Death in Paradise (29 page)

Warm hands touched my head, rearranging it, sliding a towel underneath it and smoothing the hair away from my eyes and mouth. Gently. Very, very gently. A soothing voice spoke in my ear. "Don't try and speak now. Just rest. Rest. You're going to be fine." I thought it was Dr. Pryzinski.

Fine. What a crazy idea. How was it going to be fine? I was supposed to be back at work in a few hours and I couldn't even sit up. I was supposed to be able to have a little bit of fun in my life, but some asshole had pointed a big red arrow at me and said, "Amateur detective," causing our renegade conference killer to wreck my one free afternoon by trying to kill me. I no longer put any stock in the idea that this could be the work of the lingerie killer. Why would he stick around to come after me? Dumb as the thought was, I considered this attack simply unfair. I didn't know anything. I wasn't involved. True, other times I had stuck my nose in other people's business, but this time I'd done nothing more than answer questions. I had not played "Thea Kozak, girl detective." I had been restrained, and look where it got me. I wanted to ask the people who always urged me to be careful how I was supposed to have avoided this.

Fine. They said things were going to be fine. Call me clueless in lavaland, but I didn't see how. I didn't know who was after me, but now I would have to spend every minute looking back over my shoulder while trying not to run into anything. Fine. What crap. What bullshit. What a load of baloney. I needed some new expletives. Maybe I'd retire from work and spend my days making lists. Maybe I didn't want to be a modern woman. Maybe being strong and forthright and independent weren't all they were cracked up to be. If I spent my days at home reading dictionaries, no one would pin me down at the bottom of the sea and wait for me to die. Maybe the thesaurus was a girl's best friend?

I would have felt better if I could have told people what had happened. I would have felt better if I could have groaned and moaned and complained. We're given the capacity to groan for a reason—it is very therapeutic. There is no satisfaction in being able to make a wheezy hissing sound, unless you're a snake, and any self-respecting snake would have found mine pathetic. I would have felt better if I felt better. If I wasn't so weak, so cold, so dazed, so completely exhausted. If so many things didn't hurt. If I could stop coughing. If everyone would go away and leave me alone. If someone would give me something to drink.

A loud female voice, quite close to me, said, "Such a terrible accident." I wanted to tell her it was no accident. How could anyone believe what had just happened was an accident? Of course. Because they were all blind and deaf and optimistic and they'd been out ogling the fishes, just like me. Because even those of us who ought to be more cautious can't imagine living our lives in a constantly wary state. It's not human. It's not normal.

I raised my head and tried to tell her it wasn't an accident. Raising my head reminded me of the weight machine that was supposed to work my arms and chest. The first few times I used it, I couldn't move any weight without help from the attendant. My head was just as intractable. "Not an accident," I whispered.

The cute college girl who'd been snorkeling with Laura leaned down and whispered in my ear. "Patrol Officer Robin Dunn. We know it wasn't an accident. Don't try and talk now."

I wondered how long it would before I'd be well enough to go after Bernstein and Nihilani. No need to watch my back, eh? They'd thought there was and for that important mission they'd sent an incompetent baby not yet old enough to ride her bike off the sidewalk. I didn't even have enough strength to be angry. I tried to speak again and she bent her head, all perky and attentive. "Go away," I said.

"I'm not supposed to leave you alone," she whispered.

"Then where... the... hell were you... when I..."

I wanted to say "needed you," but there wasn't enough air. I wanted to critique her competence and her credentials. I wanted to scream in her face, to tell her about my agony, let her know how it felt to be dragged to the edge of the abyss and shoved over. I wanted to ask her how it felt to have been responsible for another person's life and to have almost lost it because she wanted to play. But I couldn't. I'd been reduced to a human pudding. My only remaining talent was my ability to drip. I seemed to be able to shed more water than there was in the sea, and it all stayed right beside me, in a faithful puddle, making me colder. I shivered and threw up in her general direction. A visceral demonstration of what I thought of her abilities.

Someone, warm hands again, wiped my face. A gentle voice. Marie's voice. "Poor thing. You feel just rotten, don't you?"

Someone said something. The policewoman. I thought of her as the policegirl, but that wasn't politically correct. Of course, could I have spoken, I would have defended myself by noting that her performance had not been competent or efficient. Girlish. Not womanly. Sent to watch over me, she'd gone off to play with Laura. Oh, hell. What did I know? Maybe in her educational experiences, she'd been shortchanged. Maybe life had caused her to step back from the hands-on experience and let the boys do it. Maybe she was well trained but instinctively unable to step up to the plate.

Funny. I could spend many of my life's hours worrying about what we needed to do to help young girls become strong, confident, forthright women. At all levels, there were ways in which the educational system, and, indeed, our social system, shortchanged girls, handicapped the women they became. I studied it. I thought about it. I worried about it. I saw it changing and was glad.

Still. Understanding was one thing, being sympathetic when your life has been put on the line another. I still expect competence from professional women. I groaned. Better to not dwell on the negative. Wasn't I lucky to be alive, even if I didn't feel particularly lucky right now? Shouldn't I be bouncing with glee, suffused with joy, ecstatic in the knowledge that someday soon I would stop coughing and retching and heal and be as good as new? Thinner, perhaps, paler. Left with another notch on my soul, another dark place in my psyche. The bright, sparkling ocean another place where danger lurked, another place I couldn't go easily anymore. Would the restless rustling of the waves outside my condo, something that now served as a pleasing backdrop, become tainted with this evil? Had the nameless, faceless figure who had seized me and carried me down to drown not stolen my life but taken my peace of mind? Might I get it back by giving that evil a name and a face?

We all dream of drowning sometimes. The fear of drowning may go back to our watery beginnings, to that traumatic moment when we're pushed violently out of our warm, dark, watery cradle and into a bright cold world. We cry and suck air into our lungs and can never go back. I had almost gone back. I had felt the tug of it, been drawn down into the water's dark embrace, lured from the terror of gasping, choking, filling lungs—I had no words for that experience, it had been a fearful, ghastly shriek from the body itself, a body in desperation and a mind closing down—to the peaceful, comfortable cradling of that surrounding darkness. A part of me regretted leaving it. It had been quiet and painless while the world surrounding me now was chaotic, noisy, and painful.

There was commotion all around me. People were grabbing me, lifting me, moving me. I being taken from my puddle, dumped on a rough, dry surface. A stretcher, probably. Carried. Oh, dear. All this bumping and moving was not pleasant. Staying still, very, very still, was the key to survival. If they would just leave me alone, curled up in my little ball, long enough, I would be fine. Life never does that. The powers that be, the helpful folks who aid us in distress, are an intrusive lot.

I have often wished for a magic wand, or for the supernatural power, to put someone in my place, especially when I am a patient. If all of those willing and opinionated helpers could know what it feels like to be the piece of meat on the table, they might act differently. I am learning to be a better patient, to endure without fuss until I'm stable enough to get my feet on the floor—either literally or figuratively. But it's always agony. They should know I'd been repeatedly sick and carry me tenderly, but they transported me with all the care they'd give a canned ham.

Someone was talking to me. Dr. Pryzinski. He was walking along beside me as we bobbed our way across the deck, through the sea of nosy, curious, eager faces. Rude people. I wanted to hit them but I couldn't curl my hands into a fist. Hands, I thought. Something about my hands that I wanted to tell him.

"Thea, they're moving you to another boat," he said. "A smaller, faster boat. It will take you to an ambulance. They're going to take you to the hospital." His face loomed over me, blotting out the sun. "It's just a precaution. Because of all the water in your lungs. You're going to be fine." His hand was warm and solid on my arm. I wanted to grab it and hang on, to beg him not to leave me, to ask him to protect me from hospitals.

It made me seasick to watch him. Not because he was moving, but because I was bobbing and weaving and dipping and drifting and had I not felt sick already, I certainly would have by the time they got me transferred. I closed my eyes, felt the accelerated, exaggerated motions as they moved me onto the other boat.

"Ms. Kozak?" I opened my eyes. A neat and eager EMT was waiting for me, his uniform crisp and fresh. He told me his name, which was Tim Thomas, and asked me how I felt. Tom Tuttle from Tacoma. Ted Turner from Truckee. Tyler Teehee from Tuskeegee. Turtle Turkle from the Tyrols. I was totally losing it. After all that motion, I felt fearfully sick. I threw up on his nice clean shoes. He retaliated by getting out his needles and sticking some into me. That's medicine for you. Find a person who has been through a bad time and make them feel better by punching holes in them. I believe this is directly descended from the primitive custom of bloodletting.

Just in case I wasn't feeling sufficiently helpless and dislocated, he also threw on a cervical collar and a few straps to hold me down. Yessirree. The best way to help a person who has just been traumatized by being held down and nearly drowned is to tie them down. The best way to calm and reassure a person who has been the victim of an attempted murder is to depersonalize them, talk over them like they're deaf and dumb, and surround them with mechanical devices, like you were trying to revive a roast. I wasn't a roast and I didn't need reviving. I just needed rest, warmth, and peace and quiet so I could think. Quiet so that, as my frightened and fragmented brain went back to work, I could start remembering things that might be useful, start assessing what I knew, start adding detail to my anonymous attacker. No one around me was quiet. The people working on me were keeping up a regular barrage of talk, to each other, to the policewoman. Through the radio.

I said, "Pryzinski?"

The man bending over me looked puzzled. He turned to Patrol Officer Robin Dunn. "She doesn't speak English?"

Robin leaned in to listen, tilting her little shell pink ear to catch my utterances. Dammit, Dunn, I thought, tell the man that I speak English so he'll stop with the zombie looks. It's the least you can do. If you'd been more attentive, I wouldn't be here. I said, "Pryzinski?" again. I knew what I wanted to tell them. Be careful of my hands. I had scratched that arm, gouged that wrist. I might be carrying evidence.

She nodded. "Dr. Pryzinski stayed behind on the other boat."

I gathered myself for another attempt. "Hands," I said. She looked blank. "Hands. Evidence. I..."

"You didn't have anything in your hands when I brought you up," she said.

May the Lord preserve us from fools. I didn't have the strength for this. These were the times when I longed for telepathy. "Fingernails," I whispered. "I scratched... there's skin...." I closed my eyes. Tired of doing other people's work for them.

I opened them again. Saw the gradual dawning of recognition. "You scratched the person who tried to drown you?" she said. "You think there may still be blood and skin under your fingernails?"

Bright girl. Now, what would she do with this information? Of course. To complete the depersonalization, they carefully unwrapped me and bagged my hands like a corpse, making me so glad I'd called it to their attention. They wrapped me back up, strapped me back down. They went back to chatting. I went back to fighting my claustrophobic panic. The boat sailed on.

 

 

 

Chapter 21

 

I was a prisoner at Maui Memorial Hospital. Imprisoned by tubes and needles. Imprisoned by the fact that my only clothing consisted of a bikini and a T-shirt. I didn't even have shoes. Imprisoned by my traitorous body, so weak and unwilling I couldn't get up and walk out. Otherwise I would have, even if I had to go barefoot and in my hospital johnny. I would have hiked to the nearest hotel, rented a room, and taken a shower. I hate being helpless. I hate hospitals.

The more they cut back on nursing care, the less hospitals can do for their patients. They can save your life but they don't bother to wash your face. My skin was sticky and stiff. The rough braid I'd made in my hair lay like a wet log beneath my head. My face still tasted salty. My teeth needed brushing. I would have given a year's salary for some mouthwash. Two year's salary for a blanket and a cup of tea. I was cold and damp and itchy. My hair smelled. I hurt. It was still a chore to breathe. And I was enjoying the pleasure of a visit from the midnight twins.