It was very difficult to do everything the way it was supposed to be done. Evan Walsh had known that as a general principle for years, but it applied with even more force to working with Karla Parrish, and especially to working with Karla Parrish now. By Evan’s estimation, they had managed to keep up this deception that Karla was still in a coma for a little over fourteen hours. He didn’t know how long they were going to be able to continue keeping it up. For one thing, Karla wasn’t that good an actress. For another, she had to act harder and harder all the time, because the longer she stayed conscious, the more conscious she seemed to be. Then there was the little matter of food, which was what they were working on now. Karla had been fed through tubes the entire time she was out. The tubes were still in her arms, pumping glucose or whatever it was directly into her bloodstream. This did not seem to make any difference to the fact that she was very hungry, and that what she was hungry for was French fries.
“McDonald’s French fries,” she had told him first thing that morning, as soon as they had managed to get rid of the nurse. “Just like in Paris.”
It was true. The only thing Karla had wanted to eat in Paris was McDonald’s French fries. Evan would make reservations at fancy restaurants, even at the Brasserie Lipp, and Karla would pick at her food until she could get McDonald’s French fries. If they had had McDonald’s restaurants in war zones, Karla might never have come out to visit civilization. Still, Evan thought, it couldn’t be right to feed her McDonald’s French fries when she had just come out of a coma. He wished he knew more about comas. He wished he had spent the last few days at the library, reading up on comas, instead of sitting here doing—what? Worrying?
“McDonald’s isn’t even making French fries this early in the morning,” Evan told her. “They don’t start making lunch until eleven o’clock. Would you want one of those hash brown potato things?”
“No,” Karla had said. “God no. French fries.”
“Okay. But—”
“I know,” Karla had said. “I’ll wait. Do me another favor. Go out and get me some papers.”
“And leave you alone?”
“Well, Evan, you can’t very well run errands for me if you aren’t willing to leave me alone.”
“I know,” Evan said. “But you were the one who said you were worried about, you know, a recurrence of what happened—”
“If anybody knew I was awake. Yes, Evan, I know. But nobody does know I’m awake. Except you. Unless you told somebody.”
“Me? No. Of course I didn’t tell anybody.”
“Good. Then go out and get me the papers and come back with them and then do something about the French fries. God, but I’m hungry. I don’t think I’ve ever been this hungry. Have you ever been to Morocco?”
“No,” Evan said.
“I think that’s where we’re going to go when we get out of here,” Karla said. “It’s the only place in the world where they’ve got something I like as much as McDonald’s French fries. You can go to these little places in the old city of Tangier and eat appetizers for hours. And drink wine. You don’t know what I would give right now for an enormous bottle of wine.”
“You don’t drink,” Evan said. “I’ve never seen you drink.”
“You’re right. I don’t drink. But something like this calls for it. Do you know that I’ve been in six civil wars and never been hurt once?”
“Is it six?” Evan asked.
“And here I am, back in Philadelphia, and what happens? And all because of Patsy MacLaren, for God’s sake. I think she’s crazy, Evan.”
“Who?” Evan said.
Karla lay down flat in the bed and closed her eyes. “I think I’m going to pretend to go to sleep now. I might even sleep. Go get me the papers.”
“If you really do go to sleep and something startles you, you’re going to get found out,” Evan said.
But Karla was asleep again, already. It was one of the ways Evan could tell that she was still in very bad shape. One minute she would be sitting up, bright-eyed and energetic. The next minute her eyes would be closed and she would be out, just gone, lost to the world. There were big dark circles under her eyes too, and her skin was too white. Evan thought that as soon as she ate those French fries, she was going to heave them right back up again, but he also thought it was useless to argue with a woman who could fall fast asleep in the middle of your peroration.
Now it was eleven o’clock, hours later, and Evan was back. He had the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Star and all three New York papers spread out across the foot of Karla’s bed. He had the door to Karla’s room firmly shut, but not locked, because there was no way to lock the room doors on this floor from the inside. This was, after all, supposed to be an adjunct to the intensive care unit. Karla was sitting up in bed, sucking on long strands of French fries as she went through one paper after the other. Evan had gotten the French fries by pleading with a motherly-looking woman who served as day manager for the McDonald’s in Liberty Square. He had had to give Karla an imaginary baby that he was the imaginary father of, but he had done what he set out to do, and that was the main thing. That, Evan Walsh thought, was the entire point of his life.
Outside, the promise of a storm had turned into a real one, thunder and lightning, wind and darkness. The hospital room was air-conditioned, so the window was shut, but the shade was up. It could have been the middle of the night out there. Evan wouldn’t have believed that there were so many trees in the middle of Philadelphia. He’d never noticed them until they started blowing around like that.
Karla paged past a full-page department store ad featuring a bride in the world’s most elaborate bridal train and settled on the continuance of a story she had started to read on page one.
“None of these is saying anything,” she said. “There isn’t any real news at all. I wish I’d been able to talk to Liza before she died.”
Evan hadn’t wanted to tell Karla about Liza. He had thought the news might traumatize her. That would be all he needed. Karla back in her coma. Karla sick unto death. Everything his fault. He had no idea if bad news could put a coma patient back into a coma. He had no idea it would be so hard to keep things from Karla. He hadn’t realized how it would be with the nurses either. They talked a convincing line about how any coma patient might actually be conscious under the veil of unconsciousness, but they said things in the sickroom as if they were dealing with a deaf-mute. Karla seemed to have heard all about Liza Verity before she ever woke up.
“Is the television news any better?” she asked now. “This stuff is really awful. Nobody is saying anything about anything.”
“I think that’s deliberate,” Evan told her. “I think the police don’t want the public to know exactly what’s going on. Because it might jeopardize their case, you know.”
“You watch much too much American television. What about this Gregor Demarkian person? You met him.”
“Oh, yes.”
“And? What was he like? If you got him over here and I talked to him, would he insist on telling everybody on earth that I was awake?”
“Karla, I think you should tell everybody on earth that you’re awake. You’re not going to be able to keep this up much longer. You have to realize that. Every time a nurse comes in here and you play dead, I cringe. You’re not any good at it.”
“Every time a nurse comes in here and I’ve got my eyes closed, all I want to do is laugh.” Karla sighed. “I wish these papers were more informative. I wish I knew what to do.”
“Fess up,” Evan said.
“I wish Liza were still around to talk to. Do you know, I was thinking about it. If I’d known Liza was available and I had gotten in touch with her before the reception, then the reception would never have happened, and—”
“Shh,” Evan said.
Karla got immediately quiet. They could both hear sounds in the hallway, big booming voices, male and unmedical. Karla pushed the papers off the bed and lay down again. The little white bag of McDonald’s French fries landed on the pillow next to her chin and she shoved it into the air in the direction of Evan, anything at all in order to get rid of it. Evan grabbed the bag of French fries and stuffed it into the pocket of his jacket. Then he bent over and started taking sections of newspapers off the floor.
By the time the door opened, seconds later, Karla Parrish was completely still. Evan tried to see signs of incipient laughter in her face, but he couldn’t. She was made of stone. One of the nurses he knew well, a very young Latino girl named Carmencita Gonzalez, ushered Mr. John Jackman and Mr. Gregor Demarkian into the room.
“Hello, Evan,” Carmencita said. “There, you see it,” she told the two other men. “Just the way she’s been for days now. As far as I know, her vital signs are good, and that tells us nothing at all. Unless Evan has seen something the staff of the hospital hasn’t.”
“Me?” Evan said. “No. I wouldn’t know what to look for.”
“Speech would be a good sign,” Carmencita said.
Gregor Demarkian walked over to the bed and looked into Karla’s face. Evan shifted nervously back and forth on the balls of his feet. Demarkian was supposed to be a great detective. Surely, at this close range, he would be able to tell that Karla was faking.
He wasn’t able to tell. He backed away from the bed. Evan tried hard not to be too obvious about heaving a great big sigh of relief.
“I know I should know better,” Gregor Demarkian said, “but I’m always looking for the Gordian knot solution.”
“What’s a Gordian knot solution?” Evan asked.
“Alexander the Great,” Gregor said. “He’s supposed to have gotten to the gates of this city nobody had ever been able to conquer because they were held shut by a thick rope tied in a knot so intricate nobody had ever been able to untie it. So Alexander got out his sword and hacked the thing to shreds.”
“Smart man,” Evan said.
“He was a boy, really,” Gregor Demarkian said. “He was only twenty-six on the day that he died.”
“Forget Alexander the Great,” John Jackman said. “What are we going to do now?”
“We’re going to go visit Julianne Corbett,” Gregor said. “That’s all we can do. She’s the only link left.”
“Maybe we ought to do something about putting guards around her,” John Jackman said. “We don’t want somebody blowing her to kingdom come and doing God only knows what to the image of law enforcement in the city of Philadelphia.”
“Well, we at least ought to go see her. Although I think she’s told us all she really can, under the circumstances. It’s worth one last try.”
“And if it doesn’t work? Then what?”
Karla’s body shifted on the bed. Carmencita was instantly alert. She hurried to Karla’s side and peered down into her face. Then she got out her tiny flashlight and started poking at Karla’s eyes. Evan thought he was going to faint.
“That’s interesting,” Carmencita said.
“What?”
It was Gregor Demarkian who said “what,” but Jackman got to the bedside before him. Evan backed away a little and winced. Karla wasn’t perfectly still anymore. Something odd seemed to be happening to her chest. It was hitching and heaving at uncertain intervals, and the rest of her body seemed to shudder.
Carmencita leaned forward and hit the emergency light. “Get out of the way,” she told Jackman and Demarkian. “This may be a seizure. I need room to work.”
Seizure? Evan felt suddenly sick. It was his fault. Of course it was. He should never have gotten her those French fries.
At just that moment Karla’s eyes flew open and she sat straight up in bed. She looked wild—and she definitely looked green—but she didn’t look as if she was having a seizure.
“Oh, shit,” she said in a perfectly clear voice.
Then she threw up all over Carmencita Gonzalez’s bright white uniform.