John Lutz - Burn

His stomach calmed down to a knot of pain and the nausea became steady but controllable. His head began to ache more.

He rolled over and started to crawl toward the closet, where a spare cane was hooked over the clothes rod, but every time he moved, dizzyness swept over him and he had to stop.

The phone had fallen to the floor with the rest of whatever was on the desk when the big man had shoved it aside to get at Carver. The receiver had miraculously stayed on the hook. Or maybe the giant had for some reason replaced it. Carver rolled onto his back, then his side, and could reach the phone.

He punched out the number of the cottage, getting it right on the third try. His arm and hand told him the receiver was pressed to his ear, but he couldn’t feel it as the phone on the other end of the connection rang, rang, rang.

Finally, Beth’s voice.

Carver managed to mumble something into the phone that even he couldn’t understand. He was alarmed to find he couldn’t recall what he’d attempted to say. A plea for help. He knew that. Jesus, his mind was mush and he couldn’t think!

He rolled onto his back again, still clinging to the receiver and hoping he wasn’t pulling the cord from the phone jack.

A spider, he decided with satisfaction, staring straight up at the small brown dot that undoubtedly had moved a few feet from where he’d noticed it on the ceiling earlier. The question of its authenticity was answered.

It was definitely a spider.

“Fred?”

He made an effort and dragged his mind down from the ceiling. “At the office,” he said.

“Fred!” Alarm in her voice now.

“C’mon in here. Need some help.”

“What’s happened?”

“Big guy. . slammed my head, . warned me. .”

And suddenly he wondered if the man had been demanding he stop asking questions about Marla? Or about Brant?

That was the question Carver needed answered. Not the one about the spider.

“Beth?”

“I’m getting you an ambulance, Fred.”

“No, just you. .”

“. . ambulance,” he heard her say again as the room dimmed, then became dark.

He should never have called her. She was always bitching at him for never wanting to see a doctor, as if a pill. .

The floor pressing against his back spun and dropped faster and faster through the darkness, a wild carnival ride from long ago.

His pain, and his question, followed him into unconsciousness.

Carver floated up from sleep slowly, listening to women’s voices far away. Light seemed to sift beneath his closed eyelids, and he couldn’t understand what the women were saying. Soft voices, distant murmurs.

He moved his head only slightly, but it exploded in pain.

“Lie still,” one of the women was saying, nearer to him now. Was hers the hand on his shoulder? When he tried to move again, a sharp pain grabbed at his side and his headache flared.

“Lie still, Fred.”

He opened his eyes and saw Beth standing over him. Above her head was a white metal smoke alarm, and a stainless steel pipe with a green curtain slung from it by plastic hooks. A faint medicinal scent struck him and he knew he was in a hospital room.

“The nurse has gone to get an ice pack for your head,” Beth told him.

“It doesn’t hurt if I lie very still,” Carver said.

Beth smiled. “Good.” There were tears in her eyes. “Lie still, then.”

Most of the room’s illumination came from indirect lighting around the perimeter of the ceiling. Vertical blinds on the window were angled so that only cracks of light penetrated and he couldn’t see outside. “Where am I?”

“You’re in Good Samaritan Hospital, Fred. After you called me, you were found in your office unconscious.”

“So you brought me here?”

She shook her head no. “Ambulance. To Emergency. By the time I got here they were well on their way to having you diagnosed.”

“And?”

“Concussion, and a cracked rib.”

“How bad?”

“Rib not bad, concussion not good.”

“Huge guy came into the office-”

“I know, Fred. You were babbling yesterday when you were half conscious.”

Oh-oh. “Yesterday?”

“Right. It’s”-she glanced at her watch-“two-fifteen now. That’s in the A.M., Fred. You remember anything else about the big guy, now you’re awake?”

“That’s an odd question,” Carver said, “considering I was half conscious when you heard me tell it the first time and wouldn’t remember what I said.”

She grinned. “Testing you, Fred. Your gray matter’s still working OK.”

He told her the story as he recalled it. He didn’t remember calling her on the phone but he took her word for it, hoping it wasn’t another of her tests.

A stout, redheaded nurse came in with an ice pack and laid it gently on Carver’s forehead.

“Better?” she asked.

“I don’t need it,” Carver said.

The nurse removed the ice pack and set it on the green plastic tray on the table by the bed. Also on the tray were a green plastic water pitcher sweating with condensation and a small green plastic glass. Next to the tray was a box of white tissues, one erupting from it like a freeze-frame explosion.

“It’s right here if you change your mind,” the nurse said. She came around the bed and pinned the cord with the call button to the sheet where he could reach it easily. “I’ll be nearby if you need me.” Whenever she moved, her rubber-soled shoes yipped softly on the slick floor.

Another woman entered the room, dressed not in white like the nurse but wearing a surgical gown the same green as the water pitcher and glass. She was a dark-haired, attractive woman about forty, average height but slender, with shrewd, assessing eyes, gaunt cheeks, and lips that pouted crookedly as if she were thinking so hard she was making a face. The name tag on her gown said she was Dr. Woosman.

“How do you feel?” Dr. Woosman asked.

“OK if I don’t move,” Carver said.

“That’s to be expected.” She stared at him as if he were a cut of meat she was considering serving guests. “We’ll keep you here and monitor you for a while, Mr. Carver.”

“I want to leave in the morning.”

Dr. Woosman looked at Beth. Beth shrugged.

“It’s possible,” Dr. Woosman said. “We’ll see.” She shuffled some papers and looked at something on the clipboard she was carrying. “Your lowest right rib has a hairline fracture, so you’ll have to wear a support for a while. For the concussion, you need to rest, be observed, and take what I prescribe for you to alleviate pain. Don’t try to do anything the least bit violent. No exertion. No swimming or any other kind of exercise.”

“I’ll keep him still,” Beth said. The redheaded nurse, thinking no one was looking at her, grinned.

“Your head will let you know if you try to overdo. But don’t push it.” Dr. Woosman turned to face Beth. “Check his eyes from time to time. If they become dilated or one pupil is slightly smaller than the other, get him back in here.” She trained her shrewd brown eyes again on Carver. “The cuts on your head are only superficial,” she said, “and there are no skull fractures. The damage was done by the violent motion, the series of instantaneous reversals of direction when your head was struck or bounced off the wall. Each time, when your head stopped, your brain didn’t. It was bouncing back and forth off the inside of your cranium with considerable impact. That resulted in concussions. They’re to be taken seriously.”

“Feels serious,” Carver said.

“What happened to your rib?”

“I was kicked.”

“You didn’t mention that yesterday.”

“Didn’t seem I was kicked hard enough for anything to break, but then I wasn’t thinking too clearly.”