It was a nice room, as hospital rooms go, its walls painted a cheery yellow instead of the usual dirty white and with deep blue carpeting on the floor. Saint Mary’s was a small, private hospital that cost the earth, and it treated its patients with as much deference as their various illnesses and injuries allowed. As a former marine, Sam could have gone to the naval hospital in nearby Bethesda, but Lisa had preferred to pay for his room and treatment at Saint Mary’s. Sam had been conscious for only brief periods since that horrible afternoon when four bullets had torn into his body, leaving him bleeding like a sieve, so he had not been consulted. The decision had been strictly Lisa’s.Amos was so glad to see her alive and well that he had asked very few questions about this brawny stranger whose side she had refused to leave, except for such necessities as eating and sleeping, since the South African river patrol had pulled the two of them out of the half-submerged remains of their small, bullet-riddled motorboat.
