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Early the next morning, Gil was on his motorcycle headed east on Route 2, wary of predicted thunderstorms. The rising sun was occasionally right in his eyes, which annoyed him. He reminded himself that the sun wasn’t actually rising; the earth was spinning toward the east.
The scenery was beautiful as he rode along the Millers River, which looked like the ideal fly-fishing stream. It looked clean now, despite being terribly polluted when Gil was young.
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Gil looked up and saw two big brown eyes floating in the fog. A bright light hit his eyes. He heard beeping and mumbled voices. The fog quickly cleared, and he realized he was in a hospital bed. A woman with big brown eyes and brown skin said, “Don’t try to speak. You have a tube down your throat. You’ve been in an accident, but you’re going to be fine. We’ll remove your breathing tube in a few minutes.”
Gil fell back to sleep.
He woke up again, and a few minutes later, a young man came into the room and looked him over. The young man called a doctor, who turned out to be the woman with the big brown eyes. Everyone wore blue surgical masks.
“Hi, Mr. Novak. I’m Doctor McNaughton. I’m going to remove your breathing tube now. While I pull it out, I’d like you to cough.” She pulled, he coughed, he took a deep breath, it hurt.
“Hurt,” Gil croaked. Gil gestured for something to drink, so the nurse brought him a cup of water with a straw, which he sipped.
“I’ll adjust your pain meds in a minute. You are at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield. You were in a motorcycle accident. You have a chest injury, a broken left collarbone, two broken fingers on your left hand, and scrapes and bruises on your left hip and leg. Your helmet saved your life. You’re going to be fine, eventually. Do you have any questions for me?”
It took some effort, but after a few seconds Gil whispered, “Dr. McNaughton, you don’t look Irish.”
The doctor and the young man looked at each other and cracked up. “Now I’m sure you’re going to be okay.” She asked him some questions to assess his pain and told the nurse to give him some medicine.
After they left, Karen came in looking distraught. “This is all my fault, Gil. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have let you go alone. You could have been killed.”
He was drowsy. “What happened? Why your fault?” He fell asleep as she started to answer.
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Gil woke up a few times during the night as nurses came and went. When he woke up in the morning, his daughter Julia was there. “How are you feeling?” She looked shaken.
“I feel doped up. How are you? What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing playing detective? You could have been killed!”
“I don’t remember what happened. I could have been in an accident anywhere. I’m just helping the cops a little with a cold case.”
“The detective said it wasn’t an accident. She said someone stretched a rope across the road.”
Gil was shocked at first, but then he said. “If you’re catching flak, you know you’re over the target.”
“What’s that mean?”
Gil sucked some water from his straw and said, “During World War II, the Allies did constant bombing raids over Germany, but navigation equipment was rudimentary back then. It was often cloudy, and they couldn’t tell if they were over their targets. But they knew they were in the right place when they started catching antiaircraft fire—flak.”
“Huh. What’s all this about, anyway?”
“In the early nineties, the bones of a child were discovered in a cave up on Poet’s Seat Mountain. It turns out that when I was a teenager back in the early seventies, I saw that child with his family at that cave. I was able to provide a lead in this cold case. The police asked me to assist them because I speak hippie.”
“That sounds like the plot of a horror movie. Well, I think your detecting days are over.”
“How’s my bike?”
“I don’t know, you can’t ride it anyway!” Julia snapped. “The doctor says I might be able to take you home tomorrow if you’re stable for another day.”
“In the front left pocket of my jeans, wherever they are, is my hotel room key at the Hampton Inn. Go explain what happened to the hotel people, and you can stay there tonight. Thanks for coming. I think I need to take a nap.”