Pandemonium

The hospital was an underfunded, fifties-era county institution forty-five minutes from Harmonia Lake. When I arrived in the ER my core temperature was 83 degrees, my heart rate somewhere near twenty beats per minute. I was breathing slowly but regularly, which surprised them. At that temperature, my central nervous system should have shut down like a carnival in winter. The staff was small, but they knew hypothermia; plenty of drunk fishermen falling out of their boats. They fastened a mask over me that hissed hot, humidified oxygen into my lungs, and set up an IV of warmed saline.

They didn’t know what to make of Lew’s injuries, though. O’Connell told them that he’d dived in to rescue me from drowning, but he looked as if he’d been in a car accident. He’d burst dozens of arteries in his nose and cheeks, creating a full-faucet nosebleed that was surprisingly hard to stop. His face had swelled with blood, turning his eyes into piggy slits. As well as the torn triceps, several muscles in his back were pulled. His right kneecap had popped loose from the tendons, floating under the skin, and would require orthopedic surgery. Worse, blood tests showed that he’d suffered a heart attack. Only the massive amounts of adrenaline in his system had kept him from dying on the spot.

My shiver reaction came back online after thirty minutes of oxygen and IVs, and my core temp started to rise. This seemed to make the ER doctor very relieved. By morning I was breathing without the mask, and the rectal thermometer pegged me at a toasty 94.2. My first visitor was Bertram. He wouldn’t stop apologizing. “I swear to God, Del, that was never part of the plan! It’s—it’s—completely against the League philosophy! We use only humane, nonlethal weapons.”

“Humane? Have you ever been shot by a Taser?”

“But we’d never hurt you. ‘The use of force is a black crime.’ It’s one of our core beliefs. Killing you was never in the plan.”

“Bertram, you weren’t in on the plan, you were part of the plan.”

He was crushed, and for a moment I felt sorry for him. A moment. I got him out of the room by telling him I was tired. If you’re in a hospital bed, you’re entitled to a range of efficient social tactics. Later in the morning O’Connell appeared in my doorway looking like Super Exorcist. She was back in her voluminous black cassock, which served as a matte backdrop to the gigantic hunk of silver that hung from her neck on industrial-gauge chain. The crucifix was a nine-inch-long naturalist rendition of Jesus in maximum agony mode. It looked like it weighed five pounds.

I didn’t know how long she’d been standing there. It was too late to pretend to be sleeping.

“Hi,” I said.

“How are you feeling?” she said. This was probably a required question for clerical visits. The forms must apply even to dubiously ordained priests of schismatic sects.

“Not bad,” I lied. My mouth felt cottony, and I cleared my throat.

“Warmer.” They’d put some kind of hot-water tube vest around my chest, and now that my temperature was above the danger zone, they let me heat up my extremities too. The nurses had piled four or five blankets onto me, covered them with a sheet, and tucked the edges tight, creating a perfectly smooth mound that hid any suggestion of legs or arms. I hadn’t moved enough to disturb their handiwork.

“Your doctor’s amazed at your progress.”

“This morning I impressed my nurses by sipping chicken broth. Very exciting.” I smiled, but I didn’t have the energy to sell it. I changed the subject. “Have you seen Lew?”

“I stopped in just now. He’s fairly medicated at the moment, not in any pain.” She walked to the end of the bed. She didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands. “He doesn’t remember rescuing you. That’s standard.”

Standard for possession, she meant.

I tried to change the subject again. “That’s good in a way,” I said.

“The less he knows, the less he’ll get sucked into the investigation.”

“What investigation would that be?” O’Connell’s face was set into