Don was more heavily sedated than Alan had been, an uncommon procedure for cranial wounds but apparently necessary because Don was given to tossing and turning. He wasn't hooked up to any machines but he did have to lay flat so his head could heal. "He's a restless one," the shift nurse explained. "Must be looking for that pretty girl who came to visit, huh?" she teased. "Yeah, well, he's always looking for someone," Charlie responded without much enthusiasm, glad that the nurse wasn't going to ask for ID. Glad, too, that he'd skipped visiting hours: the pretty girl must have been Terry and she would have wanted to talk.

Logically, Charlie knew that Alan's injury was more serious. Still, he'd always had a secret horror of head injuries, the way a concert pianist might have a paranoia about broken fingers. Alan had a broken rib and a partially-deflated lung, plus the actual entry and exit wounds; still it could have been much, much worse. With Don, there was no way to judge the damage until he woke up, and no point in waking him up until his injuries healed. The nurse said Don had ducked most of the blow, but Charlie knew there was no such thing as a flesh wound where your head was concerned; just about everything was vital. By the time they'd interviewed Charlie, the police had identified a hammer as the likely weapon in Don's attack. A hammer. If Don hadn't had impeccable reflexes from years of batting practice; if Anthony had been a little handier, more physically coordinated, if he'd used the claw edge of the hammer… That thought didn't go any further; Charlie barely made it to a sink before choking up a thin stream of coffee. It took him five minutes to calm down enough to go back to his chair by Don's bed.

It was little eerie, being alone there. Charlie understood now why people came to visiting hours in groups. He couldn't remember ever seeing Don quite so still. Alan claimed that both his sons had inherited a host of finger-drumming, pen-tapping, head-scratching fiddly habits from their energetic mother. Don had managed to curb most of those by sheer force of will because they made other people jumpy ("no one wanted to be my stake-out partner," he'd joked) but Charlie always recognized the current of nervous energy that matched his own. Even Terry had once made an off-hand comment about Don kicking off the covers in his sleep. Charlie remembered blushing the color of a stop sign, half an hour after Terry's remark, when he'd put two-and-two together and realized how she would know about Don's sleeping habits.

Now, however, Don was calm and quiet. Charlie took Don's limp hand in his own, just because it looked so wrong passively folded over the pristine blankets. He ran his fingers over the bruised and swollen thumb, half expecting Don to wince at the light pressure. The human hand was surprisingly heavy, Charlie thought, without the arm supporting it. He had a sudden mental image of the giant stone hands on the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. Between his conventions and his consulting work, Charlie had been to DC quite a few times and he always went to the Lincoln Memorial, even if he was just passing through. Someday, he would have to arrange a field trip, maybe collaborate with the FBI. Every time he went to the Memorial, there were always groups of kids on field trips. Of course, he'd have to find some mathematical way to justify it, maybe something to do with geometry. He imagined explaining to his students how the angle of light bouncing off the reflecting pond served to illuminate the otherwise dark interior of the monument. He told them about the number of steps and how…he stopped talking. Anthony Padgett was standing in the tour group. Anthony watching him over the heads of the other students; Anthony who didn't have a notebook like everyone else, who was just standing there with one hand in his pocket. The other students had stopped taking notes now. They were waiting for Charlie to finish his sentence about the stairs. No one else had noticed Anthony; he blended in so well. What did he have in his pocket?

Charlie opened his mouth to shout a warning and woke himself up with a start. He'd nodded off. He'd been dreaming. Charlie blinked and sat up in the chair, trying to get his bearings and coax his heart rate back to normal. He'd fallen asleep sitting at Don's bedside and now he could see the sky just beginning to lighten through the tiny window. Funny that he hadn't heard the morning nurses.

As soon as that thought crossed his mind, Charlie knew that Don was dead. It took a minute for the certainty to penetrate his sleepy mind. Don had died in the night, in his drug-induced sleep, and no one had told Charlie. Blood had stopped circulating. Oxygen had ceased to be drawn into the body. No one had said anything because no one believed Charlie could handle it. They assumed he'd withdraw into himself, wrapping N vs. NP around him like a security blanket. Charlie looked at his brother, too still, too pale, his hair impossibly dark against the hospital sheets, his skin nearly blue in the weird morning light. Don's hand hung limply over the edge of the bed where Charlie had dropped it.

For an instant he couldn't move, too frightened of what he would find—or not find—but, Charlie reminded himself, he could handle it. A year of working with the FBI had made him better able to deal with emotional shocks; working with Don had made him stronger. So he reached out and gently laid his good hand against his brother's chest. He was so tense that at first he missed it, the little flutter of his Don's shallow breathing. And then he could almost hear Don admonishing: "God, Charlie, you get yourself so worked up. Chill out, buddy. Haven't I told you how crazy you get when you don't sleep enough?" Crazy. And so very, very tired. The relief was unlike anything Charlie had ever felt; like a light blooming through his whole body and driving away the shadows. He slid out of his chair, onto his knees, let his head drop on the bed next to Don's outstretched hand, and cried into the sheets.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form