“The friends?”
“That I was a police officer.” She paused. “Everything, really.”
“That’s normal. You had a traumatic brain injury. There was bleeding and you had an operation to relieve that. You were put into an induced coma to speed up the healing. You’re doing very well.” As she spoke, she wrote notes on the clipboard that held Diane’s chart.
She set it aside and then lifted the blanket. She moved her light, thin fingers to Diane’s arm, her side, her leg. It was like a small bird landing, only to fly to the next spot and rest for a moment.
Diane said, “What’s the bottom line?”
“The bottom line? You mean the cost?”
“No. I’m alive, but what have I lost that I won’t get back?”
“I think you’ll have a good recovery.”
“I have a brain injury and a broken arm and what else?”
The doctor sighed. “Several fractures, ribs, fingers, a shoulder dislocation, which was corrected immediately. Much of your body was bruised by the concussion, and there are abrasions and a few burns along your back. You were slammed against a wall by the explosion, so your nose was broken, but it was reset by a plastic surgeon. The bones, I’m told, are doing well.”
“Thank you,” Diane said.
“Dr. Hollskein is the attending in your case, and he’ll talk to you at length and answer all your questions in a day or so. In the meantime you’re going to feel discomfort. When you feel that way, buzz the nurse, and she’ll give you something for the pain.”
“Thank you.”
Later a nurse came in, and Diane realized she already knew her. At some point she had simply gotten used to the nurse without being really aware of her. She looked at her this time and felt accustomed to her without any memory of meeting her.
Diane said, “You’ve been taking care of me. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. But it’s a team of people, around the clock.”
“I know. But you’re here now.”
“Anything you need?”
“I want to call my mother and tell her I’m alive.”
“Okay. But that could be an anticlimax. She calls every day to see how you’re doing.”
“Only once?”
The nurse smiled, went to retrieve the telephone, and then set it on the tray table where she could reach it. “Dial nine.” She walked out. Diane called and she and her mother spent a long time crying, so only the two of them could have understood each other. Her mother had flown to Los Angeles from Miami and come to see her every day for a month, just sitting in the room and then returning to her hotel. In the end she’d had to go back. She’d been back in Miami for only a short time. They laughed and talked until Diane was tired, and her mother had run out of things to say. When they hung up, Diane fell asleep.
Hours later the nurse came in and gave Diane a sponge bath. When Diane had been changed, the nurse said, “You have a visitor waiting. His name is Captain Stahl. Are you okay to see him?”
“I don’t want him to see me like this.”
The nurse smiled. “Oh, come on, Diane. The last of your facial bruises and the swelling and burns cleared up weeks ago. You look great.” She went into the bathroom and brought a hand mirror. “Here.” She held the mirror and folded Diane’s hand around the handle carefully, because some of the fingers on that hand were still splinted with metal braces.
Diane didn’t look just yet. “Weeks ago?”
“Three at least. And the captain has been here at least once a day for as long as you have. He’s seen you many times when you looked a lot worse than this.”
Diane looked at the mirror. The discoloration, scrapes, and adhesive tape she expected were gone. Her hair must have been shaved, but it had grown in to about half an inch. Her skin looked scrubbed and devoid of makeup, but there was nothing else. “It looks like I lost some weight, anyway.”
“He’s waiting. Can I bring him in?”
“Okay.”
The nurse went out, and the door had barely closed behind her before it opened again and a tall, trim man about forty-five years old stepped in.
“I’ve seen you before,” she said.
She saw his face go flat. He said, “Yes, you have. Do you remember who I am?”
“Of course I do,” she said.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t. How are you feeling?”
“My memory started coming back pretty quickly. It’s odd, though. Things seemed all to be there, but I didn’t want to start digging through them. That felt like such a big job. Somebody mentioned I was a police officer, and that seemed so foreign to me. But pretty soon there were bits and pieces—images, memories, like a dream. What I remembered didn’t make any sense. None of it seemed like anything I would do.” She paused. “Are you my supervisor?”
“Yes. Temporarily, anyway.”
“The nurse says you were here every day.”
“I was.”
“How many days?”
“Forty-two, I think.”
“Oh, my God. It doesn’t feel that way. I would have guessed a week.”
“They put you under for a while.”
“They told me,” she said. “Just not how long.”
“They needed to. You’ve been through a lot.”
“So why have you been coming here?”
His face seemed to go blank. “It’s complicated.”
“I’ll pay close attention. I’ve got all day.”
“I’ll start with the easy answers. Several reasons. You’re a very highly skilled bomb technician. The bomber we’re after tried to kill you by planting a device in your apartment. You obviously figured out the mechanism in time to take shelter in the only place where you would be somewhat protected. You were lucky to survive, but you were also smarter than the bomber.”
“I feel like shit. Does he?”
“I hope so, but we haven’t caught him yet.” He looked closely at her. “You’re the only trained tech I’ve known who lived through anything that big. You might know something or have seen something that will help us catch him.”
“This bomber was why you came here yourself? Every day?”
“Well, no,” he said. “I could have sent other people to talk to you. Our third teammate, Elliot, for instance. He’s a very good cop and a very good bomb tech.”
“So why?”
“You said you remembered me.”
“I do.”
“We were close,” he said. “But I think we should talk about that another day, when your memory tells you it’s the right time.”
“I thought so. I just wanted to make you say it in case I imagined it or got you mixed up with somebody else,” she said.
“You didn’t,” he said. He took a card out of his wallet. “They probably have a few dozen of these lying around here, but here’s another.” He set it on her tray table. “Call me anytime you want to talk. About anything.”
20
The bomb maker read another article about himself in the Los Angeles Times. It was around thirty percent true. Everybody seemed to have figured out that the bomb maker was working alone—the police, the newspapers, the television newspeople, the FBI. They were right about his preference for relying on himself, but not about his purpose. He was doing all the work alone, but he’d had a backer since the beginning.
For half his life he had read and watched news reports about terrorist groups. Some were from the Middle East, some in Asian countries, some in Europe or South America. He had begun to keep track of radical factions in all of those places. The Internet was full of reports about them.