Precious Blood (32 page)

“Jimmy, please.”

Haley looked down at Jenner, shaking his head. “God, Doc. You look like shit.”

The other uniformed officers looked at Haley. He thought for a second, then said, “Fuck it,” and told them to stand down.

With the cops looking on, Jenner wheeled his chair to the bedside, stopping next to the ventilator. He sat there watching his friend sleep.

It was quiet for a while, but eventually the cops started talking again. Cars, mostly, and what the PBA was going to do about the overtime situation. Later, an anesthesiologist in blue and green scrubs stopped by to check the vent settings.

He looked down at Jenner with interest.

“Were you the other one?”

The other one?”

“The other Inquisitor victim.”

Jenner lowered his head.

“How are you doing?”

“Okay. How’s Detective Garcia doing?”

“Much better than he looks. Not out of the woods yet, but he should be fine. You guys came to the right place—you get shot or stabbed in New York, Bellevue’s the place to go. The vascular surgeons did a great job on his neck—we’ll get rid of the trach soon.”

“Thanks.”

Jenner sat slumped by the bed for a while, watching Rad’s chest rise and fall to the ventilator’s cough and hiss, watching the green trace of his heartbeat march across the monitor, trying to persuade himself it wasn’t his fault as he twisted and burned inside.

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Behind him, there was the noise of creaking chairs as the cops stood, then quiet murmuring.

“Dr. Jenner.”

He turned to see Dulcie Garcia, Rad’s wife, standing with Izzy, her eldest son; he hadn’t seen her since the party when she joined the DA’s squad. In the blue-white glare of the X-ray box, her face was gray and unreadable. He’d never seen her in glasses before; her eyes, distant behind thick lenses, were puffy and red.

Her son was like a young Rad, the same easy burliness and gentle manner. Crossing himself, he slipped onto the chair next to the bed, leaned forward to grip one of his father’s hands, then began to pray silently, his lips moving quickly as his forehead sunk to his dad’s hand.

It was Jenner who broke the silence. “I’m so sorry, Dulcie.

I just talked with the surgeons, and they say he’s doing great, that everything should be fine. They’re taking out the trach tube tomorrow.”

She nodded, distracted. “They told me.”

“How are you holding up?”

She was quiet for a while, watching her son plead with God for the life of his father. When she finally spoke, it was with sadness and reluctance.

“You know, I’m not one of those cop wives who spends every second of every day worrying about where her man is, and if he’s okay. I know Rad doesn’t take unnecessary risks. I know he’s careful, he won’t make a dangerous move without backup. When he started on the job, he promised me he’d always play by the rules, and I was okay with that; you play by the rules, you don’t get hurt, because your buddies always got your back. And he kept his bargain, and he always played by the rules.”

She was choosing her words carefully.

“But he’s been working with you. He likes you, you know?

Says you make him think different, that working with you
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makes him a better cop. And I like you, too, Jenner. I like you because you make my husband feel good, and I like you because you seem like a nice guy. And we were so sorry for you after all you went through.”

He was touched. “You know I feel the same way about him.”

She held up a hand to stop his interruption. “But, the fact is, you’re not a cop. You’re a nice guy, but you’re not a cop.

You don’t think like us, you don’t look like us, you don’t work like us, and in the end, you can’t do what we can do.

And one of the things cops do is protect each other. We watch out for each other.

“And I know part of why Rad likes you so much is that you’re not a cop, but it’s also why I always worried about you. I knew you’d make him play by different rules, and I worried.

“So now he’s played your way, and this is what’s happened.

Joey’s dead, Rad’s half dead. I’m not saying it’s your fault . . .

No, wait, I am saying that. That’s just what I’m saying. I think Joey and Rad got into trouble because they were playing by your rules, running around, chasing your leads, no backup, no safety net. And that’s why they got hurt.”

He looked at the blanket on his lap. “None of us . . . I had no idea that something like this was going to happen.”

“No, of course not, Jenner. You couldn’t. You just follow the clues, wherever they go. And once you were . . . seeing that girl, you didn’t look around, you didn’t watch out, you just ran after the clues. You shouldn’t have been involved, and you shouldn’t have dragged Rad in, and you shouldn’t have dragged Joey in.”

She looked down at him.

“I need you to stay away from Rad. Let him get better.

Don’t make him think about this stuff. He needs some time, time to stay with his family, time to get well again. Please.

You owe him that.”

Jenner nodded, then turned his wheelchair and headed
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toward the elevator bank, behind him the rhythmic peeping of monitors and the whispered words of the boy’s prayer.

Something inside her was slowly tearing. Twisting, clawing at her guts, trying to rip its way out. She lay there pulling herself into a ball, her cuffed hands awkwardly rubbing her belly for relief. She’d chewed the collar of her T-shirt until it was thick with spit, desperate not to cry out, terrified that he might come back in. She couldn’t stop herself from retching, and had to use the bucket repeatedly.

Afterward, she lay there on the floor, crying and shivering. Wishing she had just a taste of heroin, wishing she were warm and high.

She couldn’t lie to herself anymore: she was in withdrawal.

How long had it been now? Two days without heroin? She squinted at her watch through puffy eyes. A day and a half, almost two. Her skin, hot and flushed hours ago, was now cold and clammy. There was no heat left in her body at all, her skin pale blue, her lips dark and dried. Already dead.

Jenner. What would he do? She screwed her eyes tight, imagined him lying in his TV room watching Japanese movies, that cat sleeping by his side. Maybe ordering dinner.

Or having some of the Weetabix from Dean & Deluca.

No, wait. He was in the fucking hospital, maybe on life support. If he was alive at all. He’d been so weak on the loading dock. Maybe he was dead, or paralyzed.

She rubbed the goose bumps on her arms and tried to scrunch herself into a ball, but the heat just poured out of her; she imagined it as a spreading puddle draining out of her onto the floor.

Everyone was leaving her, one by one. First her parents, and now Jenner. Her uncle. The cops. And they’d just been trying to help her. Really, she should have just stayed and waited for him in the backyard, let him climb down the trellis and kill her after he’d finished butchering Andie. Then
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they would all have been fine. Jenner, Joey, Rad Garcia.

And what difference would it have made? She’d have lost two weeks, two lousy weeks in which she managed to hook up with Perry and start doing H again, this time kind of seriously. You go, girl!

The candle had rolled under her; touching it, she felt a sudden desire for light. She felt around her for the matches, but had the shivers so bad she couldn’t strike the match.

She rolled back down to the floor and cried until the cramping started getting really bad. She needed to use the bucket, but she was afraid he’d come in, so she put it off, and put it off. Then she could wait no longer, and clumsily tore her jeans down with her cuffed hands to squat in the dark corner, crying from pain and humiliation and self-pity, crying because she didn’t want to die, crying because no one would come to find her.

friday,

december 20

Dr. Khan squinted at the grid of CT images on the viewing box.

“You see here, Doctor?” he said to Jenner, tapping one of the scans with the tip of a gold-cased mechanical pencil. “Your spleen. See how it isn’t all the same shade? It may be nothing, but there may be some bleeding in here.

You got a good kick or two in the ribs, there, and that’s a great location to pound on if you want a splenic injury.”

Jenner nodded. “I’ve seen sudden death due to delayed splenic rupture a few times—guy sent home as okay after a fight, then slowly bleeds into the spleen until it finally ruptures and he quickly bleeds out. The CT is equivocal?”

Khan nodded. “It might be nothing. I just can’t tell without doing serial scans, and even then there’d have to be some time between scans for me to be comfortable to make a reliable diagnosis.”

“Are you keeping me in here?”

“Oh, I don’t think that the management would go for that.

You’re a doctor—physician monitor thyself, eh? Go home, come back in three days or so for a follow-up. By then it should be pretty clear whether it’s growing or not. How are you walking?”

“Slowly. My chest hurts a bit, so does my side. My stomach wound feels okay, though. The chest tube site itches a bit, but that’s it.”

“Par for the course. You feel ready to go home?”

“I’ve felt ready to go home since I first woke up in Bellevue.”

“Good, good. That makes two of us! Ha ha. Come see me in outpatient clinic Monday afternoon; let’s get a repeat CT

first. The ward secretary will set it up.”

They shook hands.

Khan turned to go, but stopped and turned back to Jenner, holding up an admonishing finger.

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“I want to make this crystal clear: if you’ve got a slow bleed into your spleen, even slight pressure can make it worse, or even burst it. Strictly bed rest until you see me Monday, eh?

And even if the Monday scan looks good, minimal activity for the next couple of weeks. Check your blood pressure every four hours or so; blood pressure goes down, pulse goes up, worsening pain in your abdomen or flank, call 911 and come in by ambulance. Got it?”

Jenner nodded.

Khan smiled again.

“Okay, Doctor. Liberty beckons . . .”

Jenner thanked him again, then dialed the Ninth Precinct one more time to see if there’d been any news of Ana.

Jun brought him clothes; the ones he’d been wearing had been impounded by the crime lab. They walked slowly together through the corridors, went down in the elevator, and out into the cold air. It had snowed all night, and Jenner was surprised to see the scrappy hospital lawn blanketed in white.

At the curb, Kimi was waiting in Jun’s Lexus, the inside lights on, the car glowing as if radioactive. He opened the passenger door, and “Baby One More Time” boomed out.

Kimi yelped when she saw Jenner, then her face wrinkled and her eyes filled with tears as she looked at him. “Jenner!

How do you feel?”

He smiled at her. “Good.”

Dabbing her eyes, she turned to Jun and spoke in Japanese for a few seconds.

“She’s going to ride in the back with you while I drive.

We’ll get you up now, then you can go onto the seat yourself.

Go slow, eh?”

They helped him in, then Kimi climbed in next to him and gave him a careful hug. “Oh, so good to see you, Jenner!”

she said, squeezing his hand and holding it in her lap. She wiped away her tears, then leaned forward to tell Jun to skip
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ahead to “Oops! I Did It Again!” and sang along, clutching Jenner’s hand tight all the way home.

There were vases with flowers outside his front door, and cards leaning against a lit devotional candle. Behind them, the front door and inside frame were sooty with fingerprint powder. Inside, though, the apartment was spotless.

Crime Scene had been all over it. They’d taken the bathroom door, which had been torn off its runners: Ana had been able to make it to the bathroom, which was presum-ably where she’d called him from. Then the man had broken through—it was probably over in seconds.

“We called your housekeeper to come by and clean after the cops left. She didn’t want to be paid, but I insisted.”

“Thanks, Jun. I’ll pay you back.”

He nodded, then put the bag of Jenner’s pain meds on the coffee table, along with the crime lab receipt for Jenner’s vouchered clothes.

Jenner eased himself into the big chair. Jun set a glass of water on the coffee table nearby, then stood awkwardly.

“You want Kimi and me to hang out with you? Or maybe come over to my place—we’re going to get sandwiches from Balthazar and watch
Alien Resurrection
.”

Jenner smiled. “Thanks, Jun. I just want to chill here.”

“Sure, Jenner. I understand.” He turned. “Call if you need anything.” He closed the door softly behind him.

Jenner listened for the sound of Jun’s front door closing, then pulled himself to his feet. He walked stiffly to his desk and went through the stacks of books until he found Alban Butler’s
Lives of the Saints
. He opened to the Anastasia entry, and read; he needed to know what would happen to her if he didn’t find her before the twenty-fifth.

National said they wouldn’t have a car for him until 11:00

a.m.

saturday,

december 21

He woke at 6:00 a.m., and soaked in the bath in the dark, Brian Eno’s
Music for Airports
playing softly.

He felt the muscles in his left side loosen in the hot water, but they knotted up again when he stood to get out of the bath, a harsh stabbing pain radiating along his flank.

He sat at the table and inflated the cuff around his arm, his eyes on the dial as he deflated it. He pressed his fingers to his right wrist and counted for fifteen seconds. His blood pressure and pulse were okay.

He looked at his chest in the mirror. He’d taken off the dressing before getting into the bath; now his torso looked like sunset fighting a storm, pale pink and red stripes over his ribs livid against the glowering purple bruise that was his left side.