Chapter 19: 5150 - Lucidity

FREMMER DREAMT HE WAS IN A HOSPITAL. HE WAS LYING IN A BED IN a hospital room and a doctor was talking to him, asking him if he could move his legs. First he tried to lift his right leg, then his left. Nothing. He concentrated, tried to wiggle a toe, but still nothing. But he was able to move his finger. In fact, he could lift his right hand. He could make a fist. “What’s wrong with me?” he asked the doctor.

“You’ve been in an accident,” the doctor said. “You fractured a vertebra in your neck.”

He recognized the doctor. He’d seen him before in another hospital room. And that was when he realized he was dreaming. He’d put himself in the hospital bed. He hadn’t been in an accident. She’d been in the accident. Not him. This was a dream.

“Tell her to come in,” he told the doctor.

The doctor knew who he meant. He left the room and a moment later his ex-fiancée Denise walked in. She stood there, looking at him, tears in her eyes, overcome with emotion.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Max.”

Fremmer smiled. She was in for a shock. His legs were limp, but using his good hand he swung them out over the side of the bed and sat himself up. He waited for the circulation to return to his legs. Then he stood and faced her, naked.

Her jaw dropped. She was wearing a long T-shirt, a kind of gown, and he lifted it up and touched her between her legs. He worked his fingers inside her. Then, when he thought she was ready, he swung her around and bent her over the gurney, hiking the gown up over her head, exposing her smooth, muscular back.

He looked over and saw a nurse sitting in a chair not far from the bed looking at them impassively. She was attractive. Hispanic. No, maybe Pacific Islander. Or African American. He couldn’t tell. Her face was expressionless but she seemed interested because he wanted her to be. He nodded in her direction, acknowledging her presence. Silently, she took off her clothes and came over to him, pressing up against him. Moving in rhythm with him, she put her hand on his backside, adding force to his thrusts. How helpful! How exhilarating! But then she brushed against his arm and something hurt. The IV. It was still in his arm. He had a tube sticking out of him. Christ. The tube.

That killed it. He felt the dream drifting away. He’d had it. He’d been lucid. But now it was getting away from him. And then it was gone.

He woke unsure of where he was at first, only aware that he had a dull headache and felt tired. But once he looked around it didn’t take him long to realize he was in a hospital room and that something bad had happened because both Carlos Morton and his son Jamie were there. Neither noticed he was awake at first. Morton was on his phone, tapping out a message, and his son had his headphones on and was working on his laptop.

“What’s going on?” Fremmer asked and Morton looked up.

“Hey, buddy. How are you feeling?”

“Where am I?”

“You’re in the hospital. St. Luke’s. You were downstairs in the ER for a while last night and they got you into a room at like 4 AM.”

He looked at the machines next to him and the curtain room divider, drawn open. Another bed to his left. Polished linoleum floors. Why the hell was he in the hospital?

“What happened?”

“You don’t remember texting me last night?”

There was something foreboding in Morton’s tone.

“I texted you?”

“Dad, you sent a text saying you wanted to die.”

Jamie had pulled his headphones off and had stood up. He had a strange look on his face that was a mixture of fear, relief, and anger. Fremmer was always amazed at the kid’s height, almost five-seven. But he looked taller standing there. He had a little bit of acne on his forehead, but objectively the kid was a stud, a poster child for the anti-abortion movement if ever there was one.

“What are you talking about?” Fremmer said. “Why would I do that?”

His visitors looked at each other. They didn’t seem to believe him.

“Dad, you texted Carlos and another person last night and said you were sorry but you were tired of living. You said tell Jamie you love him and that you’re sorry, but he could go live with his mother like he wanted to. I don’t want to live with my mother. I don’t know where you got that. I never said that. Why’d you say that?”

“We found you on the floor of your apartment,” Morton said. “You’d vomited all over the place. The paramedics came. You were lucky you didn’t drown in your own vomit.”

Oh, Christ, Fremmer thought. “It was her,” he murmured.

“Her, who?” Morton asked.

“Rochelle,” he said. “The woman I told you about. The woman from the Lucidity Center who worked for Braden. The guy you met in the police station.”

“So, you’re saying you didn’t text anyone?”

“No, she did.”

“But it came from your phone,” Morton said. “It definitely came from your phone.”

He looked over at Jamie. Tears were streaming down his face. He’d become such a stoic, macho kid that it was weird to see him crying. Fremmer hadn’t seen the floodgates open like this for five or six years. It was touching.

“Hey, buddy,” Fremmer said. “Don’t cry. Come over here and give me a hug.”

Jamie came over to the bed and practically lay down on top of him. A sharp pain shot through his arm, which made Fremmer realize he had an IV in him. Aside from that momentary discomfort and the dull headache, he felt pretty good.

“I wouldn’t kill myself. You know that.”

His son got up and wiped his face, still perplexed.

“She must have drugged me,” Fremmer thought aloud. “They say what was in my system?”

“GHB,” Morton said.

Fremmer had heard of GHB, it was some sort of hipster drug, he thought.

“You weren’t at a club last night, were you?” Morton asked. “They were saying it’s known as kind of a liquid ecstasy in smaller doses. Liquid E. At higher doses it’s a date-rape drug, though.”

“There you go,” Fremmer said.

“Why would she drug you?” his son asked.

“It’s complicated. She and her boss wanted money from me and I didn’t give it to them.”

“You might want to tell the police that,” Morton suggested.

Fremmer thought about it—thought about what he’d tell the police and what they’d believe. He had a flashback to the scene in the restaurant, wondering for a moment if it had been real. If it had, if he’d really groped her, someone probably saw it. Where did that put him?

“They were at your apartment last night,” Morton went on. “The cops. Firemen. Paramedics. Quite a contingent.”

“So is that detective, what’s his name, Chu, aware that I’m here?”

“I assume so,” Morton said.

“What about the press?”

“I think they may be working on a story. I got a call a little while ago. I said it was a private matter. FYI, outside of Jamie here, no one from your family has been contacted. I don’t know what you want to do there, but your son said you wouldn’t want them to know, especially your older brother in Connecticut.”

“Thanks. Yeah, he already thinks I’m a fuck-up. He called to berate me about getting involved with our friend Ronald by the way. Can’t wait to hear what he says when he finds out about this. In case you’re wondering, I did ask him for a donation to the Carlos Morton legal fund. I have no shame.”

Fremmer rubbed his face with both hands. He was strangely calm, not as upset as he should have been. Then it occurred to him how much his hospital stay and ambulance ride were going to cost. He had insurance, but it wouldn’t cover everything. There were deductibles and partial payments. He’d probably have to lay out a couple thousand at best. He was starting to regret not paying off Braden. But he was more perturbed at Rochelle. The woman was diabolical. He’d underestimated her. What was so important for them to do something like this? It couldn’t just be the money. It had to be something else.

“How’d she get into your phone?” Jamie asked, not yet convinced his father was telling the truth. “It has a password, doesn’t it?”

Fremmer raised his finger.

“Yeah, but there’s the fingerprint ID. She just put my fingers on the phone until the right one unlocked it.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jamie said.

“Where’d they find my phone?” Fremmer asked Morton. “Where was it in the apartment?”

“On the desk in the little alcove,” Morton said. “In that home office area you have.”

“And I was on the floor there?”

“Yeah.”

“And how ’bout my computer? Was it out?”

“Yeah, it was on the desk, too.”

Fremmer thought about that. If his memory served him correctly, which was questionable at this point, he thought he’d left his laptop in his bag. He hadn’t taken it out when he got home.

“I bet she got into that, too,” he said.

“I think we should tell all this to the police,” Morton said. “They can figure out if someone was on your computer and exactly when.”

“What will that prove?”

“Look, they’re going to ask you what’s going on, we heard you tried to kill yourself, and you’re going to tell them the story you just told us, and little stuff like this will make it hold together. We get some video footage from the restaurant and some from your apartment building.”

“There is no video from our apartment building so strike that off your list.”

“I saw a camera.”

“Doesn’t work. The DVR it records to broke and the co-op board hasn’t gotten around to replacing it.”

“Great,” Morton said.

Fremmer shook his head in disbelief. He needed to get out of here. As soon as possible.

“You leave my phone at home or do you have it?”

“I’ve got it,” Jamie said.

Fremmer motioned for him to pass it over to him, but it wasn’t in Jamie’s pocket, it was in his backpack, so it took him a moment to fish it out.

It still had a twenty percent charge. Fremmer looked up his friend Bernstein and sent him a text, asking him if he was in the hospital.

“Who are you texting?” Morton asked.

“A doctor I know who works here. I need to get out of here and will probably need professional help to do that.”

“They want you to speak to a psychiatrist as soon as you wake up. You’re a fifty-one-fifty. You’re in the psych unit.”

“I’m a what?”

“Fifty-one-fifty,” Morton explained. “That’s the code for someone who’s a danger to himself or a danger to others. If you’re admitted as a fifty-one-fifty you have to be cleared by a psychiatrist to leave. They don’t want to take the chance you’ll do it again.”

“Well, get him in here. Or her. I’ll tell them I didn’t try to harm myself.”

He was now looking at the texts he sent Morton last night. Wow, she was good. They actually seemed convincing. Then he went back to the top of his messages and noticed something really disturbing. Indeed, he had texted somebody else besides Morton. Much to his horror that person was his former fiancée.

“Was Denise there?” he asked his son. “Was she at the apartment?”

“No,” his son said. “But she called 911. And me. And she’s here now.”

“Where?”

“Out in the waiting room. She showed up a little while ago. She had some work calls to make so she didn’t want to come in. They said you’d probably wake up soon.”

“You’re kidding me. So, she thinks I tried to kill myself, too?”

His son nodded. “She thinks she’s the reason you tried to do it.”

“Oh, man.” Fremmer said. “That’s not cool. That is so not cool.”