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CHAPTER 36

THE FACES WERE BLURRY, HALOED IN HAZE I BLINKED and squinted They renized soh, broad forehead Art’s dwindling hairline and growing paunch Jim O’Conner’s bantam-rooster stance and Waylon’s iance

“Are you the five people I meet in heaven?” The words came out in a dry croak, as if a raven had spoken theuess not,” I rasped,

“since I see Grease there in the back” The faces shter

So-I closed et the in a recliner beside the bed Sleeping seeain

WHEN I AWOKE, daylight was strea rusty daggers into s “Ow!” I said “If that’s not prohibited by the Geneva Convention, it ought to be”

“You think it hurts now,” she said, “wait till the pain meds wear off”

“This is the feel-good version?”

“’Fraid so Hip replacement’s a bitch”

“Somebody replaced my hip?”

“See to do,” she said, “since somebody shot the old one to s” She paused “Actually, with that hole in your chest, you’re lucky they were able to save your life A couple more minutes and you’d have bled out” She lifted a clipboard from the foot of the bed and checked the chart “You were five pints lohen you got here,” she said

“That’s pretty far down on the dipstick,” I said “How’d I get here? And where is ‘here’ anyhow?”

She smiled “UT Hospital, Dr Brockton,” she said “You could look out theand see the Body Farm if you weren’t strapped to the bed”

I glanced down My arms were suspended by a complicated system of wires and pulleys, and instead of hands, I saw a pair of white paws floating several inches above the sheet “What day is it? How long have I been here? What’s wrong with my hands?”

“Wednesday You caot second-and third-degree burns on your hands and arms, but you’ll be fine ‘The Forensic Phoenix,’ the News Sentinel’s calling you Your lawyer friend just donated a million dollars to UT in your honor, and you not even dead You’ve been quite the story”

“You want to tell it?”

“You ready to hear it?”

“Depends,” I said “Is it a happy ending or a sad ending?”

“For you, fairly happy, considering But not for everybody Hold on I’ you”

She hung the clipboard back on the foot of the bed and whisked out the door Jied his uniform in a week