Jed and Mac would be leaning over the rail and waving China good-bye, but he was flat on his back in an upper-deck cabin, and all he could see of the outside world was a circle of gray sky. He had spent a good portion of the last few days either asleep or deep in drug-induced unconsciousness, so that much of what he knew of recent events was hearsay. He did remember the jolting rickshaw ride to the General Hospital, but all he could recall of his arrival there was a bewildering kaleidoscope of anxious faces. The next thing he knew, he was coming to in a private room, with an anxious brother looking on. As Jed had later admitted, he hadn’t relished telling their mother where he’d been while his brother was getting murdered. McColl was, it seemed, out of danger but confined to bed for at least a week. The knife had pierced his liver, which was better news than it sounded—apparently, as organs went, this one healed quicker than most. He had spent the first day staring at the ceiling, occasionally dozing off despite the pain.
