Who Killed Jenny Schecter? Ch. 32

***

After she drove home Carmen spent nearly three hours on the phone, talking to Alice, Kit, Helena, and Tina and Bette in New York, and telling them everything that had happened and everything about Shane's condition and prognosis. She called her mom to put her mind at ease. There were many tears, especially from Alice, whose role in everything had been so central. Alice insisted she'd come to San Francisco from Humboldt the minute they let her out, and since Carmen insisted Alice at least stay with her rather than stay at a hotel. Kit and Helena both vowed to come up as soon as possible.

Carmen spent most of the rest of that day and all of the next being interviewed by a succession of police, including Marybeth and Jack, who'd hurried up as soon as the learned what had happened. She no sooner got done with the police when Lauren's parents and brother and sister arrived. After introducing herself, Carmen had to explain toi them everything all over again from the very beginning.

On the second morning after her all-night surgery, they stopped the coma medication, removed the cooling system and began to warm up Shane's body. By late afternoon she was back up to normal temperature, although she was still on the ventilator and still in the coma. The next day they replaced the bone in her head and sewed her up. Carmen had stayed in the waiting room, and about seven that evening they let Carmen gown up and go into Shane's ICU unit for the first time. Dr. Hopkinson, a nurse and a tech were in the room, but stepped to the other side of the room to give Carmen a small bit of privacy. Kit, who had just arrived from LA, peered in the window.

Carmen gently picked up Shane's limp hand, mindful of the IV tubes in her arms.

"Hey, baby, I'm here," she said. "Nobody knows if you can hear me, but I just know that you can, okay? And I just wanted you to know I'm here, and I'm not gonna leave. I'm gonna be here every single day, all day, all night, until you wake up. So I just wanted you to know that, okay? Marybeth is getting the paperwork, and she's gonna go up to Humboldt and get Alice out of prison. Kit just got here a little while ago, too, and wanted me to tell you hello and say how much she loves you. And I talked to Bette and Tina in New York, and they said to tell you how much they love you, too, and they both said to tell you little Angelica is doing great and wanted to say hello and tell Auntie Shane to hurry up and get all better. It's hard to believe how big she's getting, you know? Anyway, I talked to her for a minute, too, and she's going to draw a special giant-size get-well card and send it to you, so you need to be awake and alert when it gets here, and that's an order from your niece Angelica, so you just better listen up and do it. Okay, they're looking at me and my time's up right now, but I'll be here and I'll come talk to you again as soon as they let me. Okay, I gotta go."

Carmen choked up as she said these last words, and tears ran from her eyes down into her surgical mask. She leaned over carefully and kissed the back of Shane's hand through the mask, and hurried to leave the room. The moment she got outside Kit took her in her arms and rocked her while she sobbed.

***

Carmen knocked quietly on the door jamb. The bandaged figure in the bed was wired up but the oxygen mask had come off and she seemed to be breathing room air. She was hooked up to IV bags running to her left arm, and a big monitor was beeping and showing waves of heart rhythms and other important numbers. Her right arm was covered from fingertips to elbow in what looked like a massive cast supported by a sling wired to the ceiling. Lauren Hancock didn't move her head, but she could see Carmen standing in the doorway. She weakly lifted her left hand and waved her in.

"Hey," Carmen said. "They said I could have a few minutes. I just wanted you to know I've stopped by a few times a day every day to see how you're coming along. Today's the first day they'd let me talk to you. Boy, you had a lot of people worried about you."

"So they tell me," Lauren said. Her voice was raspy and weak.

"But the good news is they say you'll make a full recovery. You lost a lot of blood, but they put most of it back, plus some other fluids and stuff, too, so that's good. I donated a pint of blood myself, and if we're a match, I might be inside you right now."

"You wish."

Carmen laughed. "You don't?"

"I'd have picked a different method," Lauren said. "They said you saved my life."

"Well, I don't know, I just did what had to be done, no heroics. There was a hole in the dyke and I just put my finger in."

"Not like it was your first time."

"First dyke, no. First gunshot wound, yes."

Lauren laughed and coughed. "Don't make me laugh, I'm not sure I'm allowed to laugh yet, it makes my chest hurt. But I wanted to say thanks."

"Hey, DJ La Pica is a full-service entertainment experience. Weddings, bar mitzvahs, quincineras, shootings, homicide investigations, life-saving, blood donations, you name it, we do it all."

"How's Shane? They told me she's in a coma."

"Yeah, she always was a heavy sleeper. All the machines they hooked up to her brain seem normal, which is a sentence about Shane I never thought would come out of my mouth. The brain swelling has been controlled and is coming down. But the short answer is she's alive, but that's all we know."

"I'm so sorry."

"I know. Me, too. And about you, too."

"They tell me Shane got him. I heard the gun go off."

"Yes, she did. She grabbed the gun and shot him just when he hit her with the bat. She jumped in front of him to stop him shooting me like he did you. He died on the operating table here. He was in the room next to you. I gotta tell you, the ER was really humming that night, with all three of you in there. I never saw so many doctors and nurses yelling out orders and people running in and out. They saved two out of three, and far as I'm concerned they got the right two, and tough shit about the third one. Good riddance."

"Guess the cops must have interviewed you all night long. Marybeth give you the third degree? Beat you with a rubber hose?"

"All the next day, and the day after. Everybody was here, starting with Marybeth. Your county sheriff was here, that guy Jack from Homicide, and some A.I.D. types and some sort of shooting team, and a shooting team from the locals. I had to start from the very beginning with all of them, because only Marybeth and Jack knew the background. Jenny's murder and Alice's confession, then Max's murder and the private eye guy's suspicious drowning, the whole story."

"What did Marybeth say? She in trouble?"

"Oh, no, she did great. First, she took responsibility for assigning you to the case. Gabe was considered a missing person, and Max was, too, before him. And the private eye and the boat captain really were missing persons cases, in a way, just in a foreign country. I think they all knew better, but they were willing to let Marybeth float on it. Anyway, remember when she called Jack and he let her run with the case? He backed her up."

"Okay, good to know."

"Another thing you need to know."

"What's that?"

"You're getting some kind of citation or medal or something."

"What, for getting shot?"

"Yeah, go figure. I only overheard some talk in the hallway, but it's above my pay grade--"

"Everything's above your pay grade when you aren't on the payroll."

"Picky, picky. Anyway, you are being credited with solving two homicides here and two in Mexico, all the while getting an innocent person out of jail."

"I'm sure I'll have to go over everything, too, when I get a little better."

"Guess so, but I don't think there's any urgency now. Marybeth is going up to Humboldt with the paperwork and get Alice turned loose on the world. She's going to stay at my place, and I'm sure she'll be here in a day or so."

Lauren laughed. "Oh, shit, we're in for it now."

"Yep. Hey, I've met your parents, your sister and her husband, and one of your brothers. Everybody's been coming and going, and we've been talking in the waiting room, and I had to tell them the full story, too, what happened and why and how and who Jenny was and Alice, and Shane and me. I tell you, I've got the story down pat. And they're all out-of-towners, too, so I'm also their local guide person and authority on where to go and where to eat in San Francisco, like that's a big mystery. We all went out to dinner on Fisherman's Wharf. They're great people, and they love you."

"Yes, they are. They haven't quite figured out what to think about my sexuality and orientation thing, but they're OK with it. Kind of like your family, I guess."

"Yeah, I guess we're hard for the straight world to figure out, although I could never figure out why. I mean, who doesn't like pussy, you know? I know I certainly do."

Lauren laughed. "We're hard to figure out with each other, sometimes."

"Sometimes."

"Like us."

"Like us."

"If there is an us. Is there an us?"

Carmen sighed. "To tell you the truth, I just don't know. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought about it. About us. About ... maybe. Pretty sure you have, too."

"It's crossed my mind a couple of times. But police brass frown on cops sleeping with their partners, and you were kinda my unofficial, unbadged partner. Unprofessional. Marybeth would have had a cow."

"This is the first time we've ever talked about it, out in the open."

"Our timing is pretty lousy, though. Me shot up and hooked up to machinery for the foreseeable future. You still in love with Shane, who is hooked up to machinery also for the foreseeable future. You in San Francisco and going away to sea for big stretches of time. Me and Shane going back to LA, sooner or later."

"I'm not still in love with Shane."

"Oh, bullshit."

"It's ... complicated."

"Right. Because if it wasn't complicated, you and me, we'd have been a thing by now."

"I know." Carmen hesitated. "This may be a really bad time to mention it, but somebody else stopped by. A woman named Caroline. Said she came up from LA when she heard the news."

"Yeah. Caroline. A blast from the past. One of those exes who become friends, sort of."

"Yeah, I know a few of those myself. At any rate, she was very concerned, almost in tears. And it was, like the second day, and we still didn't know if you were going to make it or not. She gave me her e-mail address and I've been keeping her updated."

"Good, thanks. I'll e-mail her myself, one of these days."

A nurse stuck her head in the door. "Time's up, Miss Morales. Lauren needs her meds and a wash-up."

"Yeah, I thought she was getting kinda stinky," Carmen said. The nurse laughed and left.

"Maybe one day you'll get a turn in my bathtub," Lauren said.

"I've been working on that fantasy myself," Carmen laughed. "Making you stinky, then cleaning you up. I think I better leave now, I have to go masturbate."

Lauren laughed. "Come back any time," she said, waving weakly. "Say hello to Mr. Hitachi for me."

"Count on it," Carmen said at the door.