Me Again by Keith Cronin Page B

embezzler or something. I needed to look up the names and terms Brandon had used, to find out just what sort of trouble I’d been getting myself into. But it didn’t look good.
    Who else knew about this?
    I couldn’t ask Teddy – if he had known about it, I didn’t want to expose how little I remembered. And if he hadn’t, I didn’t want to give him any new artillery to use against me.
    Maybe Victoria knew, but I couldn’t see any graceful way to ask her. Hi, Vic. Yes, your boobs look great. Hey, listen, back when we were dating, was I by any chance, you know, stealing money? No, probably not the smoothest approach.
    My God – could I be arrested? For a crime I couldn’t remember committing? Was there some kind of statute of limitations for this sort of thing? If so, I prayed it was less than six years. I could see the headline now: Man Wakes from Coma Only to Go to Prison .
    No, this didn’t look good.
    I went to the PT room, and worked out my frustrations on the leg press machine. I was eager to show Rebecca how much my walking had improved over the last few days. Thinking about her raised my spirits somewhat, and I was feeling better when I finished my workout.
    The feeling was short-lived. After a shower, I went to the computer room to find out what this Enron stuff was all about. And of course, to check for email from Rebecca. I struck out on the latter, but found plenty of information on the former. Soon I was even more freaked out.
    Apparently during my six-year nap, the accounting world had gone crazy, with accountants, auditors, and corporate executives colluding with each other, playing all sorts of games with other people’s money. I couldn’t understand the more technical descriptions of their malfeasance, but one thing was clear: some key people in my line of work had let their greed take over, and had violated the trust their profession had historically been afforded.
    And they had done it at the expense of people helpless to stop them, burning up their pensions and investments and leaving them with nothing. Some of the worst offenders had been sent to jail, but that didn’t really solve their victims’ problems, did it? I was appalled, unable to imagine what kind of person could do something like that.
    Then I looked in the mirror, and saw the answer.

 
    Chapter 12
     
    I T WAS TUESDAY, AND I FELT LIKE CRAP. I hadn’t slept well, troubled by recurring dreams of police officers raiding my room and leading me off handcuffed to my walker. It figures that the first time I actually had dreams I could remember, they were nightmares.
    At breakfast I nibbled half-heartedly at my I Can’t Believe They’re Not Eggs and doubled up on my coffee dosage. Then I put in a hard morning of physical therapy under the watchful eye – and colorful commentary – of Leon. Still, even after a shower and a hot lunch (Tuesday was Sloppy Joe day), the man who faced me in the mirror looked haggard and guilty.
    I sat down on my bed, killing time by idly flipping through one of the photo albums my mother had brought. By now the faces in the photos were familiar to me, but the people behind them remained a mystery.
    “Anybody home?” a low-pitched female voice said.
    Startled, I opened my eyes and realized I was lying on my bed. I sat up awkwardly, adjusting my glasses and looking around for the source of that voice. Rebecca stood in the doorway.
    “Sorry if I kept you waiting,” she said.
    I shook my head and blinked, still groggy. “No, I’m sorry,” I said, “I must have dozed off. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
    Rebecca walked into the room, her cane tapping on the linoleum floor. “Yeah, you look pretty tired.”
    Great. I wait for days to see her, and when she finally shows up, I look like death warmed over. Then again, in many respects I really was death warmed over.
    “How are you?” I asked, trying to at least rise to my usual level of conversational ineptitude.
    “I’m good,” she said.