Critical Injuries (6 page)

But it's too late. There's only time for one sound after Isla's gasp and Roddy's sharp intake of breath, and it isn't the sound of words.

She thinks there ought to be a correlation between something important happening and the length of time it takes. Tiny, stupid things, like driving home from the city, can take forever. Mowing the lawns, weeding gardens, can consume an eternity. Even watching a video on a winter's night, feet up on the coffee table, bowl of popcorn between her and Lyle, drinks in their hands, takes at least ninety minutes, sometimes a couple of hours.

This, though — for a long moment the world is suspended, her body is adrift in mid-air, a little pinprick of darkness grows larger and larger until there's only a sliver of light left, then even that sliver vanishes and there's no distinguishing between darkness and silence, it all amounts, and diminishes, to the very same thing.

Rewind

Lyle's version is different. Not necessarily less volatile or catastrophic than hers, but — he wasn't there. His account has to be second-hand, third-hand, picked up from running from the truck into the disarrayed scene in Goldie's, then from experts: ambulance attendants, cops, nurses, doctors. He is, it seems, doomed to observer status in the shocking events of his wives. Perhaps frustrating for him, maybe enraging. Possibly a guilty relief. In any case he now seems reduced, with his anxious eyes and fretful mouth: a recounter, a teller, not the actor, or the acted upon.

Perhaps he's just lucky.

“You'd just gone in,” he says. “We thought it'd be quick, since for once there didn't look to be anybody around, no bikes or cars in the lot. You were only out of the truck a few seconds. You kind of waved at me in that back-handed way and I heard the buzzer as you went through the door. I was thinking what a good life, sunshine, summer, off to eat ice cream by the river, good health, you, home — I guess those are moments you live off, sort of golden ones that carry you through.”

He'd better hope it carries them through. Nice for him, having a golden moment while she's getting shot.

“Just for a second, I couldn't figure out what the noise was. I thought something had maybe exploded. A propane tank? I don't know. Close and loud, and not a car backfiring because it obviously came from inside Goldie's. I jumped out of the truck, ran in. And, you know, there you were.”

No, she doesn't know. For a lawyer, he doesn't tell a story very coherently.

“I couldn't believe it. I mean literally, I didn't believe what I saw. I've heard clients say that before, and I thought I knew what they meant, but it turns out I didn't. It's like a whole different level of consciousness, where everything is all of a sudden stark and bright and totally silent. And still. And completely not real. That could have lasted forever, that moment. I didn't know how to end it. I just wanted it not to be real, I wanted to rewind the day.”

Maybe she manages some small sound of impatience; at any rate, he glances at her, says, “Sorry.”

“You were lying on your side, at my feet, just inside the door. Your head was so close I could have tripped over it. There was blood. You'd think I'd have seen blood before, violent blood, but I haven't. And even if I had, it wouldn't have been the same. It wouldn't've been yours.

“There was a kid. Sort of freckled, and real short-cropped blondish-red hair, we've seen him around town. Just a kid, except he was holding a shotgun. Pointed at the floor, though. Or not so much pointed as just hanging off his fingers. He was staring at you. I don't know if he even noticed me. He looked as if he was going to faint, not a drop of blood in his face.

“I don't know what I was thinking; maybe that if I didn't move or say anything, it wouldn't be real. Like a nightmare, you know? Maybe it was the same for him. It sure didn't look like anything he'd meant to do, or set out to do, and maybe he couldn't believe it, either.

“The cops asked me later how long it was before somebody called them, and I had no fucking clue. We could have been standing there looking at you for a few seconds or a few hours, for all the sense I had about time. But it could only have been seconds. Seems to me now the sound of the door buzzer was still in the air when the clerk's head started poking up from behind the counter, and as soon as there was a movement, even that small one, the moment was broken. The clerk was just a kid, too, I've forgotten his name. I've forgotten everybody's name, I think, except yours and mine. Except hang on, I remember him saying something like, ‘Shit, Roddy, what did you do?' so that must be his name, Roddy. The big kid, the clerk, was shaking like crazy, but he came around the counter and reached out and took the shotgun away. Just like that. So he had more presence of mind than I did. And I guess he was brave. It's a wonder the goddamn thing didn't go off again, his hands were trembling so badly.

“The other kid, Roddy or whatever, he didn't even try to hold on to the gun, or do anything with it. When he'd let go of it, he doubled over and threw up. And then he ran. Turned around and bolted through the back, we heard the door slam behind him.

“I didn't care where the hell he'd gone, or what happened to him at that point. I got my voice back, and I yelled at the clerk to call the ambulance, the cops, the fire department, anybody, and I was on my knees checking you out, calling your name. I could see you were hurt, but while there was blood, there wasn't really a whole lot of it, up close. I mean, not pools or anything. And you were alive, you were breathing. I couldn't see what was damaged, but I knew to be careful not to go shifting you.”

He himself shifts in his bedside chair. Lucky him, sitting up, leaning over. Moving. Being capable of discomfort.

None of what he's saying rings a bell; but then of course, as he points out, she was unconscious. She guesses she can spare him some sympathy, for being the one to almost stumble over her head, to be frozen by blood, to go through the process of becoming unfrozen.

When will that happen to her?

“It felt like forever before anybody turned up, although I understand now it was under four minutes. An eternity at the time. The kid, the clerk, was crying, kind of wailing away at the counter. I wanted to lie down on the floor with you and hold you, but all I could safely touch was your face. I think I was talking to you, but for sure I remember stroking your forehead, and smoothing your hair. I didn't know if you could feel anything, or if you were right out.”

He looks, briefly, uncomfortable; as if he has blundered. Which of all those words did he not mean to say?

“The ambulance screamed up first. I didn't want them tearing in on top of you, so I stepped outside to show them in. The cops arrived a couple of seconds later. The two of them jumped out of the cruiser with their guns drawn, which was a bad moment. I don't think they get a lot of really heavy experience around here. They looked kind of wild-eyed, anyway, so before they took a notion I was the bad guy, I waved them down, told them you'd been shot, the gunman was gone, the clerk was a witness, and I was sort of a witness, and I guess I was being so calm, because I thought I needed to be, that one of them said, ‘You're pretty cool for a guy whose wife's just been shot,' like I might have done it myself.”

“Oh, who cares?” Isla would like to cry out. “Who the fuck cares? Get to me!” But she can only whisper a protest, which Lyle evidently doesn't hear, or can't interpret.

“By the time the cops got inside, the ambulance guys had you strapped onto a board and were lifting it onto a gurney. The cops looked mad, like they should have just left you there. But maybe I'm wrong about that, I was kind of hyper-sensitive right then. Like everything was real bright and real clear. Not loud, but clear.

“I said I was riding along with you, and the one who'd got shirty in the first place said something like, ‘You're a witness, we need to talk to you,' but the other cop said, ‘We can catch up to him later, we got the clerk to interview anyway, a lot of other shit to do.' Like it was a chore. He was looking at the floor, where you'd been. The blood.” Lyle shivers.

How long ago did all this happen? Recently enough that Lyle might be in shock? Do witnesses and loved ones go into shock, or is it mainly just victims themselves?

Isla isn't in shock. She doesn't seem to be in anything except a rage.

“I said, ‘There's no big mystery, you probably know the kid that did it, the clerk does. He ran out the back, but I can't see he'd be hard to find. About five-eight, freckles, thin. And scared, okay?' I wanted them to know he was scared, which maybe meant he was sorry. I didn't know if being scared would make him more or less dangerous, but the shotgun was on the counter so he probably wasn't armed any more, and I didn't want them getting excited and blowing him away when they found him.”

This seems excessively merciful. What about vengeance? How about loyalty? Isla would shoot the son of a bitch herself, if it would undo what happened. If it would just get her up on her feet, she would shoot him. If for no other reason than simple, straightforward balance: this for that.

She hopes that boy's conscience, if he has one, eternally vibrates from the persistent, wide-eyed haunting of those few bright seconds in Goldie's when he, something in him, an instinct or a desire or a terror, made a decision. Because these things are decisions, no matter how swiftly or incoherently taken. Decisions are responsibilities, she believes that, not whims; at least not solely whims.

Do people like that think people like her go around armoured and bulletproofed? Do they dream no one will be hurt? If they don't deliberately set out to cause harm, do they suppose harm is unlikely? Impossible? Do they imagine their intentions are true? Oh, she is angry. Unspeakably furious. All the real disasters and true betrayals of forty-nine years — not so many, perhaps, but each one monstrous to her — and now Goldie's.

“I felt,” and Lyle sounds puzzled, “that it would be bad luck for you if things went wrong with the cops and the kid. Like it was all a mess, but if we could keep it from getting any messier, it might still be repairable, somehow.”

And will it be? Repairable? For God's sake, Lyle!

“I don't know much about what's happened since. I haven't heard if they've caught him. We took off in the ambulance, stopped at the hospital just long enough for them to say we'd better keep going, so now we're at Northern where they say the best specialists are. So you're in really good hands.” He smiles at her in a hopeful sort of way; or he is making an effort to look endearing.

One question answered, though: the inessential where. So she's in the huge teaching hospital in, obviously, the north part of the city, not that far, as a matter of fact, from her office. She regularly drives past Northern, and sometimes reads in the newspapers about its research projects and various miracles, but has never had occasion to enter it. Now and then it conducts fundraising projects of one sort and another. She should, perhaps, have contributed.

“When?”

“When what?” But how much clearer can she be, for God's sake? “You mean, what time is it, or when did it all happen? It's morning now. You were out for quite a while, and then they gave you something to keep your system shut down while they did more tests, poked around.” She would shudder, if she could shudder, at the notion of people testing and poking around while she was helpless. Not that, apparently, anyone couldn't do anything they wanted to her as she is, awake and conscious.

Morning. She has meetings, although at the moment has no idea with whom or why, and who cares? All that was probably vital yesterday, but it means shit today. Lyle's supposed to be in court first thing. He must be exhausted. A small, forty-watt bulb of compassion flickers on briefly: she would, after all, like to reach for his hand, to thank him for being here.

For all she knows, they are holding hands.

“The cops will want to talk to you whenever you're up to it. They need to nail everything down.”

What the fuck does she care about cops and what they might need? “Doctors,” she whispers irritably. Surely to God a lawyer knows what is important to a narration, a case, and what is not. In her business of advertising, she wouldn't make that mistake. In her business, there's a little space or a little air to make the point and that's it, time's up.

He looks hesitant, his eyes shifting. This is not the look of a man offering any form of good news. “I've already told you pretty much everything the doctors had to say: we wait, then there'll likely be some kind of surgery, and plenty of hope everything will go right. It's just really a matter of getting strong and being patient, that's all.”

Well no, that's hardly all. “Exactly,” she says. “Details,” she manages.

It's interesting to see somebody actually coming to a decision. She watches his face open up and grow clear, a small, relaxing movement of mouth, and then a drawing down of the nostrils, a widening of the eyes, lifting of eyebrows. Little lines in his forehead iron out, larger ones alongside his mouth deepen. He looks at her with something resembling the way he often looks at her in difficult or tenuous moments. This is an expression likely to contain more respect than, at those particular moments, affection.

Which is reassuring. She's the human Isla again in his eyes, not the patient, or wife, or responsibility, or burden, or problem.

Not quite a cripple.

Where did that forbidden word come from?

“Okay,” he says. “What they know so far is that the bullet nicked into your spine. Fairly high up. And that you're lucky, really, in a way, because just a tiny difference in the angle and it could have gone through soft tissue and drilled right into one of the vital organs. Or angled higher the other way, it could have gone into your brain.” As if her brain is not one of the vital organs. “It's a very good thing you were turning just as you did when he shot.”

Then presumably a very bad thing that she didn't turn just a tiny bit farther, twist just that little bit harder, or faster. Then the bullet would have smacked harmlessly into the door frame, or the freezer, or the floor.

“Anyway, when it nicked your spine, it obviously did some vertebrae damage, but they don't know about that exactly yet because the bullet itself fractured, or whatever you'd call it, so part of it, just a fragment I guess, is still lodged in there. But it may ease out on its own as you get more stable, we'll see.”