Compromised (3 page)

“Eaten fresh, yes, I agree, but melted and covered with my homemade sauce . . . I can’t taste the difference.”

“I guess your palate isn’t as refined as mine,” I said snobbishly.

“Ha! My palate’s not refined says the girl who eats from street carts. You’ve got a lot of nerve.”

“What about the Romano cheese?”

“What about it?” she asked.

“Did you buy that pregrated sawdust the supermarket tries to pass off as a dairy product, or did you buy the imported stuff?”

“Honey, where is this coming from? When do I ever scrimp on my ingredients? I got a nice fresh chunk of Locatelli. I’ll grate it when I need it. My goodness, you’re certainly in a bitchy mood. Maybe the doctor should check to see if that head injury threw your hormones out of whack.”

“Gus won’t talk about the shooting,” I griped.

“Ah,”
she said. “So that’s what this is all about.”

I shrugged.

“Well, of course he won’t. The last time it was brought up you had to be sedated. Are you crazy, Stephanie? You were out cold for nearly a week. Put your health at greater risk, why don’t you? I mean, my God, how stubborn can you be? The city is literally crawling with police officers looking for the shooter, and the story is running on the news day and night. Let your colleagues do their jobs.”

“I’m impatient.”

“I’m impatient,” she parroted. “You know what? How about if I tell you a story.”

“You mean like when I was a little girl?” I asked.

“Yes. Exactly like when you were a little girl, you ornery kid.”

“Will it help me get out of here faster?”

“Yeah, of course it will,” she replied with a healthy dose of sarcasm. “Dream on, princess.”

“Then I’d like a better offer.”

“I could sing you a lullaby.”

“On second thought . . . I’ll stick with the story.”

“Rotten kid.” She showed me the back of her hand. “It’s a true story. It’s why your father became a policeman.”

I searched my memory, the portion of it that I could access, anyway. My father had told me so many stories about his early days on the force and I knew how very strongly he believed in the criminal justice system, but the catalyst that had made him become a cop in the first place . . . “I’ve got to hear this.”

Ma helped me to prop myself up and fixed my pillow. “Comfy?”

“Uh-huh. Got any popcorn?”

“I think I have some Altoids.”

“Pass.”

“Ha.” She smiled happily. “I’m glad that ka-nock on the head didn’t knock the pain-in-the-assness out of you.”

“You always say I’m hardheaded.”

“All right. Settle in. This may take a bit.”

“Ready, Mommy,” I said in a child’s voice before adding in a demanding tone, “This better be good.”

“So your father and I had been married about three years and—”

“Ma, is this the adoption story? Because if it is, I’m not sure I want to hear it again.”

“But the story has such a wonderful ending.”

I had not learned that I was adopted until I was an adult, and when I was finally told . . . well, it wasn’t under the best circumstances. I loved my parents dearly, but I went out of my way to avoid being reminded of the story. “I love you, Ma, and I understand that you and Dad waited a long time to adopt but . . .”

“I’m just trying to say that good things come to those who wait.” She hugged me. “Your father and I waited a long time, but we got the most precious little girl and . . .” Her tears wet the side of my face.

“Okay,” I said in a lighter tone. “This is no time for waterworks. I get the message—I can’t just sprint out of bed and pursue Yana’s shooter. I get it. I’ll have to wait.”

She reached for a tissue. “Let your colleagues do the work this time, sweetheart. I know it’s not your style, but challenging yourself with a task that you’re not equipped to complete, well . . . it won’t help you heal any sooner. You’ve got to concentrate on getting better and being there for Gus and Max. Everything else is meaningless at this point.” She dabbed at her eyes with the tissue. “Look around and smell the roses, damn it. Do you know how lucky you are? How lucky we all are that you’re okay?”

Ma was still crying, so I waved the white flag and took her in my arms just to make her stop. But as for me looking the other way and forgetting about the felon who’d killed my partner? That just wasn’t going to happen. “I thought you were going to tell me about why Daddy decided to become a cop.”

“Oh that,” she said dismissively. “That’s a very long story.”

An hour had passed and Ma was still waxing nostalgic about my days as a little girl and the joy I’d brought to her and my father.
She had gone through an entire box of those hospital-size tissues.

Her melodramatic old stories were beginning to drive me bonkers. “
Christ.
Where’s the call button? I need some morphine. Stat!”

“
Yeah?
Make mine a double,” she snapped. “You rotten kid—you mean the world to me. What’s wrong with me getting a little emotional?”

I told myself,
Let it pass. You can’t blame the woman for being a little bent out of shape.
“Okay, let’s hug it out, but then can we please change the subject?”

She smiled and leaned in for a tight squeeze.

We were still in each other’s arms, when I heard the sound of a man clearing his throat. I looked up and saw Gus at the door, holding Max. My eyes lit up. Max’s did likewise. I threw my arms open, and the little guy went nuts. Gus handed him to me. I smothered him with kisses and blew raspberries on his cheeks and neck.

He giggled for all he was worth and gave me an enthusiastic chorus of “Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma,” the only word in his vocabulary.

“Oh my God, I missed you. I missed you so much.” A second round of kisses, tickles, and raspberries pushed every ounce of Ma’s melancholy tales out of my head. “Were you a good boy for your daddy?”

“Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma.”

I glanced up at Gus. “He said yes.”

Gus sat down, bringing the total number of people on my bed to four. The bed was definitely crowded, but it felt wonderful to be surrounded by family. Gus leaned in and gave me a big warm kiss. For a very brief moment I began to feel like myself. I grabbed Gus and pulled him back for a second smooch, then put my arms around the three of them and pulled them all close.

“It’s so good to have you back with us.” There was something in Gus’s voice. He sounded grateful, of course, but there was something more, a hint of desperation I found unnerving.

I looked into his eyes and saw that he was on the verge of tears. “Hey, cut it out. I woke up, right?”

Ma interjected, “Just like Sleeping Beauty.”

He nodded, closing his eyes.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he replied. “I’m just so—Stephanie,” he began in an alarmed voice, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Your eye. It’s . . .”

And then I felt it. My right eye felt weird, as if it were wandering. My focus went out of control. “That’s not good,” I said in a voice that lessened the true extent of my worry. I sensed that something bigger was coming, something far worse. My head began to shake. “Oh God.” I tried to lift Max but couldn’t. My arms felt stiff, and they began to shake as well. “Take Max,” I said with urgency.

Ma gasped. “Oh my God.”

Gus quickly plucked Max out of my arms and handed him to Ma. “Take Max out of the room,” he said in a tone so emotionally charged that it made me worry all the more. “Get a doctor,
fast
.” He grabbed the call button and pressed it.

I felt tremors build in both of my arms. “Hold me, Gus. What’s happening? I’m s-s-scared.” My throat tightened and began to ache terribly. It became an effort to breathe. I heard footsteps racing toward me as my body began to rock with spasms.

I was gasping for air as Dr. Efram came into view in front of me. He placed his hands on my shoulders and turned me on my side just as my arms began to thrash. “Easy now. Try to relax. This should pass in just a moment.”

A nurse grabbed my arms and pressed them firmly against the bed. A second nurse injected something into my IV.

“Easy now,” Dr. Efram continued in a soothing voice. “Breathe, Stephanie. Breathe.”

But I couldn’t breathe. My throat was frozen. My head began to spin, and I could feel the world ebbing away. I saw Gus’s face. He was petrified. Then my forehead became cold and clammy, and everything went black.

A great deal of time must’ve passed, but to me it seemed like only minutes.
I struggled to open my eyes and saw that the sky had grown dark outside the hospital window. A cloud drifted by, blotting out the moon.

Gus was sitting in a chair next to the bed, holding my hand and looking into my eyes.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Groggy.”

“They gave you Valium again. You’ll feel lethargic for a while.”

I was conscious, but I wasn’t myself. I was tired and confused and felt vulnerable in a way I had never felt before. “That was one wild ride. Had no idea I could do anything like that.”

Gus smiled to comfort me but didn’t speak.

“I guess that was a seizure, huh?”

He nodded. “Uh-huh.” Then he got up and hugged me for what seemed like minutes, pressing his face against mine.

“Can I expect any more of those roller-coaster rides?”

“The doc will be in to explain in a little while.”

“You’re not telling me everything, are you? You’re a lousy poker player, Gus. I can see it in your eyes right now, and I saw it a couple of times before. Come clean,” I said in a groggy voice. “You know I’m tough enough to take it.”

Gus took both of my hands and squeezed them, then edged forward and looked into my eyes. He was fighting to maintain a brave face, but I saw his Adam’s apple catch in his throat. He finally sighed. “You didn’t take a blow to the head, Steph.”

“Oh my God.”

He wiped away his tears and inhaled deeply before continuing. “You were shot.”

The sedative was still doing its thing. I absorbed the information but didn’t react to it. I was still adrift on a benzodiazepine high, confused and somewhat unresponsive. “But . . . what do you mean?”

“You were shot, Stephanie. The bullet came from the same gun that killed Yana. We thought it would be a bad idea to tell you the truth right after you awoke from the coma, so we invented a story. We figured you’d have to hear the truth soon enough.” Gus squeezed my hands so tightly they hurt. “It’s going to be okay, Stephanie. The only thing that matters is that you’re alive.”

But how alive will I be?
And then a terrifying realization broke through the veil of chemical tranquilizer, and the consequences of my head injury registered all at once.
Seizures. Brain damage.
“Oh Jesus.”
Calm down,
I told myself.
Don’t jump to conclusions.
But then I saw the expression on Dr. Efram’s face as he entered the room.

Glancing at Gus, he asked apprehensively, “Did you tell her?”

Gus nodded and then once again began to cry.

Gus sat silently and listened as the doctor gave me the bad news.
A bullet had ricocheted off the sidewalk and clipped the back of my skull. The projectile had entered my brain and damaged the corpus callosum, the neural network that connects the two hemispheres of the brain.

“You’re a very lucky woman,” Dr. Efram began. “Ninety percent of all gunshot wounds to the head prove fatal. The people who do survive usually have severely debilitating brain disorders. Happily, you seem to be an exception, and I expect you’re going to live to a ripe old age. You have a wonderful family to support you, and you just can’t ask for anything more than that.”

I wiped away tears while he held an X-ray film up before the overhead light and pointed to where the bullet had entered my brain. “The bullet didn’t shatter and that was very fortunate,” Dr. Efram continued. “But as you can see, it penetrated the brain tissue.”

Gus explained that the bullet hit the ground before hitting the back of my head. The theory of the NYPD ballistics unit was that the bullet began to tumble end over end after deflecting off the sidewalk and had lost a great deal of its velocity before striking me.

“According to what they told me,” Gus said, “that’s the only reason you’re still alive.”

“Oh my God.” I stared at the film and shuddered. It was a miracle that I was still living, breathing, and thinking. “Did you get the bullet out?” I asked with concern.

“Yes. We got all of it,” he said. “You were on the operating table for nine hours, and the surgeon was very skilled, very skilled indeed.”

“Then why did I have a seizure?”

Dr. Efram pressed his lips together. “For the same reason you’re experiencing memory loss. In a penetrating injury from a high-velocity object like a bullet, injuries can occur not only from the initial laceration and crushing of brain tissue by the projectile but also from the subsequent cavitation.”

“Cavitation?” I asked.

“The cavity made by the bullet.”

“Oh?”

“You see, high-velocity objects create rotations, and these rotations create shockwaves that causes stretch injuries. A cavity can develop that is three to four times greater in diameter than the bullet itself. Though this cavity is reduced in size once the initial trauma is over, the tissue that was compressed during cavitation remains injured. Destroyed brain tissue may either be ejected through the entrance or exit wounds or, as in your case, remain packed up against the sides of the cavity that was formed by the bullet.”

“And that’s why I had a seizure, because of the compressed brain tissue?”

“Most likely. Now that you’re conscious and most of the swelling has gone down, we’ll run a battery of tests to better evaluate which area of the brain is causing you trouble.”

Intuitively I already knew the answer but asked anyway, “Will it happen again?”

“I’m afraid that’s quite possible, but we can control your seizures with medication and the amnesia should resolve itself with time. The brain is very adept at rerouting the neurological pathways. You’re a young and vital person, so I’m optimistic that you’ll live a full and productive life.”