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Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrave."Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jujub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
...........................................
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the maxomome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum gree,
And stood awhile in thought
..............................................
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
............................................
One, two! One, two!
and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
..................................
"And has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.
........................................
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrave.
...................................
Lewis Carroll............Joe Dawson did not rise as the two Immortals returned from the STAT lab. "Oh," he said, "Only you guys. I thought it might be Anne. Coffee's fresh."
"And it's wonderful to see you also," Adam made a feeble attempt at pretending to his former wry wit. His voice was hoarse and joyless.
"We can only wait, Adam," Duncan said. "Sit down and have some coffee," he suggested.
Adam could do neither. His lean limbs bore him across the room and back exhausting the other two men with his restlessness.
Joe gave up waiting for Adam to settle. "If anybody asks you, I am Ram's fiancé."
"Come again?" Duncan tested the low coffee table in front of Joe's seat on the couch. He sat down on it, squinting in the light of the eastern window.
Adam halted his pacing a moment later and turned towards the Watcher.
"This mimsy little bean counter comes in with all these papers in her claws and her bun wound too tight. And she wants to know insurance and place of birth and yadayadayada... And I finally just handed her my insurance card from the club policy and told her we were shacking up, common-law and all, and she wrote down dependent, slash, fiancé. So if anyone asks you..."
"Ram hears about this, she'll be forever making you pay," Duncan laughed, knowing all too well Ram's enduring memory, the very reason for her nickname.
"Yeah," Joe nodded, "Forever would be nice."
There was a knock on the door to their "Family Waiting Room." The three men froze.
Since Adam was still standing, it fell to him to see to the door, but he couldn't make himself move. Duncan gave him a few more seconds and then rose off the coffee table and went to the door.
"Ooooh," the Highlander's breath breezed out in a reverent noise, almost a herald in tenor, if not tone. He had thought he knew what to expect, but no one in all his questioning, no words in all his reading, had led him to expect this...not this overwhelming...
Duncan's mouth stretched in a wide, open smile, and he fell more profoundly in love than he had ever been in his entire four centuries of not a few conquests. In this case, however, he was himself utterly vanquished as he reached forward and lifted his son out of Anne's arms and brought the tiny being in close to his heart beating like glory against his ribs.
"His name is Sean," Anne said quietly, but she might have shouted it like a force nine gale and the Highlander would never have heard.
Dr. Anne Lindsey knew she didn't have many more minutes of composure left and Duncan's moment of bonding was going to outlast her. She stepped around the MacLeods and walked straight toward Adam with both her hands reaching for his.
It was a small room. Adam did not have anywhere to retreat, but he tried. When he reached the wall, he lifted his hands in an effectless warding and Anne grabbed them tightly in her own.
"She is dead," Anne said simply. No "we tried everything," no "it was probably for the best," no "she went peacefully," no, no, no. None of that for Ram, Anne told herself even as she braced for Adam's reaction. Nothing but the clear, clean...terrible truth. Dead.
"No," Adam shook her hands off as if she were leprous. "You've made a mistake."
"Thank you, Anne," Joe's gentle voice drifted up from the couch. "I'll take it from here. The baby's all right?"
"Oh, yes. He's ex--" the end of Anne's strength gave out and she pressed her lips together and blinked hard. No, she would soon be blubbering. There was no help for it. One more deep breath, and she managed the last of her message, "I'll be back for Sean in five minutes. To take him up to the nursery. There's an exam, some lab, paperwork...They'll release him to me if...do you have the papers?"
Joe pointed to his inside coat pocket. "Mac brought them."
One more deep breath and I have to get out of here, Anne thought. "Go on up to my house. There's not room in the apartment for everybody. I'll get a peds nurse to come out and the frig is stocked. We should be there late afternoon." She reached in the right pocket of her scrub jacket and handed him the keys to the house Duncan had given her.
On her way out the door, she reached into her left pocket, retrieved a bottle of five percent Dextrose and handed it to Duncan who was lost in some other world far above them. It lightened everything somehow to see Sean and his Dad communing in the sacred silence between them.
Anne pushed him back two steps and closed the door. She almost made it to the surgery changing room before she collapsed back against the wall and her knees bent her down to the linoleum.
Dr. Lindsey hoped no one who knew her would walk by for the next five minutes, but she didn't really care.
Watcher Dawson wondered if he hadn't become more of an Immortal shepherd and chauffeur, than scribe and historian these days. He did seem to be doing a lot of shuttle work lately. Driving up the north highway towards Anne's country house, he tried to take stock, to ready himself for the blow that would come for him. Sometime, maybe soon, but not now. Ram was dead. Joe knew this and understood it, but some essential fabric of his being refused the message still, and, as yet, it caused him no pain whatsoever.For this he was supremely grateful. Someone had to remain sane, if for no other purpose than to shuttle the wounded back off the field of battle. An old paramedic from 'Nam, Joe Dawson was not unacquainted with the task, but he was a bit tired of it, if truth be told.
Duncan MacLeod, true warrior and new dad, had long since checked out to "lala" land, the blissful ethereal realm of the newly blessed. Dawson doubted his passenger in the front seat even saw the stark, surreal landscapes, that passed them, the cold-blighted, naked forests of oak and birch, awaiting the winter like upright corpses.
And in the back seat sprawled the wreck of the Oldest Immortal, wordless, boneless, will-less, staring like a catatonic at nothing whatsoever. For all he had quarreled and fussed about his mother, he could not contain the thought of her absence in his life. Dawson remembered his own mother's death, a decade ago, and it seemed so recent still. A woman he'd only known for four decades, what must it be like to lose someone who was a constant in your life for five millennia?
And how, Joe wondered, will I feel--when I finally do feel--for the loss of this woman I have known scarcely three years and not a handful of days altogether?
Oh, damnation! Joe grumbled under his breath. There was a bottleneck on the long rise up the pass where the oak and birch gave over to the more hearty green fur of the pines. He geared down and stretched his shoulders. It wasn't as if he were on a time schedule after all, but he couldn't lose the notion that getting to Anne's house with these two was supremely important. Joe didn't want to drag along this road too long. His car would over-heat, or something else, something else worse would happen...
Then the line of cars started up again, but Joe was late re-engaging the gear and he got to the flag man just as the dolt flipped the sign around to "Stop," again. Some inner sentinel set off a bank of alarms which Joe did not understand, except as a building uneasiness about being stopped here.
Duncan's sentinel woke him from his reverie and he pulled up straight and took stock. Oh, he thought, they were stopped at some construction. "If they ever get this stretch done," he remembered what a pain this had been, driving back and forth from Seacouver to work on the old house's renovation. "I'll be.."
Joe noticed it first, a sort of black metal stack of warped parts fifty feet behind the flagman and off the left of the road just ahead. He wondered the purpose of the metal, some rebar or bridge fitting?
"Joe?"
Dawson heard the Highlander call him, but he found he couldn't respond. He could see the pilot car pass on the left and the flagman wave him on. He understood he was supposed to go on, to get up the rise, to Anne's house. But he understood something else and it stopped him from any purposeful movement.
Duncan got out of the car, waved the cars behind them to go on by. He walked around to the driver's side, opened the door, and moved Joe over, settling in behind the wheel. He studied the odd hand controls and put the car in gear, blending into the parade of metal slowly rolling up the sad hill.
When they'd crested the pass and started down, when the place was out of their sight, Duncan put his arm over Dawson's shoulders and gave him a gentle shake. "Joe, you okay?"
"No," Joe replied as if he were surprised this was so. "Why didn't they clean it up?"
"I am sure they will," Duncan pushed the image out of his mind. "After the traffic has thinned this evening. That's probably why the water tanker's parked with the patrol cars."
"Her blood is still on the road," Dawson named the horror that had finally touched him when nothing else would, the dark brown pool by the metal stack that had been her old green car, now blackened from the fire.
"We don't know, Joe. There were a lot of children in the bus..."
"On the other side of the road," Joe was not about to be reasoned out of his pain.
"You are probably right," Duncan took a deep breath. He glanced in the back seat. Adam hadn't moved. "I don't think he saw."
Oh, but I did, Dawson thought, I did. He had waited for the blow her death would deal him, had wondered how it would take him, how he would take it. Not so bad, he thought. It will pass, he thought. But all he could feel was her long fingers draped over his shoulder that first night they met.
And all he could do was try not to let the pain make him weep too loudly.
As they turned into the lane leading to Anne's house, Duncan braked the car abruptly and reached over the seat back to slap Adam mid-thigh. "Pull out of it, Old Man," he said. "We've got company!"
Adam bolted up, nodding his head. "Of the Immortal variety," he agreed, reaching reflexively for his sword and remembering it was still in Dawson's trunk. "Keys," he said.
Neither Immortal would listen to Joe's offer to accompany them. Dawson pulled his gun out, disengaged the safety and checked the load. He watched the two men separate as they approached the house, wondering at their skill to put all else aside in the face of the Game. Then again, they were alive, and a great many others not, because of that very skill.
Several minutes elapsed and the Watcher grew restless. Grabbing his cane, Joe left the car and started down the lane. Just as he came to a turn in the lane, Joe heard shouting and the clang of steel on steel. Damn! Had they not had enough death for one day? He held back, waiting for the pyrotechnics of the Quickening to begin.
After ten and then fifteen minutes, and no such Quickening occurred. Joe's curiosity got the better of him and he strolled warily down the lane and right, to the front lawn of the house. No one was there, but the front door was ajar. Could someone have come and abducted the two Immortals? Joe made his way up the stairs and paused at the door. Inside there was excited chattering and laughing as if he were crashing a party. The sheer joy of the voices irritated him and he slammed through the door, gun drawn.
"Joe," Adam called out, "I don't think you'll be needing that. Join us, you old goat. All the time you knew and never a word. Isn't it you always whining about how secretive I am."
Joe felt Duncan take the gun from his hand, heard the click of the safety, felt the weight as it dropped into his pocket. His eyes never left the two people seated on the couch, now rising together to greet him. It was such a shock, he stepped backwards and tumbled into Duncan's strong arms.
"Hey, Joe," said the first apparition.
"Hey, yourself," Joe waved the man away. He had totally lost it. Out there on the highway with Ram's blood. There he had set his sanity down. Like Alice falling through the ground, down the rabbit's hole. He was hallucinating, sounds and sights. Who knew what was next?
Duncan helped him to the couch. "It's all right, Joe," Mac murmured, "It really is Richie, he really is still alive. I did not kill him. Or so he says..."
Dawson reached his hands out and Richard Ryan crouched down before him and remained still under the Watcher's mad stare and questioning hands. Behind Joe Dawson, Alexa leaned forward and wrapped her arms around his neck and laid her head gently on his shoulder.
He wanted to say something to them, but his mind wouldn't work. All he could think was, "come to my arms my beamish boy."
Oh, frabjous day!
Having fallen this far down the rabbit hole, it made perfect sense to Joe Dawson that they would all sit down to tea. Alexa and Adam retreated to the kitchen and probably set the world record for longest time brewing, while Richie and Duncan filled in their details in the parlor, the how's, the why's, the wherefor's.
Dawson felt like the doormouse, swaddled in sugar, peeking over the rim of the sugar bowl, half dazed and totally confused, even if he knew the answer.
The answer, as always, was "Ram." Even dead, she still commanded them, or at least watched over them. The time she'd spent waiting in this house, Ram had been busy finding Richard and arranging for Alexa to come to Seacouver, and then for Richie to join her. She had intended they both be at the house to soften the blow of her passing. It was just the sort of arrogant, dramatic, graceful magic that recreated her presence even after she was gone. There was an enormous box of letters, some of them for Joe, which she had written in the long days of her confinement...alone.
He had stuffed the papers into his pocket, because he wasn't ready to read them, because his eyes were far too blurred with his grief to focus, because...just because. Nestled in the sugar, he listened to the other Looking Glass denizens remake their own Order out of the passing of Chaos.
"But I still don't get it," Duncan's hand rested on Richie's shoulder as if to reassure himself his student was as solid as he seemed."Geez, Mac," Richie's grin reminded them all of the long dark time they'd missed just that expression. "You should have seen yourself...I thought you'd lost it...totally...I mean you were talking about Horton and Cronos and...Man, I just thought I'd hang back and see what the hell was up."
"Then this guy about my size with a buzz like a light socket, blows by me and charges you and..." Richie shrugged his shoulders and made a line across his neck with the edge of his hand. "And all I could think was, 'Man, I am outta here!'"
Duncan shook his head, but said nothing.
"Well, then...and this is the really weird part," Richie paused and ran his hand through his red cropped hair. "I couldn't get back far enough and I got the Quickening...well, part of it, anyway...I could see you, like in furs, and armour, and..." he began to laugh wickedly, "and this one get up with like frills and lace...it was toooo cute."
Duncan's head dropped forward and he laughed softly.
"Man, high heels and everything...I figured France, like Louis the Something, but, Man, hose?"
Duncan's laughter loosened into guffaws and both men rolled with their mirth and general relief.
Wiping his eyes, Richie, continued after a moment, "Mac, I swear, I tried to get back to you, but..."
The air in the parlor went icy and still.
"I heard things, Mac. How you were killing...."
"I got sick," Duncan said but he was clearly not excusing himself. "I could not live with the idea I had killed you. I just lost it....for a while, but I am back to myself now. I will never raise a sword to you again. I hope you can forgive me."
"Oh, Man," Richie reached his hand out. Duncan took it in both his own. "Hey, I'd have been dead a long time ago if you hadn't straightened me out. Nothin' to forgive, Mac. God, if I'd only known... Geez, I should have got back to you sooner...I was just too scared, Mac. I'm sorry."
Dawson the Doormouse watched from his seat in the over-stuffed couch. He watched them hugging and crying and laughing and he wondered when he was going to feel things like that again. The bright music of the voices from the kitchen floated into the room with the tea, driving the doormouse down farther in the sugar bowl. Something for Duncan. Something for Adam.
Nothing for the doormouse, he thought. Well, maybe a Dear Doormouse Letter.
Dawson patted his pocket and heard the rustle of the dry papers Ram had left him. Amidst the baby talk and the happy, love-filled staring, he surrendered himself to something like sleep, sinking down the vortex of the crystalline, sweet sea.
About five, just as the sun was setting, wild fiery sigils across the western sky, Dawson found himself wandering aimlessly about Anne's flower beds. A dark car with its parking lights on pulled up the lane and a very large, almost fat, man stepped out dressed in his pajamas and a white coat."Hello," said the big man in the green pj's. "You must be Dawson, the bi-AKA. Jesus, but you're good! Anne said you were. When I was still in General Surg, my AK's usually just gave up and stayed with chairs. Nice to meet you!"
Joe Dawson wasn't sure he could return the favor, but the big man didn't wait for an answer.
"Here, Girl, let me hold that beautiful little boy and you get out and...Mary, just wait, honey....Oh, don't cry, darlin'..." the big man never stopped talking.
Joe looked away suddenly as the baby was placed in the big man's arms and Anne got out. Mary was soon rescued from the back seat, quite out of sorts with this baby thing and her mom's sadness. All this Joe heard, but he did not turn round until he heard the door close behind them. He was afraid the infant would wound him the way the road had and he was really enough of an old fool as it was.
"Might I interest you in a bit of libation, Watcher?" the soft Welsh-English tones had returned to normal. Adam handed him a glass and they both watched the sunset in silence.
"I wonder if she sees it where she is?" Dawson wondered aloud.
There was a long silence, then Adam said, "Knowing Mother, she probably planned it."
This set them both off laughing, but for only so long as it took them to grab for one another and bury their heads together and lose some of the burden which the dying day had set upon their shoulders.
The darkness finally drove them back to the house, but the whiskey Adam had brought made the going back easier, if not steadier. "I thought you and Alexa would be inseparable," Joe commented.
"She's married, Joe. But I suppose you knew."
"Yes."
"I also suppose you know why."
"I suppose it is so her two children will have a last name, Adam," Dawson patted him on the back.
"Yeah," Adam grumbled.
"But I think I know something you do not," Joe added mysteriously as they reached the porch.
"And that is?"
"Alexa will outlive her husband and her children...and probably the both of us if we have another month like the last one..." Joe smiled as he watched Adam's face return to the twenty-year old he had been on the day Ram had killed him.
"I'm not looking forward to seeing Sean," Adam commented as he started up the stair.
"I know what you mean, Buddy," Dawson drew back in the shadows wondering if he had enough energy to drive back to town tonight. He decided he did. The more he thought about it, the more he knew it would be a long time before he could get down that road in the daylight. "I've gotta get back anyway. Mike's going to wonder what to do with the receipts books....you know."
"I think I do, Joe," Adam stepped down and patted Joe's elbow. "I'll go back with you."
Dawson shook his head. "No. This way I can see to the arrangements in the morning. I'll give you a call if I need anything. Go on."
Adam tried to gauge the Watcher's resolve. He seemed well enough all things considered.
To Joe Dawson's amazement, the lanky professor grabbed him in a powerful hug, totally out of character for the world's greatest cynic. "We've been through a lot together, Joe. I owe you...big time."
Joe could only smile and nod. He watched the Oldest Immortal bound up the porch stairs three at a time like an exuberant child, and not at all like a newly-made orphan.
Joe was the one felt like an orphan, but he gathered his strength and he made it down the pass, past the place where the crumpled steel had bashed her from the outside and the newborn Sean had torn her from within, past the water tanker spraying the rest of her away.
Joe Dawson woke up in his bed, in his bedroom, in his home above his bar. His eyes were raw and swollen and he'd somehow fallen into bed with his legs on. He was so stiff it was several minutes' deep concentration before he could even roll over. He thought about unbuckling the harness, throwing everything on the floor and going back to sleep.
What day was this, anyway? Maybe Sunday and he partied too hard with the new band. No, that didn't seem right. He couldn't shake the feeling he had something to do this morning. Something important. Maybe if I just get up and wash and...
Halfway to the bathroom, it hit him, and Dawson did something he almost never did. He fell down.
He was so angry by the time he'd managed to struggle up off the floor that he was still raging when he reached the hospital an hour later and entered the Seacouver General complex to retrieve the body of slain friend.
Joe stepped up to the front desk, the circular mahogany altar and the priestess behind. He said his name and she paled slightly and called upstairs and fluttered behind the desk, offering him coffee and such until a navy blue suit with a stunning pair of long legs glided up to him, said his magical name and invited him to follow her.
Joe wasn't sure this thing with his name was such a good thing, but it certainly got him straight upstairs, by the VIP elevator and with the quiet spoken escort who smelled like camellias. They disembarked at the very top of the tower, into a walnut-walled and cordovan leather-lined eyrie. Quiet secretaries and soft classical music gave the glassed offices an air of convent or clairestory. Gentle scribes working away in all artistry and grace.
His guide led him past the cubicles and through doors worthy of a cathedral entrance. Ram would have loved this, Joe thought. He could almost here her laughing about Satan at the Pearly Gates, giving St. Peter hell about computerizing his records. God Bless you, Ram, where-ever you are. I am going to miss you.
"Mr. Dawson?" a grey-haired CEO type in a dark grey silk suit stood up behind his enormous desk and reached out a hand.
Joe stopped daydreaming and started measuring the situation. Something was definitely afoot here. "Yes, I am," he responded warily, but he did not reciprocate the hand. His guide brought a chair forward and he lowered himself down, counting the house...The CEO, beak and belly of a Dodo, his wily gryphon of a lawyer, no, make that three lawyers, and two more navy blue suits like his guide, power dressing junior execs trying to decide which side of the gender fence would be most propitious.
"I am Mr. Haverson, the President of the Board here at Seacouver General and acting Administrator, Mr. Dawson."
The shit must have really hit the fan for the Grand Pubah to greet him so respectfully, Joe thought. Might come in handy when Ram's hospital bills came due. Lord only knew how he would pay for them.
Mr. Pubah, the dodo, introduced his half-dozen cohorts and the blue suit who had led Dawson up to the hallowed halls, an administrative ombudsman, or some such, patient liaison and pub relations.
"I have come to see to my fiancé's'..." Joe began.
"Disposition. Yes, we know, Mr. Dawson," the dodo intoned. Then he leaned an ear towards Lawyer No. 1. "If you would permit me, that is...there's been a, uh, well let me start out by saying..."
Joe wondered what had happened. They'd lost her body?
"We are a teaching facility, Mr. Dawson. We are responsible for training more than a hundred physicians in the different specialties each year. We are especially dedicated to health care delivery for those without third party reimbursement qualifications..."
Oh, dear, they'd already discovered the lie about Ram's relationship to him, Joe worried. And now they're going to charge him for fraud, or attach the bar, or...
"We are also the foremost research facility in the area, as well as the primary trauma center for the entire state. You can understand if during the course of a chaotic situation with multiple victims and..."
Lawyer No.2 had his ear next. There was a moment of excited whispering and dodo began again, "You understand that we make no admission by our generous offer, but it is our intention to reimburse any expenses, either prior to or subsequent to the incident..." Lawyer No. 1 obviously did not like this last term. "This unfortunate misadventure," dodo reworded.
What the hell had happened? Joe remained silent, but his mind was loud with this or that suggestion: they'd lost the body, it had been mutilated somehow, whatever...she was dead. He didn't care. "I am not interested in settlements," Joe said. He was certain that was dodo's direction.
The entire administrative host went ashen.
Oh, brother, Joe thought. It must be something really awful, and really litigatable.
"It was a mistake anyone could have made, Mr. Dawson. An electrical short, only a resident left in the room. We often allow our medical students to practice procedures post-mortem, intubation, defibrillation..."
That was it, Joe grimaced. They'd hacked up the body for practice and now they were afraid he'd sue their asses off. They'd given him a permission for just this and he'd refused to sign that portion, refused to release the body for pathology or any other procedure following death. In the crisis with all the injured kids, they had not paid close attention to the lack of release forms.
Joe Dawson rose slowly. It saddened him Ram had not even been allowed to rest in death, but he was in no mood to pursue this dismal conversation any further. "Just tell me where she is," he said.
Anxious glances passed between the group. "But you will have to speak to the attending physician first."
"Then tell me where he, or she is," Dawson said as he reached the door and waited for someone to open it. His navy blue suit put her hand on the big bronze knob.
"But, Mr. Dawson!" the dodo had all but lost his cool, commanding demeanor.
Joe did not turn around. "Nothing you can say will keep me here one moment longer, gentlemen."
But Joe Dawson, former Northwest Territories Watchers' Director, and blues bar owner, was very, very wrong. The next thing dodo said spun him around, sputtering questions, and gasping for breath.
"But honestly, Mr. Dawson!" the poor dodo screeched. "We thought she was dead!"
They could not find the attending surgeon, so Joe Dawson ducked into the men's room and lost his "tail," the leggy blue suit liaison person. Blending into the ten o'clock coffee crowd, he made his way to the ICU, following the various maps and listings, probably put up for the constant new crop of residents and students. Along the way he stole a long white coat from one of the doctors' lounges, that and his silver beard made him look far more authentic than many of the sleep-deprived residents wandering the halls, chewing absently on their stethoscopes.
Joe entered the Unit behind an orderly--LPN's they called them in the civilian world--and strode directly for the chart rack. It took him a moment to think what name he was looking for, then he pulled the Seaton chart and began to read. The scribbles, latin, and arcane abreviations were heavy going, so he flipped back to the Consultant section and read the cleanly typed admission evals. God in heaven, Ram had accumulated a team of six, no seven, specialists. There was the attending, an Obstetrician, the Chief of Obstetrics, Dawson noted, running down the letterhead, a Mark Palmer with an extensive word-salad following his MD designation, FACOG, and so forth. His report was yet to be signed...a summary by a resident, named Martin Fortis. Dawson flipped to the Summary and read the Diagnoses. They took two pages, typed, and only about a third of them made any sense to him.
"May I help you, Doctor?" a pristine nurse asked.
Joe looked up. "I am supposed to evaluate a new patient, forty-year-old white female, Sean Seaton."
"Oh, yes, Doctor. Neurosurgery has her prepped for next-available OR, but you probably have at least fifteen minutes before they call for her. She's in Bed Four, over there. Do you need some assistance?"
"No, thank you, Nurse," Joe said dismissively. He was beginning to enjoy the charade. God knew he'd been a patient for a long enough period of time to know how it was done.
But he did not remember an essential chore of the physician, the little nicety called "preparing the family." So he drew back the curtain totally unprepared for what he found there.
They'd left one of those CPR dummies in the bed. Not funny, Joe thought. What macabre and sick individual would...
But then the chest rose in response to the woosh and click of the respirator and he looked more closely to see that the blue-purple, nearly formless blob on the pillow was Ram's face, what remained.
Probably the only time Watcher Dawson was grateful for his artificial limbs. They could not buckle, or he surely would have gone down. There wasn't much of Ram to see, just the hideous crushing injury to her face, now swollen the size of a basketball and twenty shades of blue, purple and red. Her eyes were only visible as shadows where the lids were slightly less swollen than the rest. A spiderwork of tubes ran in and out and all the rest was tucked in blankets, except the left side which was open to allow the tongs and lines and weights and sandbags.
This at least was familiar to Joe. He'd been in enough of the war to know what a stabilized sucking chest wound looked like. Neurosurgery prep, he replayed what the nurse had said. Probably bleeding inside her brain. Probably dead already. Again.
Ram was undoubtedly unconscious. She would not be able to hear him. He was only doing this for himself. Despite the fact that it made him feel supremely foolish, Joe leaned close to the right side of her head and said, "Ram, I love you. Forgive me for not having said so sooner. I am here. I will be here."
And then, because he still needed to believe there was magic in the world, Joe said, "Return to me, Setan'm, I need you."
North and east of the good hospital, Mount Saint Seacouver, Ram's son stood alone on the porch of Anne's house and contemplated the sunrise with a jaundiced perspective and very blood-shot eyes. Bad night. After Joe had left, Adam had tried to return to Alexa, only to find her nursing his accursed baby brother. The sight had stunned him, had frozen him by the half-opened door to the guest room."What is wrong, Adam?" Alexa's musical tones floated by him, but Adam's intense sudden empathy had rendered him deaf.
"Adam?" she repeated, shifting the newborn to the other breast. She looked back towards the door where Adam stood, paralyzed, with an intense grimace pulling his upper lip high on his clenched teeth.
His eyes squinted nearly shut. "Doesn't that hurt?" he asked in a small voice, barely a whisper for all it stayed in its deep baritone register.
Alexa's usual bell-tone, almost warble, was especially lovely as she laughed. "Not everyone is so sensitive about that portion of their anatomy, Adam." The innocence of tone was brightly counter pointed by the salacious under currents, as she reminded him of their more intimate knowledge of one another.
"In fact, the sensation is quite pleasant," Alexa smiled and stroked baby Sean's cheek. "Very sensual."
Adam's jaw dropped out of the grimace and he exhaled noisily. "Maybe later we could talk," he suggested, "Perhaps when you are less encumbered?"
Alexa pressed her rose petal lips tightly together, tipped her head down and looked up at him mischievously, "Perhaps," she said.
At which point, with no better course to take, the Oldest Immortal forfeited the field in favor of his brother and moved into the status of wandering planet. It seemed the remaining guests in the house had found their own corporate orbits, complex and entire unto themselves. Anne and little Mary and the surgeon, Mark, had retired to the den where they were thoroughly enjoying themselves with a new Sega Game which Mark had brought for Mary. Their squeals and laughter mixed with the odd beep and video jingle wafted in to the parlor. Even Anne's strident laugh added itself to their song from time to time.
MacLeod and Richie sat in the kitchen, knee to knee, foreheads nearly touching, lost in some discussion about the end of the world, or something, it was clear they were only speaking so they could prove to each other they were still alive and bonded, memorizing each other like a mare and a new colt. So they would never forget each other again, Methos surmised, suddenly torn by the thought that he had himself probably forgotten more friends than either younger Immortal ever knew.
Adam had served them supper in the kitchen just to have a reason to be there. He wasn't ready to face Ram's death alone...or at all, for that matter. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but it had nearly been his undoing. Ram had left them sandwiches--chicken, endive, roast beef--with a potato salad that would feed a small army...
...and two cold six-packs of Adam's favorite beer, an imported vintage from Paris that no one else could stand. Damn her! She might as well still be alive! It was just too obscene to bear, all of it!
Before his rage could desert him to rank embarrassment, Adam had departed by the kitchen's back door, across the lawn, and up into the crook of an elderly maple. There he had settled himself in for a particularly grim bit of anguish. Weeping, howling, blubbering...the gamut.
And when he had exhausted his tears, his swollen eyes had shuttered him into darkness and sent him away from the world for the rest of the night, dreamless and desolate.
Then it was morning. This morning. This sun-bright, dew-swept beginning of yet another day. Only the second day after his mother was dead. Two days dead against the almost two million days alive and already she was farther away from him, down the past, than the last star of morning, probably Venus, winking out as the sky brightened into full day.
"Here," a gentle, silken voice reminded Adam he was not alone in the world. In a parody of "guess who" a small plastic bag full of ice slush wrapped around his swollen eyes and the relief was so complete he almost began weeping again."Sweets," Adam acknowledged the new addition to their country wake. Damn! He was going to have to snap out of this. Hadn't even heard her car pull up. That much inattention could lose him his head. He reached up and took the bag, rubbing it over his tender forehead.
"Oh, Adam," Lucille wound her pale arms around his chest and she leaned her cheek on the nape of his neck. "I am so sorry." She walked around to face him. "Ramikins would want us to be brave about this."
Adam peeked out from under the ice and stifled his urge to state emphatically that they, none of them, knew what Ram wanted. That she surely could not have wanted to end up in pieces on some Emergency Room gurney. Instead, he tried to be at least gracious, if not compassionate, "Thank you for the ice."
"You're most welcome, Adam," Lucille smiled. "And when it melts, zip it open and have a sip." Sweet Lucille handed him hers. It was only then he came out of himself enough to notice she'd been crying also.
He was really going to have to snap out of this. Really. He took a sip. "Peach daiquiri?"
"Hmm, mmm," Lucille hummed brightly. "I find it's just the thing to smooth out those really bad bumps in the road."
"Dear Lord!" Adam exclaimed suddenly as his senses began to clear and his sight focused. "Talk about bumps in the road! You didn't! Lucille, why in the hell did you get an augmentation?"
"No," Lucille's porcelain chin lifted imperiously and she arched her back slightly to increase the effect. "They are all mine...or both mine," she amended proudly.
"Not unless you've taken to hiding melons under your sweaters," Adam grumbled.
"And you had just better believe they're the sweetest honey dews you're ever likely to know, Child," Lucille reached out her hand and traced Adam's lower lip lightly with the edge of her thumbnail.
"But," Adam could not believe the change in Lucille's already lush figure. "How?"
"Dr. Mark gave me some pills and some shots and..."
"But why?" Adam put this in the category of gilding the proverbial lily.
"Because I am going with you and MacLeod and the new baby to Paris, that's why. I have been hired on as wet-nurse and companion to Sean MacLeod."
Lucky Sean, he thought. Was it just his imagination or had he suddenly become surrounded by lactating females? Adam returned her ice pack and replaced his on his throbbing left temple. "And why are we going to Paris?"
"Because you would be too depressed to stay here and because Sean is going to be baptized in Darius' chapel and because you would be too inclined to 'schlep off to Bora-Bora' if there were so many willing friends around to tend to the baby for you," Lucille thought a moment, "and because Ram says so."
Adam groaned, "And has she already picked out which college the poor child is to attend?"
"Nooo," Lucille laughed, "though she did hint that Oxford might be nice."
Adam's mouth opened and he studied the fair face before him. He honestly could not tell if she were joking or not.
"Oh, I forgot," Lucille reached into her soft leather bag and retrieved a small package wrapped in pale lavender tissue. "This is for you, Adam, to keep for Sean."
Adam tucked the ice pack under his arm and unwrapped the tiny object, a white-gold wyvern, not two inches high.
"Do you want to know what it means?" Sweet Lucille asked tentatively, unsure she could actually tell him without breaking down.
"I know," said Adam with a grace and bravery that surprised even him.
It was the baby dragon that used to reside within a perfect crystal sphere in Sweet Lucille's prism collection. Ram had broken the sphere which held the figure.
But the little drake had remained intact, unscathed amid the crystalline shards.
It was the last thing Ram had left them when she disappeared half a year ago. She had obviously cut herself when the sphere broke and she had blooded the shards.
And you give this to me now, Adam thought, so that I may remember to love my brother. If not for my sake, then for yours.
Vicious, meddling Woman! How can I mourn you when you won't even leave?
"Mr. Dawson?" Out beyond the rim of his conscious mind, Joe felt a small hand on his shoulder. It jostled him ever so gently. "Mr. Dawson?" Again with the jostling? And now the little claw was adding a pinch. Go away, Joe thought, can't you see I am asleep? Don't you know I have not slept for a long time, not since....He bolted up wide awake. Blinking his eyes open, he found himself in an empty cubicle of the Intensive Care Unit...no bed, no respirator, no IV poles, no several dozen beeping sentinels...
...no Ram.
"Where!" he fairly howled at the poor patient liaison lady in the navy suit.
"I am sorry, Mr. Dawson," she sputtered, "We've been looking for you all day."
They'd even waxed the floor around him, Dawson noted with an ill-defined edginess and horror building at the back of his waking brain. "Where," he said again, with a little more control this time 'round.
"If this should...I mean is there some family we can contact, Mr. Dawson?"
Dawson felt suddenly like the Spartan boy with the fox gnawing his innards. The worst had happened. He had fallen asleep. They had taken her away. She was gone. All alone, with himself asleep at the watch. Damn him to hell! Though where else would he be? Where else had he been these past dark days? "Where did they take her?"
"We could go get something to eat, Mr.--"
"Damn you!" Dawson reached up, grabbed her power suit lapels and pulled her roughly towards him. "It's English. It's simple. I ask a question and you answer."
Miss Patient Liaison's eyes grew round and her bottom lip started to quiver. "Yes?" she squeaked.
"Where is she? Where have they taken her?"
"As I have been trying to tell you, Mr. Dawson," the woman pulled back and started rearranging her composure with her suit. "She was in surgery for eight hours and we have moved her down to a private suite in the east hallway. They are just installing the remote monitors now, and after that's done I can take you to see her main physician, Dr. Palmer. He and Dr. Nuñez, the neurosurgeon in charge of..."
Joe was dimly aware she had gone on speaking, but he heard nothing past the fact Ram still lived...
And that was enough for now. If he could unfreeze his sleep-cramped hips and stand, that would only be gravy.
They did, after a fashion, halting and slow, but serviceable. He made his way to the elevator and down to dinner in the VIP lounge. Dawson was surprised he had any appetite at all, but he found he was famished and the liaison person, Judith (he finally woke up enough and thought to ask), just couldn't do enough for him. The entire hospital had its corporate butt in medico-legal limbo, awaiting Joe Dawson's pleasure. If the circumstances were not so tragic, Joe might have enjoyed his position of power, but he'd paid too high a price...and there would doubtless be more to pay, in some measure or another.
But, in the meantime, Mr. Dawson, Seacouver Barkeep and Blues Entrepreneur, was royalty, Lord of the Manor, his every wish a command.
Two beers and a porter house, medium rare, later, Ram's attending breezed through the door with a tiny, dark-skinned side-kick in tow, laden with all manner of Xray folders and charts and graphs and photos.
"Mr. Dawson," Dr. Mark Palmer extended an enormous hand down to Joe. "We've met. Out at Anne's house yesterday," he answered the look on Joe's face.
Joe cautiously slipped his hand back out of Mark's bear paw. These were the sensitive surgeon's fingers which had held Ram's life? No wonder she hovered near death now. The man had all the finesse of a stevedore.
The large, ursine man pulled over a chair and settled down beside Joe, helping himself to a dinner roll. "Before we get into all the technical details...Joe, is it?...Well, Joe, your little lady is one very hurt puppy, but I don't need to tell you that. We've got a long way to go before we know if she's going to make it, but the next forty-eight hours will be our 'make or break' window."
Joe thought it was odd he should refer to her as "little" when she always loomed so large in his mind.
"Well, when they paged me at the house this morning, Joe," Mark placed his hand on Joe's arm and waited until he had Dawson's attention. "I made some excuse to everyone and...Joe, I don't know how you want to handle this."
"What?" Joe couldn't seem to follow Mark's exuberant patter.
"The cold truth is this, buddy," the large hand moved up to Joe's shoulder and squeezed gently. "In all likelihood, your lady will be dead before tomorrow. I thought telling the folks at the home front would only make it harder when it happens."
Joe's whole torso collapsed, or would have, if Mark's strong hand had not supported him. He felt the other paw wrap firmly over the slope of his opposite shoulder. Joe leaned there into the unyielding, precise grasp of the bear-handed surgeon and tried mightily to come to terms. He felt exactly as nauseous as if he'd been one to many times on the Monster, the 2-g's coaster at Seacouver Palisades.
"But I could be wrong, Joe," Mark added in a soft growl, "Looks like this is too much for you to do alone. It would be for me," he added graciously.
"God!" Joe said in a single, long breath. He lifted himself upright and shook his head as if he couldn't believe how bad this felt. "Will you be around?" he asked the bear.
"Oh, yeah. Sure. I am your own personal pet physician for the duration, buddy. They've taken me off all my other cases. You gottem spooked. I 'll be here."
"Then I will be all right," Joe said. "We'll let them know when there's some good news to tell." It didn't ring as hopefully as he might have wished. Joe looked over questioningly at the small, dark man who had found his own place across the table and set up his things in assorted piles.
"Sorry," Mark waved towards the man, "Joe Dawson, this is Dr. Felipé Nuñez, Fil this is Joe, probably Seacouver's best blues man. Fil is our Neuro man. He and Plastics and ENT have spent most of the day with Lady Seaton. So, Fil?" clearly the Neurosurgeon both liked and hated the bear's familiarity. "Give us the skinny."
"The 'skinny' is hardly that," Fil had the deepest bass Joe had heard in a long time, a baso profundo for sure. Such an incredible sound to come out of one so diminutive in every other respect, and it bore the barest lisp to ornament what had to be a pure Castilian spanish accent. "Mr. Dawson, your fiancé has sustained a severe, crushing head injury, involving not only the facial structures, but also the brain. We have managed to decompress, that is, move out, the bone shards into their more normal positions and drained off two subdural hematomas, bruises on the brain's surface..."
Joe listened to the wounds' inventory. Fil and the bear talked to him about the seriousness of each and how each was surely going to kill her. They hardly spent five minutes going over the various orthopedic and thoracic concerns. They'd evidently let the Orthopods into surgery briefly to pin and wire the smashed left leg and cast the left arm, and Cardiothoracics had been given a turn to repair and inflate the puncture lung, and wire the rib fragments, and place a pericardial drain to prevent cardiac tamponade from her bruised heart.
Joe thought he knew just how that felt and wondered when he would himself need a drain to keep his own heart from crushing itself.
But first, she had to live through the next day and night and...the same time frame as The Diminishment. Joe shuddered inwardly at the connection his tired brain had made. In another life, another time, at the beginning, the second time he had seen her...
Joe slipped back along his all-too-exacting recall to the events of the night Ram had stepped in to save Adam's grits in the alley behind the dojo. For that infraction of the "no interference" edict, the Danae had hung her up by her wrists for a night, a day, another night...two dawns. She had prevailed, had come back, again, and again, and again from death. She had made it to the second dawn. Ram might just make it through this excrutiation as well.
But she had been more than Immortal then, and she had died countless times on the course to that second dawn. This time she could not afford to die even once. This time she was mortal.
"Joe?" the bear paws wrapped around his shoulders again. "You can stay at my house if..."
"No, I want to see her. I want to stay with her," Joe replied adamantly.
"You're a brave man, Joe Dawson," Mark the Bear spoke in a friendly, respectful growl.
"Joe?"
"Yes?"
"I don't want to sound like the Minister of Doom here, but..." the bear poured himself some coffee. "You know the Tale of the Monkey's Paw?"
Joe did not immediately make the connection. "Yes?"
"Well, the first wish is for money, power, so forth..."
Joe thought that fit.
"And because of the first wish, someone close to you dies, so the second wish is always..."
"To bring the person back to life," Joe finished. Where was he going with this?
"Well, Fil's an excellent surgeon, buddy, but he tends to skirt the issues, like 'will the patient have an IQ higher than a rutabaga?'" Fil had left, unnoticed, some time before.
Joe's eyes narrowed. What was this bear growling on about? The third wish, what was the third wish. Oh, Dear God! The third wish! The person comes back from the grave, rotting and mindless, an animated corpse...and the last wish is always...
"Death," Joe had to clear his throat and repeat the answer before it was audible, "The last wish is always for death."
"Your little lady's had her brains run through a cuisinart, Joe. We may both be making that third wish for her before this is over. I want you to be prepared for something worse than losing her, because..." the bear took a long sip of coffee and arranged his words. "Because that little lady of yours is about the hardest fighter I think I've ever known, and she may just make liars out of us all and live through these next days, but that may not be for the best. You understand?"
Joe did not share his uncertainty, "If she's broccoli, she's broccoli, but I want her back!"
Mark the Bear nodded sadly, "But would she want that?"
Joe heard the question for what it was...finally. "No," he said distinctly, "I do not want you to stint or withhold, or whatever the term is, you will go to the wall for her, until there is no more wall to go to. Do you understand?"
Mark patted Joe's forearm. "Thanks, buddy. I just had to be sure. Lady Seaton's not going to fight this alone. We'll be bringing in all the troops, full charge. I hope it's enough."
Adam Piersen, Ph.D., brand new orphan, the Pale Rider of the Bronze Age Apocalypse, Methos Researcher, Watcher, Clandestine Immortal of fifty centuries, was without specific identity or occupation this morning. He watched Anne's friend, the surgeon who had killed his mother, rush by in a panic, and almost envied him the purpose, any purpose, which drove him onward through the business of living.
Adam wondered when his sense of purpose, or even his sense, would be making a reappearance. No time soon if his current state of floating distraction was any indication. Lucille took his baby brother from Alexa and wandered off to the kitchen. He took advantage of the situation to slip into the guest room and visit with the woman who had filled up his world for one brief half year, with her loving and her laughter and her dying, touching and teasing and tearing him apart.
How was it possible, he wondered as he tossed back the last of Lucille's peach daiquiri, to have wished, dreamed, prayed, nearly died for Alexa's redemption from death and now be so unmoved by the fulfillment of that very redemption? Where was the joyous rapture, the great and glorious gladness? Hell, where was even the least bloody feeling of relief?
Adam sat quietly on the side of the bed and waited for Alexa to stop fussing with her breasts. Feeding babies was a messy business. He would have rather she offer to let him fuss with them, but he wasn't sure how he felt on that score...now that the equipment was fully functional, as it were.
Alexa watched his reflection in the mirror as she brushed her long hair slowly, sorting out the kinks and the tangles. "Ram told me a lot about you, Adam."
Oh, wonderful, Adam thought grimly. Aloud he said, "Really?" in as light a tone as he could manage.
Alexa laughed softly, "Yes, Adam. Really. She was quite fond of you. She was afraid you did not understand that."
Adam found himself distracted once again, this time by a simple, single word in the past tense, where Ram now resided. Forever.
"I thought you were dead," Adam said accusingly.
"Yes," Alexa gathered her waves in combs behind her pale ears. "I know, Adam. I am sorry for that. I needed, I wanted children, Adam." She placed her fingers over her belly. "This baby and the one who is waiting with his father at home for me. I can't believe I could have been so cruel to you. But maybe you can forgive me?"
"You want to put me on lay-away for that lonely time when all your kin have died?" Adam heard the words. He knew he had said them. He just could not quite believe his own cruelty.
"Exactly," Alexa replied with a stark edge to her voice which he had heard all too frequently in those final days when nothing would stop the pain. She breathed slowly and settled her shoulders. "Ram said you would have the most trouble with me being so alive. That you wouldn't know how to treat me. That the first thing you would do was see how hard you could hit me, just to make sure I wouldn't shatter like old porcelain. Well, you hit, and I am not shattered, Adam. All I am is sorry. Accept it or don't. That is your choice. I have made mine."
Adam just stared. The impressive strength against the dreadful weight of her illness which had so endeared her to him, was far too daunting now that it had no anchor to drag it back. Alexa was too alive for him. This was not the time for them, if there ever would be such a time again. Too much a contrast and exemplar against his own current state, somewhere near walking-dead.
Alexa left the mirror and went digging in her suitcase. "Here," she said and handed him a package.
He suddenly had visions of traveling the globe to the farthest point only to have an Eskimo mush up in a sled going, "Here, your mother left this for you."
"What is it?"
"Take it," Alexa sat down beside him on the bed. "Why does everything have to be so certain with you?" Almost casually, she laid the present in his lap and draped her arm over his shoulders, staring down, waiting for him to open it.
He opened it carefully, handing the wrapping to Alexa. She was the sort that saved wrapping paper and empty containers and...It was a book with a note on the top.
"Well?" Alexa folded the paper neatly and set it aside. She curled her chin over his shoulder and snuggled into his side. "What does it say?"
Adam turned his head and kissed her on her nose. "Patience, Alexa."
"You have no idea," she replied cryptically.
"It says you will explain it to me, and it says..." Adam's face drained of its color and the paper drifted down to the floor, followed quickly by a thump as the book fell off his lap.
Alexa reached over and pulled him around by his shoulder. "Adam? What is it?"
"She says," the laughter started deep in his belly, "not to worry, she says," it erupted with a spastic, jerky sound, "she won't be leaving any messages with Eskimos for me." And then he couldn't speak, let alone breathe. The laughter soon lost its mirth and shaded over into mindlessness, crashing finally down to the shoals of wracking, gulping sobs. He curled into himself, thoroughly ashamed and utterly open.
He felt like the edge of a wound, raw and stinging, open to the air, with the deeper bruise pulsing beneath. The entire world tilted wildly beneath him and he fell over on the bed, flailing his long arms out, grasping for one solid point in the whole reeling universe.
Alexa caught him and gathered him in and rocked him in the tide-bourne way of all mothers.
But it was a very long time before he was aware of anything more than Alexa's cool hand on his head and the soft, sighing whispers of her healing endearments. Then they fell easily into the way they had been before, a lazy day of laughter and loving and lolling around doing nothing at all but enjoying each other.
Not because the time was right. Not because the time was proper.
But simply because it was the only time they would have for a long, long time to come.
"Well?" said Dr. Palmer, wrapping Joe Dawson in one of his big, bearish arms.Joe looked at the wide pale green door. He looked at Mark the Bear and nodded. He took a single, steady breath and waited for the surgeon to open the door, then he pushed through to stand in the place where the vigil would begin in earnest. This would be the place where Ram lived or died, or worse. It looked like a hotel suite that had swallowed an entire block of Las Vegas' neon. Too noisy for a tomb. Too warm.
Two nurses in green scrubs puttered around, checking the last of the lines, adjusting the pumps and gauges. They finished and nodded their respects to the doctor and the "significant other person," and left.
"Mark," Joe said just loudly enough to be heard above the swoosh-click-thunk of the respirator, "Is she stable enough I can be here alone for about five minutes?"
The thick brows knotted over the bear's forehead. "Give me a minute, I'll check."
Joe did not watch him assess the body on the bed. He was wise enough to know he just wasn't ready yet. Instead, he began with the non-medical items. There was a small frig in the corner, and a microwave atop that and a coffee-maker. The day bed against the adjacent wall made Joe's back hurt just looking at it. Oh, well, at least it was more than just a chair, though there was also a brand new recliner over by the bed, beneath the window. He might not go entirely nuts with a window to remind him there was an outside, away from this place. It had been a long time since he spent a year with his face to a white wall, trying to will himself to death because his legs were gone...a long time, but not long enough. This was not going to be easy, a hard road...the best he could hope for: that it would be a long, hard road.
And he could hope that Ram was at the end of that road, but even if not he owed her to go there anyway.
"I'll be just outside the door," said the bear.
Joe approached the bed by degrees, inspecting all the machinery, noting their names and various functions, this one for fluid, this one for meds, this one only watched and counted. And the mother of them all, the enormous respirator, valves and dials and gauges, lights and beeps and printout, shiny chrome arms and translucent hollow caterpillars, sea-green, carrying the life-sustaining air, sweating on their insides with the fog from the humidifier, burbling little obscenities twixt the swoosh and the thunk of the grey bellows. Up and down, like a smithy's forge they went feeding the feeble fire of the body on the bed.
Being very careful not to disturb any of the myriad attachments, Joe leaned against the bed and looked finally down on this latest transformation of the self-labeled Techno Wonk. His attention fixed on her face. Some part of him expected her face to be better since the surgery. Of course, it was much, much worse. He would not have thought that possible. They had affixed a large, steel halo to her skull with sizable bolts straight into the bone which looked like something you'd buy from a bin at the home improvement store. Something about the threaded steel shafts disappearing through the skin at her temples and forehead made Joe regret the porter house. The swelling was better and worse. Now both eyes were shiny and purple, and her scalp a shaved collection of railroad track suture lines. A face only a mad scientist could love.
And me, thought Joe. He leaned in closer, bent over the cast-traction device on her left arm, "I am still here, Ram. I will be here." Then he touched her jaw cautiously, in much the same way as one might touch the fresh earth of a new grave. How far in there are you buried, he wondered. How far back do you have to climb? Do you know you are not alone? Do you know anything at all?
"Got some chores to do, Joe," the bear paws led him away to the day bed while the nursing staff got on with their work. "I brought you something from the bar. Well, two somethings." Mark produced, in quick succession, a bottle of Jameson's and his guitar.
"Do you think she's uncomfortable, Mark?" Why would he ask such a stupid question? What would it help to know?
"Good question," Mark answered. "We ran an EEG in Recovery, Joe. She's in a real slow alpha, steady as she goes, floating through dreamland, except of course for..." Mark busied himself with opening the Jameson's, hoping his lapse would go unnoticed.
It didn't.
"Except?" Joe borrowed the bottle and tossed back a long gulp. Sacrilegious treatment for the holy brew, but these were exceptional times.
"Joe," the bear's growl was almost too quiet to hear. "Some of her brain is just gone. That's what Fil and I were trying to tell you before...the dark areas on the scans at both temples. Remember?"
Dawson took another drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. "And the guitar is for?"
"Well, Rehab says the more stimulation, the better. They said something soothing, something familiar...maybe someone she knows reading a book...so I thought..." Mark handed over the guitar and the nurses, having finished their tasks, paused at the door.
Joe settled the instrument on his knee and tuned it. He felt ridiculous. He was far from a Jimmy Stewart in a Capra film and that would be the only combination to make this situation less than silly.
"Humor me," said Mark the Bear.
One of the nurses at the door explained to her cohort who Joe was in the Seacouver blues' scene.
Dawson thought back. Ram had really never heard him play...just singing something from an old Sinatra album...the set em up, Joe song...what, yes, "One More for the Road." That hardly seemed appropriate. But if she knew that song maybe one of the others off the Wee Small Hours...not the title song, however apt (when your lonely heart has learned its lesson), or, God forbid, Mood Indigo (the song that got the album banned for a while on the grounds it was causing people to commit suicide).
He started into a slow, clean lick, simple and honest.
........................In the still of the night, .........
While the world is in slumber,
Oh, the times without number,
Darling, I have prayed for you.
......
Do you love me, as I love you?
Are you my life to be,
My dream come true?
...
Or will this dream of mine,
Fade out of sight,
Like the moon growing dim,
On the rim of the hill,
...
In the still, still of the night.
Up and down the acute care hall, staff stopped to listen and patients drifted in their sleep towards the sound Joe made, all smoke and sadness and soulful blessing.Whether it was magic, or just coincidence...
No one died that night.
