Unsolved (Invisible #2) - James Patterson Page 0,39
at his eyes and mouth—he has a warm, pleasant face.
“Where you from?” he asks.
The question catches her off guard. “The, uh…Mid—Midwest,” she says.
“Yeah? Whereabouts?”
How to handle…“Do you mind if I run to the bathroom quick before our next patient?”
“Yeah, that’s fine. It’s just over there,” says Tom.
At lunchtime, they step outside onto a patio surrounded by shrubbery, the warm sun shining down. “Staff eats out here. So do some of the patients,” says Tom. “It’s kinda nice to interact on a less formal level. Not that any of this is formal.”
In the corner, a half a dozen men sit at a long table. Like the patients at A New Day, they range in age from mid-twenties to geriatric.
They are all listening to one man at the end of the table who’s holding court, gesturing with his hands and speaking with authority. Michelle can’t quite make out what he’s saying but she doesn’t need to. With his short, crisp sentences, his curt confidence, he oozes authority. Military, she thinks. He talks like her grandfather did.
“I wanted you to meet the lieutenant,” Tom says to her quietly, and she instantly knows he’s referring to that man. She notes a different tone to Tom’s voice, the casual whimsy replaced by a hint of caution. “Everyone calls him Lew. He’s fine, but he’s sort of a tough nut to crack. You see all his disciples over there.”
They slowly move toward the group. She sneaks a look at the lieutenant, wondering why she feels the need to be surreptitious about it. Everything seems different about this patient.
He’s in a wheelchair, an expensive model with a dark blue shroud, an American-flag decal on the leather armrest, a bumper sticker on the shroud that says RANGERS LEAD THE WAY.
His hair isn’t the standard crew cut, though. It’s shoulder-length and gray, pulled back into a ponytail. He is relatively young, probably late forties, his face slightly weathered.
Near his right eye, he has a prominent scar in the shape of a crescent moon.
“He was in some kind of elite Army Ranger unit,” whispers Tom. “Hard-core stuff. One of those explosives in Iraq blew up a jeep he was in, sent him a hundred feet in the air. He had all sorts of gear on, so the only wound he got was by his right eye, but the landing paralyzed him. Incomplete SCI. A T nine, I think.”
“Incomplete?” she asks. “Can he walk?”
Tom shrugs. “A little. He’s made great progress. And he can handle motor functions with his feet.”
They move closer and listen to the lieutenant talking.
“…just another way of breaking our spirit. Once we’re dependent, we’re always dependent,” the lieutenant is saying. “Welfare, Social Security—the most deviously unhealthy programs the government could have created. We are puppets awaiting the day—be it old age or unemployment or sickness—that the government will take care of us. The biggest mistake we ever made was promising—”
He notices Tom, stops talking.
Tom gives him a theatrical, overdone salute.
“Always with the jokes, Tommy,” says the lieutenant, the side of his mouth upturned. “And who might this young lady be?”
“Lieutenant, this is Michelle, your new physical therapist.”
“Call me Lew.” He turns in his wheelchair, using his joystick, so he is facing her. Whatever it is coming off him, it’s enough to kick her heart rate up a notch. “Let me guess—you’re a basketball player,” he says.
Michelle tries not to frown at the reference to her height; men always seem to go right to that.
“You’re gonna be nice to her, right, Lew?” Tom says.
He fixes his eyes on her. “Tommy, I’m sure Michelle is capable of speaking for herself.”
She feels a flutter in her heart and clears her throat. “Nice to meet you, Lew,” she says, surprised at the tremor in her voice.
“See?” Not taking his eyes off her but still talking to Tom. “I knew she could speak.”
“Lew is here midweek,” says Tom. “Most weekends, he’s traveling around the country as an activist and speaker.”
Michelle nods, but she’s wilting under the glare of this man, whose eyes have still not left her. She feels something creep up her spine.
Tom adds, “Yeah, Lew’s been to DC, Indianapolis, Atlanta, Charleston, Dallas. I think your last one was…New Orleans, right?”
Lew’s eyes don’t move from Michelle, but a half smile slightly alters his expression. “That’s right, Tom.”
“And you’re going to…where…Chicago next, you were saying before?”
For a moment, Lew doesn’t answer, probing her eyes to the point of discomfort. “Yes,” he finally says, “Chicago is next on my schedule.”