“She’s going to be okay. She’s going to be okay.”
Kendall’s father crouched by the side of her hospital bed, clutching her hand, his body shaking with tears of relief. Repeating the words as if saying them out loud, over and over, would make the physician’s promise come true faster. The doctor smiled, then gave the nurse additional instructions before leaving the room.
Surrounded by the hospital monitors, Kendall looked tiny and young and vulnerable. I wondered if her father was flashing on images of her as a young girl, a girl ignorant of drugs and addiction and angst. I saw that innocence in her face as she lay there, her body flushing itself of the drugs she’d been given, and felt hope. Hope for her future and hope for her relationship with her father.
Michael stood protectively by my side as we’d received the update on her prognosis, but he was strangely quiet. I could see the worry in his eyes when he looked at me.
“Well, Kellner, you did it again. Another bad guy off the streets,” Karl Janek said, joining us at the end of Kendall’s bed. “How’s the neck?” he asked, lifting back my hair to inspect the injury.
“Just bruised,” I said. “Good thing plastic was the first thing Lecaros could get his hands on.”
“Yep, that stretch probably saved your ass,” Janek said, and Michael tensed.
“You’ve got Lecaros and Wykell locked up by now, I assume,” I said. “What sob story are they giving you?”
“Please, Wykell is singing like a little girl. Guess the idea of being confined to a treatment room for ten to twenty ain’t sounding so good to him right now. The odd thing is, through it all, both of these assholes are spouting off their greatest hits as if it were some contest to see which of them is the most self-involved.”
“Unfortunately for them, malignant narcissism is not a legal defense,” I said. “And I wonder which expert witness Lecaros will want to testify at his trial.”
Janek laughed. “And even better, I personally got to haul in that little fuck Levi on smuggling charges. He’s been bringing in their ibogaine from Mexico for almost two years. Turns out Levi was deep in debt to his own dealer and shuffling the money he made from being a mule to pay it off before they whacked him.” Janek shook his head, a smug smile on his face. “We arrested two crazy-ass shrinks, a slime ball attorney, and a lowlife drug pusher. That’s a damn good day. You sure you don’t want a job on the force, Kellner? Cut out the middle man, so to speak?”
“I’m good.” I looked at Janek and laughed. It was the closest thing to a compliment I’d ever gotten from him. Janek winked and left the room.
As he left, Michael pulled me into his arms and held me as if he were afraid my legs would go out from under me again. We stood quietly, letting the adrenaline leave our bodies, watching Kendall, knowing that while her path forward with addiction was uncertain, she at least had a chance. And so did we.