J. Jance - Second Watch

Having women fussing and clucking over me tends to get my back up.

“Mel is out working. Somebody has to, you know.”

“If you decide you want me to come up, I will.”

“I’m fine. I’ll be here in the hospital for at least several more days. Mel might want some help after I get home, but for now I’ve got it covered.”

“ We’ve got it covered,” Nurse Jackie corrected. She was standing with her hands on her hips, tapping her toes with impatience. “Now are we doing that walk or not? If not, I have other patients to see.”

“I’ve got to go,” I told Kelly with no small amount of relief. “Duty calls.”

After our measured stroll—there’s no such thing as racewalking when you’re using a walker—I came back to my room to a stream of visitors. Evidently Mel’s one-day moratorium had been lifted, and visitors came in droves to see me.

People from work stopped by, including Squad B’s secretary, Barbara Galvin, who arrived armed with a box of chocolates, and Harry I. Ball, who came prepared to eat them. Two of the ladies from Belltown Terrace showed up. One of them was a knee-replacement veteran and the other was a knee-replacement candidate, so their visit was really more of a recon expedition than it was a cheerleading session.

So pardon me if I’m not all cheery about having people sitting around on uncomfortable chairs, staring at me while I’m only half dressed and lying in bed, especially when the one person I would have liked to have had there was off in the wilds of Bellingham chasing bad guys.

I was glad when the last of the visitors finally got shooed out and Nurse Jackie showed up for her last set of vitals and meds.

“How are you on pain meds?” she asked as she fastened the blood pressure cuff around my arm.

“Fine,” I said.

She glowered at me. “So you’re Superman?” she demanded. “You’re telling me you don’t need any pain meds?”

“They give me weird dreams,” I admitted. “I’d like to back off on them some.”

“Let me tell you something,” she said. “You’re not the first tough guy who’s been wheeled onto this floor. If you want those fine new knees of yours to work, you need to do the rehab. If you don’t take the pain meds, you won’t sleep and you won’t do the rehab, and if you don’t do the rehab … In other words, dreams don’t kill you, but don’t waste my time by not doing the rehab. Get my drift?”

I nodded. Nurse Jackie was about five feet nothing and as round as she was tall, but she had a glare that would have set that long-ago nun, Sister Mary Katherine, back on her heels. I got the message.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Give me the damn pills.”

She gave them to me, along with my blood thinners and antibiotics and stool softeners, and stood right there watching until I had downed them all.

“Good boy,” she said with a grin and a pat on the shoulder before she turned down the lights and hustled out of the room.

I lay there in the semidarkness, still thinking about my earlier visitors and wondering where the drugs would take me that night. It was a little like standing in line at a roller coaster when you already have your ticket and you’re just waiting for the attendant to lock you into your car. You more or less know what’s coming, but you don’t know how bad it’s going to be.

It still bothered me that in my dream, Lieutenant Davis had been standing in front of a window view that didn’t exist, but since he didn’t exist either, it seemed odd to find that odd. What really surprised me was how much his appearance had triggered my memories of that time. Usually I keep them locked away in a tight little box—boxes, actually: a literal one, a cigar box inside a banker’s box, and a mental one. It was that one I scrolled through as the hospital corridor went still and silent outside my room.

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