressed. Riley brought me clean clothes yesterday to lift my spirits. She’d even brought a new shirt she said was lavender, but registered to me as blue. I loaded my pockets with my wallet and checked to be sure my money was there. I was wearing down. I slipped my shoes on without bother with socks or to stop and tie them, took my coat and hat from the closet, and shuffled out the door.

I had no choice but to go slowly, but I walked steadily upright down the hall to the elevators. Once inside I breathed a sigh of relief. I was free. A hospital is a terrible place to die.

I was in for a shock when I stepped out the hospital door to the taxi stand. No one had bothered to tell me it had snowed while I was inside. I hadn’t seen snow in Seattle in five years. I made it to a cab and gave the driver the address I wanted.

Ten minutes later we pulled up in front of Tovoni’s. It was open this time. I showed the driver a hundred dollar bill and tore it in half. I handed him half and told him he’d get the other half if he waited for me while I had a cup of coffee, and to keep the meter running. This wasn’t to pay for the cab fare. I made my way to Tovoni’s door and was pleased to see the driver settle back in his seat to snooze.

Jackie greeted me when I walked in the door.

“Dag! We haven’t seen you in a while. Everything okay?”

“Thanks, Jackie. I was out of town for a while. Just back now.”

“Want the usual?”

“Yes, please.”

In a moment she had placed a small mug of perfect espresso and water in my hand. I hovered over it just inhaling the intoxicating scent. Just breathing. I lifted the cup to my lips and sipped at the crème.

Damn.

Everything made me cry these days. If there is a heaven, Tovoni’s coffee is there. It was so good.

I left a generous tip and went back to the cab. I handed the driver the other half of the bill and gave him my address. A few minutes later we arrived at my home. I paid the driver and made my way to the door. Inside our common entry, I saw that Mrs. Prior’s door was ajar.

“Maizie,” I called quietly. “Here girl.” I heard the jingle of her collar and she came rushing out of the door, tail wagging. “Hey there. You really are glad to see me, aren’t you?”

Maizie was up and down the stairs three times in the time that it took me to make it to my door. My breathing was labored now. I was beginning to hear the buzzing in my ears that always preceded an attack. I checked my pocket automatically and discovered I had remembered to pocket my pills from the drawer in my hospital room. I popped two into my mouth just inside the door. My chair was only a few steps away, but it seemed like an eternity before I reached it. I left the door open so that Maizie could go back to Mrs. Prior if she got tired of sitting with me.

I settled in my chair and reclined it. As soon as I had spread the afghan over my legs, Maizie jumped up and settled herself on my lap. I reached for the remote control and pressed play. Brahms leapt from the speakers in an instant, all-encompassing moment of ecstasy. A single picture light that I always left on was burning over the seascape hanging on the wall in front of me. I turned my head toward the window and saw mixed rain and snow had begun to fall. By morning it would wash the snow all away.

What did I care?

I was home.