The hallway was cooler than the outside, but the unique hospital smell struck Jack as he and Ross stepped off the elevator. “This is like deja vu all over again, Junior. Second time at the hospital this week. Not good.”
“At least this time, I’m not a patient,” Ross said.
At the counter were a few nurses talking and filling out forms. Jack knew about paperwork. The FBI had more than its share. Jack stood at the counter and waited for somebody to notice him. He cleared his throat to get some attention.
“Excuse me, can you tell us where we can find Patty Lopez?” The nurse closest to them turned and opened her mouth to answer, but she paused when she saw Ross.
“You’ll have to excuse him,” Jack said. “He usually looks better than this, but he was in a little car accident. Miss Lopez’s room?”
The nurse smiled, and looked down at her list. “I’m sorry. I just came on shift. Let’s see. She’s in room three oh five, just down the hall here.”
“Thanks.” Jack and Ross walked down the hall in the direction the nurse had pointed. “Junior, you really have an impact on women. Have you thought about dating a nurse?”
Ross didn’t answer, but paused outside of the door to Patty’s room and motioned for Jack to enter first. Jack hesitated, thinking of what he was going to say to Patty. Responsibility, guilt, he should have been shot if anybody was. He took a deep breath, slowly pushed the door open, and stepped into the room. Ross quietly followed and stood with his back against the wall at the foot of the bed. Patty was lying in the bed reading a magazine; the shoulders of her hospital gown showed above the edge of the sheet.
Jack walked over and leaned on the bars on the side of the hospital bed that were there to keep the patient from rolling out. “Patty, how’re you doing? You’re not mad at me, are you?”
“Hey guys.” Patty pushed herself up in bed and ran her hands back through her hair. “I’m not mad at you, but I’m mad. Mad that I got shot, and my leg hurts and I won’t be able to run for a while. If I don’t run, I’m going to get fat. I can’t get fat. Can you believe I got shot?” Patty said a few more words in Spanish.
Jack smiled at Patty going on like this. “Hey, I recognize some of those words and I don’t think they’re nice. You look good and it sounds like you’ll be OK.”
“Are you OK, Jack?”
“I’m fine.”
“You catch the pendejo that did this?”
“Not yet. That’s what Junior and I are working on. We were just down at the river. It was a freak shot to hit you from across the river with us running. He was probably aiming at me. Or shooting towards me. Trying to scare me.”
“My luck.”
The room got quiet as they all took a break from the nervous talking.
“Find anything at the river?”
Jack shook his head. “No, nothing obvious. Have you thought of anything that you saw or heard this morning that might help us?”
Patty shifted herself in bed and grimaced. “I peeked after you ran and he was shooting at you. I couldn’t really see anything. I wanted to get out of there, but the leg hurt too much. I think he was shooting from a sandy spot across the river.”
“That’s where we just came from. That was the spot.”
“Do you have some info for me?” Jack asked.
“Just shoot me again, Jack.” Patty stuck out her lower lip and pouted. “The video we shot at the press conference showed nothing. I was hoping I could learn some more from you. I’m sorry.”
“Getting shot once is enough. We’ll see you later, Patty.”
Jack was exhausted. The mental strain of the investigation, lack of sleep, and the excitement of the morning built up. He sat in the car waiting for Junior to call him and let him know the coast was clear to the room so that his family wouldn’t see him going into the room across from theirs. He needed some sack time for both his body and brain to get reinvigorated. He was still disappointed by how little they knew and bothered by the attacks on Ross, Patty, and him. The Governor knew who they were, where they were, and had shown he would go to great lengths and personal risk to get at them. They needed to catch up. Jack closed his eyes and tried to unfocus, to let his subconscious work on the details while he physically rested.
Settling into the seat finding a position that was somewhat comfortable, Jack remembered back to when Lynn was born. He was a young agent in his first field office, new at his job and new at fatherhood. He woke often in the night, alert to sounds that he normally would have slept through. He also got the duty of getting up and bringing Lynn to bed so Julie could feed her. There were many days he drove to a quiet spot during lunch, parked the car, and tried to catch a nap, like he was now, propped in his seat. His old FBI car had a lot more room than this car did. His legs were bent, and the steering wheel pressed into his thigh.
The cell phone on his belt vibrated and Jack reflexively twisted to grab the phone. His thigh jammed into the steering wheel, jarring him back into reality. The phone slipped from his hand and fell to the floor on the passenger side of the car. It continued to ring and Jack stretched, his fingers probing the floor for the phone, trying to locate and answer it before it went to voice mail. He found the phone, grabbed it, and answered the phone while he raised it to his ear.
“Hello.” Nobody responded and Jack looked at the small window on the phone. There was not a connection. “Damn it.” Too impatient to wait to see if the caller left a voicemail message, Jack poked buttons to get to the list of who called and called back. With the phone at his ear he shifted to a more comfortable position in the seat.
“Sleeping, Jack?” Junior asked.
“Dropped the phone. Can I come up?”
“Come on in. Julie and the kids are swimming. The geeks are here. You’ll like what they’ve done.”