Jeff Lindsay - Dexter by Design

“Shit” she said. I feel so totally ...” Her hand fluttered feebly, the one that Chutsky was not holding.

“You should” I said. “You were practically dead.” She lay there for a long moment, unspeaking, eyes closed, and then finally said, very softly, I don't want to do this any more.” I looked at Chutsky across Deborah; he shrugged. “Do what, Debs?” I said.

“Cops” she said, and when I finally understood what she was saying, that she didn't want to be a cop any more, I was as shocked as if the moon had tried to resign.

“Deborah” I said.

“Doesn't make sense” she said. “End up here ... for what?” She opened her eyes and looked at me and shook her head very slightly.

“For what?” she said.

“It's your job” I said, and I admit it wasn't terribly moving, but it was all I could think of under the circumstances, and I didn't really think she wanted to hear about Truth, Justice and the American Way.

She apparently didn't want to hear that it was her job, either, because she just looked at me and then turned her head and closed her eyes again. “Shit” she said.

“All right now” said a loud and cheerful voice from the door, in a thick Bahamian accent, “Gentlemen must go.” I looked; a large and very happy nurse had come into the room and was advancing on us rapidly. “The lady must rest, which she cannot do when you are bothering her” the nurse said. She said “boddering” and for a second I found it so charming that I did not realize she was shooing me out.

I just got here” I said.

She planted herself right in front of me and crossed her arms.

“Then you will save big money on parking, because you got to go now” she said. “Come on, gentlemen” she said, turning to face Chutsky. “Boat of you.”

The?” he said with a look of great surprise.

“You” she said, leveling a massive finger at him. “You been here too long already.”

“But I have to stay here,” he said.

“No, you have to go” the nurse said. “Doctor wants her to rest a while. Alone.”

“Go ahead” Debs said softly, and he looked at her with an expression of hurt. “I'll be fine” she said. “Go on.” Chutsky looked from her to the nurse, and then back at Deborah again. “All right” he said at last. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek, and she did not object. He stood up and raised an eyebrow at me. “Okay, buddy” he said. “Guess we're evicted.” As we left the nurse was battering at the pillows as if they had misbehaved.

Chutsky led me down the hall to the elevator and as we waited for it he said, “I'm a little bit worried.” He frowned and poked at the DOWN button several more times.

“What?” I said. “You mean about, um, brain damage?” Deborah's statement that she wanted to quit was still ringing in my ears, and it was so completely unlike her that I was a little worried, too. The image of vegetable Debbie drooling in a chair while Dexter spoonfed her oatmeal still seemed hauntingly awful to me.

Chutsky shook his head. “Not exactly” he said. “More like psychological damage.”

“How do you mean?”

He made a face. I dunno” he said. “Maybe it's just the trauma.

But she seems ... very weepy. Anxious. Not like, you know. Herself.” I have never been stabbed and then lost most of my blood, and in any case I could not remember reading anything that explained how you are supposed to feel under the circumstances. But it seemed to me that being weepy and anxious when these things happened to you was a relatively reasonable reaction. And before I could think of a tactful way to say so, the elevator doors slid open and Chutsky charged in. I followed.

As the doors slid shut, he went on. “She didn't really know me at first,” he said. “Right when she opened her eyes.”

“I'm sure that's normal” I said, although I was not really sure at all. I mean, she's been in a coma.”

“She looked right at me,” he said, as if I hadn't spoken at all, “and she was like, I dunno. Scared of me. Like, who am I and what am I doing there.”

To be perfectly honest, I had wondered the same thing over the last year or so, but it hardly seemed proper to say so. Instead, I just said, “I'm sure it takes time to—”

“Who am I?” he said, again apparently without noticing that I had spoken. “I sat there the whole time, never left her side for longer than five minutes at a time.” He stared at the elevator's control panel as it chimed to let us know we had arrived. “And she doesn't know who I am.”

The doors slid open, but Chutsky did not notice at first.

“Well” I said, hoping to break him out of his freeze.

He looked up at me. “Let's get a cup of coffee” he said, and headed out the elevator door, pushing past three people in light green scrubs, and I trudged along behind.

Chutsky led me out the door and over to the small restaurant in the ground floor of the parking garage, where somehow he managed to get two cups of coffee rather quickly, without anyone shoving in front of him or elbowing him in the ribs. It made me feel slightly superior: obviously, he was not a Miami native. Still, there was something to be said for results, and I took the coffee and sat at a small table wedged into the corner.

Chutsky didn't look at me, or anything else for that matter.

He didn't blink, and the expression on his face didn't change.

I couldn't think of anything to say that was worth the air it would take, so we sat in chummy awkwardness for several minutes, until he finally blurted out, “What if she doesn't love me any more?”

I have always tried to maintain a modest outlook, particularly when it comes to my own talents, and I know very well that I am really only good at one or two things, and advice to the lovelorn is very definitely not one of them. And since I do not actually understand love, it seemed a little unfair to expect me to comment on its possible loss.

Still, it was quite clear that some kind of comment was called for, and so, dropping the temptation to say, don't really know why she loved you in the first place” I fumbled in my bag of cliches and came up with, “Of course she does. She's just had a terrible strain it takes time to recover.”

Chutsky watched me for a few seconds to see if there was any more, but there wasn't. He turned away and sipped at his coffee.

“Maybe you're right” he said.

“Of course I am” I said. “Give her time to get well. Everything will be fine.” No lightning struck me when I said it, so I suppose it was possible that I was right.

We finished our coffee in relative silence, Chutsky brooding on the possibility that he was no longer beloved, and Dexter anxiously gazing at the clock as it approached noon, the time for me to leave and get in place to ambush Weiss, and so it was something less than chummy when I finally drained my cup and stood up to go. “I'll come back later” I said, but Chutsky just nodded and took another forlorn sip of his coffee.

“Okay, buddy” he said. “See you.”

The Golden Lakes area went boldly against the unwritten law of Miami real estate; in spite of the fact that the word “lakes” was in its name, there were actually several lakes in the area, and one of them butted up against the far side of the school's playground. In truth, it did not look terribly golden to me, more of a milky green, but there was no denying that it was actually a lake, or at least a large pond. Still, I could appreciate the difficulty of trying to sell an area called, “Milky Green Pond', so perhaps the developers had known what they were doing after all, which would be yet another violation of custom.

I got to Golden Lakes well before school was over for the day, and I drove around the perimeter a couple of times, looking for a likely place for Weiss. There was none. The road on the east side ended where the lake came up almost to one side of the fence. And the fence was the tall chain-link variety and it went all around the school without a break, even on the lake side —just in case a hostile frog tried to get on the grounds, I'm sure. Almost to the spot where the side road ended at the lake, there was a gate in the fence at the far side of the playing field, but it was securely closed with a chain and a large padlock.