Pines

hour ago, when he discovered he could tune out completely as long as he interjected an “I hadn’t thought of it that way” or “Hmm, interesting” every five minutes or so.
    He’s turned to make just such a token contribution to the conversation when he reads the word
MACK
several feet away on the other side of Stallings’s window.
    Hasn’t even begun to react—he’s barely read the word—when the window beside Stallings’s head bursts in a shower of glass pebbles.
    The air bag explodes out of the steering column but it’s a millisecond late, just missing his head, which slams into the window with enough force to punch through.
    The right side of the Lincoln Town Car implodes in an apocalypse of breaking glass and bending metal, and Stallings’s head takes a direct hit from the truck’s grille.
    He can feel the heat from the truck’s engine as it tears into the car.
    The sudden reek of gasoline and brake fluid.
    Blood is everywhere—running down the inside of the fractured windshield, splattered across the dash, in his eyes, still erupting out of what’s left of Stallings.
    The Town Car is sliding crosswise through an intersection, being pushed by the truck toward the side of that brownstone with the phone booth near the alley, when he loses consciousness.

CHAPTER 2
    A woman was smiling down at him. At least, he thought those were a mouthful of pretty teeth, although his blurred, double vision made it difficult to say for sure. She leaned in a little closer, her two heads merging and her features crystallizing enough for him to see she was beautiful. Her short-sleeved uniform was white with buttons all the way down the front to where the skirt stopped just above her knees.
    She kept repeating his name.
    “Mr. Burke? Mr. Burke, can you hear me? Mr. Burke?”
    The headache was gone.
    He took a slow, careful breath until the pain in his ribs cut him off.
    He must have winced, because the nurse said, “Are you still experiencing discomfort in your left side?”
    “Discomfort.” He groaned through a laugh. “Yes, I’m experiencing discomfort. You could certainly call it that.”
    “I can get something a little stronger for the pain if you’d like.”
    “I think I can manage.”
    “All right, but don’t you be a martyr, Mr. Burke. Anything I can do to make you more comfortable, just name it. I’m your girl. My name’s Pam, by the way.”
    “Thank you, Pam. I think I remember you from the last time I was here. I’d never forget that classic nurse’s uniform. I didn’t even know they still made those.”
    She laughed. “Well, I’m glad to hear your memory’s coming back. That’s very good. Dr. Miter will be in shortly to see you. Would you mind if I took a blood pressure reading?”
    “Sure.”
    “Wonderful.”
    Nurse Pam lifted a blood pressure pump from a cart at the foot of the bed and strapped the cuff around his left biceps.
    “You gave us a good scare, Mr. Burke,” she said as she inflated the cuff. “Walking off like that.”
    She was quiet while the needle fell.
    “Did I pass?” he asked.
    “A-plus. Systolic is one twenty-two. Diastolic seventy-five.” She un-Velcroed the cuff. “When they brought you in, you were delirious,” she said. “You didn’t seem to know who you were.”
    He sat up in bed, the fog in his head beginning to lift. He was in a private hospital room—he thought it looked familiar. There was a window beside the bed. The blinds had been drawn, but the light creeping through seemed timid enough to be either early morning or early evening.
    “Where’d you find me?” he asked.
    “Mack Skozie’s front yard. You’d blacked out. Do you remember what you were doing there? Mack said you seemed pretty agitated and confused.”
    “I woke up yesterday by the river. I didn’t know who I was or where I was.”
    “You’d left the hospital. Do you remember leaving?”
    “No. I went to the Skozie residence because he was the only Mack in the phone book.”
    “I don’t think I understand.”
    “Mack was the only name that held any meaning for me.”
    “Why do you think that is?”
    “Because Mack is the last word I read before the truck hit us.”
    “Oh, right...it was a Mack truck that T-boned your car.”
    “Exactly.”
    “The mind is a weird thing,” the nurse said, moving around the end of the bed and walking over to the window. “It works in mysterious ways. Seeks out the strangest connections.”
    “How long has it been since I was