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She said softly, “I’m sorry about Washington.”
She saw hurt in his eyes and realized that he had misunderstood her words.
“So you wish it never happened between us,” he said.
“No. No, that’s not it at all-”
“Then what are you sorry about?”
She sighed. “I’m sorry I left without telling you what that night meant to me. I’m sorry I never really said good-bye to you. And I’m sorry that…” She paused. “That I didn’t let you take care of me, just that once. Because the truth is, I really needed you to. I’m not as strong as I like to think I am.”
He smiled. Squeezed her hand. “None of us is, Jane.”
“Hey, Rizzoli?” It was Barry Frost, calling to her from the edge of the woods.
She blinked away tears and turned to him. “Yeah?”
“We just got a double ten fifty-four. Quik-Stop Grocery Store, Jamaica Plain. Dead store clerk and a customer. The scene’s already been secured.”
“Jesus. So early in the morning.”
“We’re next up for this one. You good to go?”
She drew in a deep breath and turned back to Dean. He had released her hand, and although she missed his touch, she felt stronger, the tremor silenced, the ground once again solid beneath her feet. But she was not ready to end this moment. Their last good-bye in Washington had been rushed; she wouldn’t let it happen again. She wouldn’t let her life turn into Korsak’s, a sad chronicle of regrets.
“Frost?” she said, her gaze still on Dean.
“Yeah?”
“I’m not coming.”
“What?”
“Let another team take it. I’m just not up to it right now.”
There was no response. She glanced at Frost and saw his stu
“You mean… you’re taking the day off?” Frost said.
“Yeah. It’s my first sick leave. You got a problem with that?”
Frost shook his head and laughed. “About goddamn time, is all I can say.”
She watched Frost walk away. Heard him still laughing as he headed into the woods. She waited until Frost had vanished among the trees before she turned to look at Dean.
He held open his arms; she stepped into them.
TWENTY-SIX
Every two hours, they come to check my skin for bedsores. It is a rotating trio of faces:
Armina on day shift, Bella on evenings, and on the night shift the quiet and timid Corazon. My ABC girls, I call them. To the unobservant, they are indistinguishable from each other, all of them with smooth brown faces and musical voices. A chirpy chorus line of Filipinas in white uniforms. But I see the differences between them. I see it in the way they approach my bed, in the various ways they grasp me as they roll my torso onto one side or the other to reposition me on the sheepskin cover. Day and night, this must be done, because I ca
Thanks to my ABC girls, I do not have any sores-or so they tell me. I ca
I also know they are afraid of me.
They know, of course, why I am here. Everyone who works on the spinal cord unit is aware of who I am, and although they treat me with the same courtesy they offer all the other patients, I notice they do not really look me in the eye, that they hesitate before touching my flesh, as though they are about to test a hot iron. I catch glimpses of the aides in the hallway, glancing at me as they whisper to each other. They chatter with the other patients, asking them about their friends and families, but no such questions are ever put to me. Oh, they ask me how I am feeling and whether I slept well, but that is the extent of our conversation.
Yet I know they are curious. Everyone is curious, everyone wants a peek at the Surgeon, but they are afraid to come too close, as though I might suddenly spring up and attack them. So they cast quick glances at me through the doorway, but do not come in unless duty calls them. The ABC girls tend to my skin, my bladder, and my bowels, and then they flee, leaving the monster alone in his den, chained to the bed by his own ruined body.
It’s no wonder I look forward so eagerly to Dr. O’Do
She has been coming once a week. She brings her cassette recorder and her legal notepad and a purse full of blue rollerball pens with which to take notes. And she brings her curiosity, wearing it fearlessly and unashamedly, like a red cloak. Her curiosity is purely professional, or so she believes. She moves her chair close to my bed and sets up the microphone on the tray table so it will catch every word. Then she leans forward, her neck arching toward me as though offering me her throat. It is a lovely throat. She is a natural blonde, and quite pale, and her veins course in delicate blue lines beneath the whitewash of skin. She looks at me, unafraid, and asks her questions.
“Do you miss John Stark?”
“You know I do. I’ve lost a brother.”
“A brother? But you don’t even know his real name.”
“And the police, they keep asking me about it. I can’t help them, because he never told me.”
“Yet you corresponded with him all that time from prison.”
“Names were unimportant to us.”
“You knew each other well enough to kill together.”
“Only the one time, on Beacon Hill. It’s like making love, I think. The first time, you’re still learning to trust each other.”
“So killing together was a way of getting to know him?”
“Is there a better way?”
She raises an eyebrow, as though she’s not quite sure if I’m serious. I am.
“You refer to him as a brother,” she says. “What do you mean by that?”
“We had a bond, the two of us. A sacred bond. It’s so hard to find people who completely understand me.”
“I can imagine.”
I’m alert to the merest hint of sarcasm, but I don’t hear it in her voice, or see it in her eyes.
“I know there must be others like us out there,” I say. “The challenge is to find them. To co
“You talk as though you’re a separate species.”
“Homo sapiens reptilis,” I quip.
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve read that there’s a part of our brain that dates back to our reptilian origins. It controls our most primitive functions. Fight and flight. Mating. Aggression.”
“Oh. You mean the Archipallium.”
“Yes. The brain we had before we became human and civilized. It holds no emotions, no conscience. No morals. What you see when you look in the eyes of a cobra. The same part of our brain that responds directly to olfactory stimulation. It’s why reptiles have such a keen sense of smell.”
“That’s true. Neurologically speaking, our olfactory system is closely related to the Archipallium.”
“Did you know I’ve always had an extraordinary sense of smell?”
For a moment she simply gazes at me. Again, she does not know if I am serious or I am spi