Earl had just lost an argument with a nurse about trading his Percocet prescription up to morphine when his cell phone rang on the stand next to the bed. He just stared at it with fogged eyes because it could only be one person. So he let it ring. Fuck her.
Five hours out of the recovery room, his left cheek, chin, eye, and ear had turned deep black and blue. His neck was stiff. They said they were concerned about concussion. In the meantime, the staff kept popping in to view him: Earl Garf, the ostrich-kick novelty.
His left upper arm was now held together by a thirty-four-millimeter titanium rod. The surgeon had accessed the ball of the left humerus through an incision in the shoulder. Then he’d inserted the rod down the bone channel and, working under an X-ray machine to get his alignment, had joined the rod and broken bone in place with two screws. Then he sutured the gashes in Earl’s biceps, lightly casted the whole business, and folded it into a hanging traction sling.
The pain was nonspecific at this point, more like just everywhere. The fingers of his left hand peeked from the sling and were starting to resemble Oscar Meyer wieners, plump and brown-gray. But he could move them.
Because his neck was stiff, he had to rotate his whole upper body to turn his head. Percocet was not doing it. He needed morphine. He began to marshal his case to present to a doctor.
But then, after the phone stopped ringing his pager buzzed on the table. With difficulty, he swung his right arm across his chest and pressed the call button.
6666666.
The devil, the end of the world; the code he and Jolene used for a major emergency. Now what?
Again, with difficulty, he reached over to the table and manipulated his cell phone in his good hand. He punched Jolene’s wireless number.
She answered immediately except it wasn’t an answer, it was, “Earl, can you drive?”
“Hey, fuck you. I’m off the island, remember? I got a broken arm because of you. I may never bench-press again.”
“Listen, Earl, things just got serious,” Jolene said.
“Which part of ‘fuck you’ don’t you understand?”
“I mean serious, Earl; NoDak serious.”
More personal code. NoDak meant the convenience store in North Dakota. It meant life and death. “Okay. I’m listening,” he said.
“Good, because Hank’s talking.”
That brought him up sharp; the Percocet haze wavered and dimmed as a cold streak of sweat shot down the inside of his stitched broken arm. He tried to focus on the voice in the phone. “Hank is talking?” he repeated, incredulous.
“He’s not word-talking with his mouth, he’s blink-talking with his eyes. The point is-he’s communicating. You may remember certain conversations we had in front of him about you taking Stovall into the woods and leaving him to die nailed to a fucking tree?”
Kicked by an ostrich and now this. Unbelievable. “So what’s he saying?”
“What happened was, this afternoon he tickled my hand with his finger. I didn’t call Allen or you because you guys laughed at me the other night. So I called Broker.”
“Sure, fine; makes perfect sense.” Earl was having trouble controlling his voice.
“Any rate, Broker comes over with this nurse. .”
“Like real light blond?”
“Right. And we’re all excited and I’m not tracking-like, who is this chick? But she knows her stuff, she makes this alphabet board thing and gets him to wink to select letters to make words. Guess what his first word was?”
Earl gritted his teeth, heaved up, and swung his feet over the side of the bed. Funny how the idea of Hank talking put his pain in perspective. He eyed his clothes which hung on hooks in the small bathroom alcove. “What?”
“Killers.”
Earl started hyperventilating and struggled to get his breathing under control. “Did he name anybody?”
“Not exactly, he blinked out the words: ‘Not Amy fault.’ ”
“Who’s Amy?”
“The nurse Broker brought.”
“I don’t get it.” Earl discovered he had more than partial use of the fingers of his left hand, limited range; but he could painfully grasp and hold. Maybe he could drive. Thankfully his van was an automatic. He managed to pull on his jeans. He held the phone wedged to his ear with his good shoulder.
“She was the anesthetist in Ely. She’s one of the nurses we’re suing for Hank’s accident. She came down with Broker. They’re working together.”
“I still don’t. .” But he had a bad feeling.
“Broker didn’t arrive just to deliver Hank’s truck, he used that as an excuse because he’d read about Stovall in the paper and he was suspicious. Then he tried to get close to me.”
“Try, shit. There was no daylight between you.”
“Well, that’s what he’s good at, see; the nurse got real excited about Hank. A regular babbling fucking brook. She was telling me how Broker was an undercover cop. BCA.”
Earl started hyperventilating again.
“Earl? You there?”
“Jesus. Fucking. Shit. We are-”
“Yeah, how do you think I feel. I said was-he’s retired. But he knows all these cops.”
“Shit!”
“We have one thing going for us. The last word Hank blinked was: ‘nurse.’ Then he was exhausted, or something; and he fell asleep. I have no idea what he’s getting at, but Broker and this Amy start making like detectives and think he meant the other nurse up there in the recovery room tried to kill him. So, I’m playing for time and I suggested we pack up Hank, drive up to Ely, and try his blinking routine on the nurse.”
“The old killer-nurse theory,” Earl said.
“It buys time. Maybe twenty-four hours.” She paused and Earl heard her exhale. “You sure can get offered some fucked choices in life,” she said.
“Amen,” Earl said.
“So, can you get a cab back here, pick up your van, and meet me up there?”
“Like you say, it’s a fucked choice, but I’m with you.” Despite his pain, Earl smiled because it felt like old times.
“Okay, we’re going to Broker’s uncle’s place. It’s called Uncle Billie’s Lodge, on Lake One. They say it’s just outside Ely. Any gas station can direct you. Nobody is there this time of year. You with me so far?”
“I’m still here. Uncle Billie’s Lodge on Lake One in Ely, Minnesota. Then what?”
“Page me with sixes when you get in position, like outside the front door. I’ll lure Broker out. Then I’ll try to distract him so you-”
“I get the picture.”
She paused, then said, “So you better bring it.”
“I thought we weren’t like that anymore,” Earl said, clicking his teeth.
“I don’t see any other way,” Jolene said.
She clicked off the phone, flicked her cigarette, and watched it spiral out, sparks in the gloom. She straightened up her shoulders and raked her fingers through her short hair.
She reminded herself that she didn’t kill that guy in North Dakota.
And she wasn’t going to kill Amy and Broker, either.