@page { margin-bottom: 10.000000pt; margin-top: 10.000000pt; } Chapter SeventyThe hospital visit was routine, in that I went from curtained area to curtained area without any information or courtesy until they were done poking and prodding and bandaging me. They kept Patrick confined to the waiting area, so we didn’t even get to talk. Instead, I used the time to check in with Michaela, advise her of what had happened, listen to her urge Opus out of her office, since “this was no time to be emptying wastebaskets when my best agent’s hurt,” make her call Opus back in so the poor man could do his job, assure her I was okay, assure her a man hadn’t done this to me, plead with her not to go castrate someone anyway, hush the nurses who tried to tell me not to use cell phones in this area, apologize profusely to the nearby patients whose heart monitors chose that moment to go berserk from cell interference, turn the cell phone off, apologize to the nurses for not listening, ask them for a landline, suffer their silent treatment for a while, plead with them for a landline, call Michaela again, apologize for cutting her off earlier, get her to agree to clear Patrick’s license plate with the authorities, refuse Michaela’s offer of assistance for my return visit to Scherzo’s house, and apologize one last time to the nursing staff.With all that activity, after which Patrick insisted we get lunch (drive-through Arby’s), it wasn’t until that afternoon that we got back to the house.
