The Long Sleep (3 page)

“What
happened?
” Rhoda must have been
thinking I wrecked it.

I said, “I tried calling but nobody
answered.”

“What happened to the car?” Daddy asked.

“It’s impounded for further investigation,”
Falco told them. “And it needs a new windshield.”

That brought a flurry of exclamations and
questions. Falco gave them the whole story.

“No!” Rhoda said. “Were you hurt? Are you all
right? What happened?”

He had just told them what happened. She
meant who did it and why, but nobody had those answers yet. Falco
said, “She’s okay.” Then he had to add, “Just barely. It missed her
by inches.”

Rhoda sat down on the sofa, holding her head.
“I don’t believe this. In Southbridge? What’s the world coming
to?”

Ben said, “It’s been that way all along.” My
brother had Asperger’s syndrome. It gave him a lot of problems with
the world, so he took a cynical view of it.

Patiently Falco answered all their questions
until they got every detail. He checked the whole house, making
sure I’d be safe. Then he took off.

Falco had met Evan, my ex. His thoroughness
in checking the house made me wonder if he thought Evan could be
the shooter. I wondered about that myself, but I wasn’t ready to
deal with that idea yet.

Daddy and Ben must have thought so, too. They
went through the house again, re-checking doors and windows, and
closing all the blinds. Rhododendron bushes that kept their thick
leathery leaves all winter surrounded the house. Nobody could see
through them even with the blinds open. With everything closed, I
felt cut off from the world. As if I was in prison.

Even though I knew their thinking, I said,
“Why would anybody want to shoot
me?
”

They looked at me as if I were crazy. Even
the dogs. All because of Evan and the things he had done.

Daddy said, “Until they catch the perpetrator
and lock him up without bail, we will take every precaution.”

Daddy was an attorney. He often used words
like “perpetrator.”

The whole thing was only now beginning to hit
me. I mean
really
hit. Rhoda insisted I eat dinner even
though I didn’t feel like it. I begged off for a couple of minutes
while I called the hospital.

The switchboard told me Hank was in surgery.
It meant he was still among the living. I said, “Can you give me
any information? Like a prognosis or something?”

“All I know is, he’s in surgery,” the
operator repeated. She suggested I try again later, but couldn’t
predict when the surgery would be finished.

He had been so alive just before the shot. So
full of plans and ideas. All in an instant, it was gone. As Falco
said, there were a lot of crazy people in the world. But why? What
made people try to force their ideas on other people? Especially
with violence.

“It’s just not right,” I told Pumpkin, who
poked her beige nose into my room. She was a blond lab. Petey was
black.

I wished it wasn’t Thursday. I needed a
weekend before I could face school again. After a trauma like that
I felt entitled to a day off, but under the circumstances my
parents wouldn’t want me staying alone.

School was where the shooting took place. Was
it any better than home?

What if the shooter decided he had to
eliminate me, the only witness? Even though I didn’t see a
thing.

Chapter Three

Just as I figured,
they didn’t want me home alone. Not after last night. Evan might be
out there. They had convinced themselves it must have been Evan. I
wasn’t convinced. They hadn’t heard Cindy Belcher’s ranting. Or it
could have been someone else who felt as she did but kept
quiet.

Since I had no car, I couldn’t fake going to
school. I had to ride with Ben and that meant leaving before our
parents did.

Ben’s truck had both a front and a back seat.
I moved to the back when we picked up my friend Cree, of the long
reddish hair and the hourglass figure. She and Ben were really into
each other, so she got to sit in front. This time she mostly stayed
turned around, plying me with questions about last night.

Not long ago Cree had been through a trauma
of her own and almost lost her life. All because she was twenty
minutes late for her babysitting job. During the course of its
unraveling, she and Ben got hot and heavy. Neither of them
explained how
that
happened. All I knew was she didn’t mind
his Asperger’s syndrome the way most people did. She just thought
he was delightfully unusual, as well as frank and honest. I was
glad for both of them but couldn’t help envying them their
closeness. Especially when they kissed each other after we got to
school. It was their last time together before lunch. Ben was a
senior and not in any of our classes.

Before going to homeroom, I found a quiet
corner and called the hospital. Hank had made it through surgery
but was still in a coma. That was all they could tell me. It made
me frantic that I didn’t have my car. I thought of calling a taxi.
But that would be expensive, with the hospital five miles away in
another town. My only hope was Ben. Sometimes he could be obliging,
if he happened to feel like it.

I tried it after school when the three of us
met at his truck for the ride home. “Ben? Would you mind dropping
me off at the hospital?”

“What hospital?”

He knew perfectly well. There was only one in
the whole area.

“The. Hospital.”

“What for? You hardly know the guy.”

“I know him a little. It won’t take more than
a couple of minutes. You don’t have to wait. I’ll get myself home.”
By cab if I had to.

Cree said, “I could borrow my grandma’s car
and pick you up.” She sounded so eager, but then had to retreat.
“If she’s not using it.” Grandma lived with Cree and her mom and
led a very social life.

Ben surprised me. Without another word he
drove me to the hospital, all five miles. But then he took me at my
word and didn’t wait.

I should have known. With his Asperger’s, he
could take things very literally. He assumed you meant what you
said, so you had to be careful how you worded it. But if I hadn’t
added that part about not waiting, I knew I wouldn’t have gotten
there at all.

The hospital had an attractive lobby with
several comfortable sofas and a piano. In one corner were a gift
shop and a coin-operated dispenser where you could get flowers if
you forgot to bring any.

At the desk they looked up Hank and told me
he was in Intensive Care. He wasn’t allowed any visitors except
immediate family.

It reminded me of a movie I saw once,
While You Were Sleeping,
about Sandra Bullock passing
herself off as some guy’s fiancée so she could get in to see him.
There were a lot of parallels to my situation. Too many, in fact.
Other people must have seen the picture, so I couldn’t pull that
one. The difference was, I knew Hank, personally, if not a lot.
Sandra only had a crush from afar.

I was wandering through the lobby, trying to
find a phone book with taxis in it, when an elevator opened and
Officer Falco came out.

He stopped when he saw me. I stopped, too,
embarrassed that he’d found me there. He knew I wasn’t well
acquainted with Hank, and also that I had no transportation.

“Were you upstairs?” he asked.

“They won’t let me. I have to be immediate
family. Did you see Hank? How is he?”

“Stable, but still out of it. I was hoping
he’d be awake so I could get a few words with him. As you must have
seen, the shot went into his brain. They tell me—” Falco gave a
little cough and looked as if he had bad news. I braced myself. “He
might never wake up.”

My knees crumpled. Falco grabbed me and led
me to one of the couches.

He sat down next to me. “I’m sorry I had to
tell you that. You came all this way and they won’t let you
in?”

I nodded yes. “I didn’t even think of asking.
Even though I saw the movie.”

He didn’t ask what movie. He’d probably seen
it on TV. “How did you get here? I’m pretty sure we still have your
car.”

“I came with my brother. I told him not to
wait and he didn’t.”

“Is he coming back for you?”

“Uh—I might have to call him.” A little white
lie seemed better than admitting how incompetent I was. Ben
wouldn’t come back, I was sure of it. He hadn’t thought much of my
coming here in the first place.

“Can you wait, say, half an hour?” Falco
asked. “I need to talk to some people and I’ll be right with
you.”

Still embarrassed, but desperate, I agreed.
He pointed to the couch I was on and emphasized, “Right there.”

Half an hour could be long or short,
depending on what you were doing. All I could do was wait and
think. About whether Hank would live or die. Or spend the rest of
his life as a vegetable. About what would’ve happened if I hadn’t
offered him a ride... But it had seemed like a normal thing to do
at the time.

If they were so determined to shoot him,
they’d have done it anyway, right? It might have been a cleaner
shot if it hadn’t had to go through my windshield. He could have
died instantly. Would that have been any better?

An elderly man in a dark red blazer nodded
and smiled at me. I hadn’t noticed him before, standing near the
reception desk. I supposed he was a volunteer waiting to help
somebody.

With an innocent smile, I said, “Can you give
me directions to the ICU?”

I was sure he’d tell me I couldn’t go there.
He asked, “Which ICU do you want? Cardiac or the other one?”

Gulp.
It must have been the other one.
I didn’t think Hank’s heart was involved. It was his head. “Second
floor,” said the man. “Get off the front of the elevator, make a
right. There are signs in the hallway.”

The elevator, I discovered, opened at both
ends. I tried to figure out which was front.

What if Falco came and I wasn’t here? He
would think I had found my own way home and he’d leave without me.
Cree had offered to pick me up. I wished she had a cell phone.

Ben did. If Cree was with him, she might make
him see reason. I would offer to pay for the gas. Knowing Ben, he’d
take me up on it.

I found the ICU but, as expected, I couldn’t
get in. The nurses’ station was right there guarding it. All the
individual patient rooms branched off like flower petals and they
all had big windows. The two nurses could keep a watch on
everything, including me. I didn’t try to get any closer.

That meant I could only look through the
window, but I thought I found Hank. The one with the bandaged
head.

“Oh, Hank,” I whispered. We had just been
talking about comas. Now he was there himself, exactly what he’d
wanted to write about. Could he have had some sort of premonition?
Or was it just a horrible coincidence?

Right then, I made up my mind. What could be
more fitting than to go ahead with his idea for the newspaper? If
no one else wanted to carry on, I’d do it myself. And probably get
shot.

I really wanted to get in and talk to him.
Hank himself had said a lot of coma patients were vaguely aware of
what goes on around them. It might really help if he knew we were
still working on his idea.

The nurses kept a close eye on me. I must
have looked suspicious, lurking the way I did. I asked one of them,
“Do they ever get out of ICU? I mean, if they’re in a long-term
coma?”

“It depends,” she said. “Sometimes they’re
moved to a different facility.”

That brought up another question, but I
didn’t want to ask. Who pays for all that? It could go on for
years. I was sure his family didn’t have that kind of money, nor
did most people. The “different facility” must be a dump.

I hurried back to the lobby. Falco was
already there, talking with the volunteer, who pointed me out.

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to keep you
waiting.”

“No problem. I just got here myself.” He led
me out to his car.

“When do you think I can get mine back?” I
asked.

“Any day now, but you’re still going to need
a new windshield.”

“Yes, officer, I’m aware of that. But it
might be hard to get one on a weekend.”

“Let’s skip the officer. Call me Rick.”

“As in Richard?”

“That’s right, but only my grandmother calls
me that. What about you?”

“Nobody calls me Richard.”

I thought it was cute, him having a
grandmother. It made him seem like a little boy.

Then I got serious. “I have to tell you, I
disobeyed your orders and went upstairs. I didn’t get in, but I saw
him. It seems like such a...I mean, it’s not
living.
That
was his point exactly with the series, but he was trying to be
even-handed. So why did they have to shoot him?”

“We don’t know that’s what it was about.”

“He was just a nice guy. Not the type who
would be into something like—drug-dealing, or stealing
somebody’s—”

I stopped right there. Evan might have
thought Hank was stealing me, and Evan was of the opinion that he
owned me.

Falco gave me a quick look. He, too, must
have remembered Evan.

“I know Evan Steffers is a lunatic,” I said.
“But I can’t see him going so far as to kill. Except me, maybe.
Anyhow, my friend Glynis at Lakeside told me he’s in New Hampshire
now.”

Falco opened the passenger door and held it
for me. “What’s he doing in New Hampshire?”

“Getting an education, I assume. I know he
got kicked off the Lakeside football team. They might have kicked
him all the way out of school. Or he decided it himself if he
couldn’t be a football hero.”

Falco got in and resumed his questioning.
“Where in New Hampshire?”

“Something Academy. I forget the name. He’s
out of my life so I don’t care anymore.”