Dean Koontz - False Memory

Dusty considered sitting on the edge of his brother’s bed and questioning him further. He was inhibited by the concern that under pressure Skeet might retreat into a semi-catatonic state and might not easily wake the next time.

Besides, together they had been through a difficult day. Skeet, in spite of his nap and fortifying dinner, must be nearly as weary as Dusty, who felt clipped, ripped, and whipped.

Shovel.

Pick.

Hatchet.

Hammers, screwdrivers, saws, drills, pliers, wrenches, long steel nails by the fistful.

Although the kitchen was not yet entirely a safe place, and though other rooms of the house must be inspected and secured, as well, Martie couldn’t stop thinking about the garage, mentally cataloging the numerous instruments of torture and death that it contained.

At last, she was no longer able to maintain her resolve to stay out of the garage and to avoid the risk of being among its sharp temptations when Dusty eventually arrived. She opened the connecting door from the kitchen, fumbled for the light switch, and turned on the overhead fluorescent panels.

As Martie stepped across the threshold, her attention was first drawn to the Peg-Board on which were racked a collection of gardening tools that she had forgotten. Trowels. One pair of snips. A hand spade. Spring-action clippers with Teflon-coated blades. A battery-powered hedge trimmer.

A pruning hook.

Noisily, Skeet scraped the last traces of clotted cream and brown sugar from the dessert cup.

As though summoned by the clatter of spoon against china, a new private nurse arrived for the night shift: Jasmine Hernandez, petite, pretty, in her early thirties — with eyes the purple-black shade of plum skins, mysterious yet clear. Her white uniform was as bright and crisp as her professionalism, although red sneakers with green laces suggested — correctly, as it turned out — a playful streak.

“Hey, you’re just a little bit of a thing,” Skeet told her. He winked at Dusty. “If I want to kill myself, Jasmine, I don’t see you being able to stop me.”

As she removed the dinner tray from the bed and set it on the dresser, the nurse said, “Listen, my little chupaflor, if the only way to keep you from hurting yourself is to break every bone in your body, then put you in a cast from the neck down, I can handle that.”

“Holy shit,” Skeet exclaimed, “where’d you go to nursing school — Transylvania?”

“Tougher than that. I was taught by nuns, the Sisters of Mercy. And I’m warning you, chupaflor — no bad language on my shift.”

“Sorry,” Skeet said, genuinely chagrined, though still in a mood to tease. “What happens when I have to go pee-pee?”

Scratching Valet’s ears, Jasmine assured Skeet, “You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before, though I’m sure I’ve seen larger.”

Dusty smiled at Skeet. “From now on, it would be wise to say nothing but Yes, ma .

“What is chupaflor?” Skeet asked. “You’re not trying to slip some bad language by me, are you?”

“Chupaflor means ‘hummingbird,’“Jasmine Hernandez explained as she stuck a digital thermometer in Skeet’s mouth.

In a thermometer-punctuated mumble, Skeet said, “You’re calling me hummingbird?”

“Chupaflor,” she confirmed. Skeet was no longer hooked to the electrocardiograph, so she lifted his bony wrist to time his pulse.

A new uneasiness slid into Dusty, as cold as a shiv between the ribs, though he couldn’t identify the cause. Not wholly new, in fact. It was the free-floating suspicion that earlier had motivated him to watch Skeet’s reflection in the night-mirrored window. Something was wrong here, but not necessarily with Skeet. His suspicion refocused on the place, the clinic.

“Hummingbirds are cute,” Skeet told Jasmine Hernandez.

“Keep the thermometer under your tongue,” she admonished.

Mumbling again, he pressed: “Do you think I’m cute?”

“You’re a nice-looking boy,” she said, as though she could see Skeet as he had once been — healthy, fresh-faced, and clear-eyed.

“Hummingbirds are charming. They’re free spirits.”

With her attention on her wristwatch, counting Skeet’s pulse, the nurse said, “Yes, exactly, the chupaflor is a cute, charming, free, insignificant little bird.”

Skeet glanced at his brother and rolled his eyes.

If something were wrong about this moment, this place, these people, Dusty was unable to pinpoint the falsity. The bastard son of Sherlock Holmes, born of Miss Jane Marple, would be hard pressed to find good reason for the suspicion that sawed at Dusty’s nerves. His edginess probably arose from weariness and from his worry about Skeet; until he was rested, he couldn’t trust his intuition.

In response to his brother’s rolling eyes, Dusty said, “I warned you. Two words. Yes, ma’am. You can’t go wrong with Yes, ma'am.”

As Jasmine let go of Skeet’s wrist, the digital thermometer beeped, and she took it out of his mouth.

Moving to the bed, Dusty said, “Gotta split, kid. Promised Martie we’d go Out to dinner, and I’m late.”

“Always keep your promises to Martie. She’s special.”

“Didn’t I marry her?”

“I hope she doesn’t hate me,” Skeet said.

“Hey, don’t be stupid.”

Unspent tears shimmered in Skeet’s eyes. “I love her, Dusty, you know? Martie’s always been so good to me.”

“She loves you, too, kid.”

“That’s a pretty small club — People Who Love Skeet. But People Who Love Martie — now, that’s bigger than the Rotary and the Kiwanis and the Optimist clubs all rolled into one.”

Dusty could think of no comforting reply, because Skeet’s observation was undeniably true.

The kid wasn’t speaking from self-pity, however. “Man, that’s a load I wouldn’t want to carry. You know? People love you, they have expectations, and then you have responsibilities. The more people who love you — well, it goes round and round, it never stops.”

“Love is hard, huh?”

Skeet nodded. “Love is hard. Go, go take Martie out for a nice dinner, a glass of wine, tell her how beautiful she is.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Dusty promised, picking up Valet’s leash and clipping it to the dog’s collar.

“You’ll find me right here,” Skeet said. “I’ll be the one in a body cast from the neck down.”

As Dusty led Valet out of the room, Jasmine approached the bed with a sphygmomanometer. “I need your blood pressure, chupaflor.”

Skeet said, “Yes, ma’am.”

That skewering sense of wrongness again. Ignore it. Weariness. Imagination. It could be cured with a glass of wine and the sight of Martie’s face.

All the way along the hall to the elevator, Valet’s claws ticked softly on the vinyl-tile flooring.

Nurses and nurses’ assistants smiled at the retriever. “Hi, puppy.” “What a handsome fella.” “You’re a cutie, aren’t you?”

Dusty and Valet shared the elevator with a male orderly who knew just the spot on the ears that, when gently rubbed, caused the dog’s eyes to take on a dreamy cast. “Had a golden myself. A sweet girl named Sassy. She got cancer, had to put her to sleep about a month ago.” His voice caught briefly on the word sleep. “Couldn’t get her to go for a Frisbee, but she’d chase tennis balls all day.”

“Him, too,” Dusty said. “He won’t drop the first ball when you throw a second, brings them both back, looking like the world’s worst case of mumps. You going to get a new puppy?”

“Not for a while,” said the orderly, which meant not until the loss of Sassy hurt a little less than it hurt now.