My Kind of Town
>> Queen's Medical Center Not so great good news
Lily Ah Sun could tell just by seeing her brother Lance lying unconscious in the Intensive Care Unit with tubes and wires running into and out of his head and hooked up to an IV, that he was not doing well.
"The doctors say it's wait-and-see," her father said. "The main thing is keeping blood from building up on the brain."
They heard a knock on the door. Nurse Janice Wong entered, exchanged polite greetings, checked an electronic monitor that showed read-outs from those wires and tubes. "That's good," she said.
"What?!" Grace leaping at any hint of good news.
"He's stable. Not better, but nothing is any worse. At this stage, that is a good sign," Nurse Wong said, closing the door behind her.
Lance's condition had not worsened. As good news goes, Grace had heard better. But she'd take it.
Something else was troubling her. "Lily, why was Quinn at your house?" It had been 21 years since the two sides of the Ah Sun clan communicated.
"Long story that can't be told short," Lily said, waving away any other questions. "And Elizabeth and I have a couple of other stops to make tonight. I'll check back later."
Looking at Lance, it hit Lily -- her brother and their cousin Quinn, both patients at Queen's -- what could this mean for the mysterious standoff between their fathers? She glanced at her parents, knew they were each asking the same question. And Lily wondered again what it was that drove the previously inseparable brothers Ah Sun to quit speaking.
>> HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes wanted to tell Serena Kawainui that if the baby of Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka growing inside her was so important, what the heck was she doing drinking and taking drugs, but that really wasn't his business. He said, "About the 'old friends' you said were the source of the drugs you obtained to share with the senator, would they have anything to do with your days as, ah, an exotic dancer?"
"Stripper. That's all it is -- take off your clothes and like wiggle around."
"Right," Gomes said. Last time he'd been in one of those clubs, it wasn't exotic and there was very little of what you'd call dancing. "That's how you met the senator?"
"He was a big fan of mine."
"The old friends you referred to were they involved in ..."
"That's beside the point," Serena said and grimaced at another sharp pain in her lower abdomen, the second one.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin
with weekly summaries on Sunday.
He can be emailed at dchapman@midweek.com