Which was why she was cursed afterward with remembering everything with such stark and brutal clarity.
Chapter 2
Mr. Hudson?”
Calder wished that whoever the hell was talking to him would shut up and leave him alone. He had a mother of a headache.
He was surrounded by noises and activities he couldn’t identify, nor did he want to. People were talking loudly. Impossibly bright light seeped through his eyelids even though he kept them tightly closed. All these hyperactive stimuli were as intrusive as a tornado. His heart’s desire was silence, stillness, darkness, oblivion.
“Mr. Hudson? Can you hear me? You can wake up now. Your operation is over.”
He sensed motion as the persistent creature—the voice was female—came nearer, bumping into whatever surface he was on, rocking it, and causing the pain level inside his skull to spike off the charts. His right arm was lifted, pressure was applied, and when it was released, the individual said, “My name is Cindy. I’ll be taking care of you for the next few hours. The doctor will be in to see you soon. Would you like some ice chips?”
He didn’t care what her name was. Who was she, and what was she talking about?
“I’m going to elevate your head a little. Let me know if you feel nauseous.”
She didn’t elevate his head “a little.” She catapulted it from supine to straight fucking up. A stick of dynamite exploded inside his cranium. His stomach heaved. He gagged.
“Here’s a bag.”
Something cold and foreign was crammed against his mouth. He retched violently. Again and again his guts were wrung out, but nothing came up except sour fluid, which he spat out, uncertain and uncaring if he hit the receptacle or not.
When the spasms finally subsided, she said, “Better now? If you need it again, let me know.”
He attempted to raise his arm and bat at Cindy the Witch, who’d pulled him out of a sublime state of nothingness into pure hell, but he seemed to have lost control of his limbs.
Stunned and frightened by that realization, he pried open his eyes and blinked against the blinding overhead light. A figure loomed and receded, loomed and receded, making him seasick until he was able to focus and secure his torturer into place.
A young woman with dozens of long braids was adjusting an IV bag beside what was obviously a hospital bed.
His eyes tracked the IV tubing to the back of his right hand, where strips of tape secured a shunt. A device with a red light was clipped to the end of his index finger. He supposed it was monitoring something. He became aware that he was breathing through a cannula.
The young woman glanced over her shoulder and smiled at him. “Good. You’re with us. Has the nausea passed?”
He tried to speak but only made a croaking sound. His mouth was as dry as dust, and his throat stung from the vile stuff he’d thrown up. He tried again and this time was able to whisper, “Am I in the hospital?”
“Surgery recovery.”
“Surgery?”
“You’re going to be all right.” Cindy patted his right shoulder, then went over to a portable stand with a laptop on it and began tapping on the keyboard.
What surgery? Why did he feel like complete and total shit? What had happened to him, for chrissake?
His memory was sluggish, but things began to come back to him in scraps of recollection that he wasn’t sure were chronological. He struggled to piece them together in their proper order until he’d reconstructed the time frame between leaving the office building in downtown Dallas and arriving at the fairground in one of the outlying communities in a neighboring county.
He’d gone there to surprise Shauna. As expected, it had been a mob scene. He had…
Suddenly he heard again the gunfire and was assailed by remembered sights and sounds that seemed surreal. Panicked people screaming, running, dropping, bleeding.
He remembered being struck. “Was I shot?” He was seized by a horrifying thought that would explain why his limbs were heavy and motionless. “Am I paralyzed?”
The nurse stopped typing and returned to the side of his bed. “You’re not paralyzed, Mr. Hudson. You were wounded in the arm. You’re getting pain meds in the IV. You can move; you just don’t feel like making the effort.”
Only then did he become aware of the confining bandage around his left arm and shoulder. He looked back at the nurse, and she must’ve seen the wild anxiety in his eyes. She patted him again and said, “You’re going to be okay.”
“Will I lose the use of my arm?”
“You’re going to be fine, Mr. Hudson.”
He wanted to yell at her to stop saying that. Did he look fine? He put as much oomph as he could muster behind his feeble voice. “I want to talk to the doctor. The one who operated on me.”
“He’ll be in soon.”
He shook his head, detonating land mines of pain inside it. “I want to see him now.”
“He’s still in the OR, working on other casualties of the shooting.”
Calder opened his mouth to speak but closed it quickly. A second wave of nausea came on strong. He gulped down the bitter fluid that filled his mouth. “How many were there?”
“I don’t have that information.”
She was lying, but he lacked the strength to accuse her. “Did some die?”
“I’ll bring you a ginger ale. If that doesn’t help with the nausea, we can give you something for it.”
Her avoidance was answer enough. People had died.
She left by flipping back a flimsy curtain that ineffectually separated his bed from those of other patients. It was a busy place. Staff were going about their duties, carrying this, pushing that. One was wheeling around a mop bucket like a dance partner. Another went past with a rattling cart on squeaky wheels. A young woman in scrubs jogged past, her expression intense. A desk phone rang incessantly, but no one answered it. Outside his range of vision, someone of indeterminate age and gender cried out in either anguish or pain.
He must be having a nightmare. The scenario was too bizarre to be real. People like Calder Hudson didn’t get gunshot at a county fair. People like him didn’t even go to county fairs.
But as he settled his head onto the pillow and closed his eyes against the brutal overhead light, he acknowledged that it was all too real.
Other than the headache, he wasn’t in actual pain, although he knew he would be when the anesthesia wore off and they reduced the dosage of pain medication.
For now his left arm and hand were blessedly numb and too heavy to move, and, in any case, he was disinclined, and slightly fearful, even to try. Cindy had assured him that he wasn’t paralyzed, that he was going to be all right, but could he trust that? Maybe she just hadn’t wanted to panic him.
But he was alive.
He could so easily be dead.
He could have died. Today.
Pressure began mounting deep inside his chest and continued to intensify until he feared his sternum would crack open from the strain. His throat grew tight and achy. Random but graphic recollections flashed across his mind’s eye.
He made a fist of his right hand to keep it from trembling. Tears leaked from the corners of his closed eyes and rolled down his temples. Against his most stubborn will to withhold it, a sob erupted from between his lips.