Chapter Three
Elena returned to work on Monday morning, feeling bruised and battered both literally and figuratively. Something had set String off while he was in her care, something that had terrified him, and she had no idea what it was or if it would happen again. And in the process he'd managed to land a couple of pretty heavy blows on her face. She looked like someone's abused wife.
She had a look at his chart before going to his room. It looked like Dr. McCutcheon had finally deigned to answer his pager on Saturday morning, and had okayed enough Seconal to keep her patient down for a good forty-eight hours. She guessed that he hadn't wanted to be bothered for the rest of the weekend.
At least they'd brought String back to his own room. He was still groggy, which made getting him out of bed and into the bathroom more difficult than usual, but she reasoned that at least it was better than being punched in the face. Luisa had left a diaper on him, which he'd managed not to soil; he was fastidious as a cat in that regard. She helped him relieve himself, then bathed and shaved him, got him dressed and brought him his breakfast. He could barely hold the spoon for his cereal. Patiently she guided his hand back and forth from the bowl to his mouth until everything was eaten.
All that took nearly twice as long as usual. Outside the sun was finally shining, and it was a warm day for this late in September. She draped a jacket around his shoulders, made sure the lap belt on his chair was fastened in case he started to slide, and wheeled him outside, hoping the fresh air would revive him. As she slowly pushed him around the grounds of the clinic, she was pleased to see him gradually becoming more alert. His head lifted and he took deep breaths of the crisp nights had been cold lately, and the trees on the hillsides were in the full glory of a New England fall.
"They're beautiful, aren't they?" Elena commented, seeing that String's eyes were fixed, as usual, on the countryside beyond the chain link fence. She had no idea if that was what he was really looking at, but decided to see if she could draw him out of his habitual silence.
"They're pretty," he agreed. "Nice colors."
She was surprised and pleased at his quick, casual response; it sounded almost conversational.
"You said before the trees are different where you come from." She tried for an oblique approach. Maybe, just maybe, she could prise another snippet of information from him ‒ for him. "I'm from Pennsylvania. I can't imagine not having colors like this every fall. Are there lots of trees where you're from?"
There was a long pause while he frowned, seeming to grapple with the question. At last he said slowly, "Pines. There're lots of pine trees. All over the mountainside, around the . . . " His voice trailed off.
"Around the what, String?" she asked gently.
The spark had gone out. He was back to staring.
Elena sighed, and wheeled him back indoors.
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She waited for another day when he seemed alert, and produced an atlas of the United States that she'd gotten out of the library. Time for some rudimentary geography.
She opened the book on his lap. "Do you want to look at this, String?"
He flipped a few pages, seeming to be somewhat interested. "It's a book of maps of the whole country, so you can see what every state looks like. Have you ever seen a map before?"
That got her a sardonically raised eyebrow and a look that said, What kind of an idiot do you think I am. Be careful, she thought. You know he doesn't like being talked to like a baby. You don't want him to throw the book at you. But it was hard when she couldn't tell how much he understood. "Okay, sorry. I guess you have. Remember I told you the other day I'm from Pennsylvania? That's right here." She turned the pages until she got to Pennsylvania, pointing out the rough location of her home town. "Ever been to Pennsylvania, String?"
He shook his head.
"How about New York City? Practically everyone's been to New York City. Can you find it on the map for me?"
He flipped pages, unhesitatingly pointing out New York City.
"Have you ever been there?"
"Yeah."
"What did you think of it?"
"Too many people," he answered succinctly. "Too noisy."
"Well, it is pretty crowded," she agreed, inwardly elated at this one small sign of a breakthrough. "The museums are good, though. And the ‒ "
"Where are we now?" he cut in.
"New Hampshire."
"New Hampshire?" he repeated, looking stunned. He paged back in the atlas to find the right map, and sat staring at it.
"That's right. Didn't you know?"
"No ‒ I ‒ what am I doing here? I don't live here. I've never been to New Hampshire."
"You know this is a clinic, don't you? The Green Hills Clinic?"
He nodded.
"Well, then. You were hurt, and your doctor decided this was the best place for you."
His face darkened. "That's what she said. The doctor. She said I'd had an accident. I don't remember it. I don't remember getting here. It's so far from ‒ from ‒ "
"From the place with the pine trees and the mountainside?" she asked gently.
He nodded.
"Well, let's see if we can figure out where that is." She turned to the map of the whole country and drew a finger across the page heading away from New England. South? That didn't sound like pines and mountains. "Uh ‒ how about Colorado?"
He shook his head, looking dazed, although whether from the effort of trying to remember his home or astonishment at finding himself living in some part of the country he apparently knew nothing about, she had no idea.
"Wyoming? Look at the book, String. Do you think it could be Wyoming?"
"Don't know," he muttered. "I don't ‒ I can't ‒ "
It was fading again, just like before, the mental vision of the lake, even his ability to think about the lake. He clenched his hands into fists and pressed them to either side of his head, trying to keep the vision in place, trying to understand what she was saying to him, trying to remember what she had already told him about where he was ‒ New Hampshire ‒ he had to remember that, it was the only thing he knew for certain . . .
"Montana?" asked Elena, a bit desperately. "String, did you live in Montana?"
Montana, where was that? Where was he?
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She tried again a few days later, not mentioning the subject of where his home might be but instead trying to get him to point out places in the east he might have visited. He'd obviously been to New York ‒ although the only recollections of it that she could prise out of him were the Statue of Liberty and some deli with really good smoked salmon ‒ and Washington, although that was even sketchier. He did know the national cemetery at Arlington, though. "All those white stones on the hillside," he said soberly.
Maybe that meant he was military. He looked like the right age to have been in Viet Nam. She asked him if he knew anyone buried there, and he nodded yes. She was tempted to ask if he'd fought in Viet Nam, but decided it was better not to. She knew a few men who had been there, and didn't want to risk wading into such troubled waters. Better to fish for what she hoped would be more pleasant memories.
He could also describe fragments of a hiking trip in what sounded like the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, and watching the sun rise at a beach that could have been practically anywhere on the eastern seaboard. Last winter Elena had scraped together enough money to spend a week in St. Petersburg, sharing an apartment near the beach with three friends. She described her vacation briefly, which String seemed to enjoy, and asked him if he'd ever gone south in the winter. He pointed out a spot on the map near Miami, but his one recollection of the place was of drinking in an odd-sounding bar with a huge fake swordfish on the roof. He'd been with friends, he said. For some reason this memory seemed to be more raw than the others, even Arlington. Elena stayed silent, not daring to try prompting him, as he tried to remember the names and faces. When he didn't succeed, he faded out again, just as he had done before.
That was as much as she could wheedle out of him. The next time she produced the atlas he scowled and knocked it to the floor, apparently tired of the game.
She took the atlas back to the library. It might not have accomplished what she had hoped it would, but at least they had managed to have a couple of reasonably coherent conversations.
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A few days later, while she was wheeling him past the nurses' station on the way out to the lounge after breakfast, he suddenly said, "Wait." He reached back with one hand to brush her wrist, making sure he got her attention. Elena stopped, puzzled. "What is it, String?"
"Ssh." He cocked his head, listening. Elena suddenly realized that someone had left a radio turned on, low, at the nurses' station. Instead of the easy-listening type music it was normally tuned to, there was a classical piece playing. She hadn't noticed it, but String evidently had. The music was intricate, measured, with a kind of restrained happiness to it, played by what she assumed was a violin.
"What was it?" she asked when the piece had ended.
"Bach's cello suite number one," he said casually. "The prelude."
"Oh," she said, feeling rather stupid, then, "I thought it was a violin."
"Nope. Cello. Pretty, wasn't it?"
"I guess. I don't know anything about classical music. You seem to know a lot." At least he'd been able to identify the piece, which was more than most people Elena knew could have done. She held her breath, not daring to ask him directly what he did know about it.
"Practically all the big-name classical composers wrote something for cello. You should try listening to Bach sometime. Or Haydn, he wrote a well-known cello concerto. Or Prokofiev, if you want something more modern. I've got a record somewhere . . . " He trailed off.
"A record of what, String? Of cello music?" she asked softly, after a moment.
He shook his head. It was gone again.
"Well, I'd like to listen to it," said Elena with a sigh, "when you remember where it is."
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Then they had an early heavy snowfall, and Elena borrowed a jacket for him and took him outside, parked him next to a snowbank formed by the plow, and teased him into a snowball fight. At first she made herself a broad target to make it easy for him, but soon discovered that he had a deadly accurate aim. When she finally called it quits and came over to his chair, he surprised her by leaning forward and solicitously brushing the remnants of his ammunition from her coat.
She made another discovery then - he had the sweetest smile she'd ever seen.
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She was due to take some vacation at the end of the month ‒ ever since String had arrived at Green Hills in mid-summer, none of his caregivers had been allowed to take more than an occasional day off, aside from weekends ‒ but before she left she decided to try an experiment.
She helped him to settle into bed for his afternoon rest, then produced a picture she'd found in a magazine. Her palms were sweating. If this went wrong, she would have just caused String a huge amount of anguish and herself a heap of trouble.
"Do you know what this is?" she asked, as casually as she could.
It was a photograph of a small float plane landing on a lake surrounded by trees in autumn foliage. The plane was painted bright red and yellow and looked as friendly as an airplane could ‒ nothing like the "black machine" of String's nightmares.
He took the picture from her, smiling. She began to breathe again.
She'd hoped he'd be able to tell her it was an airplane. But his answer stunned her. "Hey, one of those old de Havilland Beavers," he said. "Kinda cute, isn't it?"
"A what?" she said blankly.
"A de Havilland Beaver," he repeated patiently. "They've been around practically since World War II. They were built for flying in Canada, way up north in the bush. No runways up there for them to land on, but there're lots of lakes. It would be kinda fun to fly one of these things up there."
"I see." For the first time his conversational skills were outstripping hers, and she was delighted. "I've never thought of a plane being cute."
"Well, sure. Some of them are beauties, and some are big hulking brutes, and some of them are just ‒ cute."
Wondering if she was rushing in where angels feared to tread, she said, "Have you ever flown a plane, String?"
"Sure I have ‒ I ‒ "
Too much. The picture slid out of his hand. "Oh God, it's going, Elena." He groaned, pressing both hands to his head the way she'd seen him do before, as if he was trying to hold reality in by pure force. "I know I've flown," he said hoarsely. "Thousands of hours. Hueys in Nam. Everything. Why can't I . . . "
Like before, his voice trailed off. When he finally let his hands drop, his eyes were dull and staring again.
Elena picked up the picture of the red and yellow plane. The sight of String trapped in his own personal fog was as distressing as ever, but this time, she thought, there were definitely signs of improvement. That had to be a good thing. "Don't worry, String," she said, giving him a reassuring hug before straightening the blanket and making sure he was set for his nap. "It'll come back."
But she had to admit sadly that if in fact he ever had been a pilot, it was extremely unlikely that he was ever going to fly again.
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She went home with no intention of thinking about work for the next week. Her tiny basement apartment was desperately in need of cleaning, she wanted to get a decent haircut, had several friends to catch up with, and there was a tottering stack of books on her night table waiting to be read.
She lasted until Thursday before sitting down with an oversized mug of coffee and a notebook and started writing down everything she knew about her patient.
Name: Tommy Vine (aka "String").
Age: Early to mid-thirties.
Diagnosis:
Hmm. She was still going under the assumption of a car crash or something similar. Yet beyond some minor cuts and scrapes there'd been no sign of physical trauma when he'd arrived at the clinic. Also odd, when she started to think about it, was the effect of the injury. She'd looked after several paraplegic patients, and String certainly wasn't typical. He had normal sensation in his lower body, and normal bladder and bowel control. She wasn't going to try guessing whether or not he had normal sexual function as well, but thought it was a fairly safe bet that he did.
It was more as if he'd simply forgotten how to move his legs.
She wrote down "Spinal cord injury" and put three question marks after it.
If his physical condition was puzzling, his mental state was even murkier. When he'd arrived he'd been nonresponsive most of the time, staring off into space with a blank look on his face. He'd gone out without leaving a light on. The only times he'd seemed at all aware of his surroundings he'd grown extremely hostile, almost violent. He might not have known where he was or why he was there, but he did know that he sure as hell didn't want to be there.
As the weeks went by he had definitely improved. He still wasn't very communicative, and she didn't know whether he couldn't talk, or wouldn't. When he did, he could speak clearly and concisely, with no sign of the difficulty she would have expected from someone with a serious head injury, except that he couldn't seem to concentrate for any longer than a few minutes at a time.
And, of course, there was the near-total amnesia.
It dawned on her that nearly every time he'd begun to talk about something that was intrinsically important to him, to knowing who he really was, he slipped away. Things like trying to tell her where he lived. Describing his home, with the lake and mountainside and trees. Flying planes – thousands of hours of flying, he'd said. That sounded like something he did, or had done, for a living. Things that were presumably not so important, like a long-ago trip to New York, he could recall more easily.
And it seemed to both frustrate and frighten him. He knew that he was being sucked out of the real world and he couldn't stop it.
And then, to top it all off, there was that whole thing about the "black machine" that, according to String, was coming from the sky to get him. Fortunately that had only happened twice, to her knowledge. The second time had been while Luisa was there, and one of the nurses had promptly shot him full of sedative again ‒ there was a standing order for that now. Was this black machine some kind of airplane? Had he been in a plane crash?
She really wished she could talk to Dr. Fairling about him. She wanted to help him. She had spent three years looking after patients at the clinic, and String was the first one whose life she really thought she might be able to make a difference to. But asking questions about patients or their treatment was not encouraged at Green Hills, especially from those at her menial level.
The best she could hope for was that eventually he'd be able to remember the name of someone who knew him, who could come and take him home, because she was feeling more strongly than ever that String was never going to have a chance to get well as long as he stayed where he was.
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Elena had no idea how close that hope had already come to being realized.
On the first day of her vacation, Luisa had gotten String out of bed and brought him his breakfast. She'd been pushing his wheelchair out to the lounge when a commotion abruptly broke out ‒ two of the other patients had gotten into a shouting match over something, and it was quickly progressing into a shoving contest. Luisa left String where he was to help separate and calm the combatants.
She had left his wheelchair right by the nurses' station at the entrance to the bedroom wing. The staff on duty were all involved with the brawl. String looked speculatively at the unguarded telephone. As if moving by its own volition, his hand went out and lifted the receiver.
He dialled the numbers without knowing what they were. If he'd been asked, he couldn't even have said what he was doing.
One . . . eight one eight . . . seven eight five . . .
The phone on the other end rang four times, then a man's gruff voice said, "Santini Air."
What? He knew that voice. Who was it? What did "Santini Air" mean?
"Who are you?" he whispered.
"Hello? Hello?" said the man loudly, sounding exasperated.
String looked at the phone, puzzled, then let the receiver drop back into the cradle.
When Luisa came back, he was sitting with his hands folded in his lap, staring straight in front of him.
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On the other side of the country, Dominic Santini hung up the silent phone and stood staring at it.
What the hell had that been about?
It wasn't as if they didn't get enough crank calls, or wrong numbers. But that funny faint whisper ‒ "Who are you?" ‒ that was just plain weird. Spooky.
He actually shivered.
He looked through the window of the office into the hangar, where Caitlin O'Shannessy was checking the Tyler mount on the Jet Ranger, getting ready for the first day of a week's filming they had booked. Life had to go on, even without String, no matter how joyless.
It occurred to Dominic that today was nearly four months to the day that they'd last seen him. He'd gone off on his motorcycle after work to visit a friend, one of the small group of his Viet Nam buddies that he kept in contact with. He'd never made it there, and the only sign of him had been the crashed remains of the bike at the bottom of a canyon, a mile or so from his buddy's place. Not all the resources of the cops and even the Firm had been able to turn up anything else. He sure as hell couldn't have just walked away from that. In fact, if he'd gone into the canyon along with the bike, then he'd probably been killed.
Then why couldn't they even find his body? Even that would have been better than the not knowing. It was eerily like what had happened with St. John; and Dominic knew that he was now in exactly the same position String had been in all these years, grabbing at any straw, no matter how flimsy, that might offer a clue as to where he was now. If he let himself dwell on it, Dominic figured he could probably talk himself into believing that that whispering voice had been String's, running up long distance charges from beyond the grave.
He couldn't dwell on it, he told himself firmly, and levered himself out of the battered office chair. String was still alive, somewhere, and God willing, they would find him. Even if it cost Dominic Santini everything he had.