Odd Thomas

damaged.
        Complex vascular repairs were required, and the physician in charge of the surgical team estimated that the chief would be in the OR another hour and a half to two hours.
        "We're pretty sure he'll come through surgery good enough," Jenna said. "Then the challenge will be to prevent postoperative complications."
        Karla went into the ICU waiting room to share this report with the chief's sister and Jake Hulquist.
        Alone in the hallway with Jenna, I said, "Have you swung both hammers, or are you holding one back?"
        "It's just the way I said, Oddie. We don't soften bad news for the spouse. We tell it straight and all at once."
        "This blows."
        "Like a hurricane," she agreed. "You're close to him, I know."
        "Yeah."
        "I think he's eventually going to make it," Jenna said. "Not just out of surgery but all the way home on his own two feet."
        "But no guarantees."
        "When is there ever? He's a mess inside. But he's not half as bad as we thought he'd be when we first put him on the table, before we opened him up. It's a thousand to one odds that anyone can survive three chest wounds. He's incredibly lucky."
        "If that's luck, he better never go to Vegas."
        With a fingertip, she pulled down one of my lower eyelids and examined the bloodshot scenery: "You look wrecked, Oddie."
        "It's been a long day. You know - breakfast starts early at the Grille."
        "I was in with two friends the other day. You cooked our lunch."
        "Really? Sometimes things are so frantic at the griddle, I don't get a chance to look around, see who's there."
        "You've got a talent."
        "Thanks," I said. "That's sweet."
        "I hear your dad's selling the moon."
        "Yeah, but it's not a great place for a vacation home. No air."
        "You're nothing at all like your dad."
        "Who would want to be?"
        "Most guys."
        "I think you're wrong about that."
        "You know what? You ought to give cooking classes."
        "Mostly what I do is fry."
        "I'd still sign up."
        "It's not exactly healthy cuisine," I said.
        "We've all got to die of something. You still with Bronwen?"
        "Stormy. Yeah. It's like destiny."
        "How do you know?"
        "We have matching birthmarks."
        "You mean the one she got tattooed to match yours?"
        "Tattooed? No. It's real enough. We're getting married."
        "Oh. I didn't hear about that."
        "It's breaking news."
        "Wait'll the girls find out," Jenna said.
        "What girls?"
        "All of them."
        This conversation wasn't always making perfect sense to me, so I said, "Listen, I'm walking grime, I need a bath, but I don't want to leave the hospital till Chief Porter comes out of surgery safe like you say. Is there anywhere here I can get a shower?"
        "Let me talk to the head nurse on this floor. We should be able to find you a place."
        "I've got a change of clothes in the car," I said.
        "Go get them. Then ask at the nurse's station. I'll have arranged everything."
        As she started to turn away, I said, "Jenna, did you take piano lessons?"
        "Did I ever. Years of them. But why would you ask?"
        "Your hands are so beautiful. I bet you play like a dream."
        She gave me a long look that I couldn't interpret: mysteries in those blue-flecked gray eyes.
        Then she said, "This wedding thing is true?"
        "Saturday," I assured her, full of pride that Stormy would have me. "If I could leave town, we'd have gone to Vegas and been married by dawn."
        "Some people are way lucky," Jenna Spinelli said. "Even luckier than Chief Porter still sucking wind after three chest wounds."
        Assuming that she meant I was fortunate to have won Stormy, I said, "After the mother-father mess I was handed, fate owed me big."
        Jenna had that inscrutable look down perfect. "Call me if you decide to give cooking lessons, after all. I'll bet you really know how to whisk."
        Puzzled, I said, "Whisk? Well, sure, but that's mainly just for scrambled eggs. With pancakes and waffles, you've got to fold the batter, and otherwise almost everything is fry, fry, fry."
        She smiled, shook her head, and walked away, leaving me with that perplexity I'd sometimes felt when, as the player with the best stats on our high-school