Read Online Ed McBain_Matthew Hope 12 by Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear - Free Book Online

the state’s witnesses, whereby
     he sang the “Particularly Heinous Nature of the Crime” song and respectfully requested that bail be denied.
    Heather set bail at half a million dollars, which I promptly assured her could be secured by the defendant’s home, offering
     to turn over to the Court the deed to her house, her current tax bill and her passport for good measure.
    Whatever the grand jury decided tomorrow morning, Lainie was for the time being a free woman.
    The first thing I say when I open my eyes is “Where am I?”
    Hardly original, it nonetheless startles the ICU nurse into unaccustomed alacrity. Running from the room shouting “Doctor!
     Doctor!” she provides the first clue that I might be in some sort of medical facility. The second clue comes with the realization
     that I am lying flat on my back with a great many tubes running into or out of my arm or arms.
    Someone leans over the bed.
    “Mr. Hope?”
    He has a little black mustache and little brown eyes opened wide in expectation and surprise.
    “Who are you?” I ask. “Where am I?”
    “I’m Dr. Spinaldo. You’re at Good Samaritan Hospital. In Calusa, Florida. Do you know where Calusa, Florida, is?”
    “My head hurts,” I say.
    “I’m sure it does,” he says. “Do you know your name?”
    “What is this?” I ask.
    “This is Good Samaritan Hospital in…”
    “Yes, Calusa, Florida. What is
this?”
I ask, more forcefully this time. “Why are you asking me if I know my own name?”
    “You’ve been very sick,” Spinaldo says.
    There is now something close to unbridled joy on his face. I expect him to begin crying in ecstasy at any moment. I suddenly
     like him. And just as suddenly I remember. But not everything.
    “Did I get shot?”
    “Yes,” he says.
    “My chest hurts.”
    “Good.”
    “My shoulder, too.”
    “Very good.”
    I cannot imagine why he thinks hurting so much is good and very good. I do not realize that he’s telling me I’m
feeling
things again. He’s telling me I’m
awake
again. The problem is I don’t remember having been asleep. Euphemism of the week. Asleep. It will later be explained to me
     that sometime while I was in surgery and they were frantically trying to repair the ruptured blood vessels in my chest, I
     suffered cardiac arrest and…
    Well, what happened was my heart stopped for five minutes and forty seconds, and there was subsequent loss of blood to the
     brain…
    No blood was being pumped to the brain, you see.
    No blood was being circulated
anywhere
in my body.
    In short, I was in a coma for seven days, eleven hours, and fifteen minutes, after which time—and with a mighty leap, don’t
     forget—I sprang out of the pit.
    A different face suddenly appears above me.
    This one I know.
    This one I love.
    “Daddy,” she whispers.
    Joanna.
    My daughter. Blue eyes brimming with tears. Blond hair falling loose as she leans over the bed.
    “Oh Daddy”
    Nothing more. And hugs me close.
    And the nurse who’d earlier run to fetch the doctor cautions her not to knock over the stand holding the plastic bag of
whatever
the hell is dripping into my arm, I am beginning to feel crotchety already, you see, I want to put on my pants and get the
     hell out of here.
    But now there is yet another face, and I love this one, too, and Patricia leans over the bed, and kisses my cheek, eyes as
     blue as my daughter’s, shining and wet, hair as blond as my daughter’s, it occurs to me that I may have a thing for blue-eyed
     blondes.
    But, no, my former wife was a brunette, isn’t that so? And lo and behold, here she is
now,
right on cue, the once and future Susan Hope, leaning over me with a smile on her face and a whispered “Welcome back, Matthew,”
     which causes me to wonder where I’ve
been
because no one has yet explained to me that I’ve been in a coma, you see, although I am beginning to recall, vaguely, a bar
     someplace, I am waiting for someone in a bar, I leave the bar—and can