James Bell - Deadlock

She was not dead. She was in a hospital room.

The realization came to her, and with it a wave of such sweet relief that she almost wept.

Come back, she told herself as her eyelids pressed downward. Don’t sleep!

A nurse – Millie assumed it was a nurse, hoped it was – floated in through the mists.

“… feeling?” the nurse said.

Millie heard herself groan.

“How are you feeling?” the nurse repeated.

“Help.”

“Are you in pain?”

Was she in pain? No, it was beyond pain, as if she were awakening into a thick, burning substance. She felt things attached to her body.

“Help,” Millie said.

“I’ll get the doctor.”

Millie wanted to shout Don’t leave me, as if this nurse represented the last lifeline. But the nurse was gone.

She was alone. Would she die? The word again popped into her mind. Why should she think that? Her mind slogged forward, barely, frustrating her. She knew who she was, that her mind was a sharp one, well oiled, trained. Or had she suffered some sort of damage?

What was happening?

She did not have any idea of time. The next span could have been minutes or hours. But she fought to stay awake. Sharp pains helped her. She became aware of a monitor next to the bed, issuing peak and valley lines. Her heartbeat. She still had a beating heart.

She heard a voice. A familiar one. “How does Justice feel?”

Myron Cross. Her doctor. He always called her Justice. Not Madame Justice. Just Justice, as if she herself were the principle of law itself.

Dr. Cross was one of the best. He had been the doctor to many Supreme Court justices over the years, even getting a spread once in Time magazine about his practice to the powerful.

But he was a gentle and humble man who loved his work. Millie had never felt a moment’s anxiety around him, until now. Dr. Cross must have seen a tortured look on her. He said, “Are you in much pain?”

She was, but the physical pain was not what concerned her. “What happened?” she asked. Her voice was thick and slow.

“You are lucky,” Dr. Cross said. “You survived a bad accident.”

“I thought I… was dead.”

“Truth told, we almost lost you. You were in surgery four hours. Dr. Dickinson performed brilliantly. I was there.”

“How did I…?”

“You don’t remember?”

Millie was barely able to shake her head.

“A car hit you,” Dr. Cross said. “Don’t try to talk about it now. Let me just tell you you’re going to be all right, but you’ll need a lot of recovery time. You have three broken ribs, a collapsed lung, bruises like you wouldn’t believe, and a blow to the head. You were unconscious for twelve hours. It could have been so much worse.”

But it was. What she had felt in that darkness had been worse than anything she had ever experienced. Yet how could she explain it to Dr. Cross? She had enough sense, even in her foggy condition, to know that what had happened was psychological, not physical. He would have no remedy for that.

“Did I…”

“Go ahead, Millie.”

“Was I ever… gone?”

He straightened up. “You mean close to death? The answer is yes.”

“No. Actually…”

“There was a moment when you flatlined. But it was only a moment.”

“When?”

“Do you really want to go into this?”

“Please.”

“Your accident caused what we call simple pneumothorax. It happened when one of your broken ribs punctured your lung. You were unconscious and not breathing.”

A trembling disquiet swept over Millie’s body.

“So the paramedics brought you in with a bag-valve mask to keep you breathing. What that did, though, was fill you up with air, not in the lung but in the pleural space. That collapsed your lung completely and put pressure on your heart. And that is probably…”

“Yes?”

Dr. Cross glanced at the chart in his hands. “At 1:35 a.m. we had a flatline that lasted about one minute.”

Millie said nothing.

“But you’re here now,” Dr. Cross said. “That’s the important thing.”

Pain exploded behind her eyes.

“You have some heavy bruising to the legs,” the doctor added. “It’s going to be painful to walk.”

“Will I be able to play the violin?”

“You think I’m going to fall for that old joke? No, you won’t be able to play the violin unless you could before. Yes, you will be able to walk and do everything else you used to do. Over time.”

“Thanks,” Millie said, feeling a tiny spot of relief.

“Don’t talk,” Dr. Cross said. “I should tell you the place is crawling with reporters, police, and all sorts of people who want to see you. I’m keeping them as far away as possible. But they’ll want a report, and I’m happy to say I can tell them your prospects for a full recovery are excellent. Is there anyone you’d like to see?”

Her mother. That was who sprang to mind. She would be worried when she heard the news. “I want to call my mother,” Millie said.

“I’ll arrange it,” Dr. Cross said. “Anything else?”

“Who hit me?”

“Oh, a man named Rosato or Rosetta, something like that. He is extremely remorseful, I understand. The police are questioning him.”

“Tell them…”

“Yes?”

“It wasn’t his fault.”

Dr. Cross nodded. “I’ll take care of it. You rest.”

She could do nothing else. Her body felt like it had been put through a harvester and dumped in a bale on a road. But her body was not what concerned her.

It was that vision. She wondered, for a few moments, if the blow to her head meant she was going to lose her mind.

Down the hall from Millie Hollander’s room, Anne Deveraux stuck a finger in a cop’s face. “Did you not hear me?” she said.

The cop nodded. “And I’m telling you – ”

She flashed her credential again. “United States Senate, okay?”

“Nobody sees her,” the cop said. “Not the president, not the Dalai Lama, unless the doctor says so.”

She looked around at the milling masses, recognizing some members of the press waiting for the impending press conference called by Dr. Myron Cross. That would be a whitewash, of course, telling her nothing she needed to hear.

But she’d hang around anyway. Maybe there would be an opening somewhere. What would they do if she walked right in?

She’d say she was paying her respects from a senator. A man concerned about her health, as he would any prominent member of the Court or Congress. A man who had admired her judicial integrity for years.

She would not reveal the real reason she was there, of course. She would not mention the word Jaws.

She felt a touch on her arm. She whirled around hard. Anne did not like to be touched.

She faced a short man with sweat beads on his forehead.

“You’re Anne Deveraux, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Who wants to know?”

“You work for Senator Levering, right?”

She was getting rapidly ticked at this guy. He was – what was the word? – ratlike. He had a longish, pointed nose and eyes that seemed to be scouting for food.

“What business is that of yours?” Anne asked.

He smiled, showing two prominent front teeth. Rodent choppers. “I know everything that goes on in this town, every poop that’s a scoop. Dan Ricks.” He extended his hand.

Anne ignored it. “I’m busy now, Mr. Ricks. If you’d like an appointment – ”

“Get off it,” he said. “I write for The National Exposure.”

“Tabloid guy?”

“Reporter,” he said defensively.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Don’t get huffy. You remember when the New York Times sat on that Congressman Conley story?”