Odd Thomas

Sonny Wexler, "What happened?"
        "I thought you must've heard," he said. "I thought that's why you came. The chief's been shot."
        Jesus Bustamante, another officer, said angrily, "Almost an hour ago now, some pusbag sonofabitch plugged the chief three times in the chest on his own front porch."
        My stomach turned over, over, over, almost in time with the revolving beacons on the nearby cruiser, and the phantom obstruction in my esophagus became real when a bitter gorge rose into the back of my throat.
        I must have paled, must have wobbled on suddenly loose knees, for Jesus put an arm against my back to support me, and Sonny Wexler said quickly, "Easy, kid, easy, the chief's alive. He's bad off, but he's alive, he's a fighter."
        "The doctors are working on him right now," said Billy Munday, whose port-wine birthmark, over a third of his face, seemed to glow strangely in the night, lending him the aura of a painted shaman with warnings and portents and evils imminent to report. "He's going to be all right. He's got to be. I mean, what would happen without him?"
        "He's a fighter," Sonny repeated.
        "Which hospital?" I asked.
        "County General."
        I ran to the car that I'd left in the street.
        

CHAPTER 40
        
        THESE DAYS, MOST NEW HOSPITALS IN SOUTHERN California resemble medium-rent retail outlets selling discount carpet or business supplies in bulk. The bland architecture doesn't inspire confidence that healing can occur within those walls.
        County General, the oldest hospital in the region, features an impressive porte-cochere with limestone columns and a dentil-molding cornice all the way around the building. At first sight of it, you know that nurses and doctors work inside, instead of sales clerks.
        The main lobby has a travertine floor, not industrial carpet, and the travertine face of the information desk boasts an inlaid bronze caduceus.
        Before I reached the desk, I was intercepted by Alice Norrie, a ten-year veteran of the PMPD, who was running interference to keep reporters and unauthorized visitors from advancing past the lobby.
        "He's in surgery, Odd. He's going to be there awhile."
        "Where's Mrs. Porter?"
        "Karla's in the ICU waiting room. They'll be taking him there pretty much straight from the OR."
        The intensive care unit was on the fourth floor. In a tone meant to imply that she would have to arrest me to stop me, I said, "Ma'am, I'm going up there."
        "You don't have to bust my badge to get there, Odd. You're on the short list Karla gave me."
        I took the elevator to the second floor, where County General has its operating rooms.
        Finding the right OR proved easy. Rafus Carter, in uniform and big enough to give pause to a rampaging bull, stood guard outside the door.
        As I approached through the fluorescent glare, he rested his right hand on the butt of his holstered gun.
        He saw me react to his suspicion, and he said, "No offense, Odd, but only Karla could come along this corridor and not get my back up."
        "You think he was shot by somebody he knew?"
        "Almost had to be, which means it's probably someone I know, too."
        "How bad is he?"
        "Bad."
        "He's a fighter," I said, echoing Sonny Wexler's mantra.
        Rafus Carter said, "He better be."
        I returned to the elevator. Between the third and fourth floors, I pressed the stop button.
        Uncontrollable trembling shook the strength out of me. With my legs too weak to stand on, I slid down the wall of the cab and sat on the floor.
        Life, Stormy says, is not about how fast you run or even with what degree of grace. It's about perseverance, about staying on your feet and slogging forward no matter what.
        After all, in her cosmology, this life is boot camp. If you don't persevere through all its obstacles and all the wounds that it inflicts, you cannot move on to your next life of high adventure, which she calls "service," or eventually to your third life, which she assumes will be filled with pleasures and glories far greater even than a bowl of coconut cherry chocolate chunk.
        Regardless of how hard the winds of chance might blow or how heavy the weight of experience might become, Stormy always stays on her feet, metaphorically speaking; unlike her, I find that sometimes I must pause if