Soneji’s taunt echoed back to me after I’d gotten my coffee.
After several sips, I decided I had to assume Soneji was still dead. So I’d seen, what, a double? An impostor?
I supposed it was possible with plastic surgery, but the likeness had been so dead-on, from the thin reddish mustache to the wispy hair to the crazed, amused expression.
It was him, I thought. But how?
This doesn’t end here, Cross.
I saw Soneji so clearly then that I feared for my sanity.
This doesn’t end here, Cross.
I’m coming for you, even from the grave if I have to.
Chapter 6
“Alex?”
I startled, almost dropped my coffee, and saw Bree trotting down the hall toward me with a wary expression.
“He made it through the operation,” she said. “He’s in intensive care, and the doctor’s going to talk to Billie in a few moments.”
We both held Billie’s hands when Dr. Kalhorn finally emerged. He looked drained.
“How is he?” Billie asked, after introducing herself.
“Your husband’s a remarkable fighter,” Kalhorn said. “He died once on the table, but rallied. Besides the trauma of the bullet, there were bone and bullet fragments we had to deal with. Three quarters of an inch left and one of those fragments would have caught a major artery, and we’d be having a different conversation.”
“So he’s going to live?” Billie asked.
“I can’t promise you that,” Kalhorn said. “The next forty-eight to seventy-two hours will be the most critical time for him. He’s sustained a massive head injury, severe trauma to his upper-left temporal lobe. For now, we’re keeping him in a medically induced coma, and we will keep him that way until we see a significant drop in brain swelling.”
“If he comes out, what’s the prognosis, given the extent of the injury you saw?” I asked.
“I can’t tell you who he’ll be if and when he wakes up,” the neurosurgeon said. “That’s up to God.”
“Can we see him?” Bree asked.
“Give it a half hour,” Kalhorn said. “There’s a whirlwind around him at the moment. Lots of good people supporting him.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Billie said, trying not to cry again. “For saving him.”
“It was an honor,” Kalhorn said, patted her on the arm, and smiled at Bree and me before returning to the ICU.
“Damage to his upper-left temporal lobe,” Billie said.
“He’s alive,” I said. “Let’s keep focused on that. Anything else, we’ll deal with down the road.”
Bree held her hand and said, “Alex is right. We’ve prayed him through surgery, and now we’ll pray he wakes up.”
But Billie still appeared uncertain forty minutes later when we donned surgical masks, gloves, and smocks and entered the room where Sampson lay.
You could barely see the slits of his eyes for the swelling. His head was wrapped in a turban of gauze, and there were so many tubes going into him, and so many monitors and devices beeping and clicking around him, that from the waist up he looked more machine than man.
“Oh, Jesus, John,” Billie said when she got to his side. “What have they done to you?”
Bree rubbed Billie’s back as tears wracked her again. I stayed only a few minutes, until I couldn’t take seeing Sampson like that anymore.