Chapter Twenty-One
Randy wasn’t entirely sure he had woken up. He couldn’t feel his body, yet he knew he was in bed. He opened his eyes and looked around the hospital room. He felt his ribs creaking as they rose and fell with his breath. His arms and legs were giving him no sensation whatsoever.
He wondered why he wasn’t panicked by what should have been terrifying. He was glad not to be. That would have made things a lot worse. He remembered being scared in the restaurant. He remembered the whole episode, and every word Sanantha and the paramedics had exchanged in the ambulance.
He also remembered feeling numb like this before, but he couldn’t place where. He felt like this numbness should be accompanied by a light-headed mental disconnect as well. Yeah, drunkenness. Maybe this was how he spent the four months of his missing memory. Drunk on Young Nae’s booze and unknowingly poisoned by Lo Cheung.
Being fully aware and numb like this was surreal. He felt like a brain in a jar. Completely alert yet unable to interact with the world. The only good part was he knew this wasn’t going to kill him, that he had been in this weird space before, and he was going to recover.
He saw Sanantha sleeping in a chair in the corner of the room. Obviously, she had stayed the night. That was really nice. How many shrinks would do that?
He couldn’t turn his head. His neck wasn’t stuck. It just didn’t respond. He could see the call button cord snaked down by his arm. He couldn’t feel his arm or hand. Good thing he didn’t need to use the buzzer.
He saw the two IVs, one in each forearm. He thought he heard an electric motor going somewhere in the room. That’s right, they were filtering his blood over charcoal to extract the poison.
He saw a TV mounted up on the wall and wished it was on. He would have used the buzzer to get a nurse to turn it on, if he could move his hand.
Morning light was just starting to peek through the drawn blinds, and he heard faint footfalls and voices out in the hall as the hospital floor awoke to the new day. The nurse would probably be in soon to check on him. He could somehow tell her to turn on the TV when she came.
He waited. No nurse. He waited. This was going to be a long day.
His thoughts wandered back to the blackness he felt before heading off to his fateful Japanese dinner. The anger and hurt of the affair gripped him again, despite his every conscious effort not to wallow in despair. It was just too new, too raw to set aside. The betrayal was so unexpected and had caught him so unprepared, he felt inundated, crushed. He looked over at Sanantha sleeping. Surely, she would help him out of this hole, when she woke up, and when he could move again to tell her about it.
He had plenty of other things to sort out, plenty of distractions to keep him away from that precipice. His life since he woke up had become more tangled every day. He added long term poisoning to the list of his trials. Did this change anything? Not really. Now they knew the mechanism used to wipe out his memory. The chi energy trap was still loaded to kill him if he did remember whatever dark secret was the trigger. He still had the pacemaker to catch him, he hoped, if he did spring the trap.
The one clear vision he had just before the heart attack struck, and probably the cause of the heart attack, was Cheri lying unconscious on a hospital bed, not mangled from a car wreck. It was also the one piece that did not fit any of the rest of the puzzle. Forbidden and unfitting—just the combination to fire up his scientific principles. One good piece of evidence that doesn’t fit the theory is all you need to go back and question the theory itself.
Cheri’s coworkers at UNESCO hadn’t heard of the car wreck either. They only knew about the snakebite.
If Cheri didn’t die in a car wreck, then why would Young Nae go to the trouble of making up such an elaborate story? Why indeed. Young Nae had lied about the snakebite in the worker’s village. Was that also part of his covering up his affair with Cheri?
Even accepting Young Nae as a liar up to no good didn’t explain all the facts.
Randy needed more facts. How to trigger more of the hidden memories? He stopped and considered that, pacemaker or not, that path was playing with fire.
Frustrated by the dead end, he took a labored breath to clear his head. He caught a strain of a song playing way off in the back of his mind and tried to identify it. He played the bar over a few times until he recognized it as Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. He wasn’t sure he knew all the lyrics.
“I’m just a poor boy from a poor family; He’s just a poor boy, from a poor family.
“Spare him his life for his monstrosity; Easy come, easy go. Will you let me go?
“Bismillah! No, we will not let you go.
“Let him go!
“Bismillah! We will not let you go.
“Let him go!
“Bismillah! We will not let you go.
“Let me go, oh, oh, oh, oh.
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no!
“Mama mia, Mama mia, Mama Mia, let me go.
“Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me; For me! For me!”
Persecution? Was he feeling persecuted to have thought of this song? Still, he marveled at how much sound the three band members generated in this song. He decided to let himself revel in it. Then the song shifted, from passive to aggressive. Great, now he was conjuring up revenge and escape fantasies. Why not?
“So you think you can leave me and spit in my eye? So you think you can do this and leave me to die?
“Oh, baby. Listen to me, baby; Just gotta get right, just gotta get right out of here.”
This didn’t feel right. He felt betrayed, and angry at Cheri and Young Nae. He was still sad for her death, and still confused by Young Nae’s cloak and dagger. The anger and hurt were again blotting out everything else. He knew he could not see clearly with so much blood in his eye. He could be staring straight at the answer and not see it. No, he could not afford to indulge his anger.
Sanantha could help talk him down. He wondered if just calming down would help. Lying there paralyzed, he wasn’t charged up with adrenaline. His thoughts were just crowded out. He had sought comfort in the Japanese food. That trip accidentally uncovered a big piece of the crime. Comfort still eluded him.
He recalled the Old Testament Psalm 23. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”
Could he trust God to lead him to the answers? Could he trust God to lead him to comfort? He thought through the litanies he grew up with, but had not thought about in many years. He remembered a quote from Jesus. “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”
Should he consider forgiving them the affair? They did try to hide it from him, so they were not out to harm him. Maybe Young Nae got in over his head and felt he needed to lie to protect Randy. He could certainly see the situation more objectively if he forgave them.
That was a huge stretch. It was all still too soon and too raw. He wasn’t anywhere near ready to take that high a road.
Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount came back him. “If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
Yeah. Way too soon.
As he lay there wrestling with his emotions, another song bubbled up from his subconscious.
“When I find myself in times of trouble; Mother Mary comes to me
“Speaking words of wisdom; Let it be
“And in my hour of darkness; She is standing right in front of me
“Speaking words of wisdom; Let it be
“Let it be, let it be
“Let it be, let it be
“Whisper words of wisdom; Let it be
“And when the night is cloudy; There is still a light that shines on me
“Shine until tomorrow; Let it be
“I wake up to the sound of music; Mother Mary comes to me
“Speaking words of wisdom; Let it be
“Let it be, let it be
“Let it be, let it be
there will be an answer; Let it be.”
* * * *
Sanantha was walking back to Randy’s room after getting a cup of coffee when she heard what sounded like a nurse having a conversation in the room.
“Well, you must be feeling better!”
Randy was holding his head up and tentatively turning it side to side. “Yeah,” he grunted. “Hurts a lot.”
“Most excellent!” Sanantha congratulated him, and then caught herself. “Not about the hurting part. We’ll have you up and about in no time.”
He tried to raise a hand off the bed. His voice was a hoarse whisper. “So stiff. Feels like splinters in my muscles.”
The nurse finished her notes to his chart and left.
Sanantha picked up the chart and looked at it. “Yes, and that’s on some pretty powerful pain meds. The poison upsets the sodium balance in the nerves. Your nerves and muscle fibers need to all reload. Go slow, but do try to keep moving. You’ll only get those kinks out by moving the muscles.”
He shot her a disappointed glare. “Feel like the Tin Man.”
She frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t get the reference.”
“Oz.”
“Oh, right. Well, I’m afraid there is no oil can to loosen you up. Just detox and PT. On the other hand, I imagine it feels good to be able to move again.”
He nodded, and winced. “Weird. Thoughts clear all day.”
“It’s three o’clock in the afternoon. You’ve had some quiet time to think. Anything you want to talk about?”
“Went to Jakarta to visit where Cheri worked. She and Young Nae were having an affair.”
She blinked involuntarily. “Someone told you that?”
“Figured it out. Wasn’t too hard.”
She frowned and blew out a breath. “That must have been hard to take.”
He averted his gaze. “Yeah.”
“So, you found this out—what—the day before yesterday?”
“I spent that night sitting in a strip club staring at a scotch, torn between how badly I felt and how much more scared I was of falling back into the drunken haze that started all this craziness. It was a horrible, sleepless night. Then I flew back yesterday.”
“Right, because you were still in Jakarta when I called you at seven in the morning. Oh. Sorry about that.” She was trying to make small talk as she gathered her thoughts. Having his wife cheat on him with his best friend was exactly the same scenario that drove Randolph’s father to suicide. Randolph could easily be at that same brink. “How has this discovery left you feeling about Cheri?”
“Betrayed, of course. Although I’m still confused enough about how she died that I’m not ready to write her epitaph yet.”
“How she died? Have you discovered something else?”
“Yes. Her coworkers thought she had died of the snakebite in January. They never heard of the car crash in February. I have recovered one image from my blank period. It was the image that tripped the heart attack trap. It didn’t make sense at the time, but now it fits. It was Cheri lying unconscious on a hospital bed, but with no car crash injuries.”
Sanantha’s eyebrows climbed up her forehead as she considered his words. “So, the whole car crash death is suspect? With it, Young Nae too?”
“Yeah. Ask me how I feel about Young Nae right now.” He grimaced as menacingly as he could, given the continuing partial paralysis in his face muscles.
“Fighting mad is a healthy reaction. I’m glad to see it.”
Randy blinked in surprise.
“What, you thought I was going to go all sweetness and light on you at a time like this? Someone is out to get you and your family. Me too, remember.”
“True. I am having a hard time getting past the betrayal to focus on the crime. All day today, every time I tried to sort through the clues, I kept falling back to the affair. It’s like I can’t even force myself to think about anything else.”
Sanantha nodded. “Not a surprise. That was a big shock, and it’s going to take time to process. You know I’m here to help with that. I’m also here to make sure all of this bad news doesn’t overwhelm you. I’m really glad to see you able to talk about the affair and the crimes. I wonder, though, if that’s just you hiding behind the intellectual puzzle. How are you coping?”
He frowned with his stiff face as he thought. “Frankly, better than I would have thought. I’ve been playing a lot of music in my head.”
“Pardon?”
“Classic rock and roll. It’s kind of my movie soundtrack of life. Playing music has always helped me focus and put things in perspective.”
“That’s good that you have that anchor. We all need something we can draw strength from, a safe place we can go. I don’t mind telling you I am greatly relieved.”
“Yeah, the 70’s and 80’s were good to me that way.”
“Good, because we have work to do. Someone mutilated and poisoned you to keep you quiet, and they tried to kill me. That someone is still out there and they will be back. They will not wait for you to learn to cope with the affair before they strike again. Whether it’s a high roller criminal like Lo Cheung, or your cheating partner Young Nae, we’ve got to figure this out. It can be figured out.” She added with some venom, “We are going to get your memories back. We are going to put an end to this.”
* * * *
Sanantha let herself into the dark beach house with Randy’s keys. She flipped on the light switch and was taken with the odd mix of smells: sea salt, coffee, beer, and sweat. So this was where Randolph had spent four months strung out on nerve toxins and alcohol. The scene of the crime, as it were. Well, at least one of the crimes.
She was looking forward to sleeping in a real bed. She had eaten at the hospital before she headed out, so she only paused in the open kitchen long enough to see where the coffee making supplies were for the morning.
Sanantha was pleased with how efficient Young Nae’s housekeeping staff was. She felt funny about sleeping in Randy’s bed, but the sheets were fresh, as were the towels in the bathroom.
She sat down on the tan leather couch and pulled her PDA out of her purse. The hospital had made her turn it off while she sat with Randy, since its radio could interfere with the medical equipment. It had been hours since she had checked her email, and she was sure her inbox was overflowing.
While she was deleting newsgroup updates and ads, she heard a buzzing coming from inside her purse. She snatched it up off the floor and fished through too many unnecessary things in the large bucket-like handbag until she found her phone, but it was too late. The voice mail message surprised her.
“This is Lo Cheung. My spies have seen a woman who fits Desiree Macklin’s description at Young Nae’s vacation house in the mountains near Ipoh. I’m investigating further. Thought you should know. Later!”
She frowned at the phone for a long moment, trying to decide what to make of this. Lo was apparently out of jail. He was clearly continuing his cover story of being victimized by Young Nae. Now he was adding things to the story that made no sense. A third woman? Who was she supposed to be? How was that supposed to convince her that Cheung wasn’t behind Randy’s poisoning?
She decided not to reply. If Lo did find something useful, he would call again. She closed the phone.