Fire Trap

26 - Rescues

I leaned left toward Neal and his knife, feeling its point prick into my neck, then threw my weight the other way tipping my chair over on its side.

"Help, help," I croaked too softly to be heard, but then Neal stabbed me in the nearest place he could reach, my left thigh. I guarantee the scream that followed could be heard at the front desk.

Neal was beside himself with fury.

Ignoring the ripple of fire running up the walls and the snapping flames, he stabbed me twice more in the leg and once in my arm howling like an animal. Although he was getting a satisfying amount of my blood spread around, he began to realize he wasn't striking anything vital.

The silence in the hall seemed endless before the Sig Sauer began to throw slugs into the door lock.

The whole room shook as someone threw themselves against the door. Then more bullets. I was too preoccupied to do more that listen. I was now looking up and sideways at Neal who had finally stepped around the fallen chair to get a better angle at my head.

I was completely wasted. Two images of Neal, with his bloody stiletto, replaced the single one I'd been suffering under. I saw the door burst open behind him and, as two right hands swung back to deliver another stab, Neal's whole body seemed to rise into the air amidst hammering gunfire. The inert mass of him crashed down on top of me.

His falling weight knocked the air out of me. His face was turned toward mine, but there was nothing happening behind the eyes. I could feel his warm blood flowing over my shoulder onto the floor.

Near the bathroom, the flames had run across the ceiling reaching the water-filled baggie, which melted in a second, spilling its water. Moments later the heat and flames set off the sprinklers. The baggie above me swelled and burst.

I guess Neal wasn't much of a physicist. The fire was rapidly being replaced by a flood. Alarms sounded in the building and, far away, the wail of fire engines and emergency vehicles answered back through the open window. The last thing I saw were Jean and Arnie's faces, contorted in horror, as they looked down on me.

#

I awoke, once more, in the hospital. It was night and there wasn't much light, but I could tell it was O'Connor by the familiar decor.

I moved my toes.

Gratefully, I could feel them trapped at the bottom of the bed under the iron grip of a sheet cinched in with hospital corners. I moved my fingers. They worked. Great. My head was strapped into a device with a tube projecting down my throat. The device was pushing air into me when I wanted to push it out. I panicked. I heard beeps and buzzers and running feet. I struggled. There were tubes and wires all over me.

I passed out.

#

Later, I woke up again. It was daytime and the tube down my throat had been removed. As I swallowed, it felt as raw as if the tube were still in there, but when I moved my right hand over my face there wasn't even the small tube that sends oxygen up your nose.

I turned my head. Arnie was there, sitting in a chair, reading a sports magazine. I never saw a more welcome sight.

He met my eyes. "About time," he said, pressing my call button. He returned to reading his magazine. A young nurse with short blonde hair came in and helped me drink a few teaspoons of water. I was so parched. I felt I'd been a week in the desert. She put a wet washcloth on my lips and forehead and rose, in my estimation, to the level of a minor angel. Her perfume lingered behind her as she left. Somehow it didn't seem fair for a nurse to wear perfume. Your interest was attracted while you were perfectly helpless to do anything about it.

I slept again.

#

In the late afternoon, I woke and had a dinner for the tender esophagus—soup, applesauce, chocolate pudding, and milk. It was Saturday, I learned. I had been unconscious for a whole day after they pumped my stomach for the alcohol and Elavil I hadn't digested. I had been on a respirator until late last night since the amitriptyline had suppressed my breathing reflex. Arnie had ridden with me in the ambulance and said I'd been in convulsions as we pulled up to the emergency room entrance.

He told me the story from his side. It seems the hotel was so well insulated for sound, he hadn't realized anything was wrong until he heard gunshots in the corridor.

When he got to my door, he pulled his gun on Jean, because he thought she was trying to kill me. Then he saw the smoke coming under the crack of the door, and they joined forces to break it down. It was Jean who shot Neal in the back, launching him on top of me, but Arnie cleared her with the police by supporting her story about the knife attack. "You were in a bad way when we rolled Neal off you. You were bleeding from half-a-dozen places. One on your leg was pulsing like a little fountain." Arnie went on explaining he had clamped his hand over each wound while Jean sealed them with duct tape.

"Duct tape!"

"Don't complain," he ordered, "the emergency room physician said it probably saved your life. It was Jean's idea. She had to pry the stiletto out of Neal's dead grasp to cut the stuff. All the while she worked on you, we were in a steady downpour from the sprinklers. Blood everywhere. We were drenched and splattered in it when the police took us down to the ambulance. I'm sure the hotel guests, who lined the corridors, thought Jean and I were maniac killers, judging by the way they looked at us."

"She was amazing," Arnie said, "how she held up under it all." Arnie had already spent hours with Jean, Dale Andrews, and a group of his buddies from homicide going through the whole investigation from the beginning. They were holding Jean temporarily, until they got enough corroborating statements to form a clear picture of what happened. My statement was one of those key ones they didn't have yet.

I thought about running down to give it to them. I felt bad about them holding Jean. It seemed pretty clear I owed her my life. Now she had rescued me twice. She didn't seem to be getting anything but grief for helping me out.

"If they want to come up here," I suggested, "I'll give them a statement."

He nodded and slipped out the door to telephone Dale. They must have been dripping morphine into my I.V. because I didn't seem to mind the pain in my arm and leg. The pain was there. I could feel it surge when I moved, but my brain seemed insulated from it.

It felt wonderful to be alive. The slanting sunlight wove changing leaf patterns on my blanket. My moving leg moved the patterns. A clear patch of sunlight pooled on the blanket over my injured thigh, and I could feel its extra warmth. It didn't take much to feel the joy of life when you'd come that close to losing it.