Dexter by Design (Dexter 4)

Still, the logic was not terribly convincing. And what if she lived but suffered brain damage? That could very well affect her career in law enforcement. She might need full-time care, spoonfeeding, adult diapers—none of these things would go over well on the job. And who would do all the endless tedious drudgery of looking after her? I didn’t know a great deal about medical insurance, but I knew enough to know that full-time care was not something they offered cheerfully. What if I had to take care of her? It would certainly put a large dent in my free time. But who else was there? In all the world, she had no other family. There was only Dear Dutiful Dexter; no one else to push her wheelchair and cook her pablum and tenderly wipe the corners of her mouth as she drooled. I would have to tend to her for the rest of her life, far into the sunset years, the two of us sitting and watching game shows while the rest of the world went on its merry way, killing and brutalizing one another without me.

Just before I sank under a huge wave of wet self-pity I remembered Kyle Chutsky. To call him Deborah’s boyfriend was not quite accurate, since they had been living together for over a year, and that made it seem like a bit more. Besides, he was hardly a boy. He was at least ten years older than Debs, very large and beat-up, and missing his left hand and foot as the result of an encounter with the same amateur surgeon who had modified Sergeant Doakes.

To be perfectly fair to me, which I think is very important, I did not think of him merely because I wanted someone else to take care of a hypothetically brain-damaged Deborah. Rather, it occurred to me that the fact that she was in the ICU was something he might want to know.

So I took my cell phone from its holster and called him. He answered almost immediately.

“Hello?”

“Kyle, this is Dexter,” I said.

“Hey, buddy,” he said in his artificially cheerful voice. “What’s up?”

“I’m with Deborah,” I said. “In the ICU at Jackson.”

“What happened?” he said after a slight pause.

“She’s been stabbed,” I said. “She lost a lot of blood.”

“I’m on my way,” he said, and hung up.

It was nice that Chutsky cared enough to come right away. Maybe he would help me with Deborah’s pablum, take turns pushing the wheelchair. It’s good to have someone.

That reminded me that I had someone—or perhaps I was had. In any case, Rita would want to know I would be late, before she cooked a pheasant soufflé for me. I called her at work, told her quickly what was up, and hung up again as she was just getting started on a chorus of oh-my-Gods.

Chutsky came into the room about fifteen minutes later, trailed by a nurse who was apparently trying to make sure he was perfectly happy with everything from the location of the room to the arrangement of IVs. “This is her,” the nurse said.

“Thanks, Gloria,” Chutsky said without looking at anything but Deborah. The nurse hovered anxiously for a few more moments, and then vanished uncertainly.

Meanwhile, Chutsky moved over to the bed and took Deborah’s hand—good to know I had been right about that; holding her hand was, indeed, the correct thing to do.

“What happened, buddy?” he said, staring down at Deborah.

I gave him a quick rundown, and he listened without looking at me, pausing briefly in his hand-holding to wipe a lock of hair away from Deborah’s forehead. When I had finished talking, he nodded absently and said, “What did the doctors say?”

“It’s too soon to tell,” I said.

He waved that away impatiently, using the gleaming silver hook that had replaced his left hand. “They always say that,” he said. “What else?”

“There’s a chance of permanent damage,” I said. “Even brain damage.”

He nodded. “She lost a lot of blood,” he said, not a question, but I answered anyway.

“That’s right,” I said.

“I have a guy coming down from Bethesda,” Chutsky said. “He’ll be here in a couple of hours.”

I couldn’t think of very much to say to that. A guy? From Bethesda? Was this good news of some kind, and if so, why? I could not come up with a single thing to distinguish Bethesda from Cleveland, except that it was in Maryland instead of Ohio. What kind of guy would come down from there? And to what end? But I also couldn’t think of any way to frame a question on the subject. For some reason, my brain was not running with its usual icy efficiency.

So I just watched as Chutsky pulled another chair around to the far side of the bed, where he could sit and hold Deborah’s hand. And after he got settled, he finally looked directly at me. “Dexter,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Think you could scare up some coffee? And maybe a doughnut or something?”

The question took me completely by surprise—not because it was such a bizarre notion, but because it seemed like one to me, and it really should have been as natural as breathing. It was well past my lunchtime, and I had not eaten, and I had not thought of eating. But now, when Chutsky suggested it, the idea seemed wrong, like singing the real words to “Barnacle Bill” in church.

Still, to object would seem even stranger. So I stood up