Lee Child - Make Me

Chang said, “We are, and thank you very much.”

Reacher said, “You’re the man. You’re down there among them. They can’t see you, but you can see them.”

Westwood said, “Send me an invoice.”

The guy said, “I’ll get you a car,” and he pressed his phone.

People got up, and Reacher took a step toward the door, and another, and then the floor on the left slammed upward at a crazy angle, just canted itself to forty-five degrees, some immense force, instantaneous, and he thought earthquake and it tipped him over and smashed him into the door frame, across the chest and the neck, like a blow from a two-by-four, followed by a clatter to the floor, and a desperate glance around, for Chang, and whatever else was coming next.

Not an earthquake.

He sat up.

Everyone else squatted down.

He said, “I’m OK.”

Chang said, “You fell over.”

“Maybe a board was loose.”

“The boards are fine.”

“Maybe there’s a warp.”

“Do you have a headache?”

“Yes.”

“You’re going to the emergency room.”

“Bullshit.”

“You forgot Keever’s name. You had to say the guy who was killed with the backhoe. That’s classic aphasia. You forgot a word and you worked around it. That’s not good. And before that you tripped near the bookstore. And you keep drifting off. Like daydreaming, or talking to yourself.”

“Do I?”

“Like it’s all spacey in there.”

“How is it normally?”

“You’re going to the emergency room.”

“Bullshit. Don’t need it.”

“For me, Reacher.”

“Waste of time. We should go direct to the hotel.”

“I’m sure you’re right. But do it for me.”

“I’ve never done it before.”

“There’s a first time for everything. I hope not just this.”

Reacher said nothing.

“For me, Reacher.”

The guy from Palo Alto said, “Go to the emergency room, man.”

Reacher looked at Westwood and said, “Help me out here.”

Westwood said, “Emergency room.”

The guy from Palo Alto said, “Tell them you’re a coder. No waiting time. Some of those companies make big donations.”

They did as the guy said, and claimed a status Reacher did not have. And was never likely to have. Right down there in terms of probability, with quilter, or scrapbooker, or tenor in the choir. But it got him seen in ninety seconds, and ninety seconds after that he was on his way for a CT scan of his head. Which he said was bullshit, don’t need it, waste of time, but Chang hung in there, and they fired up the machine, which was nothing much, a kind of electric buzz, just X-rays, and then a wait for a doctor to look at the file. Which Reacher said was bullshit, waste of time, the same things over again, and Chang hung in again, and eventually a guy showed up with a file in his hand and a look in his eye. Chang and Westwood stayed in the room.

Reacher said, “The CT in CT scan stands for computed tomography.”

The guy with the file said, “I know.”

“I know what day of the week it is and I know who the president is. I know what I had for breakfast. Both times. I’m proving there’s nothing wrong with me.”

“You have a head injury.”

“That’s not possible.”

“You have a head. It can be injured. You have a cerebral contusion, in Latin contusio cerebri, in fact technically two, both coup and contre-coup, caused, quite clearly, by blunt trauma to the right side of the head.”

Reacher said, “Is that the good news or the bad news?”

The guy said, “If you’d taken that punch on the upper arm, you’d expect one hell of a bruise. Which is exactly what you got. Not on the outside. Not enough flesh. The bruise is on the inside. On your brain. With a twin across the hall, because your brain bounced from side to side in your skull like a goldfish in a test tube. What we call coup and contre-coup.”

Reacher said, “Symptoms?”

“Will vary with the severity of the injury and the individual, but to some degree will include headache, confusion, sleepiness, dizziness, loss of consciousness, nausea, vomiting, seizures, and difficulties with coordination, movement, memory, vision, speech, hearing, managing emotion, and thinking.”

“That’s a lot of symptoms.”

“It’s the brain.”

“What about mine in particular? Which symptoms will I get?”

“I can’t say.”

“You have my paperwork right there. An actual picture.”

“It can’t be interpreted exactly.”

“Case closed, right there. You’re only guessing. I’ve been hit in the head before. This is no different. No big deal.”

“It’s a head injury.”

“What’s the next part of your speech?”

“I think the scan justifies admission overnight for observation.”

“That ain’t going to happen.”

“It should.”

“If the guy hit me in the arm you’d tell me I’d be OK in a couple of days. The bruise would go down. You’d send me home. You can do the same thing with my head. It happened yesterday, so tomorrow will be a couple of days. I’ll be fine. If it is what you say it is anyway. You could have gotten that file mixed up with somebody else.”

“The brain is not the same thing as an arm.”

“I agree. An arm is not protected by a thick layer of bone.”

The guy said, “You’re a grown-up. This is not a psychiatric facility. I can’t keep you here against your will. Just sign yourself out at the desk.”

And then he turned around and headed out, ready for the next in line. Maybe a coder, maybe not. The door swung shut behind him.

Reacher said, “It’s a bruise. It’s getting better.”

Chang said, “Thank you for having it checked. Let’s go find the hotel.”

“Should have gone direct.”

“Reacher, you fell over.”

He walked carefully, all the way to the cab line.

People said that on a map San Francisco looked like a thumb sticking up south to north, shielding the Bay from the Pacific, but Reacher thought it curved more like a raised middle finger. Although why the city should be mad at the ocean, he didn’t know. The fog, maybe. But either way, the hotel Westwood had chosen was at the tip, where either the thumbnail or the fingernail would be. Right on the waterfront. It was dark, so the view was a void, apart from the Golden Gate Bridge, which was all lit up, on the left, and then further out on the right was the distant twinkle of Sausalito and Tiburon.

They checked in and washed up and met in the restaurant for dinner. It was a pretty room, with plenty of crisp white linen. There were couples and foursomes in there. They were the only threesome. Trysts and deals were going on all around them. Westwood got the internet on his phone and said, “Forty thousand suicides every year in America. One every thirteen minutes. Statistically we’re more likely to kill ourselves than each other. Who knew?”

Chang said, “If five of them every nine days use the Mother’s Rest concierge service, that’s a couple hundred a year. Like Keever’s note. We already saw two.”

Reacher said, “What would you pay for that?”

“I wouldn’t, I hope.”

“If it’s nine hundred bucks to do it yourself in bed, then what would be reasonable? Five times as much? Say five grand?”

“Maybe. For the pampering. Like going to the spa instead of filing your nails at home.”

“That would be a million dollars a year. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.”

“But?”

“Their proposed hit list this week alone was Keever, McCann, you, me, and the Lair family. Seven people. Which is not a problem, apparently, because they rent a Ukrainian tough guy to do the heavy lifting. That’s a big reaction for a million bucks.”