Lost (2 page)

I open my eyes again. The world is stil here.

Taking a deep breath, I grip the bedclothes and raise them a few inches. I stil have two legs. I count them. One. Two. The right leg is bandaged in layers of gauze taped down at the edges. Something has been written in a felt-tip pen down the side of my thigh but I can't read what it says.

Farther down I can see my toes. They wave hel o to me. “Hel o toes,” I whisper.

Tentatively, I reach down and cup my genitals, rol ing my testicles between my fingers.

A nurse slips silently through the curtains. Her voice startles me. “Is this a very private moment?”

“I was . . . I was . . . just checking.”

“Wel , I think you should consider buying that thing dinner first.”

Her accent is Irish and her eyes are as green as mown grass. She presses the cal button above my head. “Thank goodness you're final y awake. We were very worried about you.” She taps the bag of fluid and checks the flow control. Then she straightens my pil ows.

“What happened? How did I get here?”

“You were shot.”

“Who shot me?”

She laughs. “Oh, don't ask me. Nobody ever tel s me things like that.”

“But I can't remember anything. My leg . . . my finger . . .”

“The doctor should be here soon.”

She doesn't seem to be listening. I reach out and grab her arm. She tries to pul away, suddenly frightened of me.

“You don't understand—I
can't
remember! I don't know how I got here.”

She glances at the emergency button. “They found you floating in the river. That's what I heard them say. The police have been waiting for you to wake up.”

“How long have I been here?”

“Eight days . . . you were in a coma. I thought you might be coming out yesterday. You were talking to yourself.”

“What did I say?”

“You kept asking about a girl—saying you had to find her.”

“Who?”

“You didn't say. Please let go of my arm. You're hurting me.”

My fingers open and she steps wel away, rubbing her forearm. She won't come close again.

My heart won't slow down. It is pounding away, getting faster and faster like Chinese drums. How can I have been here eight days?

“What day is it today?”

“October the third.”

“Did you give me drugs? What have you done to me?”

She stammers, “You're on morphine for the pain.”

“What else? What else have you given me?”

“Nothing.” She glances again at the emergency button. “The doctor is coming. Try to stay calm or he'l have to sedate you.” She's out of the door and won't come back. As it swings closed I notice a uniformed policeman sitting on a chair outside the door, with his legs stretched out like he's been there for a while.

I slump back in bed, smel ing bandages and dried blood. Holding up my hand I look at the gauze bandage, trying to wiggle the missing finger. How can I not remember?

For me there has never been such a thing as forgetting, nothing is hazy or vague or frayed at the edges. I hoard memories like a miser counts his gold. Every scrap of a moment is kept as long as it has some value.

I don't see things photographical y. Instead I make connections, spinning them together like a spider weaving a web, threading one strand into the next. That's why I can reach back and pluck details of criminal cases from five, ten, fifteen years ago and remember them as if they happened only yesterday. Names, dates, places, witnesses, perpetrators, victims

—I can conjure them up and walk through the same streets, have the same conversations, hear the same lies.

Now for the first time I've forgotten something truly important. I can't remember what happened and how I finished up here. There is a black hole in my mind like a dark shadow on a chest X-ray. I've seen those shadows. I lost my first wife to cancer. Black holes suck everything into them. Not even light can escape.

Twenty minutes go by and then Dr. Bennett sweeps through the curtains. He's wearing jeans and a bow tie under his white coat.

“Detective Inspector Ruiz, welcome back to the land of the living and high taxation.” He sounds very public school and has one of those foppish Hugh Grant fringe haircuts that fal s across his forehead like a dinner napkin on a thigh.

Shining a penlight in my eyes, he asks, “Can you wiggle your toes?”

“Yes.”

“Any pins and needles?”

“No.”

He pul s back the bedclothes and scrapes a key along the sole of my right foot. “Can you feel that?”

“Yes.”

“Excel ent.”

Picking up a clipboard, he scrawls his initials with a flick of the wrist.

“I can't remember anything.”

“About the accident.”

“It was an accident?”

“I have no idea. You were shot.”

“Who shot me?”

“You don't remember?”

“No.”

This conversation is going around in circles.

Dr. Bennett taps the pen against his teeth, contemplating this answer. Then he pul s up a chair and sits on it backward, draping his arms over the backrest.

“You were shot. One bul et entered just above your gracilis muscle on your right leg leaving a quarter-inch hole. It went through the skin, then the fat layer, through the pectineus muscle, just medial to the femoral vessels and nerve, through the quadratus femoris muscle, through the head of the biceps femoris and through the gluteus maximus before exiting through the skin on the other side. The exit wound was far more impressive. It blew a hole four inches across. Gone. No flap. No pieces. Your skin just vaporized.” He whistles impressively through his teeth. “You had a pulse but you were bleeding out when they found you. Then you stopped breathing. You were dead but we brought you back.”

He holds up his thumb and forefinger. “The bul et missed your femoral artery by this far.” I can barely see a gap between them. “Otherwise you would have bled to death in three minutes. Apart from the bul et we had to deal with infection. Your clothes were filthy. God knows what was in that water. We've been pumping you ful of antibiotics. Bottom line, Inspector, you are one lucky puppy.”

Is he kidding? How much luck does it take to get shot?

I hold up my hand. “What about my finger?”

“Gone, I'm afraid, just above the first knuckle.”

A skinny looking intern with a crewcut pokes his head through the curtains. Dr. Bennett lets out a low-pitched growl that only underlings can hear. Rising from the chair, he buries his hands in the pockets of his white coat.

“Wil that be al ?”

“Why can't I remember?”

“It's not real y my field, I'm afraid. We can run some tests. You'l need a CT scan or an MRI to rule out a skul fracture or hemorrhage. I'l cal neurology.”

“My leg hurts.”

“Good. It's getting better. You'l need a walker or crutches. A physiotherapist wil come and talk to you about a program to help you strengthen your leg.” He flips his bangs and turns to leave. “I'm sorry about your memory, Detective. Be thankful you're alive.”

He's gone, leaving a scent of aftershave and superiority. Why do surgeons cultivate this air of owning the world? I know I should be grateful. Maybe if I could remember what happened I could trust the explanations more.

So I should be dead. I always suspected that I would die suddenly. It's not that I'm particularly foolhardy but I have a knack for taking shortcuts. Most people only die once. Now I've had two lives. Throw in three wives and I've had more than my fair share of living. (I'l definitely forgo the three wives, should someone want them back.) My Irish nurse is back again. Her name is Maggie and she has one of those reassuring smiles they teach in nursing school. She has a bowl of warm water and a sponge.

“Are you feeling better?”

“I'm sorry I frightened you.”

“That's OK. Time for a bath.”

She pul s back the covers and I drag them up again.

“There's nothing under there I haven't seen,” she says.

“I beg to differ. I have a pretty fair recol ection of how many women have danced with old Johnnie One-Eye and unless you were that girl in the back row of the Shepherd's Bush Empire during a Yardbirds concert in 1961, I don't think you're one of them.”

“Johnnie One-Eye?”

“My oldest friend.”

She shakes her head and looks sorry for me.

A familiar figure appears from behind her—a short, square man, with no neck and a five-o'clock shadow. Campbel Smith is a Chief Superintendent, with a crushing handshake and a no-brand smile. He's wearing his uniform, with polished silver buttons and a shirt col ar so highly starched it threatens to decapitate him.

Everyone claims to like Campbel —even his enemies—but few people are ever happy to see him. Not me. Not today. I remember him! That's a good sign.

“Christ, Vincent, you gave us a scare!” he booms. “It was touch and go for a while. We were al praying for you—everyone at the station. See al the cards and flowers?” I turn my head and look at a table piled high with flowers and bowls of fruit.

“Someone shot me,” I say, incredulously.

“Yes,” he replies, pul ing up a chair. “We need to know what happened.”

“I don't remember.”

“You didn't see them?”

“Who?”

“The people on the boat.”

“What boat?” I look at him blankly.

His voice suddenly grows louder. “You were found floating in the Thames shot to shit and less than a mile away there was a boat that looked like a floating abattoir. What happened?”

“I don't remember.”

“You don't remember the massacre?”

“I don't remember the fucking boat.”

Campbel has dropped any pretense of affability. He paces the room, bunching his fists and trying to control himself.

“This isn't good, Vincent. This isn't pretty. Did you kil anyone?”

“Today?”

“Don't joke with me. Did you discharge your firearm? Your service pistol was signed out of the station armory. Are we going to find bodies?” Bodies? Is that what happened?

Campbel rubs his hands through his hair in frustration.

“I can't tel you the crap that's flying already. There's going to be a ful inquiry. The Commissioner is demanding answers. The press wil have a fucking field day. The blood of three people was found on that boat, including yours. Forensics says at least one of them must have died. They found brains and skul fragments.” The wal s seem to dip and sway. Maybe it's the morphine or the closeness of the air. How could I have forgotten something like that?

“What were you doing on that boat?”

“It must have been a police operation—”

“No,” he declares angrily, al pretense of friendship gone. “You weren't working a case. This wasn't a police operation. You were on your own.” We have an old-fashioned staring contest. I own this one. I might never blink again. Morphine is the answer. God, it feels good.

Final y Campbel slumps into a chair and plucks a handful of grapes from a brown paper bag beside the bed.

“What is the last thing you remember?”

We sit in silence as I try to recover shreds of a dream. Pictures float in and out of my head, dim and then sharp: a yel ow life buoy, Marilyn Monroe . . .

“I remember ordering a pizza.”

“Is that it?”

“Sorry.”

Staring at the gauze dressing on my hand, I marvel at how the missing finger feels itchy. “What was I working on?” Campbel shrugs. “You were on leave.”

“Why?”

“You needed a rest.”

He's lying to me. Sometimes I think he forgets how far back we go. We did our training together at the Police Staff Col ege, Bramshil . And I introduced him to his wife, Maureen, at a barbecue thirty-five years ago. She has never completely forgiven me. I don't know what upsets her most—my three marriages or the fact that I pawned her off on someone else.

It's been a long while since Campbel cal ed me buddy and we haven't shared a beer since he made Chief Superintendent. He's a different man. No better or no worse, just different.

He spits a grape seed into his hand. “You always thought you were better than me, Vincent, but I got promoted ahead of you.”
You were a brownnoser.

“I know you think I'm a brownnoser.” (
He's reading my mind.
) “But I was just smarter. I made the right contacts and let the system work for me instead of fighting against it. You should have retired three years ago, when you had the chance. Nobody would have thought any less of you. We would have given you a big send-off. You could have settled down, played a bit of golf, maybe even saved your marriage.”

I wait for him to say something else but he just stares at me with his head cocked to one side.

“Vincent, would you mind if I made an observation?” He doesn't wait for my answer. “You put a pretty good face on things considering al that's happened, but the feeling I get from you is . . . wel . . . you're a sad man. But it's something more than that . . . you're angry.”

Embarrassment prickles like heat rash under my hospital gown.

“Some people find solace in religion and others have people they can talk to. I know that's not your style. Look at you! You hardly see your kids. You live alone . . . Now you've gone and fucked up your career. I can't help you anymore. I told you to leave this alone.”

“What was I supposed to leave alone?”

He doesn't answer. Instead he picks up his hat and polishes the brim with his sleeve. Any moment now he's going to turn and tel me what he means. Only he doesn't; he keeps on walking out the door and along the corridor.

My grapes have also gone. The stalks look like dead trees on a crumpled brown-paper plain. Beside them a basket of flowers has started to wilt. The begonias and tulips are losing their petals like fat fan dancers and dusting the top of the table with pol en. A smal white card embossed with a silver scrol is wedged between the stems. I can't read the message.

Some bastard shot me! It should be etched in my memory. I should be able to relive it over and over again like those whining victims on daytime talk shows who have personal-injury lawyers on speed dial. Instead, I remember nothing. And no matter how many times I squeeze my eye shut and bang my fists on my forehead it doesn't change.