Page 68 of Lies He Told Me

“MRS. BOWERS.”

I look up, startled, though I shouldn’t be. I’ve been expecting him. I’ve been waiting more than two hours with my children in this waiting room as they play on their phones.

I try to read the face of the surgeon, still in his scrubs, that shiny bald head of his, as he gestures to the side and walks away, expecting me to follow.

“Hang on one second, guys, okay?” I kiss both my kids. “I’ll be right back.”

Dr. Grant opens the door to an examination room and holds it while I walk in, the pungent smell of iodine greeting me.

I say a silent prayer and turn to the doctor.

“Well, the surgery went as well as it could have,” he says. “We’ve repaired the arterial damage, and we’ve oxygenated him.”

But. There’s a but. The way he phrased that.

“He lost a great deal of blood,” he goes on. “When you lose blood volume, you lose blood pressure. Your blood carries oxygen to the brain and other organs. So we’ve done our best to maintain blood pressure. We’ve pumped in other substances to maintain the pressure, but they don’t carry oxygen. We’re transfusing him, giving him blood, but you can only do that so quickly.”

“What does that — is he going to live?” I hear the words coming out of my mouth.

“I don’t know. It’s too soon to tell. It’s also too soon to know the extent of anoxic brain injury.”

“Brain … he might …”

“He might have brain damage, yes, from the oxygen deprivation. But there’s no way to know his neurological state until he … until he regains consciousness. If he regains consciousness.”

“If …”

The doctor helps me to a chair. The cushion makes a hissing sound when I sit on it.

“We’ve induced a coma,” the doctor says. “He’s stable. But there could be some tough days ahead, Mrs. Bowers. You should probably prepare yourself.”

SEVENTY

“OKAY, KYLE, WE DID what you asked.” One of the surgeons, whose younger brother Kyle went to high school with, hands him a plastic dish. “The bullet.”

“Thanks.”

“And we left him intact. Whatever you guys are looking for, under his nails or cuts or abrasions or whatever — we kept him as pristine as possible.”

Kyle nods. “How’s it looking for him?”

The surgeon’s eyebrows rise. “Tough sledding. Odds are against survival, much less functionality.”

Kyle puts on a pair of rubber gloves, turns to Officer Risely, his best forensic officer, who is also putting on gloves.

“We need to clean him up for the family,” says the doctor.

“I got you. Shouldn’t take us more than a half hour or so.”

Kyle and Officer Risely enter the room. Kyle tries toremain clinical, pushing away any thoughts he might have about David and Marcie. But personal or not, part of the job or not, it’s never easy to see someone lying with tubes coming out of his nose and mouth, IVs in his neck and arms, machines expanding and contracting, whistling and buzzing.

Ginny goes to work on David’s left hand while Kyle looks him over. The nurses and doctors and surgeons did as he asked, cleaned him up as little as possible. David has significant bloodstains caked on his forearms and hands. Otherwise, most of the blood is limited to the regions below the waist, where the injury occurred, and David’s backside, as the pool of blood spread beneath him on the concrete.

And one small spot of blood above David’s left eye.

“Okay, Ginny, let’s start with prints. Get as many as possible.”

“Sure thing, Sarge. I’ll probably have to clean off his hands. Want me to look under his fingernails before I do that?”

---