You Get Full Credit For Being Alive

Chapter Four

By the end of my shift I realized that I wasn't going to learn anything else tonight, and I wasn't going to get back in there either. So I decided to go home. I'd take Della for a walk, get some sleep and come back sometime during the day to see how things stood. Good plan.

The first two parts went perfectly. I made it home, and I took Della for a walk. She was eager to get outside, and I considered, yet again, installing a doggie door for her. She hadn't had an accident inside yet, but it was probably only a matter of time. Apart from worrying that she'd run away, though, I didn't like the breach in security a door like that afforded. Not that anyone was looking for me... that I knew of. But while I personally was too broad to ever fit through a doggie door, some of the best in the business were wiry little fuckers who'd slide through it without breaking stride. I had worked mostly as a lone wolf, solitary but straightforward, but these people were the cougars of the trade. They were men and women who fit into places no human should go and then toyed with their prey, stalking them until the mood to kill finally struck. You could see why I'd be worried.

The walk was good, Della was tired out and lay down on the floor to sleep, but I could already tell that short of exhausting myself and then taking some drugs I wasn't going to sleep any time soon. I couldn't stop thinking about Shawn. Why he didn't speak, how he was recovering, whether he really knew who I was and had any memory of me at all. Whether or not Janich was there with him.

The transmitters in the bugs I'd put in place had a fairly limited range, enough that I could hear what was going on while I was in the hospital but not much further. Everything was being recorded and I could listen later if I wanted to, but that wasn't doing it for me tonight. I needed to know.

I put Della in my other car, a ten year old silver Civic that looked like a thousand other cars on the road at any given moment, and drove back to the hospital. There was a coffee shop a few blocks down. I grabbed a latte, parked within listening distance, and sat back to get the lay of the land.

There was a lot more movement in the room now, people coming in and out, doctors, therapists, nurses all vying for Shawn's attention. He seemed to slip in and out of sleep, dozing for as long as they would let him before someone else had to test something. He still wasn't speaking, but they more than made up for his silence. I lay my seat back, closed my eyes and let the words flow over me. It was relaxing, almost Zen, to hear them outline his injury in such distant terms, test and poke and prod. I enjoyed it, because it was all proof that he was really awake, really alive, really doing this. It couldn't be fun for him, but life wasn't about fun. Life was about survival.

Around eleven that morning, just as I was getting ready to get out of the car and go inside, Janich arrived. I settled in again and waited for him to get up there. Janich knew even less than I did about medicine, which meant a real explanation was coming.

"Detective Janich, thank you for coming—"

"You said he was awake," Janich said briskly. I heard footsteps moving fast, then stopping abruptly. "He's not awake." The tone was accusatory.

"Shawn has had a very busy twelve hours," the doctor said reprovingly. "He fell asleep about fifteen minutes ago, right after we called you."

"Is he speaking?"

"No. That's part of what I wanted to talk to you about. Please, sit." There was silence for a long moment, then the scraping of chairs being pulled out on linoleum. "Shawn is exhibiting some symptoms of both aphasia and dysarthria, which isn't surprising given that he's sustained major head trauma."