whatever it was. They were combing the redwood forest. People claimed to have heard howling in the night.
Howling. Reuben remembered those gnashing growls and snarls, that savage torrent of sound when the beast had descended on the brothers, as though it could not kill in silence, as if the sounds were part and parcel of its lethal strength.
More medication. More painkillers. More antibiotics. Reuben lost track of the days.
Grace said she wondered if plastic surgery would even be necessary. "I mean this bite has healed remarkably. And I must say, the incision in your stomach is healing too."
"He ate all the right things growing up," said Celeste. "His mother is a brilliant doctor." She winked at Grace. It pleased Reuben so much that they liked each other.
"Yes, indeed, and she can cook!" said Grace. "But this is just marvelous." Gently her fingers moved through Reuben,s hair. Gingerly she touched the skin on his neck and then on his chest.
"What is it?" Reuben whispered.
"I don,t know," Grace said absently. "Let,s say you don,t need any vitamins through that IV."
Reuben,s dad sat in the corner of the hospital reading Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. Now and then he said something like, "You,re alive, son, that,s what matters."
Everything might be healing, but Reuben,s headache got worse. He was never fully asleep, only half asleep, and he overheard things he didn,t understand.
Grace talking somewhere, perhaps to another doctor. "I see changes, I mean, I know, this has nothing to do with the rabies virus, of course, we have no evidence he,s contracted it, but well, you,ll think I,m crazy but I could swear that his hair is thicker. You know, the bite marks, well, I know my son,s hair, and my son,s hair is thicker, and his eyes ..."
He meant to ask her, What are you talking about, but only thought about it dully with a multitude of other tormenting thoughts.
Reuben lay there speculating. If drugs could really numb your consciousness, they,d be a good thing. As it was, they slowed you down, confused you, kept you vulnerable to violent flashes of recall, and then agitated you and made you unsure of what you knew and didn,t know. Sounds startled him. Even smells woke him from his shallow uneasy sleep.
Fr. James rushed in a couple of times a day, always late for something back at his church, and with just enough time to tell Reuben he was obviously improving and looking better and better. But Reuben saw something in his brother,s face that was entirely new; a kind of fear. Jim had always been protective of his younger brother, but this was deeper. "I gotta say, though," said Jim, "you do look quite ruddy and robust for someone who,s been through all this."
Celeste did as much hands-on care as he would allow. She was amazingly capable. She fed him Diet Coke through a straw, adjusted his covers, wiped his face over and over, and helped him up for his required walk around the ward. She slipped out again and again to call the D.A.,s office, and then she,d be back assuring him he had nothing to worry about. She was efficient, matter of fact, and never got tired.
"The nurses have voted you the most handsome patient on the ward," she told him. "I don,t know what they,re giving you here, but I could swear your eyes are actually a deeper shade of blue."
"That,s impossible," he said. "Eyes don,t change color."
"Maybe drugs can change them," she said. She kept looking at him, not in his eyes, but at them. It made him slightly uneasy.
Speculation about the mysterious animal continued. Couldn,t Reuben remember anything else, asked his editor Billie Kale, the feminine genius behind the San Francisco Observer. She stood beside his bed.
"Honestly, no," Reuben said, pushing hard against the drugs to look and sound alert.
"So it wasn,t a mountain lion, you,re sure of that?"
"Billie, I saw nothing, I told you."
Billie was a short, rotund woman, with neat white hair and expensive clothes. Her husband, after a long career, had retired from the state senate and bankrolled the paper, giving Billie a second chance at a meaningful life. She was a terrific editor. She looked for an individual voice in each of her reporters. She fostered that voice. And she had liked Reuben from the start.
"I never saw the creature," said Reuben. "I heard it. I heard it and it sounded like a huge dog. I don,t know why it didn,t kill me. I don,t