Ground Zero Part 10

Dr. Orlando's tone said he didn't believe him. "Yes, well, be that as it may, I-" He stopped and pointed at Darryl's hand. "Oh, I see you have a tattoo. Contaminated tattoo needles can spread the infection as well."

Darryl looked down at the little black Kicker Man in the web between his thumb and forefinger.

"Aw, no. Don't say that."

"The manner in which you were infected does not affect your treatment options. The fact that you have Kaposi's indicates that you've been infected for some time-years, most likely."

Years? Then it couldn't be the Kicker tattoo. He hadn't had it anywhere near that long. But how then? Darryl couldn't imagine. He'd had a couple of girlfriends back in Dearborn after his divorce-well, okay, before his divorce too-but he'd always used a rubber because they hadn't been the choosiest women.

But right now how how didn't matter all that much. He had AIDS, man. f.u.c.king didn't matter all that much. He had AIDS, man. f.u.c.king AIDS AIDS!

He listened to the doc go on about staging him and waiting for the results of tests that would take longer to complete and how treatment was so much better these days.

Yeah, sure. Medical bulls.h.i.+t. Everybody knew AIDS was a death sentence. So as the doc rattled on about this and that, tossing out terms like T-cell counts and remission, Darryl rose and forced his rubbery legs to carry him out of the office and back down toward the street.

Dead man walking.

He wasn't a fool. He'd been handed a death sentence.

He just couldn't let anyone else know.

11.

Jack spotted Eddie at the far end of the waiting area, motioning him over.

"It's her," he said, relief large on his face as Jack reached him. "Weezy's their Jane Doe."

He pressed a hand over his eyes and for a moment Jack thought he was going to sob. He squeezed his old friend's shoulder.

"At least she's in good hands."

He nodded. "I was so worried. She's nutty as a fruitcake, but I love her to death. She's the only family left."

Uh-oh. Jack had never thought to ask ...

"Your folks?"

"Gone. Mom from cancer, Dad from a car crash a year later."

"I'm sorry. I never heard a thing about it."

"It's okay. Old news."

"How's Weez?"

"Pretty banged up and still unconscious."

"I want to see her."

Eddie looked at him. "You sure?"

"h.e.l.l, yeah. I didn't get involved in this just to locate her and say, 'See ya, bye.' "

She'd been his best friend at one time and he hadn't seen her in ages. He needed to lay eyes on her at least once.

He followed him upstairs to a semiprivate room that seemed oddly familiar. At least it wasn't an ICU or trauma unit. The inside bed was empty. Eddie led him to the one by the window.

"Hey, Weez," he said to the supine figure under the sheet. "You'll never guess who's here."

The figure didn't move or respond as Jack stepped closer and looked down at his childhood friend.

He could see that she'd added a few pounds-picked up some of the weight Eddie had lost, maybe? Her face had rounded out, but he could still see the old Weezy Connell in those features. She'd never been pretty in the cla.s.sic sense, but as a teen she easily could have been considered "cute." He remembered her dark, dark brown eyes, closed now. Her almost-black hair was shorter than he'd ever seen it and showed minute streaks of gray. Was that unusual for someone in her late thirties? A partially denuded area of her left frontal scalp revealed a st.i.tched-up, three-inch laceration. Her skin was as milk pale as ever-even as a kid she'd never liked the sun.

No endotracheal tube or respirator, just an IV running in from a bag hung high and a catheter tube running into a receptacle slung low. He noticed movement under the sheet where her right hand should be but didn't lift it to investigate.

"Well," Eddie said. "There she is."

Jack felt his throat constrict. He hadn't given her a thought for so, so long. She'd been a year ahead of him in school, but during prehigh school summers they'd been almost inseparable. He'd never paid much attention to her mood swings; that was the way she was, and he accepted it. Weezy was Weezy-a loner like Jack, a free thinker, one of a kind. During high school a doctor began putting her on medication that smoothed out the swings but, in the process, changed her. Things were never quite the same.

He wished she was awake and on her feet now so they could hug and exchange long-time-no-see cliches.

"Yeah," was all he could manage.

"Good day," said a high-pitched, accented voice behind him.

He turned and recognized the tall, lean, dark-skinned man in the white coat. He had a Saddam Hussein mustache and carried a clipboard. Jack checked his ID badge to make sure he was right.

"h.e.l.lo, Doctor Gupta."

The man looked confused. "I'm sorry. Have we met?"

Jack now knew why the room seemed familiar.

"Yes. I was acquainted with Professor Buhmann." When Gupta shook his head, Jack added, "The guy with the stroke who spoke only in numbers?"

His eyes lit. "Ah, yes! How is he?"

"Gone."

"Yes-yes. The tumor. So sorry. A most fascinating case." He gestured toward Weezy. "I am told you are the brother of our mystery patient?"

Jack pointed to Eddie. "That would be him."

"Her name is Louise Myers, Doctor," he said, stepping forward and shaking hands. "How is she?"

"As you can see, she is comatose from her head trauma. She has a lacerated scalp but no skull fracture. Scans reveal no intracranial hemorrhage or hematoma."

"What's her Glasgow score?" Jack said.

Gupta gave him a puzzled look. "You know the Glasgow scale?"

Jack nodded. His father, Gia, and Vicky had all been comatose at one time or another. He knew more about comas than he wished.

Gupta moved toward the bed. "Well, strictly speaking, her score is eight. She makes incomprehensible sounds now and then, and she responds to painful stimuli. Here. I show you."

He pulled a little rubber-headed percussion mallet from his pocket and removed a pinlike instrument from its handle. Then he raised a flap of sheet to reveal Weezy's left hand.

"Watch."

He lifted it about six inches off the bed; when he let go it dropped like a piece of meat.

"Now watch."

He jabbed her palm with the pin. Her hand jerked away and her eyes fluttered open for a second.

"Hey!" Eddie said.

But Gupta was already moving to the other side of the bed, saying, "So, that gives her a score of eight. But this does not fit with that score."

He lifted the sheet to reveal her right hand. Its index fingertip was scratching the sheet in a circular motion.

"See? Intermittent spontaneous movement. That should move her above an eight but I'm not sure where. The movement is certainly not consciously directed."

"What's the prognosis?" Eddie said.

"Good, I think."

"When will she wake up?"

"Oh, that I cannot say. It would be foolish of me to predict."

As they talked Jack stared at Weezy's finger where it scratched the sheet. After a moment he began to sense a pattern in the movements. She'd make somewhere between fifteen and twenty loops-her movements were too rapid and small for an accurate count-stop for maybe two seconds, then start again. Almost as if ...

"Doctor Gupta," he said, motioning him over and pointing to her hand. "Could she be writing something?"

He leaned closer, stared a moment, then straightened, shaking his head.

"It is highly unlikely. The movement is most likely the result of random neuron firings." He started for the door. "I must continue rounds. I shall check on her later. In the meantime, please fill in the nurses on as much of your sister's medical history as you know."

When he was gone, Eddie stepped up to Jack's side and together they stared at Weezy's moving finger.

"Doesn't look very random to me," Jack said.

"You really think she's writing something?"

Jack nodded. "Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin."

"What?"

"Nothing." He leaned close to her ear. "Weezy, it's Jack. You told Eddie to call me and he did. If you can hear me, stop moving your finger."

The fingertip kept up its relentless pattern.

"Okay, then, if you can hear me, draw an 'X' with your finger."

No change. The looping motions continued. As Jack watched them, an idea formed. He straightened and turned to Eddie.

"You going to the nursing station?"

"Yeah."

"Good. I'll come with you."

The station lay fifty feet down the hall. While Eddie hunted the head nurse to background her on Weezy, Jack leaned over the counter and got a candy striper's attention.

"Can I help you?" She was all of sixteen and chewing gum with her mouth open.

"I hope so. I need to scrounge a notepad and some carbon paper."

She stopped chewing. "Carbon paper?" She turned and called to another girl who was maybe a year older. "Hey, Brit? Do we have any, like, carbon paper?"

Brit looked at her like she'd just spoken Farsi. "Carbon paper? Like what's paper? Like what's that that? Is that, like, a color color?"

Feeling terminally Tria.s.sic, Jack said, "Never mind. How about we try this ... ?"

Two minutes later he returned to Weezy's room with a yellow legal pad, a black Sharpie, and a roll of quarter-inch adhesive tape. He pulled a chair up to her right side and seated himself before her hand. He taped the Sharpie alongside her index tip so that its point jutted just beyond the fingernail. Then he placed the pad under her finger and let her rip.

At first all he got was an irregular blotch of black scribbles. So he decided to slide the paper along under the tip. And as he did, figures that looked like letters began to appear. He kept working at it, varying the speed until ...

"What on Earth are you doing?" Eddie said as he returned to the room carrying some papers.

"Trying to find out what she's writing."

"You heard the doctor-random neurons."

Yeah, Jack had heard. But he knew doctors could be as pigheaded as anyone else, refusing to see what was dangling before their noses because it didn't fit their preconceived notions.

"Really?" Jack held up the latest sheet he'd run under her finger. "This look random to you?"

Eddie frowned and squinted at it. " 'b.u.mmyhouse'? What's that mean?"