I must see my father while he still lives.
Chapter 40
My father was still in a coma when I reached the intensive care unit. Dr. Kirby and our local cardiologist had used a device called the Arctic Sun to put him into hypothermia, and a propofol-induced coma was part of their protocol. By circulating cold water through pads affixed to the thighs and torso, the Arctic Sun can prevent brain damage from insufficient blood flow. The ICU only allows visitors for fifteen minutes out of every hour, so we’ve set up a temporary camp in the waiting room. Right now Mom is in with Dad, having given me the first ten minutes of this quarter hour.
After my first silent visit with him, I rode out to Dixie Allman’s house to get my Flex back. She’d lost her shift at the Show ’n’ Tail and wasn’t happy about it. I gave her a hundred bucks as compensation, but she still griped about having to take her Explorer back so soon. As I pulled out of her driveway, Denny ran up to my window and knocked. He’d been proud to see his photos in the Watchman, and while his mother has forbidden him from doing any more filming for the paper, he hopes to keep helping out on Buck’s murder case. I told him I’d call him if I needed aerial support.
Back at the hospital, I found Nadine in the ICU waiting room with a food basket and a big steel thermos. As soon as she’d learned about Dad’s plight, she’d run by her bookstore and gathered up muffins, sandwiches, and coffee. The Bienville General Hospital has no food available after hours, other than vending-machine crap, so Nadine made sure we would want for nothing. I told her she didn’t have to stay, but she planted herself beside me on the plastic couch and started reading Twitter and Instagram like she meant to stay all night.
After a while, she asked me about the closing of the Watchman, which is apparently the talk of the town. Though she didn’t know the inside story, she knew enough to guess that my deal with the Poker Club was never consummated. After some reflection, I told her that Ben Tate was working on getting out a newspaper tomorrow, one that would at least wound some Poker Club members. When her face betrayed concern, I confessed that I’d avoided telling her ahead of time because I knew how she felt about risking the loss of the paper mill. While she thought about that, I described how Arthur Pine shut down the paper and fired our staff, and the effect that had on my father.
“Hit them back,” she said flatly. “Jab them with a sharp stick and let them know they’re mortal. They have to obey the rules like everybody else, or they go down.”
“I thought you’d try to talk me out of it.”
She shrugged. “I don’t want Bienville to lose the mill. I won’t lie about that. But I don’t see why taking down some corrupt assholes has to destroy the whole deal. Is the story you’re running tomorrow going to hurt Azure Dragon directly?”
“Nothing they can’t survive. There was something in the PDF file that hinted at a quid pro quo between Azure Dragon and Senator Sumner—or that’s how I read it—but I told Ben to hold that back until we know more. I’m hoping my source will flesh that out with the next delivery. If there is another delivery.”
“What alias did you say the source used?”
“Mark Felt.”
She looked as though she were trying to recall the name of a song playing on the radio. “Was he one of the Watergate burglars?”
“No, he was Deep Throat, Bob Woodward’s secret source.”
“Right. Got it.” She shook her head, a wicked smile on her face. “Man, oh, man, when that trail camera photo of Beau Holland with Buck hits tomorrow, Beau’s going to lose it. He’ll be truly desperate. He won’t know who he can trust. I’d love to be there when he opens that paper.”
We’ve sat in companionable silence for a while since that conversation, Nadine reading a novel on her phone while I text back and forth with Ben about tomorrow’s stories. When a woman of about seventy walks in and sits in a shiny brown chair on the opposite side of the waiting room, Nadine leans close and whispers, “So Ben Tate is editing this issue alone?”
“He’s writing it alone, for the most part. Building the pages, everything. I’m just giving him a little guidance. I may read the stories before he sends out the final file, but I trust Ben. All but the front page we’re contracting to a paper in a nearby city.”
“Why not the front page? Legal issues?”
“Bingo. My dad’s old press men are trying to run off a front page with the original Watchman masthead, but I don’t know how much luck they’re having. If they succeed, we’re somehow going to have to recruit a crew to wrap that page around the main issue, as well as deliver the papers before sunup.”
“That sounds like a lot of work. How many papers?”
“Our normal run is seven thousand. But we’re going to try for ten thousand tomorrow and just throw them at every house. To hell with the subscriber list.”
Nadine looks intrigued. “That sounds like something I could help with, organizing some of that. Or grunt work, whatever. I know how to fold.”
“Would you really?”
She smiles. “Sure. I can do whatever those guys need, plus keep you up to speed, since you’ll be stuck here.”
“I’ve got to say, I’m surprised.”
She laughs. “Hey, I may be pragmatic, but I won’t stand by while a bunch of Daddy Warbucks–types subvert the free press.”
I can’t help but smile. After giving her Ben Tate’s contact info, I text Ben that Nadine will be calling him and that he should trust her. While she walks down the hall to talk to Ben out of earshot of the other visitor, I lean back on the hard plastic sofa and wonder how Jet fared tonight. How long did it take her to get a ride to her Volvo? To get home to Paul and Kevin? She hasn’t texted me, so I’m guessing things must be tense over there. I’ll probably have to wait until tomorrow to get any answers.
My watch shows thirty minutes until my next ICU visit. They’ve obviously let Mom overstay her allotted time, unless she’s in the restroom. I’m so dazed by all that Jet told me on Parnassus Hill that I’ve found myself focusing on other things, however painful. The last ten minutes I spent in the ICU were nothing like the sixty seconds that Mom left me alone with Dad last night. Last night I could have nudged him awake, brought him back to the present, into the flow of human existence. But standing over him tonight, I knew that if I nudged him, nothing would happen. He’s sedated, yes, but he was unconscious when the paramedics brought him in, and Dr. Kirby made it clear to me that he might never wake up. How can it be that only this morning, I called Dad and got a long, well-reasoned answer about why he never went after the Poker Club in print? Tonight he can’t even hear my questions. I fear that my mother’s dream of Dad and me having a cathartic conversation, one in which forgiveness is at least a possibility, is receding to the unreachable horizon of might-have-been. It may not be too late, of course. But it feels too late.
Looking up and down the hall, I see no sign of either Nadine or my mother. Left in relative solitude, I allow the thoughts I’ve held at bay for the past couple of hours to rush in. Jet revealed life-altering facts back on that hill. Kevin’s true paternity was a revelation of such magnitude that a few hours can’t possibly suffice to work through all the implications. I can scarcely get my mind around the idea that Jet’s been hiding a rape for thirteen years. And not a rape by a stranger, or even an acquaintance, but a family member—one who raped her when she was an adult. Not only an adult, I remind myself, but an attorney. Moreover, she’s been raising the child of that rape while the rapist is involved with him. Everything I know about Jet tells me she wouldn’t be able to do that. And yet . . . she has.