Girl With a Past (18 page)

She squeezed back and seemed to doze
off.

He called his father. “She’s awake. She
spoke to me.”

Steven hung up the phone. “Dad’s on his way
over.”

Al groaned, muttered something. It sounded
like she said, “Steven, it’s so real, maybe I’ve been reliving––it
was like I was there.” She nodded off.

33

Definitely strange, but the dreams were so
real.
Had
I been reliving Lexi’s life?

I had a lot to think about as I lay in my
hospital bed. My imaginings were so realistic. Was it real? Had I
really chosen my best friend and his wife for parents? Or was it
all another bad dream?

I tried to remember the thoughts I’d had
just prior to being shot in front of Kroeber Hall. I was onto
something, but the concept kept slipping from my grasp.

“Steven?” I said.

My brother looked up from his book.
“Yes?”

“How bad is it?”

“Your injury?”

“Uh-huh.”

“The doctor says there’s no reason you won’t
recover completely. And the second MRI they did this morning showed
the inflammation has gone down a lot.”

“How soon can I get up?”

“I think we better ask the doctor that, but
I imagine as soon as you feel like it.”

I attempted to lift my head, but it felt
impossibly heavy. A wave of nausea hit me.

Steven looked alarmed. “Hey. Wait until we
talk to the doctor, will ya?”

“Yeah, I think I better.” I rested for a few
minutes before I asked him the next question.

“Steven . . . what do you think about . . .
the idea . . . of reincarnation?”

He shrugged. “Seems logical. Could explain a
lot of things. Feeling like you’ve been somewhere before. That
immediate connection you feel towards some people. Even love at
first sight. There are more people on this planet who believe in it
than don’t. But . . . it’s a little . . . um . . . freaky.
Why?”

I didn’t want to answer his why. I decided
to drop the subject until I’d had a chance to think about it with a
clearer head. “I thought I heard Dad’s voice.”

“He’s been in and out,” Steven answered.

“What about Mom?”

Steven got a pained look on his face. “Hmm .
. . mm . . . uh.” He looked at me. “Al, we haven’t found Mom
yet.”

“WHAT?” Waves of panic shot through my body,
my limbs began to tremble.

“Chill!” Steven said. “Shit, I shouldn’t‘ve
told you. But she called Dad and said she was okay.”

I looked at the tubes and cords hooked up to
my hand and chest. “What is all this shit anyway? What are they
putting into me?”

“There’s the heart monitor.” He pointed to
the machine. My heart felt strong to me; in fact it was racing with
panic.

“Tell them to get it off me.”

“The nurses said they were planning to
unhook it today.”

“I want it off now.” I looked around the bed
trying to find the call button. Steven handed it to me from where
it was wrapped around the bed rails. I held my thumb on the button
thinking I’d get some immediate response. Nothing happened.

“Steven, what about drugs? What’s in this
thing?” I touched the tube running into my hand and looked at the
clear plastic bag that had countless little baggies hanging off
it.

“Sugar water to keep you hydrated and fed
and medicine to take down the inflammation and I don’t know what
else.”

“How long’ve I been out?”

“Two days.”

That was all. It seemed like a lifetime.

Oh God, Mom had been missing for two days!
“What’s Dad doing about Mom?”

“The police, of course, and his
investigators. And grandpa hired private investigators too.”

“And?”

“Nothing. Ab-so-fucking-lutely nothing.”

I ripped the round heart monitor tape things
off my chest. Ow, that stinging hurt as much as my head. “Are there
more of these damn things on my back or something?” I sat up,
turned my back to my brother and opened the back of my gown.

“Al, what the hell? We agreed to wait for
the doctor.”
“Uh, no, you suggested we wait for the doctor. I didn’t agree to
anything.”

Steven drew his phone out of his pocket,
punched some numbers and spoke to the doctor’s office.

It must have been the heart monitor flat
lining because all of a sudden we had a room full of nurses and
medical personnel.

“The doctor’s office says he’s in the
building somewhere. Can you get him?” Steven asked one of the
nurses.

“He’s already been alerted.” The male nurse
walked to my bed. “Well, you look pretty good,” he said.

“I need to get outa here,” I answered.

“I strongly recommend you take it easy for a
bit. Lie back down. You don’t want to get up too fast or you’ll
have one hell of a headache,” the nurse said.

Like I didn’t already.

A doctor I’d never met before came into the
room, ordered people around and everyone but Steven fled the
room.

“Alexandra, I’m Doctor Worthy. My partners
and I have been taking care of you.”

“What about Dr. Fleiss? He’s always been my
doctor.”

“Well, apart from the fact that he’s a
pediatrician, and you’re hardly a child anymore, he's also only a
GP and you’ve suffered a fairly serious head wound.”

“Are you a neurosurgeon then?” I asked.

He had removed the bandage from the side of
my head and was inspecting the wound. “Yes.”

I did my best not to react to the pain he
was causing. “I want to go home.”

“Maybe tomorrow morning we can discuss that.
You need some rest before you’re ready for going anywhere.”

“You don’t understand. I have to get out of
here.”

“No, you don’t understand young lady. You
have been in a coma for forty-eight hours. You aren’t going
anywhere. In the morning, a physical therapist will see you. We
need to assess how much damage has been done with this wound and
how to address it.” He scribbled on a chart while he lectured me,
then he turned to my brother to make sure that Steven had been
paying attention to what he said. “Do you both understand? You may
be past the most acute danger, and I’m certainly glad to see you
alert. But we are not out of the woods yet.”

What’s with this
we
business?
You
were never in the damn woods. But what came out of my
mouth was, “What time will you be here in the morning?”

“I can’t be specific. I make my rounds after
the surgeries I have scheduled for tomorrow morning. But I’ll make
sure the physical therapist comes by here first thing so that by
the time I get here we’ll know where we stand.”

There’s that
we
again.

He walked out, I heard him talking in the
hall. A nurse rushed in and put something in the IV bag.

As soon as the nurse cleared the door, I
turned to Steven. “Are you gonna help me?”

“Help you do what?”

“Get outa here.”

“Al, did you hear anything that doc
said?”

“Steven, Mom is––well, fuck.” A sudden urge
to sleep overcame me. I shoulda ripped out that damn IV. Drugged
sleep, again.

“Al, in the morning, I’ll help you all you
want. We can’t do anything tonight. Besides, what can we do better
than the police? Or Dad’s investigators? You need to get well.
Please just get well. Sleep.”

It appeared I had no choice. Waves of dozing
slid in and out even as I listened to his assurances.

But it wasn’t a restful, peaceful sleep I
was pulled into. Faces flashed in and out of view, mad faces,
bloody faces, grinning faces, Derek’s light blue eyes set in an
equally handsome face, Ted’s friendly smile, an ugly leer through a
black hood, a very young beautiful Carol, Dave’s stoned expression,
Lauren’s ladylike appearance that few knew hid a free spirit. The
last convinced me that Mom was still alive.

But the experiences of the last few days had
brought home to me the fragility of human life, and how quickly, in
a flash, life changed. Or ended.

34

The next morning I wasn’t taking any chances
on getting drugged again.

“Are you gonna take this thing off? Or am
I?” I said to the nurse who was fooling with the IV bag.

“I don’t have any orders from the doctor,”
she answered.

A tall, skinny dark guy entered my room and
pointed to the IV stand. “You might want to use that as a support
while we walk you around,” he said.

“I want it off,” I said. “Are you the
physical therapist?”

“Yep.” He nodded at the nurse who slid the
needle out of my hand and applied a bandage. “I’ll be back when the
nurse is finished.”

Next out came the catheter.

The physical therapist returned and
introduced himself, told me what we were going to do, put slipper
socks with sticky stripes on my feet, and offered his arm to help
me out of the bed. We walked very slowly to the door and a short
way down the hall. I felt unsure of each step and woosy as hell,
but I did my best to tough it out.

Steven and Dad arrived as we made our way
back to the door of my room.

“Ah, Al, I’m so glad to see you up.” Dad
carefully, tenderly kissed my cheek and smiled into my eyes. “I
hear you’re anxious to go home. I’ll arrange whatever nursing and
security is needed, but of course, by home, you mean to the city,
not Berkeley. Right?”

“Sure Dad.” Wherever. Just get me outa here.
This was all so confusing. Dad
was
Jeff!

Dad went out to the nurses’ station.

“Steven, any word?”

He knew that I meant about Mom. He shook his
head.

“I’m glad I don’t have to break out of
here,” I said.

“You’re not the only one.” Steven grinned.
“I wasn’t looking forward to that drama.”

My doctor arrived. Dad and he discussed what
I might need at home, when and where I would have physical therapy
while I took my bloody clothes into the bathroom and changed.

Dad paled when he saw the blood on my
sweater and jeans. “Oh, Al, sweetheart. We didn’t think to bring
you clean clothes.”

“I don’t care Dad.” Standing in the bathroom
door, I was suddenly dizzy and still confused. “I’m having trouble
remembering what was happening right before, uh, before . . . I
think I had some things that were important in my pocket. Yes. What
happened to the papers I had with me when I was shot?”

The nurse stared at me, Dad shrugged his
lack of knowledge but Steven spoke up. “I have’em.” Steven pulled a
handful of papers and the 8 x 10 photo, all of which he’d folded in
half, out of the back of his book. “Sorry about the crease.”

“Just get me out of here.” I started to the
door when a wave of lightheadedness swept over me.

“Hold it young lady,” the nurse said. “Sit
down in that chair while I get a wheelchair.”

“A wheelchair? I can walk.” I didn’t want
Dad or Steven to know that I wasn’t feeling all that strong.

“Hospital policy.” She walked out the door
and I sank into the chair holding my hand toward my brother for the
papers and especially for the photograph. I studied the photo of my
father and his friends, and started my mental list of what needed
to be done.

35

The ride across the Bay Bridge and through
the city was long and painful. Every bump in the road hurt like
hell.

I was exhausted by the time Dad got me to my
room in Sea Cliff. The turned down bed was tempting, but I changed
into clean sweats and sat down at my computer instead.

The two security guards Dad had arranged sat
on each end of the side terrace watching the front and rear of the
house.

Search engine time. I worked my way down the
list of names of the men in the photo. I had managed to know these
men for two lifetimes, yet I knew little about their business
lives.

Bits and pieces, comments made by my parents
and their friends had told me that Jamie was well respected for his
crime fighting legal work and prosecutions.

I knew that Dave was enormously wealthy from
furniture manufacturing in Southeast Asia and retailing in the US,
UK, and EU.

Elliott had some sort of title company. All,
but Dave, practiced some form of law. Maybe research as to what the
world in general––well, at least the internet world––thought of
each of them and the particulars of their businesses would give a
hint as to which of them could possibly be involved in murder and
kidnapping.

I tried to ignore the pains in my head and
the mental images of a dark figure in a black hood that threatened
to distract me from my task. Mom, I reminded myself, Mom has been
missing for three days.

Rather than read each article or blog I
found, I printed them off. I was halfway through my list when
Steven knocked on my half open door.

“I thought you’d be in bed,” he said.

I scribbled the rest of the names on a pad
of paper, the names of Dad’s friends from college. Come to think of
it, they may have been my friends too. “If you do this search or go
through Dad’s address book, I’ll lie down and read.” I picked up my
papers from the printer.

“Sure.” He googled the next name.

I climbed into bed and started reading.

36

I tried to remember Derek’s last name. Did I
ever know it? Damn, how would I find him? Was he alive? Why had his
body never been found? If he hadn’t been killed, he might be able
to help.

“Steven, please google the Zodiac killer and
print off a list of his victims. Also, see if Lexi’s date the night
of her murder is mentioned, get his name, and google that. His
first name was Derek.”