Cited to Death (18 page)

Saturday June 9

It was dark.

I was alone.

It wasn't completely dark.

There was light leaking around the curtains in front of me.

There were curtains.

I was in a room.

A very small room.

I was sitting up, partially.

There was a rhythmic hissing sound coming from just behind me.

My eyes began to adjust.

I tried to look to my right, but I couldn't move my head very far.

There was something pinching my finger.

I tried to raise my hand to look at it, and I couldn't.

There was something in my mouth.

I tried to swallow and couldn't.

I tried to breathe, and heard the hissing sound again.

Huh.

I went back to sleep.

The next time I opened my eyes, there was more light. There was also someone in my room.

A young woman in mint green scrubs was to my right, making notations on a clipboard. She looked down at me, and smiled. "Well, hi there."

I tried to say something but couldn't. There was something in my mouth. And there was that hissing sound again.

"Don't try to talk. You've got a tube down your throat." The young woman leaned on the rail on my bed. "My name's Melissa. I'm your nurse today. You're in the intensive care unit at UCLA hospital. You've been here since last night." She patted my arm. "I want you to blink once for yes, twice for no. Can you do that?"

I blinked once.

"Great. Do you remember what happened to you?"

Did I? Oh, yeah. Alana Wray in the lab with a bottle of cologne. I blinked once.

"Excellent." She smiled down at me. "You're doing great. You're breathing on your own, and your oxygen levels are getting better. The ventilator is just helping you out to rest your breathing muscles. Are you having any discomfort anywhere?"

Actually, no. I blinked twice.

"Great." She patted me again. "Your family is all out in the waiting room. Would you like to see one of them?"

I blinked once.

"Okay. I'll go get them." She pushed aside the curtain at the foot of my bed and left. It turned out there wasn't a wall there, just a curtain. I could see a piece of counter with someone sitting behind it at a computer, and a clock. 10:30. Was that AM or PM? No way to tell in here. But she said I'd been here since last night - maybe it was AM now.

Melissa reappeared, with Pete in tow, his arm in a sling.

Oh wow. I'd felt curiously calm until now, but the sight of Pete ended that. I tried to reach out to him and realized my hands were tied down.

Melissa untied me quickly. "Sorry about that. We didn't want you to wake up confused and try to pull your tube out." She patted Pete on the shoulder. Lots of patting going on. "I can give you ten minutes. Oh, and he blinks once for yes, twice for no." She left, pulling the curtain closed again.

I reached out again. Pete took the hand without the IV in and held it against his chest while he kissed me on the forehead. He looked awful - rumpled, scruffy, red-eyed. I'd never seen a more beautiful sight.

His voice was rough. "You scared the
shit
out of me."

I blinked once.

"How do you feel? Oh, that's not yes or no. Are you feeling bad?"

Not too bad, considering. I blinked twice.

He let go of the hand that had the oxygen meter on it and brushed my hair off my forehead. "You're doing fine, they say. Your doctor will be in later, and they'll probably take you off the machine."

I blinked once.

"You probably want to know what happened, huh?"

I sure did. I blinked once, and nodded as much as I could.

"Kevin and Tim broke through the door as you were going down. Kevin tackled Wray as she turned to shoot me and knocked off her aim.”

Oh my God
. Pete had almost died. I couldn’t make a sound, but I thrashed around a little bit. He got my meaning and shook his head. “It’s okay. It went through my deltoid muscle, near the skin, didn’t even hit any bone.”

It most definitely
wasn’t
okay, but we’d have to discuss it later. I blinked once.

“They've arrested Wray for the murder of Dan and the attempted murder of you, me, and Ben."

Ben was okay
? I needed to communicate. I made a writing motion.

"Uh - okay, hang on." Pete stuck his head out of the curtain and asked for a pen and paper. He came back with it and handed it to me. I was at a weird angle to write, but I managed to spell out “Ben’s okay?”

“Yeah. He’s got a concussion and lost a good bit of blood, but he’ll be fine.”

I wrote, “Wray confessed?”

“No. She’s lawyered up, and Andy still isn’t talking. But since we’re all alive and well, she has no chance of getting away with anything.”

I blinked once and laid down the paper. The burst of adrenaline that had shot through me when I saw Pete was already failing me. Pete started to say something else, but Melissa came back in. “Sorry, guys, but I’ve got to limit you to ten minutes per hour.”

“Okay.” Pete kissed my forehead. “I’ll see you later. Don’t go anywhere.”

I’d have stuck my tongue out at him if I could.

I must have dozed back off, because the next thing I knew, my dad was in the room. "Hey, you." He reached over and squeezed my hand. "How are you feeling?"

I made a see-saw motion with my hand and pantomimed pulling the breathing tube out.

My dad nodded. "Yeah - your doctor stuck his head in a little while ago and said he'd be back. I think he's planning to do that."

I picked up the paper and pen from where they’d fallen on my lap. “What time is it?”

“It’s 1:30. You went back to sleep for a while.”

Jeez. I did more than doze off, then. I wrote, “Any confessions?”

“Nope, not yet. Although Kevin figures they can get the young guy to agree to a deal. His parents are leaning on him pretty hard to do that.”

The curtain parted, and Dr. Weikal strode in. "There he is, wide awake! How are you feeling?"

I made the same see-saw motion and pointed at the tube.

"Yes. First I need to take a look at your oxygenation..." He pressed a button on one of the machines to my right, and a strip of paper printed out. He looked it over. "Very good. You've been at more than 90% saturation for several hours now." He moved to my side. "Okay, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to unhook the ventilator, and listen to your lungs while you've still got the tube in. If it sounds good, we'll take it out." He unfastened the tube and moved it to the side. I took in a breath on my own. My rib muscles were pretty sore. It felt a bit strange to not have the machine kick in. I'd gotten that used to it in such a short time.

"Okay, sit forward a little for me." I did. Dr. Weikal put his stethoscope in his ears and placed the flat piece on my back. "Take a deep breath, in and out."

I breathed several times. He moved the stethoscope around, listening closely, then stepped back and pulled the earpieces out. "Sounds good. Does it feel all right?"

I nodded.

"Okay, then, let's get that thing out." He slowly and gently pulled all the tape loose from my face, deflated the little balloon that was hanging from the tube, and got a firm grip on the tube itself. "Now, take in another breath - now breathe out." As I breathed out, he pulled. Ugh. It felt as bad as I had imagined, but it was over quickly. I had a coughing fit, and Dr. Weikal poured me a glass of water. "Okay?"

I drank, handed the glass back, and managed to croak out, "Okay." It hurt to talk.

"Your throat and voice are going to be a little scratchy for a while, but that should clear up pretty quickly. We’ll keep you on liquids for today - milkshakes, soup, ice cream. If everything goes well for the rest of the day, you can go to a regular room in the morning."

“Not home?”

“Not tomorrow. You were in severe status asthmaticus. If everything still looks good tomorrow, you can go home Monday. Stay hydrated. Respiratory therapy will be around with a nebulizer treatment soon.”

I leaned back against the pillows. "Awesome."

He grinned. "Great. The nurse will come in a few minutes to take this away-" he patted the ventilator - "and hook up a tube to give you some oxygen flow through your nose. I'll come back and check on you this evening." He waved at us and left.

Nurse Melissa came to collect the ventilator and my dad. I spent the next several hours getting nebulizers, drinking water, and eating ice cream. I hadn’t thought about peeing until I’d been awake a few hours, at which point Pete helpfully pointed out that I had a catheter in. Great – another tube that would have to be pulled out.

That happened the next morning – yeowch! – and then I was transferred to a regular room. I was still getting nebulizers but didn’t have to use the oxygen any more. My oxygenation had dropped back into the 80s after the ventilator tube came out, but never got lower than that. And I did get to go home on Monday morning.

I went home to Pete’s long enough to pack, then went home with my dad to Oceanside. I spent the next week there, breathing in the clean sea air and helping my dad in the garden. Pete came down on Wednesday after SMC’s graduation. The following Monday, June 18, we went home for good.

Almost four weeks after the fire, Kevin and Abby moved back in to our apartment. I kept paying my third of the rent so they could afford to stay in our apartment until the lease was up. It worked out okay since Pete didn't have a mortgage for me to help out with.

Alana Wray maintained her innocence for about a week. Then, under pressure from his parents, Andy Mitchell gave in and told the police that Alana had hired him to sabotage my computer and trash my office. It turned out that Alana’s older sister, Andy’s mother, had been estranged from Alana for years, and Andy’s dad hated Alana’s guts. They weren’t about to let their son take the rap for his aunt.

Better than that, Andy knew the identity of "Ed," who had beaten me up and, as it turned out, had been following me from the time I requested the Welsh article. He’d also been the one who had slashed my tires at Cedars. "Ed" was a cousin of Alana's, Wayne Edward Sobrowski. The police found him easily enough. He refused to talk until he found out that Alana was going to blame
him
for everything, then he spilled the whole story. Andy didn't get jail time, but he did get two years' probation and lost his job. Sobrowski pled guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated arson and was sentenced to twelve years. Mauro Politano, who'd broken in to the apartment and condo, was sentenced to eight years in prison for the two first degree burglaries and another eight years for felony arson.

Once Alana learned that both Andy and Wayne had admitted everything and were prepared to testify against her, she pled guilty to the first degree murder of Dan Christensen and the attempted murders of Ben, Pete, and me. She was sentenced to life without parole and shipped off to Chowchilla.