By: Ailis Neftzer

I am still, it would seem, on a journey that began nearly five days ago. The road and its path have shifted under me several times, and though I have managed to compensate for changes in both direction and purpose, I have yet to regain my own internal equilibrium. And I still do not know exactly what I'm doing here in Chicago.

I understand the details--don't worry--but if someone were to stop me and ask, What are you doing here? the kind of question that I turned left at the corner doesn't answer, I couldn't tell them.

I had been heading due south on Interstate 74 driving to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with my family in Kentucky when events, or fate--serendipity, whatever you want to call it--conspired to have me turn a full 180 and reset my heading north, to Chicago.

Nora Ephron, who is a person that I esteem at least as highly as, say, Victor Hugo, or Mark Twain, once said that writing things down doesn't change anything about them. It's just that now they're written down. And even though I believe that, I'm going to write this down anyway. In the hopes, I suppose, of making some sense of it later.

Thanksgiving: The nearly three-hour car ride with Detective Ray Vecchio to Chicago from my home in Battle Ground, Indiana was nothing like the day's earlier ride from Shelbyville. There was no quiet to envelop us as Interstate 65 sent us past busy industrial cities like Gary and Hammond, car-to-car with other drivers in some spots.

Vecchio's agitation was evident. He drummed his fingers on the dashboard, changed the radio station showing no intent of stopping on any frequency for more than a few moments. And since I didn't know how to help, I stayed silent, still locked in my own dream state--or whatever it was that had descended on me since had I had let Victoria Metcalf into my car the night before.

Vecchio drove fast, and occasionally muttered a concern over his hospitalized partner, always adding a curse as well for Victoria; that she had ever set foot in his city.

Richard Rhodes said he believes eventually everyone reaches the point where they tell you their story. Since Vecchio had already told me the bulk of his the day before, we seemed to be at an impasse. He might have been waiting to hear mine, but my head had begun throbbing to the rhythm of the broken pavement below us, and I was regretting the fact that I had invited myself along at all.

As a result of crossing into Central Time, we arrived at the hospital a little after seven that evening. My own agitation had grown as we approached the intimidating downtown. In my life I had spent little time in large cities, and I knew no one on whom to call should my return be delayed and I need to stay the night.

In truth, I had started to consider one of two things; that I should have stayed home and troubled with the car another day, or that I should have brought along the Saint. He was a good companion on such trips. His size and disposition making me feel more at home--more in control. There were very few people--or places--that could frighten me when he was by my side.

Shortly after getting the call that my car had been found in the visitor's lot of the hospital where his partner was recuperating, Detective Vecchio had managed to locate an unengaged officer via cell phone to post outside his partner's room until we arrived. The officer's name was Huey, and Vecchio had assured me that he would also be able to help work out the details and paperwork involved in getting back my car.

So once we got to the hospital and parked his 1971 Buick Riviera, we made a bee-line for his partner's room, and Detective Huey.

It may seem strange, seeing as how I had just been in a hospital only the night before getting myself stitched up, (that had been the emergency room--not the regular, death-almost-hanging-in-the-air wards) but I had forgotten how much I disliked hospitals. How much they uncomfortably recalled to mind Kara, my sister, and her long, unending illness, during which time we had become more or less residents of the hospital. How I had briefly become addicted to soap operas along with her, laying side-by-side (which had been against the rules) in her bed, the kind that had knobs to elevate and lower any and every part of yourself. How we would sit there, afternoon after afternoon, hanging on the words and gestures--lives and deaths--of people in Pine Valley and Santa Barbara. And how even in the midst of everything they seemed to matter.

We would talk about the characters when the shows weren't on, imagine fixing them up with each other, or with someone else we knew. We planned elaborate plots there among the starched whites of Good Samaritan, so close to one another that Kara could comb my long hair over her then-bald scalp and shout, "Look at me, I'm Aggie! I'm gonna RULE the world."

I had to squeeze my eyes shut against the onslaught of memories as we took the elevator up several floors. But as Vecchio and I passed a nurses' station, one look at the board announcing who was on rounds and who was elsewhere brought back how when people would visit Kara, or new nurses would be assigned to her, she would always greet them with the unreadable announcement, "You may bow," as though she had been Queen Victoria herself.

Sometimes the party addressed would play along and genuflect. For Kara--even though it was her own little joke--I have always thought it was one of the only moments in a long sequence of sponge baths and bedpans, poking and prodding, that she felt like she received even the smallest fragment of respect. Even if only for an instant.

Something switched uncomfortably in my vision as we got off on the floor that kept Vecchio's partner, and I had to hang back and pause a moment next to the wall. My gut lurched and my eyes, after that nurses' station, had quit focusing.

"God," it was not exactly a prayer. "I hate hospitals."

Further down the hall, Vecchio noticed that I was no longer beside him.

"Good idea," he encouraged me.

My announcement having gone unheard, he must have thought I stopped to wait in the visitor's lounge.

"You stay here a second and I'll come back with Huey."

I told him sure, I would do that, and turned into the room. It held several chairs, some out-of-date magazines and pamphlets on various diseases, a TV and some No Smoking signs. I left the TV off and the lights out and sat in the room like someone abandoned after prom, busily trying to convince myself that I was somewhere else, and that the smells of alcohol and rubber gloves and illness were not there, and not familiar.

I had tried to watch our shows after Kara died. I think I thought it would be a kind of tribute, something we could still do together. But I couldn't make it through an episode. All that melodrama, all that emotion. For people who had never and would never exist.

So I quit watching. And then, about two years later I was home with the Saint, sick, with nothing to do but lay on the couch and blow my nose, and All My Children came on the television. I was caught off guard and began to watch, but even though the faces were familiar--even some of the sets--and I knew almost everyone's name, it was like coming home to find my house of full strangers, doing things from motives I didn't understand.

I remember turning off the TV that day and letting myself cry right there into the shaggy side of the Saint. He's good for things like that.

I cried because I had been afraid. Afraid that if Kara were to show up and see me just then--if she were able to peek in on me like I could spy on the Castillo-Capwells or Erica Kane--that after two years she wouldn't recognize me either. That I would have allowed myself to become a stranger to her. And that if two years could produce such a change, what the amount of time before I could see her again would do.

About a year ago, somehow it came up in a conversation I was having that Kara was dead, had been dead going on six years. Another person--I wish I could remember who--just casually announced on my behalf to the others, "Oh, but of course you're over that now." I remember seriously wanting to puke on her. It was the only response that I felt was strong enough at the time.

I was trying to remember Kara's joke involving hospital visitor's lounges-something about happy hour, cocktails for all non-hospital staff, and desperate orderlies trying to score, when the overhead light switched on, and I raised my head to see Detective Vecchio at the door. His brow was knotted up like string tied on a package, and it seemed he had run most of the way back down the hall to me. My eyes wouldn't focus in the sudden bath of brightness. My pupils refused to contract.

"Is something wrong?" I asked, though I should have been asking that of myself.

"Huey," he swore, slapping his leather gloves up against the doorjamb. "He left to get something to eat." And here the sarcasm cut in. "He asked the nurses at the desk to watch. As if they don't have enough on their hands, without waiting for Victoria Metcalf to show up and finish what she started."

"Is your partner okay?" My eyes snapped back to attention and clarity.

"Yeah. He's asleep." He paused a moment and crossed the room to where I was sitting. "He does that a lot."

"Maybe she didn't come in after all," I offered. "Or maybe he was asleep."

"Yeah, sure," Vecchio snidely replied. "And maybe this is all part of some sick game she's playing to up the ante. I mean, look, she's got all of us here together now." He nodded his head to the side. He often did this when making a point. "Less work to ruin our lives if we're in a cluster."

"But he's okay?" Hadn't I just asked this? I must have been more tired than I thought.

"Well, he's at least safe from her for right now."

Vecchio seemed itchy to be doing something else, and he wouldn't have had to convince me too greatly to get me to leave and go in search of my car, and the interstate home. "So what now?" I prompted him.

"I've got to go find Huey, and your car," he said. He leaned over and reached down into his sock.

I thought he was just straightening it, but then he pulled out a tiny pistol. The kind saloon girls in westerns wear in their garters.

"You know how to shoot a gun, Maggie?"

It was not much larger than his hand.

"I trust you're not going to ask me to shoot that one any time soon," I replied.

"No," he said. "I'd rather you didn't. But if you see her--if you see her, don't be--" and he stressed this, "afraid to use it."

"So you're leaving me here to watch his room?"

"I trust you Maggie," he said. His brow had straightened out. "I AM trusting you. With his life."

He pressed the pistol into my palm, his large hand covering mine, and the weapon it now held. Both felt warm to me--his grip and even what should have been the cold steel of the pistol's barrel. In contrast to the temperature of my own hands, my nerve endings sent faulty reports of heat through me, as though the gun had just been fired. I shivered in response.

"You see anything," Vecchio instructed. "Even a shadow, you yell for help. If she shows up-you make her regret that decision." He brought his eyes away from the gun and back to mine. "I won't be gone long." In a flurry of his long coat, he left, turning down the hall on his way back to the elevators.

I checked the chamber quickly, habitually, making sure to empty it of the first round. I slipped the now-extra bullet into my jeans pocket. I did not want to risk shooting the wrong person, nor did I wish to have the gun used against me. In truth, I didn't want the gun at all. I had never shot anyone. 0 for 0. It seemed like a good record. One to try and keep. Not that I believed I could've plugged Victoria if she were to show up. And not only on account of the fact my vision was still a little swimmy.

I padded down the long corridor, to the room number Vecchio had given me, wondering if it was at all common that he would arm a near-stranger with his weapon, and all but hand-letter an invitation for them to use it on someone.

Outside the open door, I let myself ease against the wall. I had no intention of going inside. Detective Vecchio had said the guy was asleep anyway, and being greeted by the sight of a private room doubtless near-identical to Kara's was not what I needed to see at the moment-no matter how fuzzy my vision.

So I relaxed to the side of the doorway. The gun hung heavily in the pocket of my coat. It was the same coat I had worn last night. In fact, I realized that I had not had the chance to change my clothes, or even shower since the evening before with Victoria. At the Shelbyville police station they had only managed to let me get in a face-and-hand wash with the gritty dispenser soap places like that use. The equivalent of rubbing sand on yourself, clean via friction.

I decided not to think further on the subject, but despite my mental road-block, the thought slipped through that I must smell atrocious. At least I had had the opportunity to comb through my hair when we had been back at the house.

How much time passed between when I began standing outside and doing my version of guarding the room and when its occupant called out to me, I don't know. I was sort of foggy and away thinking about being at home in my bed, the Saint snuggled below on the floor.

"Who's there?" Vecchio's partner called in a haunted whisper.

I answered him in my mind only, pleading. No one. Please, no one. Now go back to sleep.

"Who is it?" and I thought I heard a quiver of fear. Slight, but definitely there. Still, I did not answer.

"Victoria?"

A moment.

"Victoria? Are you there?"

And it was then I knew I had to go in. That I couldn't keep him lying in there, immobilized by the bullet in his spine, him thinking she was here, refusing to come in despite his requests. I couldn't think she would do that.

So I swallowed my reluctance and entered.

Like all the other single bed hospital rooms I had been in it was sparse. It had two larger than average windows that looked into a courtyard, a curtain that could be pulled around the bed for privacy, and an extra chair near the window. The walls and other furniture were decorated with flowers, balloons, and a putrid shade of emerald over-sized stuffed bear that looked like a mutated beaver. Later I would find out its card read, Love, Francesca in large letters and, the Vecchio family in a much more diminished script. There was no television.

I soon realized that I could see much more of the room than its occupant could. He lay face down on what looked like a primitive massage table, complete with a hole where his face could rest, without his being suffocated against the mattress.

"Who is it?" he asked again, and if hospitals didn't have the peculiar policy of keeping all rooms at least in half-light, I would have probably thought the question was posed by the emerald bear.

"We don't know each other," I said, and then unnecessarily added, "I'm not Victoria."

I wondered whether or not I should approach the head of the bed, as I would if he was sitting up and we were talking. Or whether he would be satisfied with what I had said and I could excuse myself and leave.

"I know," he said, and I crept closer. "I dreamt she was here last night."

I let it go, not knowing what I was or was not supposed to say to Vecchio's partner.

"You have her smell about you," he continued. "Are you wearing perfume?"

"No," I said, honestly, not liking in my current state the discussion of how I did or did not smell. "You must be mistaken."

"Also," and I heard him take a deep breath, like someone inhaling from a joint. "Gasoline, premium grade, a rather abrasive pumice-based soap." He inhaled in again, "the upholstery of a 1971 Buick Riviera, blood, and--if I'm not mistaken--a Saint Bernard?"

"I guess there's not much to do here in the hospital," I offered, not knowing what else to say to such a list.

"No," he said, as he had to, to the floor. "Not much. Are you hurt?"

"Not anymore," I said, intuiting that he was referring to the blood. I wondered if he had that ability in other areas as well, and whether it had ever proven embarrassing; telling a woman he could smell blood on her.

"You've been with her, haven't you?"

It was as straightforward a question as I had ever been asked. It seemed pointless to ask whom the "her" he referred to was. Was it within the realm of possibility that he really could smell her perfume-or some other scent of hers on me?

"Last night," I responded, forgetting all about Ray's theoretical desire for secrecy. "She knocked me unconscious, stole my car, and drove here."

I wanted to say that I hadn't minded, really. I didn't feel bitter or vindictive. That I would have given her the keys, driven her myself if she had only asked, and that my only real complaint at all was that at that moment I wanted to be at home in bed asleep, not in this hospital fighting this ache in my bones.

But how do you say that? How do you explain; I met this woman, she was a criminal, she was nothing but unkind to me, but there was something-something dark and beautiful, like a liquid pain floating in the timbre of her voice-something that would have made me gladly do-what? What? Whatever she had wanted, so long as she took me with her.

There was a pause. He was probably realizing that he had not dreamed whatever happened last night.

When he did speak his voice was not even, it sounded choked. "So you've come for your car?"

I had yet to see his face, or any other distinguishing feature. It was like talking to a blanket.

"Yes, Detective Vecchio drove me up from Shelbyville."

"In Indiana?" he asked.

I nodded and then remembered he couldn't see me. "Yes," I said aloud, perhaps a little too loud. My stomach growled fiercely, forcing me to apologize for it.

"Can I call one of the nurses to get you something?" he asked.

After assuring him I was fine, he called anyway, using an intercom system he had.

"Would you mind-that is, could you possibly-" he broke off.

"What?" I asked, inching still closer to the head of the bed. I assumed he was about to ask why I was standing outside his room, and then send me away.

"Could I, could you, just--could I see you?"

Surprised, I smiled. "Well, I guess," I said, "but I'm not going to win any prizes today."

"Fair enough," he answered, his voice gaining steadiness as he spoke. "Although my hygiene is regularly scheduled, and I have no complaints, I haven't been able to perform it myself, and therefore am not at my best either."

Still smiling, and feeling a bit like a seven-year-old crawling into a tent they had made with sheets under the dining room table, I eased myself onto the floor at the head of the bed and slid on my back the few feet to be nearly centered with his face.

It made for a strange encounter--unlike any introduction I had yet to experience. It was most closely related to Vecchio's waking me up that morning, his face so near to mine, my lying down making the moment seem to be more intimate than it really was.

Vecchio's partner's face was no doubt somewhat misshapen by the padding holding it above the metal frame. His eyes were clear, the color of tears, and his mouth came down at the corners, but not in a bad way. He had short dark hair-what I could see of it, and his skin was the color I imagine writers mean when they write the word porcelain. I think his looks surprised me. They were not exactly what I would have expected as a complement to his brash, strong-featured partner. He was--well, he was pretty. It sounds silly to say, looks silly on paper, even as I look at it now, but it's the truth.

In the book Enchanted April, one of the characters is described as looking like a disappointed Madonna. He had that look about him as well. That he had, as it says of Mary in The Gospel of Luke, "taken all of these things and pondered them in his heart." Although I had no idea what, for him, all these things could mean. Being shot for one, I guessed.

I've always had trouble around men that looked that way, like they had a heavy burden, which still could not manage to dim their physical presence. A loss of brain function, blank staring, and general flusteredness that would overcome me faster than the flu-and probably would have, had he not been flat on his stomach and immobile at the time, and had my head not been screaming for aspirin.

I pushed back the pain again.

"I'm Maggie Davis," I said. "From Indiana. That is, from Indiana at present."

"Benton Fraser," he responded, and paused, as though he was leaving something usual out. "From Chicago, at present."

"How do you do." And I realized his hand was moving slightly in its place at his side, so I reached up through the bed's side railings and managed to twine my fingers lightly in his, in some kind of nod to a handshake.

"So, what do you go by?"

"Hmm?"

"Well, do people go around calling you Benton? Your parents I mean, or Detective Vecchio."

"Detective Vecchio calls me Frasure," he said, seemingly oblivious to the discrepancy in pronunciation. "Or sometimes Benny."

"I can't call you Benny," I decided aloud. "It sounds kind of shady."

"Yes," he considered. "I guess it rather does." He smiled faintly, as if the idea appealed to him.

"How about Ben," I asked. "I could call you Ben."

"I like that," he said, agreeing. "Some people call me that."

Time passed as we each held our positions, he out of an inability to move, me out of a brief desire not to.

Ultimately though, I broke the silence, apologizing, but admitting that being down on the floor was not the most comfortable place to hang out with still-new stitches in the back of my head. It was the first time I had referenced my stitches, even though he had asked after my injury earlier.

After apologizing I excused myself, planning to leave the room. Surely Vecchio would return before long, and I was not certain I was even supposed to be consorting with his partner, much less keeping him from his rest.

"Don't leave," Ben called after me, and I heard the catch in his voice from before, the one where he had been calling for Victoria, and realized that what I had first identified as fear had really been loneliness. A sound I had heard often enough in Kara's voice when we had to leave her alone.

"Hospitals are desolate places," I said, as I acquiesced and moved to sit in the chair between the windows. He didn't reply, but then it had not been the kind of statement that required a response.

We sat in silence for so long that I was sure he had fallen back to sleep, but as I shifted--quietly, I thought--in the chair, sliding out the foot rest, he spoke.

"Do you sing?"

I thought about pretending I hadn't heard him, or hadn't understood, but answered despite thoughts to the contrary. "Nothing fancy," I confessed.

"Would you--sing something?"

In normal circumstances I never would have done it-not even considered it momentarily. But then, nothing in my life had been going normally for days at this point.

"All right," I complied. "Give me a second."

It is one thing to sing something silly off the top of your head, something to yourself, something like Dancing Queen or even You've Lost that Loving Feeling. It's quite another to have to respond to someone's request for music. Necessarily it takes a bit more effort, and a bit more dignity as well.

"This is a song--maybe you know it--my mother used to sing my sister and me to sleep. So I guess it's a kind of lullaby."

"Thank you," he said, before I even began. Perhaps he had the right idea-that if I really stunk-sang off-key, under pitch, the whole nine yards--he wouldn't have to try and summon genuine thanks after.

I straightened up in the chair, thinking of sixth grade choir and lectures on the diaphragm. Light fell across the bed in front of me through the large windows over my shoulder. I was positioned at an angle where I could not see anything outside the room except the blank wall of the corridor.

I could not see Ben's face, he was again just a body--a form in a hospital bed. It was not at all like I was in Chicago. I could have been anywhere in the world. I could have been sitting in that chair, keeping a vigil with my own past.

Ben's breath, which he strained slightly against the bed's hold to get, reminded me of Kara. Of how at some point even taking her own breath had been an accomplishment.

The silhouette of the room swam in front of me, and I began to sing, slowly, the way I had heard it last, the way that Kara had sung it to me. "Down in the valley, the valley so low. Hang your head over, and hear the wind blow. Hear the wind blow, Lord, hear the wind blow. Hang your head over, and hear the wind blow."

I do not remember blacking out, coming to, or trying to walk out of the room only to collapse into a jello-legged heap on the floor. I only remember chanting the circular memory of the song's line into the half-darkness, over and over and over again until I could almost feel it returning to me, like the strength I no longer had.

There were strange dreams that I don't remember. I only know that I regained consciousness winded and unspecifically frightened.

"How do you feel?" a disembodied voice asked.

I was lying on my side in a thin-mattressed hospital gurney facing the windows. An IV sprouted from my arm. I was not entirely convinced that I wasn't dead.

"There is a poem by Charles Simic," I heard myself saying, though I never quote poetry. "It begins, I am the last Napoleonic soldier. It is almost 200 years later and I am still retreating from Moscow." I sighed. "I feel like that."

It came to me that I was no longer wearing my own clothes, but instead two hospital gowns-one on front-ways, the other backwards. Outside it was daylight.

"What happened?" I asked of the voice without a body while I watched the courtyard's fountain, and strained-through the glass-to hear the sound its water made.

"Do you recall anything about last night?"

I struggled to push past the haze in my mind, and latched on to the first memory. "Vecchio," I said. "You're Vecchio. You brought me here to get your car." I rubbed at my eyes. "It was stolen."

"Try again," the voice prodded gently, reminding me, "I'm Benton Fraser."

"Ben?" I rolled over as I asked, seeing once again the outline of a body under a sheet, as I had last night.

"Yes?" It spoke.

"I was singing. You asked me to sing and I sang to you."

"Can you remember anything else after that?"

"No."

"Well," he began, and it was obvious there was an entire story to catch me up on. "I think you must have fallen asleep. It was hard to tell from down here, but you were very quiet, and then Ray-Detective Vecchio--came back with Detective Huey to take you to the station and get your car out of impound."

I found the emerald bear was a nice focal point to concentrate on as he spoke.

"They had trouble waking you, and left to find a nurse. It was late by that time, and the nurses were stretched rather thin-there had been a code called somewhere on the floor only moments before Detectives Vecchio and Huey had arrived for you.

"Soon after they left the room you did wake up. I heard you stand, and start to go after them. Almost immediately you fell back into the chair. I think you must have blacked out."

A very nagging memory began to unzip from a distant corner of my mind. The memory of a voice like the one speaking to me now, shouting my name, and the sounds of a man immobilized from a bullet in the spine struggling against his restraints in an effort to get to me.

"Moments later, before anyone could answer my repeated calls, you came around and stood again. I asked you to sit back down, asked you what was wrong, but you didn't answer-maybe you couldn't hear me. Then you ordered whiskey, neat."

"Huh?"

"You ordered a whiskey, neat." He said it as though it was no more unusual that any other aspect of the night before.

"Oh, goodness," I said. That was a new one.

"Directly after that, you took four steps in the direction of the doorway, stubbed your right toe on the leg of the bed and collapsed head-first onto the floor."

The memory I had summoned was a real one then, of his shouting to me, a frantic, urgent voice belonging to someone who could tell what had happened, but do nothing to assist. Another memory came to me, this of a one-eyed view of the bed's wheeled leg and the surprisingly clean tile floor. How long had I lain there, staring at it, him begging for me to answer, shouting for help?

"Was it long?" I asked.

He ignored the question, pausing instead of answering.

"When the nurses did arrive, they took you away for some tests. I asked them to bring you back here. I thought it might distress you further to wake in an unfamiliar room, without anyone to explain what had happened. I hope I did the right thing?"

"I'm sorry I didn't answer when you called me," I apologized. "I could hear you. Only you sounded very far away."

"I'm sure it's nothing you need to worry about now," he said.

"So what's wrong with me?" I asked, as though he were my doctor.

"Sub-dural hematoma. I would have noticed it myself, no doubt, had the room not been so dark when we met."

"What does that mean?"

"Well, when a person has certain head trauma, the pupils tend to-"

"No."

"Oh," he moved on. "I'm sorry. Sub-dural hematoma? Well, it's a mass of clotted blood, like a bruise that--"

I interrupted him again, and asked in the direction of the emerald bear, "What's this big bandage on my head for?"

"You have some more stitches," he told me, seemingly unfazed by switching trains of thought. "From when you fell onto the floor."

"Did they cut my hair?" I felt a little panicked.

"No, I shouldn't think so. The cut was on your forehead, below the hairline, if I recall what they said correctly. Did they cut your hair before?"

"Yes," I said. "They shaved it in the back." I lifted my hand to feel the bristles they had left me with. "It itches."

"Oh," he said. "I am sorry. Although itching is usually a good sign that something is beginning to heal."

I thought about that for a moment. "So do you itch?"

"I beg your pardon," he asked.

"Do you itch?"

"Well, I hadn't thought about it before."

"You've lain there-what, seven, eight days with nothing else to do, and you've never noticed if you itched?"

I moved to get out of the gurney. It was a tricky process, as it was on wheels, and I was IVed-up. Once on the floor, I pushed the tall metal pole with the liquid medication on it ahead of me, shuffling slowly across the room.

"I'm going to the ladies," I said. "Why don't you think about it, and let me know when I get back?" And I disappeared into the room's lavatory. I needed to have a look at myself.

It was at least as bad as I had imagined. The patch of gauze on my forehead did not completely obscure my face, but it did make me look dangerously hurt. I tried my luck at seeing the back of my head and its stitches in the above-the-sink mirror, but turned dizzy again for a moment and knocked into the wall, grabbing hold of one of the abundant metal railings that ringed the small space to steady myself.

"Maggie!" Ben shouted from beyond the door. He had heard the noise of my tumble.

"It's okay," I called back. "I'm okay!"

When I exited the room he was of course still there, and when I asked him my question again, he answered.

"A little," he said. "My back."

I steered my IV to his bed, and looked down at the sheet and blanket covering him. Without asking, I pulled it aside just enough so that I could see the bandage, so as not hurt him. And for a few moments, I let my fingertips rest gently against his skin around it, and lightly scratched.

The nurse found me that way. Apparently Ben had pushed his call button over my stumble in the lavatory, uncertain (as last night's escapade could attest) as to whether I had been okay, or would soon start re-ordering strong drinks.

The nurse did not smile when she saw me standing over his bed, scratching around the bandage on his back.

With a commanding, "Missy, what do you think you're doing there?" she hustled me back over to the gurney, single-handedly lifting me into it, as you might lift a child. While she looked me over, and took my vitals, she spoke.

"This one's going to be a trouble, Mr. Fraser, I can see that right now," she told him, clicking her tongue. "I shoulda been more suspicious when you asked for her to be in here with you. Shoulda realized you been looking for some spice n' activity to vary your days. I'm of a mind to take her out of here right now," she teased as she left my side to see to him.

With a few quick and skillful turns of knobs and body parts that I could not quite follow, she had him righted in his bed, nearly sitting up and facing the window.

"Now you two can plan your adventures face-to-face."

"Thank you, Riva," Ben said. His face still had some red pressure marks from the night before, but they were fading quickly.

"Excuse me," I called after her, "when can I be released?"

"Twenty-four hour observation, Miss Magnolia Davis," she told me, wagging a finger and using my full name. "Then you can talk about taking your sore head home-wherever that is. Doctor will be in to see you--" she consulted a clipboard she had with her. "In about an hour. Don't forget your lipstick."

Which I guess was her way of telling me that the doctor was a handsome sort of man.

When she had gone, Fraser asked me tentatively, in a tone I recognized from the many other times I had heard it used before, "Magnolia? As in the flowering tree?"

"Can we just not?" I asked. "You're only supposed to be subjected to your legal name twice in your life. Graduation, and marriage." I sighed. "If my luck holds-and I pray it does--that means once more and I'm free of it."

"I was only going to say that I thought it was a very pretty name. I haven't heard it before," he said apologetically.

"Oh," I said, as this was an uncommon response. "Uh, thank you."

To hide my embarrassment, I looked around the room for something else to focus on and remembered Vecchio's gun, which I could only hope was still hidden in my coat pocket.

"Where are my clothes?"

"In the closet, I believe. Do you need something?" He asked as though he were able to move and get it for me. Which of course he was not.

"In the pocket of my coat. There's something that belongs to Detective Vecchio."

"Ah," he nodded his head slowly, tightening his mouth and brow. "He retrieved it last night. No one saw, I think." Perhaps he had been wondering when I would ask about it.

"Good," I said, relieved, though I couldn't say exactly why.

"Are you licensed to carry a firearm?" he asked.

"I have a valid hunting license for Indiana and Kentucky."

Silence.

"No. I don't have a permit to carry a handgun."

Grief, I must have been worse off than I remembered to have taken someone else's gun. I doubt I could have shot better than to miss my own foot anyway.

Ben didn't say anything else about the gun, didn't ask why I had it, how it had come to be in my possession, or upon whom it was intended to be used. I wanted to confess that I wouldn't have been able to kill her, to say it out loud, but I didn't know how.

"The bullet I took out of the chamber-did he get that?" I asked, feeling more than a little like a teenager out past curfew trying to explain their late return.

He nodded, but remained silent. After awhile he did speak again.

"Do you still want that drink?" he asked.

"What?" The IV had seen to it that I was not especially thirsty.

"The whiskey, neat."

"No," I said. Following with, "No-that is, I don't even drink. I mean, I had some champagne at my cousin's wedding a few-I'm not a heavy drinker. Definitely not hard liquor." I turned to him to further my protest, but saw that he was smiling.

"It was a--" he stalled out, still smiling. "Well, where do you think it came from?"

"Watching too many hard-boiled detective movies," I confessed.

"Someone order a hard-boiled detective?" asked a voice from outside the doorway, and a second later, Detective Vecchio stood in front of us, carrying an armful of flowers and a blue helium balloon with arms and legs of accordion crepe. All of which looked suspiciously similar to the ones we had passed the night before in the hospital gift shop window.

"For you, Maggie," he said, presenting them, before they joined Ben's growing bower of plants. I stifled the urge to announce that he could bow.

"How you feeling," he asked, raising his chin with the question. I didn't respond right away, certain that he was addressing his partner. But he walked deliberately up to my gurney and grabbed onto the railing.

"I'm okay, I guess. The doctor is supposed to be by soon."

"I'm sorry," he said, putting his hand on top of mine-the one with the IV tube taped to it. "I should have known-shouldn't have brought you along, gotten you even more hurt." The lines around his eyes seemed so kind, so concerned. So different from the tense, angry cop of yesterday.

"It's not your fault," I said, and I meant it. "Things happen. If not here, then somewhere else. I doubt the Saint would've known what to do if I had collapsed by myself back at home."

"The Saint?" Ben asked.

"My Saint Bernard," I told him. "He's smart, but lacks a few credits before he can get his Red Cross First Aid certification."

"Oh," he said, and nodded.

"I'm joking."

"Don't worry, Maggie," Vecchio kidded. "Benny here believes you 'cause he's got a wolf that can practically knit and play Schubert-that is when he's not out rescuing the population of Chicago at large."

He smiled widely and I wasn't sure what to think. So I smiled too.

"Oops--almost forgot." Vecchio pulled a rolled-up newspaper out of the inside pocket of his coat. "The Consulate sent this over--the newest edition of Mountie Monthly, I guess. And I thought I'd round it out with today's Guardian. But the two of you'll have to fight over who gets to do the crossword, I only brought one copy."

A conversation ensued about the wolf Diefenbaker, the one Victoria had shot, who apparently had an impressive aptitude for both crosswords and the daily jumble. It seemed Vecchio was taking care of him at Ben's apartment until he was well enough to come to the hospital.

During this I decided to try and get a comb through my hair. If I had to see a doctor and spend another night here, I thought I might as well try to re-braid it and keep it out of my way.

There was a small comb in the drawer of Ben's bedside table, obviously more suited to his abbreviated shock of hair than mine, but I tried to make do. It was rough going. I was all tangles and rats, most of which I couldn't see. I did not realize that I was also emitting sound effects to accompany my struggles until Detective Vecchio stood and crossed from Ben's bed to mine.

"Here," he offered, taking the comb from my stunned hand. "Let me."

I didn't know what to say, and from the perplexed expression on Ben's face, neither did he.

"What?" Vecchio wailed. "I got two sisters and a couple of nieces. I can't know how to braid hair?"

Ben and he continued talking, I faded in and out, sometimes listening, sometimes thinking to myself. He was very careful of my stitches, and hardly pulled at all even on the rat's nests.

When he was finished, he had done a pretty good job.

By the next morning I had gotten the doctor's promise that I would be discharged that evening. So there was only the rest of the day to get through. Just a few more hours surrounded by hospital things.

Out of sheer exhaustion I had almost slept through the night. When I did wake up, disoriented (according to the clock, around three), I lay still, afraid that if I moved or rustled the covers too much I might disturb Kara in the next bed. But I couldn't get over the urge to tell her about what had happened to me, about my stitches, and why I hadn't come home for Thanksgiving, how I had stopped to pick up a motorist in trouble for the first time ever, and how I had met Victoria.

And when I did turn over, away from the windows, I only saw Ben, who had been allowed to sleep on his back. He lay there, free of all the tubes and machines I had expected to see attached to Kara, his chest expanding and contracting strong and independently under the blanket. I watched him for what seemed like a long time, until I felt the desire to get up and walk over to him.

I did, and standing beside him I willed him to heal, to be free of this place. Maybe I was sleepwalking, but it seemed like the right thing to do to lay my hand on his shoulder, lightly, so as not to wake him, and to ask that he would get better, that he would walk again.

Despite my efforts to be quiet, his eyes came open at the touch, and he started. "Dad?" he asked.

Startled myself, I apologized.

He bit his lip and asked the obvious. "What are you doing?"

"I was saying a prayer," I said, not knowing how else to explain what had carried me out of my bed and to the edge of his in the middle of the night.

"I thought you were a ghost," he answered, though the idea didn't seem to distress him.

"I thought you were too," I said. "I guess I was tying to keep you real."

"Oh, you don't believe in ghosts?"

I looked at his face, still retaining some of the peacefulness of sleep despite my interruption, and I wondered if he could be serious. His expression was so mild, yet I could see he was curious, trying to figure out why I would choose him to say a prayer over, and whose ghost it was that I had taken him for.

I turned and walked back towards my gurney. Did I believe in ghosts?

I wanted to believe. To believe anything that would make people permanent--anything to eliminate loss and loneliness. I stalled at climbing into bed, trying to keep my back to him so that he wouldn't see I was ready to cry. I hoped the window's angle wasn't right to produce a reflection of my face.

"The dead are dead," I told him, though I hoped the opposite. "Why would they want anything to do with us?"

The next morning when I opened my eyes, two badge-wearing detectives were in the room, each in a chair on Ben's side. I saw that he was sleeping, and wondered if I would have to introduce myself to them without the help of our slumbering mutual acquaintance.

I didn't have to wait long to find out. I was barely aware of exactly where I was when they both seemed to re-appear at the edge of my gurney.

"Miss Davis," the taller African-American one presented himself. "I'm Detective Huey, and this," he motioned toward his partner, a curly redhead with shifty eyes, "is Detective Gardino. We need to ask you a few questions about the other night."

"First," I said, in my sudden discomfort being much more vulgar that even I could imagine. "I gotta go to the can." I saw confusion in their faces. Whatever they had been told about me, rude and offensive had not been mentioned.

"Yeah, okay," offered the redhead. "Sure."

I made a move to get down, and Detective Huey put out both his hands, like he was going to catch a baby, or a football.

"Are you planning to lift me down?" I asked him. "'Cause we just met, and I don't think we're to the man-handling stage just yet." I pushed past him with as much attitude as anyone dragging an IV stand could muster and once in the lavatory I slammed the door.

I found that I did not want to answer any more questions about the other night. I knew where, and to whom they would lead.

I spent as much time as I could seated on the closed toilet seat, hoping one of them would come to the door and offer to come back later. It didn't happen, so finally I gave in-mostly from the cold-and returned to my bed. When I saw that Ben was awake-probably courtesy of my door slam--I even took their offered hands to help climb back in.

They apologized for bothering me at the hospital, but explained the urgent need to follow up on the case before the trail got too cold. They had a copy of some of the things I had told Vecchio at the Waffle Steak on Thanksgiving when he interviewed me there, and they asked to clarify one or two of the statements I had made.

Finally, when I felt sure they were just about to leave, satisfied with all I had said, Detective Gardino pulled out a mug shot.

"Is this the woman who stole your car?" he asked, trying to give the picture to me.

I kept my hands tangled up in the sheets, so he laid it on top the covers. I looked at the picture. She was there, in prison blues. I couldn't mistake either her hair or her face for anyone else's. I had to stop myself from asking if I could keep the photo.

I didn't answer him. It came to me that I was their only case. No one else, except perhaps the boy working the drive-thru at McDonald's, had seen her. Using me as her mouthpiece, even Detective Vecchio could not convincingly testify that it had been her. They had brought me a picture to identify because they couldn't be sure it was the same woman. I stole a look into each of their eyes.

He asked again.

I looked at the picture harder.

"Is this the woman or not, Miss Davis?" This time from Detective Huey, his voice deeper than Gardino's, but louder.

"I-I-no, I can't be," I stalled.

"Is or is not this woman, Victoria Metcalf, the motorist you picked up on Interstate 74, who then went on to hold you at gunpoint and commandeer your vehicle two nights ago?"

"It is not a hard question Miss Davis. Is this her?" Huey's eyes were growing larger each time he asked the question, and with each asking, my heart beat harder against my chest. This time, I jumped at every word he said.

I opened my mouth. And Detective Vecchio swept into the room slamming the door shut behind him with a force to rival my earlier attempt.

"What do you two jokers think you're doing here?" he shouted at Huey and Gardino. "Have some respect! Does this look like a pokey room to you?" He spread his arms wide. "Do you see any criminals here?"

He turned, and without even looking at Ben pulled the privacy curtain around his bed ferociously, cutting him off (visually at least) from the rest of the room.

Both Detectives began to speak, but when Vecchio turned back toward the windows and us, his face was deep set in anger. When he saw the picture lying in my lap, I thought he might explode. His face got very red.

"Get out of here," he told them as they began to grumble. "Get out of this damn hospital room before I say another word. You got no right bringing this mess in here where a man's trying to get well. Get out or so help me I'll kick your ass all the way back to the station."

Gardino snatched the picture up off my lap, and Huey grabbed for his coat off a chair. It was obvious they were both angry with Vecchio's intrusion, but not angry enough to cross him at the moment.

Detective Vecchio followed them out of the room, and closed the door behind them as they went out into the hall. I could still hear him chewing them out, though I was unable to make out any specific words.

"Ben?" I called across the room.

"Yes," he answered.

"It was her," I confessed.

"I know," he said through the curtain separating us, his voice a monotone of sadness.

When Detective Vecchio returned, he was carrying a large paper sack, which he sat down before pulling back open Ben's curtain, putting us all in one room again. He made no mention to either of us of the scene that had just taken place, instead he pulled a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts out of the sack, along with coffee for himself and milk for Ben and me. Breakfast.

"Don't worry," he told Ben. "I left some jelly-filled back at the apartment for Dief."

"You shouldn't have," Ben told him, his eyebrows raised in doubt.

"Ah, don't worry, it was no trouble."

"No, you really shouldn't have." Ben pulled at his eyebrow with one hand while holding a glazed in the other. "You know, Ray, you can't buy his affection with treats. Besides, Diefenbaker doesn't like doughnuts."

"Right," Detective Vecchio acquiesced, but he turned his head to me and winked conspiratorially. "Ah, but before we forget all about the suddenly very silent Maggie," he grabbed for the paper sack, moving it from the bedside tray to the foot of my gurney. "Some clean things to wear home."

I thanked him and opened the bag. It would seem my thanks had come too soon. First I pulled out a tiny, tiny hot pink angora sweater with a hood. It had long sleeves, but left me doubtful that it would cover my entire ribcage, let alone my abdomen. Certain there would be something else to go over it, and wondering if he was having a joke at my expense, I reached in a second time, withdrawing a plaid wool miniskirt, with Catholic school girl pleats. This too was hot pink, and sported a pair of black suspenders to complete the ensemble.

After I pulled each item out, I just stared. There were no words. Detective Vecchio had retreated into the lavatory, so for a moment I was safe. But Ben had seen it all. I looked to him for guidance.

"I-can't" I said. "I just-"

"No," he commiserated, widening his eyes and shaking his head. "Of course not."

I took a deep breath, and tried to think of a way to politely decline the gift.

The commode flushed and the door opened, and Detective Vecchio stepped out, but before I could begin, Ben stepped up to the plate.

"Ray, Maggie can't--" and then he stalled out.

"Can't what?" he asked, a line forming between his brows. "Something wrong?"

"Well, it's just that the clothes you so thoughtfully provided, albeit very--" he looked to me for help with a word.

"Fashionable?"

"Fashionable, and...well tailored, are not, that is to say--"

"Are not what?"

Seeing that Ben was drowning, I cut in. "I'm sorry, thank you, but I can't wear this out in public."

The detective took three steps over to my bed, and seeing the flash of pink, lifted the sweater off the pile of clothes he had so generously offered me.

"I'm gonna kill her," he said.

"Now, Ray," Ben interjected. "I hardly think the fact that Maggie has declined your offer of clothing would lead one to the conclusion that to satisfy honor it was necessary-"

"Not her, Benny," he cut him off, exasperated. "I'm gonna kill Frannie."

"Oh," said Ben. "Well, that's quite another matter."

Detective Vecchio turned to me. "I'm sorry. I asked my sister, thinking that, like you, she was--"

"Are you going to say 'small'?" I asked.

"Okay," he paused, re-wording his sentence. "More your size, that she might have something to give you so that you wouldn't have to wear your grubby things from the other day. I did not know this was what she chose."

He sighed, looked at the sweater again and tossed it and the skirt back in the bag. "Now I'm gonna have to call her and have her come up here with another set of clothes, and I've been trying to-keep her clear of the hospital as much as possible."

Ben cleared his throat. "If it's amenable to everyone, I can lend Maggie a pair of my sweats," offered Ben promptly, gesturing to where they were waiting in the closet.

I had to roll up the waistline and cuff the pants of the blue fleece more times than Leon from E!'s Fashion Emergency might endorse, but they were comfortable, and he promised me that the nursing staff had so far denied him any clothing but a gown, so that by the time I was able to wash and return them, they would not even have been missed.

"Besides," he added, "it's nice to see them on someone else for a change."

While being discharged I was instructed by the hospital doctor not to drive the trip back to Battle Ground just yet, so I found myself trying to decide if I could afford any of the hotels Chicago had to offer and asking Detective Vecchio if he wouldn't mind driving me to the nearest Best Western for the night.

"Don't be silly," Vecchio laughed. "You can stay at my house. Plenty of room for one more."

When we pulled into the driveway of the several-storied brick house, night had fallen, making it easy to see the shadows inside through the windows. The lights burned brightly, in a way that reminded me of a homey turn-of-the-century painting.

But when Detective Vecchio opened the driver's side door to get out, the noise of shouting and arguments came to our ears. He shut the door. We sat, staring straight ahead. A moment passed, and he spoke.

"Okay, change of plan. I'm going in to get a few things, then I'll take you over to Benny's."

"I don't know," I said, not crazy about a house full of shouting occupants, but not comfortable either with spending the night by myself. "A strange apartment in a strange city alone-"

"Don't be nuts!" he exclaimed. "I wouldn't let you stay there alone, in that tenement! I've been staying there with the wolf."

So I accepted.

I did not realize there was only one very narrow bed that the wolf Diefenbaker clearly wished to share. I did not anticipate how awkward Detective Vecchio and I would become once night settled in and we had finished up using the hall-shared bathroom. There was no television, no radio, no Ben. Nothing to hide behind. Neither of us seemed to know how to act, so we compensated by deciding to turn in early.

I was clean for the first time in days. Bathed, my hair washed, and in a pair of Vecchio's borrowed pajamas. The last thing that came to my mind before I nodded off was not a deep thought. I remembered I had not called back my family. I wondered if I had to, if they had to know. And then I fell asleep.

"Who?"

"Karen. You were yelling Karen."

In my surprise, one of my hands came up to my forehead, forgetting the bandage there, the other went to his wrist. "Kara," I corrected him, saying her name and wanting to cough.

"Okay," he agreed, still quietly, "you were yelling for Kara."

His hand followed the path that mine had taken to my forehead, lightly touching the gauze patch it still wore. "You okay?" He didn't ask who this person I was calling for in my sleep was.

I was trying to get control of myself. Not trusting my voice, I didn't answer, just clenched my jaw and breathed out hard.

"I'm sorry about all this," he apologized, as he already had several times before. "Sorry that you were involved, sorry I made such a bad call and brought you along. I'm just really sorry."

And looked at me, in the way someone does when they need to be forgiven for something. At that moment, though, sitting up in Ben's bed, so far away from home, but so close to so many things I didn't want to think about, I didn't care if he needed something I could give him or not. Without even thinking, I looked back at him and told the whole truth out loud for the first time in days. "I want Kara, dammit. Not your apologies."

And I pushed him away, probably more confused than before, rolled over onto my side, and cried.

I hate crying in front of people, I can't imagine anyone who doesn't, and if there had been anywhere else in the apartment-besides the hall-to go, I would have.

I cried--quietly, I hope--until I couldn't any more. Then I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn't seem to do that any more either. I stood and walked over to his pallet, not supposing him asleep either after my unpleasant behavior and crying jag.

"I'm sorry, Detective Vecchio," I said, sitting beside him cross-legged on the floor. "It's not you." I held back a sniffle.

Rolling on his back to look up at me, he spoke. "After all we've been through don't you think it would be all right if you called me Ray?" And he gave me a lopsided half-smile.

"Well, Ray," I said, letting the sniffle happen. "I can't seem to sleep right now. So why don't you take the bed. I'm going to go sit in the kitchen for a little while."

"You promise to get me up when you're ready to sleep?"

"Word of honor."

"Fair enough, then." And he took my place.

I've been sitting here ever since. It's near dawn now. I can see it coming through the window. Twice Diefenbaker has trotted over to come and see me. Checking, I suppose, to see if I am all right. To see if it is yet time for him to kick Detective-to kick Ray out of the bed. But I'm not sure I'm going to sleep again.

And if I do decide to go back to sleep, I won't take the bed away from Ray. I know from experience that it's hard to sleep well when someone you care about is far away, in an unfamiliar place on an uncomfortable bed, surrounded by strangers. Ray deserves a good night's rest. It's probably been a long time since he's had one.

I managed to find the correct version of that Nora Ephron quotation I put at the beginning of this. I keep a little notebook to write things in when they strike me, she was on page 43.

What she said was this; I think you often have the sense when you write that if you can spot something in yourself and set it down on paper, you're free of it. And you're not, of course; you just managed to set it down on paper, that's all.

So I acknowledge that I am not free of what has happened over the past few days between Indianapolis and Chicago, any more than I can be free of the scar that will grow at the base of my skull--a small, white line with no hair that will always be visible for those who look to see. But for those who look to see, and for those who ask about how such a mark came about, here is the story, as I understood it, set down on paper.

The End