Night Of Knives

Chapter 11

She wakes to bliss. There are sheets over her body, pillows beneath her head, and her body is free of pain for the first time in recent memory. It feels like floating in a warm bath. She rolls onto her side, keeping her eyes closed, trying to draw out this deliriously wonderful daze as long as possible - but there is something against her arm, some kind of thin plastic tube. She tries to push it away but it seems stuck to her wrist. In fact it feels stuck in her wrist.

Veronica opens her eyes, alarmed. She is in a room decorated with wicker furniture, a big TV, a ceiling fan, and a leopard-print blanket. It looks like a hotel room except for the wheeled cart next to her bed and the IV drip in her arm. She doesn't understand where she is or why. Her memory is a jumbled collage of nightmare images, blood and slaves and feral teenagers with dead eyes, chains and guns and pangas, Derek's severed head, their desperate escape through thickets of thorny bush.

Recollection trickles slowly into her muzzy brain. She lifts up her blanket and peers beneath. Somebody has dressed her in a hospital robe. Her numberless wounds have been treated and dressed with white gauze bandages, although several are already dark with seeping blood. She feels oddly dissociated from her body, like it used to belong to someone else. Veronica puts her hand to the side of her head and feels fresh stitches. It doesn't hurt. She's drugged, she realizes distantly; that IV is overflowing with analgesics, maybe even morphine. Which is fine by her.

She lies in bed for a long time before deciding to mount an expedition for the TV remote control. It lies tantalizingly close, on a table not ten feet away. Sitting up is hard. Swinging her legs over the side of the bed is harder. Standing up is nearly but not quite impossible. She grabs the IV rack and uses it as support as she shuffles dizzily across the room. Through the window she sees daylight and palm trees. She wonders where she is. Maybe she's been flown back to America and that's Miami outside. She could look, but the window seems so far away. The TV will tell her. She harvests the remote control and is on her way back to bed when the door opens.

"Well, aren't you a lively one," the plump, middle-aged black woman says cheerfully. She wears an army uniform and speaks with an American accent.

"Where am I?" Veronica asks.

"You're safe. I'm your nurse, my name's Irene. Let's just get you back to bed." She helps Veronica back to a horizontal position. "How are you feeling?"

"I feel great," Veronica says enthusiastically. "What are these drugs?"

Irene laughs. "The works. Analgesics, antimalarials, vitamins, minerals, we've put together a real party cocktail for you. You just sit tight. I'll be back right away. They'll be glad to know you're awake."

She leaves without explaning who they are. Veronica turns on the TV. The entertainment selection consists of CNN, some French equivalent of the Discovery Channel, a softcore porn channel, and a very strange, cheaply made black-and-white movie which seems to be about genies who appear out of thin air and shower African crowds with money. Clearly she's still in Africa, some French-speaking nation. The third time she flips to CNN she sees Michael and Diane's faces onscreen above the words BREAKING STORY. Veronica nearly screams before she realizes they aren't ghosts, they are actually the subject of the piece.

The anchorwoman says, "Mr. Anderson and his wife were millionaire philanthropists who had come to Uganda to tour the missions and orphanages they funded. CNN has learned that earlier today, America's special forces, aided by a local militia, mounted a dramatic assault on the terrorist headquarters in which dozens of terrorists were killed. The US government reports that all the other hostages have been safely rescued and are being treated in an undisclosed location. In a related story, well-known video-sharing web site YouTube has agreed to remove the videos of these hostages that were uploaded to their site, several of which are already among their most-viewed videos ever, but copies are still reportedly widely available on similar sites worldwide. Some of these videos portray the beheadings of Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, and of Derek Summers, a Canadian citizen." Derek's picture appears onscreen. "CNN has elected not to show any footage filmed by terrorists and we call on other news organizations to join us in this decision. Up next, sports and entertainment."