Nothing to Lose

led away to bottles mounted on a low cart parked under the bed. A breathing tube was taped to his cheek. It curved neatly into his mouth. It was connected to a small respirator that hissed and blew with a slow, regular rhythm. There was a clock on the wall above the respirator. Original army issue, from way back. White Bakelite rim, white face, black hands, a firm, quiet, mechanical tick once a second.
    Vaughan said, “David, I brought a friend to see you.”
    No response. And there never would be, Reacher guessed. The guy in the bed was completely inert. Not asleep, not awake. Not anything.
    Vaughan bent and kissed her husband on the forehead.
    Then she stepped over to the cabinet and tugged an X-ray envelope out of the pile. It was marked Vaughan, D. R. in faded ink. It was creased and furred. It had been handled many times. She pulled the film out of the envelope and held it up against the light from the window. It was a composite image that showed her husband’s head from four different directions. Front, right side, back, left side. White skull, blurred gray brain matter, a matrix of bright pinpoints scattered all through it.
    “Iraq’s signature injury,” Vaughan said. “Blast damage to the human brain. Severe physical trauma. Compression, decompression, twisting, shearing, tearing, impact with the wall of the skull, penetration by shrapnel. David got it all. His skull was shattered, and they cut the worst of it away. That was supposed to be a good thing. It relieves the pressure. They give them a plastic plate later, when the swelling goes down. But David’s swelling never went down.”
    She put the film back in the envelope, and shuffled the envelope back into the pile. She pulled another one out. It was a chest film. White ribs, gray organs, a blinding shape that was clearly someone else’s wristwatch, and small bright pinpoints that looked like drops of liquid.
    “That’s why I don’t wear my wedding band,” Vaughan said. “He wanted to take it with him, on a chain around his neck. The heat melted it and the blast drove it into his lungs.”
    She put the film back in the stack.
    “He wore it for good luck,” she said.
    She butted the paperwork into a neat pile and moved to the foot of the bed. Reacher asked, “What was he?”
    “Infantry, assigned to the First Armored Division.”
    “And this was IED versus Humvee?”
    She nodded. “An improvised explosive device against a tin can. He might as well have been on foot in his bathrobe. I don’t know why they call them improvised. They seem pretty damn professional to me.”
    “When was this?”
    “Almost two years ago.”
    The respirator hissed on.
    Reacher asked, “What was his day job?”
    “He was a mechanic. For farm equipment, mostly.”
    The clock ticked, relentlessly.
    Reacher asked, “What’s the prognosis?”
    Vaughan said, “At first it was reasonable, in theory. They thought he would be confused and uncoordinated, you know, and perhaps a little unstable and aggressive, and certainly lacking all his basic life and motor skills.”
    “So you moved house,” Reacher said. “You were thinking about a wheelchair. You bought a one-story and took the door off the living room. You put three chairs in the kitchen, not four. To leave a space.”
    She nodded. “I wanted to be ready. But he never woke up. The swelling never went away.”
    “Why not?”
    “Make a fist.”
    “A what?”
    “Make a fist and hold it up.”
    Reacher made a fist and held it up.
    Vaughan said, “OK, your forearm is your spinal cord and your fist is a bump on the end called your brain stem. Some places in the animal kingdom, that’s as good as it gets. But humans grew brains. Imagine I scooped out a pumpkin and fitted it over your fist. That’s your brain. Imagine the pumpkin goo was kind of bonded with your skin. This is how it was explained to me. I could hit the pumpkin or you could shake it a little and you’d be OK. But imagine suddenly twisting your wrist, very violently. What’s going to happen?”
    “The bond is going to shear,” Reacher said. “The pumpkin goo is going to unstick from my skin.”
    Vaughan nodded again. “That’s what happened to David’s head. A shearing injury. The very worst kind. His brain stem is OK but the rest of his brain doesn’t even know it’s there. It doesn’t know there’s a problem.”
    “Will the bond re-form?”
    “Never. That just doesn’t happen. Brains have spare capacity, but neuron cells