Page 51 of Baca

I shrugged. “Don’t know. He was coherent when we got here.”

“The Doctor hasn’t talked to you?”

“Not yet. They’re still with him.” Hunter reached for my hand and held it as we sat and listened to the sounds that trickled out of ER into the waiting room.

**

It was another hour before a young doctor came out to talk to us. He said, “Your friend is going to make it.”

I took a deep breath and let it out. Hunter hugged my arm.

The Doctor said, “One lung collapsed and the blade scraped the outside of the heart, but didn’t puncture it. The sword was wedged so tight we had to go in and pry the ribs apart before we could remove it.” He was agitated and had more to say, so we waited. “Your friend is very tough, even telling us before he was sedated that he fell on the sword, but...and here is where I’m having problems, there was evidence that the sword had been yanked back and forth several times, like someone trying to dislodge it. Would that have been you?”

“Not me, Doctor. I got there after he’d fallen. He told me the handle hung in a banister when he fell and he’d pulled against it trying to get loose.”

The doctor mulled that over. “He’ll be in recovery for another hour, then we’ll put him in a room. You can visit him then.” He paused, “Your friend is...very in control. Most people go into shock, but his pulse and respiration remained steady. Was he by chance in the military?” I nodded. He continued, “I thought maybe that was it. Lots of signs of violence on that young man’s body.”

I didn’t elaborate.

The Doctor said, “He also said he wanted the sword with him after he woke up and to tell you, let me get this right, ‘We’ll have a pointed conversation’ when he wakes up. I assume that is a joke.”

; I nodded. “Always the kidder.”

“The sword in his room is something we can’t allow.”

“I’ll tell him.”

The doctor nodded, then went back through the doors and we went to the cafeteria to drink some coffee until Hondo was in his room.

Hunter said, “Found out a few things.”

I’d been thinking of Hondo, but said, “Like what?”

“For one, Bond Savitch was a Russian citizen who immigrated as a child twenty years ago and became a naturalized US citizen eleven years ago. She came over with her parents and lived as a LAPR” --she pronounced it lap-er -- “until she had the required residency to naturalize.”

“What’s a LAPR?”

“Lawfully Admitted Permanent Resident. It’s Immigration terminology.”

“Anything else?”

“Uh-huh. Our friend Mr. Rakes was an officer in the Spetsnaz, the Soviet Special Forces, before he was sent to prison.”

“Did it say what charge?”

“He was jailed as a political prisoner, is what I read.”

“That’s the last thing I’d have thought.”

“Me too. Some of our records from former Soviet countries are a little, ahh, cloudy. It was all they had to go with his application though, so he was allowed in after being released from prison and pardoned by the Russian government. He’s a LAPR, too.”

“Did you happen to look up Simon Mortay?”

“No, but I can tomorrow.”

“Thanks.” I could still see Mortay with his sword cane the day Hondo faced him down.