Million Dollar Road (23 page)

C
rippled
.

It had been five days since the horror on the pond's edge. In room 447 at St. Tammany General, the flower arrangements, balloons, and cards all served as hollow reminders to ensure that Con awoke to his new reality. Now that the hospital staff was stepping down the Demerol, every time he opened his eyes, reality, that beast, inexorably buried its sharp teeth in his consciousness and shook it like a rat. This Saturday morning as he drifted upward through the fog of his narcotic doze, Con sensed the snarling beast was ready to pounce.

But still, everybody kept saying, it could have been so much
worse
. Refusing even a glance at the white gauze-swathed lump that was once his left hand, Con set his jaw and stared out the window at the hospital parking lot.

So much worse? Easy for the un-crippled to say. They were complete while he was going to have to manage without his little finger, his ring finger and nearly half of his palm. For the rest of his life, Con would have to endure the averted glances, the pity, the inevitable questions, as well as this uncompromising fact: he wasn't himself anymore. He never would be again.

Con had lost a lot of blood, undergone two surgeries, and so was still weak as Arkansas coffee. But oh, don't forget—it could have been so much worse, right? Everyone cheerfully reminded him how lucky he was that Snowball had eaten his left hand, so lucky that he was right-handed. As though he wasn't going to have to re-learn how to feed himself, to button a shirt, to do even something so simple as unlock and open his own front door. To drive his car. To open a bottle of wine.

To make love.

With a violent shudder, Con shoved that last thought into the back room of his mind, slammed the door, and locked it. Don't think about that, he thought, fighting the panic. Don't let yourself wonder if it might be impossible that a cripple with a deformed hand could attract
anyone,
even Thanksgiving turkey–thighed fat chicks with uni-brows.

And whatever he did, he couldn't let himself think about Lireinne. Don't, Con begged his stubborn, heedless desire. Think of... nothing. It's safer.

Daring a glance at the lump on the end of his arm, he wondered wearily if having a mangled hand wasn't somehow worse than having no hand at all. At least there wouldn't be as much to stare at, Con thought in sour humor. Then, too, maybe if he had only a stump he could've been outfitted with a steel claw, like that immortal pirate, Captain Hook himself. Hell, he'd always thought of himself as a pirate, but now he was a . . . cripple.

A grotesque.

In the hospital since that fateful Tuesday afternoon, Con's risk of infection was such a threat his surgeon didn't want to remove him from the super-high-power antibiotic, dripping one stratospherically expensive drop at a time into his saline IV.

“Wouldn't want you to lose the whole limb to gangrene, or a staph infection,” Dr. Binnings, the plastic surgeon, had said.

For a small mercy, at least Binnings had agreed that he didn't have to wear the catheter anymore: Con and his bladder were on their own now. He groaned, realizing he needed to crawl out of his hospital bed, drag his IV pole into the adjacent bathroom, and take a piss. This simple act was fraught with clumsiness and pain, but being catheterized had been a constant irritation—and humiliating, too. Con writhed, remembering the disgust on Lizzie's face when she'd come by for one of her obligatory visits, when her eyes had gone to the bag of urine hanging from the bed frame.

So far, though, Liz hadn't broached the subject of Jennifer. Con had avoided it as well. It seemed there was some kind of uneasy truce between them for the time being, an unspoken pact not to open that nuclear can of worms until he was back on his feet again. He was grateful for the reprieve, whatever the circumstances. Con was certain there'd be some bad weather ahead, but for now dealing with his injury was eating up all of the small energy he could muster.

Like now: simply getting to his feet was a major effort. Using his right hand, Con drew back the cotton blanket and swung his bare legs over the edge of the bed. His vision grew gray and spotty, and for a long moment the room slid disconcertingly sideways. Demerol could suspend the normal laws of physics, he'd learned, and so Con waited for the corners and the ceiling to stop switching places before he tried to stand.

Okay, he could get up now—if he didn't mind the gaping hospital gown, exposing his backside to anyone who might be looking in his window from the parking lot. Women had always admired his ass, Con thought with a wince, but in this case revealing it wasn't a choice. Being one-handed had narrowed his options down to the critical: that is, to hanging on to his IV pole with his right hand, the useless left one held protectively to his chest.

Con's bladder sent him an urgent message. With a low moan, he stood. The room revolved again.

“Damn it to hell,” he muttered, swaying.

His right hand clutching the cold steel IV pole, like an old man Con shuffled barefooted across the linoleum to the adjacent bathroom. Under the yellow overhead light, in the mirror his unshaven face revealed new lines of pain and fatigue. It was the face of his dad before he had died at sixty, as ravaged as an underpass bum's. Con could swear that the few silver threads at his temples had crept upward into his red-gold hair overnight. He was distinctly grayer, and his beard was coming in gray, too. Crippled and old to boot, he shuddered as he turned away from his reflection.

Con emptied his bladder with a groan of relief, and had just laid the fingers of his right hand on the toilet's handle when, outside the door to his room, in the hospital hallway, he heard them talking.

“But how are
you
doing?” His plastic surgeon, Binnings.

“It's been . . .” There was a catch in Liz's voice. “It's been . . . very hard.”

In the bathroom, Con froze, holding his breath.

Binnings was an irritatingly self-possessed young man in his early thirties with the misfortune of being short, a full head shorter than Con's wife, but he also bore a striking resemblance to a young, baby-faced Tom Cruise. Even under the influence of five hazy days of heavy narcotics, Con had picked up on the fact that Binnings thought Lizzie was hot. Here was another undeniable fact: although she was handicapped by her crutches and cast, Lizzie was doing her damnedest to encourage the doctor in that opinion.

Outside in the hall, Liz sniffled. “I don't know what else to do. I guess I shouldn't feel like this, not when he's hurt, not even after he, he . . .
cheated
on me, but half the time he doesn't seem to know I'm here at all.”

So Liz had shared that, had she? Con flushed, wondering why. And that business about him not knowing she was there? Bullshit. She'd followed the usual good-wife guidelines and come to the hospital all right, but they'd been acutely aware of the other's presence, uncomfortably aware, no matter how doped up he'd been. Lizzie had never stayed more than five minutes—unless the surgeon was there, too, checking on his patient.

“Look, Liz,” Binnings said. He lowered his voice and Con's ears strained. “Please don't cry. You've got to do . . . what you've got to do. No one could blame you for that.”

“Oh, Skip.”

This was something new to Con as well. Until now his wife and the plastic surgeon had been scrupulous to call each other “Doctor” and “Mrs. Costello”—in front of the patient, that is. Con's lips drew back from his teeth in a humorless grin. She wasn't letting any grass grow under her feet, not at all. That's the Lizzie I know and love, he thought with a grim twist of his mouth. Con wondered if she'd told Binnings she was pregnant yet.

“Fuck it,” Con said under his breath. With a savage yank of the handle, the toilet erupted a loud cataract of water. Let 'em know I'm in here and listening to every goddamned, backstabbing word, he thought, anger flaring.

Grasping his IV pole, his support and anchor, Con gave up on retaining any particle of dignity and emerged from the bathroom. Liz and Binnings were just outside the doorway of his room. Binnings, red-faced, was pretending to study a chart.

But Lizzie lifted her chin and met Con's eyes in defiance. She raised her hand to tuck a stray strand of caramel-streaked hair behind her ear, and with a jolt, Con realized she wasn't wearing her wedding band. Her three-carat diamond engagement ring sparkled on her finger, but now it was on her right hand. When had she done that? And, he wondered uneasily,
why
?

“Y'all will have to excuse me,” Con said, recovering and raising one sardonic eyebrow. “Can't hold this damned gown closed and drag my pole at the same time. Avert your eyes, darling.”

Liz's face was as cold as a blast of winter spiraling from the frozen plains of Canada. “By all means, Con. We wouldn't dream of looking. Would we, Dr. Binnings?”

The little doctor cleared his throat, his tone now professional as he said, “Glad to see you up and around, Mr. Costello. I was just telling your wife that we're going to release you tomorrow morning.”

The hell you say, you suck-up weasel in green scrubs.

But his anger deserted him as the linoleum heaved under Con's feet. Struck with the unalterable certainty that he needed to get back into bed as soon as possible, he had to turn away from them, keenly aware that his backside was hanging out of the hospital johnny with every halting step.

The bed looked like a bear had been wallowing in it. The blanket was twisted and hanging halfway to the floor, but when Con sank into the rumpled sheets he felt as emptied of fight as a wounded soldier coming home. The ruined hand had begun to throb again, but Con would be damned if he whined in front of these two.

Well, well, Con observed wearily. During the last five days Liz had become significantly more accomplished with her crutches, winging across the hospital room with confidence. She must have had plenty of practice since he'd been laid up in the hospital and hadn't been around to fetch and carry for her. With something almost like grace, Lizzie propped her crutches on the end of his bed and settled her shapely ass in the room's sole chair.

Taking his place beside her, Binnings almost laid his hand on her shoulder, but hesitated and shoved it in the pocket of his scrubs instead. His baby face revealed a fleeting guilt, just like a thief who'd spotted a cop the instant before he lifted a wallet from a clueless mark.

Things were moving fast now, Con suspected. “When do I get out of here?” he asked.

“Soon, but there's going to be a day or two more of adjustment, Mr. Costello.” Binnings recovered his surgeon's smile. “I've made an appointment for you with the hospital's physical therapist later on today. She'll acquaint you with the protocol for your sutures. You'll need to return to my office on a regular basis, too, so I can check your drains.”

“The hand still hurts like hell,” Con griped, hearing the petulant tone in his voice and hating it.

“It's going to for some time, I'm afraid,” Binnings replied. “Lots of nerves in hands. They tend to be painful when they're damaged. You're looking at several weeks of recovery.”

The doctor turned to gaze down at Lizzie's upturned, rapt face. “And you, Mrs. Costello—with those crutches you're hardly in a position to help your husband, so I recommend hiring a home nurse for the next few days.”

At the mention of the words
home nurse,
Liz's eyes turned hard as brandy-colored agates. With the demeanor of a woman facing an unpleasant but necessary task, she got right to it.

“We need to talk,” Lizzie announced to Con without preamble. Her expression probably would've been unreadable to anyone else, but he knew the set of her mouth very well: his wife was going to have her way in this, whatever this was. There was going to be no opting out of this conflict, no Obi-Wanning her even if he'd felt up to the challenge. It seemed the Jennifer discussion was now on the table.

Binnings, looking less self-assured now, glanced at the pager clipped to the waist of his green scrubs. “I've got another couple of patients to see,” he said quickly. “That'll give y'all some privacy. I'll be back later on today for a wound check before we get cranking on the discharge process, so rest up, hear?” The smarmy dwarf exchanged a complicit glance with Lizzie, one loaded with an unspoken, mutual admiration. “Try to have a nice day . . . Mrs. Costello.” With a suggestion of a swagger, Binnings left the room.

After the doctor was gone, the gloves came off.

“So, you want to tell me what
that's
about?” Con asked, his voice carefully neutral.

Liz didn't bother answering his question. “You won't be coming home, Con.” She ran a hand—a perfectly good hand, the one with the diamond—through her chestnut-gold hair and stared at him without a shred of feeling. “I've arranged one of those residential suites for you, down at the Marriott on 190, until you can find a new place to live.”

Surprised that he wasn't more shocked by how fast her plans had advanced, still Con was walloped with an emotion strikingly similar to the one he'd known in the instant before Snowball's deadly strike.

Wait
.

He was too damned ennervated to attempt the tremendous effort required to change Liz's mind, though. After absorbing this latest turn of events in what had been a long week of unexpected and unwelcome events, he was exhausted with life and its insults. Living at the Marriott hadn't been the way he'd envisioned his recuperation.