Chapter Seventy-Four

VENDING MACHINE. MAGAZINE stand. Row of chairs. Bank of payphones. I recited the names of the four points of my pacing route around the hospital waiting room. I didn’t know how many laps I’d done, but I could see my endless route was starting to annoy Effie. She watched me going around and around from the back row of the room full of chairs. She fit right in there, her shirt drenched in Neddy Ives’s blood and her eyes full of turmoil. To her left, three seats down, a father was clutching a wad of bandages to a blood-smeared toddler’s forehead, and on her right, a guy with a possibly broken foot was lounging in a wheelchair, head bent forward, tapping at his phone.

I went and sat beside Effie, wringing my hands between my legs.

“Tell me again what happened at the house with Nick and Breecher,” I said.

Effie rolled her eyes, handed me her phone. I could read for myself the story she had written out for me, unable to explain an ordeal that long and awful with her makeshift sign language. I pushed the phone away without reading it, thought about going back to pacing. Maybe I’d try going in the opposite direction. Effie put a hand on my leg and mouthed words that were clear, especially from the expression in her eyes.

Calm. Down.

“I can’t do this again,” I said, shaking my head, ignoring her direction. I pointed to a chair in the front row. “See that chair there? That’s where I sat waiting for the doctors to tell me that my wife hadn’t made it. Four hours I sat there. You see the sign out front when you came in? That’s where they told me about Marni.”

Effie nodded knowingly.

“I can’t lose Susan,” I said. “I can’t do it again. I can’t lose someone again.”

Effie gripped my hand, tried to say something, but I didn’t look. The words were tumbling out of me. Darker and darker, spiraling down.

“I stopped for Norman Driver,” I said. My voice quivered. I paused for a long time, in case I lost it, only speaking again when I was sure I could get the words out. “I hit him with the car. He just came out of the woods really suddenly, and before I could slam on the brakes—bam. It was an accident. I stopped and went to see if he was alive, if there was something I could do.”

Effie shrugged. So?

“So what if those few seconds make a difference?” I asked. “What if, you know, if she dies, and it turns out that she might have survived if I’d just got her to the hospital a few seconds earlier. I did a stupid, stupid thing, Effie. I shot her. And then I did another stupid thing. I stopped to see if some goddamn worthless, murdering, drug-dealing piece of trash could be saved. What if I—”

Effie grabbed my cheek with one hand and turned my face toward her, hard.

Cut it out!she mouthed.

I stopped. Effie tapped a message out on her phone, showed it to me.

You stopped for Shauna because you’re a good man.

I wasn’t convinced, so I went back to pacing around the room. Vending machine. Magazine stand. Row of chairs. Bank of payphones. I was trying to decide how many seconds I’d given Shauna Bulger to get into the car with me when a nurse came through the double doors beside the triage desk and walked up to Effie. I sprinted over to be at her side.

“Your friend, Mr. Ives, is out of surgery and is stable now,” the nurse said. “But he’s unconscious. He’s had a difficult time. I’m afraid I won’t be able to let anyone other than immediate family in to sit with him.”

Effie nodded and the nurse walked away.

“They’re not going to let me in to see her,” I said.

Effie looked up at me.

“If she survives,” I said. “Susan. I’m not her immediate family.”

Effie hung an elbow over the back of her chair and tapped a message out on her phone with one thumb.

Better settle in, then. Could be here a while.