Chapter 17
AFTER THE GAS
Melinda
I wake up in a hospital bed.
I know it is a hospital bed before I open my eyes.
I recognize the smell and the weight of the sheets.
I hear a monitor across the room belonging to someone who is not me.
I open my eyes.
The light is grey, it’s early morning.
The window is to my left and the IV is in my right hand.
The headache is real but manageable.
My left eye is partially swollen and the world out of it is yellow at the edges.
Kaden is in the chair beside the bed.
He is asleep.
He should not be.
He has a graze in his side that needed sutures and a body that has been awake for thirty-six hours and a job he is no longer doing.
He has every right to be asleep.
He has one hand on the bed near mine.
Not on mine. Near it.
The kind of contact you make when you do not want to wake the other person but cannot bear to be apart.
I move my hand half an inch.
His fingers find mine.
He does not open his eyes.
"You're awake," he says.
"I'm awake."
"How do you feel?"
"Like I got hit in the face. And gassed. And kept in a chair for an hour. Which is what happened."
"How’s the headache? Is it better?"
"Manageable."
"Vision."
"Yellow at the edges on the left. Otherwise, fine."
"Pupils were equal at intake."
"I know. I told the resident."
He opens his eyes.
The corner of his mouth moves just a hint.
"Of course you did."
"She was very young. She needed my mentoring,
"You're insufferable."
"I'm a doctor."
"You’re both."
He shifts, and winces as he moves closer.
"Stay there. Don't move."
"I'm fine."
"You have a four-inch laceration through skin and superficial muscle, and you are sitting in a hospital chair. You are not fine."
"I'm fine."
I look at him.
He looks at me.
He sits back. Carefully.
"I'm not fine. But I will live."
"Yes. You will."
We sit there. The grey light. The monitor across the room. His hand on mine.
"Marcus is outside. The federal team now has Whitfield. The have their case and he will be at a six-a.m. arraignment. Crane is also in custody, charged with murder. He was brought in last night. He's in segregation and Carol Voss is safe."
"All before breakfast."
"It has been a long night."
"For you especially."
He looks at the window.
"For me especially."
I turn my hand over. He puts his palm against mine. His hand is warm. Steady.
"Kaden."
"Yes?"
"You did not miss the third man."
He looks at me.
"You did not miss him," I say. "You were paying attention to me. I had asked you to. You were doing what I asked. That is not the same as missing the man at the door."
The monitor across the room beeps once.
"It feels the same," he says.
"I know it does."
He closes his eyes.
The light shifts on the wall as the day progresses from grey toward gold.
He opens his eyes again.
"I am going to need some time with that," he says.
"Take it."
"Okay."
He sits there. His hand on mine. The light goes from grey to gold across the floor.
The nurse comes in. Checks my vitals. Asks me my name. Asks me what year it is. Tells me she will be back at eight and leaves.
Kaden watches her leave.
"They're going to discharge you this afternoon," he says.
"Probably."
"Where do you want to go?"
I look at him.
"What did I say in the truck."
"You said you want all of it."
"All of it, with you.”
He looks at me.
"Yes. I want that too."
He brings my hand to his mouth and kisses the inside of my wrist at the pulse point.
The same place he kissed it the first time in the cabin on the day he stopped pretending.
I close my eyes.
"Marcus is outside," he says again, softly.
"Tell him to give us five more minutes."
"He will give us five more minutes."
He puts my hand back down on the sheet. His hand stays on mine.
The gold light moves across the floor.
The trial is six weeks later than they originally scheduled.
The delay was needed because Whitfield's case is now linked to Crane's.
The prosecutor wants them on the same docket.
The federal piece is bigger now.
The bruise on my face takes ten days to clear. The wrist scarring will be there longer.
My cardiologist colleague Sam takes one look at the wrists and tells me to wear long sleeves for six months unless I want every patient to look at them instead of looking at me.
I wear long sleeves.
I am back at work in three weeks. Part-time. By choice.
I have started, slowly, to figure out what I want the rest of my life to look like.
It does not, I am finding, look like ninety hours a week in an ER.
There will be much more time on a porch.
Kaden is at his place. I have been with him for most of the six weeks.
My apartment is not yet released.
I am not in a hurry to release it, but I am also not in a hurry to be in it.
I have been spending time in his kitchen.
I have made significant improvements to his spice cabinet.
He has, to his credit, allowed all of them.
Crane is smaller than I remembered.
That is the first thing I notice. Walking into the courtroom in the morning. The bailiff at my shoulder. The prosecution table to my left and the defense table to my right.
He is sitting at the defense table in a gray suit, older than I remembered.
His hair fully gray now under the courtroom light.
His hands folded on the table in front of him with the kind of stillness that takes practice.
He doesn't look at me when I walk in.
He doesn't have to.
I have seen him already.
I look at the prosecution table. I look at the judge. I look, just once, three rows back behind the prosecution.
Kaden is there.
I find his eyes. He finds mine.
That's enough.
I sit in the witness chair. I am sworn in. The prosecutor walks me through it.
The night.
The structure.
Level three.
The stairwell.
The face.
I look at the prosecutor. I look at the jury.
I do not look at the defense table for the first thirty minutes.
Then she asks me to identify him.
I look across the courtroom. I look at the man who watched me through a stairwell door at midnight on a Tuesday two months ago and did math about whether I was a problem.
He is looking back at me now.
The same face.
The same eyes.
I am not afraid of him.
I am, to my own surprise, very calm.
"The man I saw on level three of the St. Catherine's parking structure on the night of October fourteenth," I say. "Standing over the body of Raymond Chu. Is the defendant. Sitting at the table to my right."
The prosecutor nods.
"For the record," she says.
"Victor Crane," I say.
The courtroom is very quiet.
Crane does not move.
The prosecutor thanks me.
The defense attorney cross-examines me for forty-three minutes.
He is good, but he is also working with a defendant who pulled a trigger in a parking structure in front of cameras and a federal informant in handcuffs and an ER doctor who saw it all.
And now, with a federal kidnapping charge wrapped into the same docket., he has an uphill battle.
I do not flinch. I do not contradict myself.
I answer the questions I am asked and do not volunteer answers to questions I am not asked.
I am a doctor. I have been trained to give precise testimony in malpractice depositions for fifteen years.
This is not different. Except that it is, and I know that, but I do it anyway.
At eleven forty-three the defense rests.
The prosecutor calls me back for re-direct. Eight minutes. I confirm the identification one more time. The case rests.
I step down from the stand.
I walk past Kaden three rows back. I do not look at him. He does not look at me.
We will look at each other later. The whole time.
The jury comes back in four hours.
Guilty on all counts. Murder one. Federal informant tampering. Three counts of conspiracy. Kidnapping in the first degree.
The judge schedules sentencing for ten weeks out.
I am in the hallway with the prosecutor and Torres when the verdict comes through. The prosecutor shakes my hand. Torres shakes my hand.
Kaden is on the bench against the wall. Not close. Not far. Watching.
Torres looks at him. Looks at me. Says, "Take care of yourself, Dr. Brock."
She walks away.
Kaden stands up. Crosses to me.
He looks at me. The hallway is empty around us.
Then he puts his hand on the back of my neck, draws me in, and presses his forehead to mine.
In a federal courthouse hallway.
Six weeks after a man tried to have me killed in an industrial back room.
Three rows back from where I just identified that man under oath.
I close my eyes.
"What now?"
"Whatever you want."
"Wow, how will I ever decide?" I joke.
"You have time."
"What about you?"
A breath. Mine on his cheek.
"I have leave. And a porch I now sit on with someone I love."
"Wow, that a big word.”
"Yes. It is"
I open my eyes.
He is looking down at me. The expression I have spent two months learning to read. The one that isn't the operator or the thin smile.
It’s the expression of a man in love.
The Reyes acknowledgment comes through six days later.
Kaden tells me at the kitchen table. He sets the printed letter between us.
"The Department signed it," he says. "Whitfield's exposure pulled it loose. They are formally acknowledging Miguel's role in the case. The family is being notified this week. There is a benefits package for them."
I read the letter.
It is bureaucratic. Three paragraphs. The kind of language an institution uses when it has decided to do a thing and does not want to be eloquent about it.
It does not, anywhere in its three paragraphs, use the word sorry.
I look up at him.
"You wrote it," I say.
"I wrote the draft. They cut the apology. They said it would be admissible."
"Cowards."
"It is what it is."
"Did the family see your draft."
He looks at the table.
"Yes. I sent the original to them privately. Before I sent it to the Department. The Department doesn't know."
"Kaden."
"I know."
"Was that smart?"
"No."
I look at him.
"Was it right?"
"Yes."
I reach across the table and take his hand.
"Then it was right."
He looks at me.
"His widow wrote back," he says. Quietly. "Last night. I haven't told you."
"What did she say."
He looks at the table.
"She said the kids ask about Miguel. She wanted them to know what kind of man he was. She asked if I would write to them. When they're older."
"Will you?"
"Yes."
"Good."
He brings my hand to his mouth. Presses it once.
"Good."
We sit there. The kitchen light. The letter on the table.
After a while he stands up. Crosses to the refrigerator. Comes back with two glasses of water.
He has stopped sitting on the porch alone.
I notice these things.
He does too.