left alone to rest and lick my wounds like an old bear. So I gritted my teeth and went along with every regimen they brought my way.
Chawlie had provided a large-screen television in the room. I tried to watch it, but nothing interested me and most of it repelled me. The news was scary. People were killing each other all over the planet, sometimes singularly, sometimes in organized groups. Europe and Asia, those continual hotbeds of organized mayhem for much of the past millennium, had decided to bring in the twenty-first with pogroms and ethnic cleansings, as if nobody in those places had learned a thing from the miseries of the past. I avoided the news.
In the daytime, the programming seemed to consist of victims and whiners or smiling plump ladies shaking their fingers at us
from the other side of the screen, earnestly wanting us to see things their way. At night, the insipid comedies took over.
I left the TV off. The thing was too overpowering in the room, anyway.
For his part, Felix had little to do and was absent much of the time. Errands for Chawlie, he explained, as if that meant something. I had no need for a bodyguard; that was evident both to Felix and me, but the money must have been good, or he had found a friend, because he stuck around. As he once told me, it was an opportunity to work for the man who seemed to be a legend in the Chinese underworld.
It was good to see a young man striving to make his mark. Even in that kind of business.
Every day my nurses forced me to get out of the bed and walk across the room and down the corridor. And back.
All four of my nurses were there to support me. I returned from each excursion and fell exhausted into the deep feather cushions of the bed.
John Caine, action hero.
Every day they made me try again. From time to time, inertia took over and my body didnât want to leave the comfort and safety of the big old bed. When that happened, Angelica insisted, and so, in fact, would my conscience. Together the two of them guided me out of the bed and across the room and into the living room of the suite and down the hall again. I tottered around as if I were three hundred years old, and then wobbled back to bed, feeling as if I had accomplished something.
The doctor came to visit later that first day and fussed over my wounds and drains, telling me that he would take the drains out within a few days. He seemed pleased that the incisions were healing, as if he had anything to do with my improvement.
The bullet wound in the back and the incision in front gave me a hole that went all the way through me, in one side and out the other. The image both appalled and fascinated. It wasnât the first time my body had been holed. But this was one of the worst. And in one of the worst places.
But I was getting better, steadily improving in tiny increments. In a few days the nurses let me wander down to the lobby of the Royal Hawaiian and out to the lawn, a distance of maybe a couple hundred meters. A little farther than the Wright Brothers flew that first day at Kitty Hawk. My accomplishment was nowhere near as momentous, but seemed a true milestone.
Finally, the day came when I could venture outside and walk along the beach. I must have looked a sight, a big pale haole, skinny as a stork, his clothes too big for him, accompanied by a bevy of beautiful little nurses in their crisp white uniforms and odd little hats, every one of us barefoot.
With a nurse on either side I slowly meandered along the sand where the gentle waves lapped the shore. The warm water washed over my feet and caressed my ankles and then rushed back out to sea. I looked down and laughed because it felt good to be here, it felt good to be outside again, on the beach of my island, in the sunshine. It felt good to be alive.
My little nurses laughed, too, because they knew that I was healing. Their merry laughter reminding me of a mountain stream rippling over smooth stones.
That night, after Felix
Chawlie had provided a large-screen television in the room. I tried to watch it, but nothing interested me and most of it repelled me. The news was scary. People were killing each other all over the planet, sometimes singularly, sometimes in organized groups. Europe and Asia, those continual hotbeds of organized mayhem for much of the past millennium, had decided to bring in the twenty-first with pogroms and ethnic cleansings, as if nobody in those places had learned a thing from the miseries of the past. I avoided the news.
In the daytime, the programming seemed to consist of victims and whiners or smiling plump ladies shaking their fingers at us
from the other side of the screen, earnestly wanting us to see things their way. At night, the insipid comedies took over.
I left the TV off. The thing was too overpowering in the room, anyway.
For his part, Felix had little to do and was absent much of the time. Errands for Chawlie, he explained, as if that meant something. I had no need for a bodyguard; that was evident both to Felix and me, but the money must have been good, or he had found a friend, because he stuck around. As he once told me, it was an opportunity to work for the man who seemed to be a legend in the Chinese underworld.
It was good to see a young man striving to make his mark. Even in that kind of business.
Every day my nurses forced me to get out of the bed and walk across the room and down the corridor. And back.
All four of my nurses were there to support me. I returned from each excursion and fell exhausted into the deep feather cushions of the bed.
John Caine, action hero.
Every day they made me try again. From time to time, inertia took over and my body didnât want to leave the comfort and safety of the big old bed. When that happened, Angelica insisted, and so, in fact, would my conscience. Together the two of them guided me out of the bed and across the room and into the living room of the suite and down the hall again. I tottered around as if I were three hundred years old, and then wobbled back to bed, feeling as if I had accomplished something.
The doctor came to visit later that first day and fussed over my wounds and drains, telling me that he would take the drains out within a few days. He seemed pleased that the incisions were healing, as if he had anything to do with my improvement.
The bullet wound in the back and the incision in front gave me a hole that went all the way through me, in one side and out the other. The image both appalled and fascinated. It wasnât the first time my body had been holed. But this was one of the worst. And in one of the worst places.
But I was getting better, steadily improving in tiny increments. In a few days the nurses let me wander down to the lobby of the Royal Hawaiian and out to the lawn, a distance of maybe a couple hundred meters. A little farther than the Wright Brothers flew that first day at Kitty Hawk. My accomplishment was nowhere near as momentous, but seemed a true milestone.
Finally, the day came when I could venture outside and walk along the beach. I must have looked a sight, a big pale haole, skinny as a stork, his clothes too big for him, accompanied by a bevy of beautiful little nurses in their crisp white uniforms and odd little hats, every one of us barefoot.
With a nurse on either side I slowly meandered along the sand where the gentle waves lapped the shore. The warm water washed over my feet and caressed my ankles and then rushed back out to sea. I looked down and laughed because it felt good to be here, it felt good to be outside again, on the beach of my island, in the sunshine. It felt good to be alive.
My little nurses laughed, too, because they knew that I was healing. Their merry laughter reminding me of a mountain stream rippling over smooth stones.
That night, after Felix
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