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  Meanwhile Pike asked Heather for her number, pointing out that he’d probably be around for a couple more days, at least that was the plan . . . and Heather gave him a coy smile and said, “You never know,” and she gave it to him and found her girlfriend and Pike figured that might be that.

  The urgent care was only a few blocks away and they were perfectly accommodating--right up to actually getting Eva seen by a doctor. There seemed to be only one guy on duty tonight, an older fellow, and you could hear him taking his time with the patients ahead of Eva--thorough, but Pike thinking come on.

  Eva was trying to keep it light, making small talk, clearly embarrassed by dragging everyone here but at the same time she looked increasingly in pain, and finally they brought her back and cleaned the wound and stitched her up, and they gave her a prescription and told her to keep an eye on it, that it may be an uncomfortable couple days, and there you were.

  “I never asked,” Pike said when they were back outside, “but where’re you all staying? I mean you’re not, like, sleeping in the car, right?”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “Are we good?”

  Dave took a second too long and said, “Nah, we got it handled, thanks for asking.”

  “Okay, no you don’t then,” Pike said, looking at Jack and Andrea. You couldn’t blame Dave and Eva, Pike had dangled the invitation back then and they took him up on it spur of the moment--meaning go for it, have a little adventure and just wing it--including the accommodations part--or even stay out all night, which is how Pike could see himself maybe handling it too, if he was in their shoes.

  Andrea was already on the phone to Lucy, Pike thinking dang, isn’t that a little late to be bothering her, but admittedly Lucy was gritty. Andrea hung up and said, “We have it covered,” and that was enough, they all caravaned it back up to Anthem and Lucy greeted Eva with a big smile and had a cup of hot tea brewing and some sweet biscuits warming, and Eva thanked her profusely but Lucy cut her off with a smile, as all in a day’s work.

  So Andrea and Eva stayed there, and Pike, Jack and Dave hoofed it back over to Mitch’s--and unlike Lucy, Mitch was in a crabby mood after being woken up, but if he noticed Dave he didn’t say anything and he went back to bed pretty quick, and Pike gave Dave the couch and unfortunately ended up on the floor next to Jack.

  But they were all pretty beat and everyone slept solid until Mitch’s phone rang at 4:30 in the morning.

  Mitch came out of the bedroom rubbing his eyes. “That was Lucy,” he said. “You dropped someone over there? It sounds like you did. Anyhow, she’s having a reaction, Lucy says, to an injury.”

  Everyone sat up straight and Jack said, “Reaction . . . how? What’d they say?”

  “It was unclear. Just that Lucy’s taking her in.”

  “Well, where?” Dave said, and they all scrambled to their feet and Pike made a quick introduction, and Mitch shook hands with Dave and said, “Not sure, they were in the car, Lucy was driving her. They said they were going to call it in.”

  Pike didn’t like the sound of this--call what in? Like a 911 kind of call, we’re talking?

  Dave was surely thinking the same thing, his eyes were wide, and Mitch picked up on it and said, “Gentleman. Let’s not blow anything out of proportion. When I had my case of shingles, I thought I was out of the woods, and then I had a middle-of-the night reaction as well . . . Your friend is in good hands.”

  “Yeah well, whatever,” Jack said, “but let’s please get a move on, wherever they’re headed to.”

  Mitch volunteered to drive and when they got to the Interstate he handed Pike the phone and Pike called Lucy, except she handed her phone to Andrea, who handed it to Eva, and Pike put Dave on.

  There were some, ‘Unh-huhs?’ and ‘Whens?’ and a couple ‘How does it feel nows?’ followed by a ‘Babe, don’t worry’, and Dave hung up.

  “What?” Jack said. “The pain acting up bad?”

  “Yeah, and she feels like she has a fever,” Dave said, and to Mitch: “They told them to go to Horizon Medical.”

  “Got it, north Phoenix,” Mitch said, stepping on it a bit, which made Pike nervous, on top of the fever business--if Mitch was reacting now as well--and no one said much for the half hour it took and they pulled into the ER parking lot, pretty empty right now, little bit of sun coming up, and Pike recognized Lucy’s older green Volvo, and they all went charging in.

  The desk attendant said it would be a couple minutes. They had Eva in an examining cubicle with sliding curtains and finally the doctor came out, a friendly young guy with a southern accent, and he informed Dave and Jack and Pike and Mitch that Eva’s wound has contracted a bit of an infection, and thus the corresponding fever--perfectly normal, under the circumstances--and that he administered some intravenous antibiotics, and she should be good to go . . . except that for observational purposes they wanted to admit her for 24 hours.

  Lucy and Andrea were waving from the cubicle as the doctor was talking, and you could see Eva try to smile and wave with her good hand--and soon there were two orderlies with a gurney and they were wheeling her upstairs.

  Mitch said he’d find a Starbucks and pick up a bunch of breakfast sandwiches, and he was taking orders, and Pike uncharacteristically had no appetite, except unfortunately--and alarmingly--he wasn’t surprised.

  Mitch came back and by this point the others were up in Eva’s room and Pike intercepted Mitch in the lobby and asked him to come outside after he delivered the food.

  Ten minutes went by and Mitch popped out of the elevator and said, “I didn’t go in, didn’t want to intrude. Lucy told me in the hall the hand had swelled up like a boxing glove before she called this morning, and that a specialist is on his way in now to have a look.”

  “That’s not good,” Pike said. “I don’t have a good feeling about this. What might happen.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Mitch said. “But sidetracking for a second--how’d you guys let that happen, anyway? Some old guy, they said, he skated over her?”

  “Not that old, but yeah, he should have been able to avoid it . . . It was like . . . it was meant to happen.”

  Mitch was distracted, watching an attractive woman wheel an elderly person out to a waiting car, and it took a moment to absorb what Pike said, but then he was in tune.

  “Don’t go there kid,” he said. “You’re overthinking. Not to mention overreacting.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Ooh boy. Meant to happen, how?”

  “Well what do you think? You know my deal. In fact you’re about my only confidante--which is sad.”

  Mitch looked hurt and Pike knew he went too far. “I didn’t mean it like that, it came out wrong, don’t take me so literal. Dang.”

  “Literal-ly,” Mitch said, but he’d perked up again. “Okay kid, you better run me through this, whatever’s on your mind.”

  And Pike was a little confused himself--what with Hannamaker on his plate still, and the slightly bizarre Dani stop on the way here, and Christmas in the mix--did he ever fill Mitch in, the Round 2 business with Chuck? Or even the Round 1?

  “You got me mixed up,” Pike said, “meaning between what’s on my mind, normal, and what found its way onto my mind.”

  “Ooh boy,” Mitch said.

  “Lot of details, not worth going into, and you’re liable to challenge me on some of them, or worse, ask a bunch of questions.”

  “Fine, I get it.”

  “Anyhow. Cutting to the chase--Eva and Dave aren’t supposed to be here.”

  Mitch was absorbing this. “I see . . . and if I might ask, they’re not supposed to be here, because . . .”

  “Because of me, what did you think I was getting at? You mean like Jack met ‘em in line at a Taco Bell, in Needles for example on the way here? That what you were expecting?”

  “Probably not, no,” Mitch said.

  “They bailed me out twice in Idaho,” Pike said. “Can’t remember if it was the first or second incarnation, but so
mewhere in there I invited them here for Christmas . . . Either way, I was already here, when I invited them, otherwise I wouldn’t know I’d be here.”

  This would have sounded bizarre to an innocent bystander overhearing the conversation--in fact they might have thought Pike had mental health issues--but Mitch understood the essentials. “You’re saying,” he said, “you were busy trying to correct something . . .”

  “Yeah. Correct it, and then reverse the correction.”

  “And it had nothing to do with Dave and Eva . . .” Mitch was rubbing his chin, putting it together.

  “And this is a freaking bi-product,” Pike said. “It’s going to get worse.”

  “Eva, you’re referring to. She’s going to get worse? . . . I have to tell you, I think she’s in good hands.” Mitch pointed upstairs. “I’ll admit, if Lucy hadn’t reacted as she did, in timely fashion, there could have been a bit of a crisis for your friend.”

  “Come on man, don’t fight me here, please? I’m getting a major headache, and I’m not sure what to do about it.”

  “Take an Advil. I have some in the glove compartment.”

  “Not the headache. The hand. Eva’s predicament. I’ll say it again, I have a negative feeling here.”

  Jack and Andrea came out of the elevator with Lucy.

  Andrea said, “She sleeping, she seems comfortable. Dave’s with her.”

  “In that case,” Mitch said, “let me take you all out for a real breakfast. I know the place. Nothing like good home cooking to recharge the batteries. Not to mention take the stress level down a couple notches.”

  Everyone said that sounded good, and Mitch put his arm around Lucy and thanked her for having such an alert bedside manner.

  Everyone except Pike. But he followed them out of the hospital lobby, got in someone’s car and went along.

  Chapter 2

  “See now, these type situations,” Mitch was saying, in Joe’s Crabshack Diner . . . the whole thing out of whack for North Phoenix--the name, the fact that they were all eating fish and chips at 9:30 in the morning, and worse, that Mitch was holding court, la-di-da, as though nothing had happened.

  “Please continue,” Lucy said.

  Pike thought of something else, totally irrelevant at the moment--but that at some point he’d speak to Lucy about whatever supposed UFO incident she witnessed as a child in 1956, since it was shaping up more and more like that business was having a profound effect on his life. In fact dominating it.

  Lucy was a sweet gal, that’s for sure, and it was a good bet she was harboring some of her own secrets as a result of that day.

  It wasn’t like they were tied together, the two of them--not quite--but you’d be an idiot to think there wasn’t any connection.

  Mitch swallowed, dabbed his mouth with a napkin, unfortunately missing some tartar sauce. He said, “Point being, a hospital visit--particularly an unintended one--it can be nerve-wracking, but that wears off quickly. I had to drive my sister once. I was 17, just got my license, my parents were out, and my little sister, we had a swing-set in the backyard, and she cracks a tooth.”

  Pike blocked it out from there, Mitch delusional if he’s trying to compare that (or his early shingles story) to this, Eva’s plight currently. Fine, the guy’s trying to relax everyone, that’s part of it, but it wasn’t working. In fact now Andrea, Jack and Lucy were re-focused on Eva and asking questions and not convinced at all by Mitch trying to put it in perspective.

  “What’s the next step, you think?” Jack said.

  “Well,” Andrea said, “don’t they simply wait for the antibiotics to take effect? Re-evaluate then?”

  Pike wasn’t going to add anything, to scare the daylights out of anyone, but dang, you worried what happens if they don’t take effect?

  You didn’t want to go there, but he couldn’t help thinking about a guy on the LA Clippers a couple years ago--it was in the news--they’re playing on the road at Philadelphia and mid-3rd quarter there’s a collision under the basket, and the guy gets gashed on the shoulder by a tooth of a Philly player.

  Not a big deal--at first--but by the time they’re showered and on the team bus headed to the airport the guy’s arm is a mess, and they get him on a private jet and fly him back to LA, and the son of a gun--great athlete and physical specimen, right in his prime--ends up in intensive care . . . and it’s touch and go for a week whether he’s going to lose the dang arm.

  The guy pulled through and is back playing ball but it was a heckuva scare. They named the thing, a long medical word that ended with orosis . . . one of those. Pike could relate better to the rag papers on the racks when you checked out of Safeway, which had occasional photos of people who were being hammered by flesh-eating bacteria . . . and when you thought about it, an ice-skate blade, which had picked up God knows what before it ran over Eva, could do the same thing. Still, it would be a freak occurrence for sure, but common sense told you it could work that way.

  Especially, when the poor girl who got run over . . . wasn’t supposed to BE here.

  Pike hadn’t done a whole lot of travelling--the window for this stuff had been relatively short--but he’d experienced enough weird pieces of incidents to know that when something is ‘abnormally influenced’ to start with--that all bets are off.

  ***

  They went for ice cream, not your ordinary after-breakfast deal, but without mentioning that fact, everyone was happy to kill time.

  Lucy and Andrea were saying, maybe they could bring something back to the room for Dave--and maybe even Eva--that the place had a slow-melt container for, such as an ice cream log cake?

  Mitch liked the idea and pulled out another 20 bucks--one thing you had to admit, the guy was generous--and Lucy and Andrea took a while and picked something out, and they even got a get-well message squirted on it by the ice cream scooper.

  It was a nice gesture and they got back in the cars, Pike with Mitch, and Jack and Andrea with Lucy, and everyone was full and relatively upbeat, and Pike started thinking maybe he’d been jumping the gun after all, his brain getting illogically carried away with worst case scenarios.

  Except right about then his phone buzzed and it was a simple text from Dave:

  a little worse here

  Pike said to Mitch, “Let’s don’t fool around please. I’m not getting the greatest updates, all of a sudden.”

  Mitch said, “Real updates? Or . . . you know.”

  “Come on,” Pike said, and Mitch got the picture and did hightail it back to the hospital pretty quick, Pike at one point surprised Mitch didn’t get a ticket, when it was questionable if he made a yellow light, and there was a cop sitting at the intersection.

  The nurse when you came off the elevator, who likely had been pretty casual the first time, when they admitted Eva and things seemed routine, looked tense now as they passed her station--not a good omen.

  There were five medical people in Eva’s room. Two in blue, who you figured were nurses or assistants, and three in white cotton coats, who unfortunately were full-fledged doctors.

  Dave was outside the doorway giving the medical people space, and the guy looked much worse than two hours ago, almost like he was the patient.

  The discussion in the room was serious and subdued, but you could pick up bits and pieces. The gist of it, the doctors’ conclusion, was they were going to perform surgery ASAP to cut away some flesh . . . one of them explaining to Eva, who was sedated but awake, that they’d remove as little as possible to contain the infection, and to not worry, she’d be fine.

  Just a couple minutes after that, a crew appeared with all kinds of equipment, and they whisked Eva out of there.

  Chapter 3

  There was an open plaza across the street from the hospital, and not knowing what else to do they all went over there. Now you had the brutal waiting period, everything uncharted and unknown.

  Lucy was sitting with Dave at a picnic table, reassuring him, and she patted his hand occasionally. Dave
was a mess.

  Jack and Andrea were laying on the grass, going on and off their phones, then staring into space, not saying much.

  Mitch and Pike were talking privately on a far bench.

  Pike said, “I have to go back there. You know it and I know it.”

  “Okay take it easy my friend,” Mitch said. “With all due respect--and mind you, I’m not entirely disagreeing with you--but don’t you think you’re jumping the gun? Just a hair?”

  “No,” Pike said.

  “Oh,” Mitch said. He cleared his throat. “Well if you have to . . . how would you go about it?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you . . . You’ve always been the big shot with the answers. The . . . suggested Rules modifications . . . the pre-1956 business . . . those are for starters . . . So I’m not saying big-shot as a negative, necessarily.”

  “Speaking of which,” Mitch said, “not sure I confirmed this with you--did you ever try it . . . post 1956?”

  “No. I’ve been tempted . . . But all that energy.”

  “Wasted, you’re implying.”

  Pike said, “Whatever. Probably. I mean . . . no other part of my situation makes any sense--and you know exactly what I’m talking about--the silver mine, the lab, the preposterous dental business--so why should 1956 mean anything.”

  “But?”

  “So. Reversing it. Might as well lump 1956 in there, since it’s all a joke.”

  Pike’s voice cracked slightly and Mitch was silent for a minute. It was easy to lose sight of the strain Pike--or anyone--would be under, since the ill-fated football game incident last fall. The kid had adjusted obviously, had done plenty of good in the world--and that would be an understatement--but there had to be negative moments, where he’d be logically frustrated . . . the What’s Happening To Me? part.

  Mitch said, quieter, “Look son. You don’t have to do anything. Let’s get that straight right now.” Nodding at Pike, meeting his eyes.

  “I know,” Pike said. “And I keep apologizing, for taking cheap shots at you. I know you’re in my corner.”