 The Bucket List, an agent John Adderley novel, by Peter Molen and Peter Nystrom, translated from the Swedish by Ian Giles, narrated by Dion Graham, Part 1. 2019 and 2009, Baltimore, 2019. He lay in bed looking up at the white ceiling. The contours of the discolored plasterboard panel were gradually becoming clearer. The stain looked like a ghost, or maybe a balloon, something a child might have drawn. John knew he was in the borderlands between sleep and wakefulness. He had no idea how long he had been drifting between the two worlds. He tried turning his head to see where he was. A second later, he was hit by a wave of pain. Its epicenter was at the back of his head, rippling out to the rest of his body. He closed his eyes and tried to find somewhere inside himself where he could take cover. There was no such place. He waited until the worst of the pain dissipated and decided to take in the room using senses other than sight. It smelled of cleaning fluid, but it lacked the synthetic scent that products like that often had, no lemon or meadow flowers, just a clinical smell of cleanliness. He discerned a beeping sound to his left. The noise was repeated at intervals of a few seconds and had to be coming from some kind of technical equipment level with his head. Using one hand, he slowly gripped the steel frame of the bed and let his fingers slide along the structure until they encountered something that seemed to be a wire. He took hold of the cable and lifted it high enough for him to see. At the end was a plastic cylinder with a red button. He pressed it and waited for something to happen. After just a few seconds, he heard the sound of a door opening and footsteps approaching. A woman in a white coat with her hair tied in a bun at the back of her neck leaned over the bed. Are you awake, John? Can you hear me? He nodded imperceptibly and received a smile in return. You're at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, she said. He performed surgery on you to treat the gunshot wounds to your chest. As he listened to the nurse's voice, he became aware of the post-surgical pain. It was different in nature, less explosive than the neck pain, more gnawing in its character. Like a second layer of pain. The woman continued to update him about his condition. He had lost a lot of blood and had been unconscious when he was brought into the emergency room 24 hours earlier. They had then operated and the doctors had managed to stop the internal bleeding. The bullets, two of them, had missed his vital organs and passed through his body. Water. He managed to say, taken by surprise at how feeble his voice sounded. The nurse picked up a cup with a straw from the table and helped put the straw to his lips. John was over-enthusiastic and sucked up more water than he could swallow. He coughed and the white-clad woman had to wipe his chin with a napkin. It's hard to drink when you're lying completely flat. Would you like me to angle the bed? He nodded. The nurse pressed a button on the wall and the head of the bed was slowly raised. Finally, he had a view of the room. Next to the bed on his left was a stand on wheels holding intravenous drugs. John counted three transparent tubes supplying his body with a concoction of chemicals through an insertion in the crook of his arm. The beeping he'd heard was being emitted by an instrument monitoring his breathing and oxygen. The closed curtains in front of the two windows were thin and they led in more sunlight than he would have liked. The door into the corridor also had a pane of glass in it. It was inset at the top and big enough to let him see the policeman on guard outside. John slowly turned his head and saw the other bed. He was apparently not the only patient in here. As he saw the face, pain exploded at the back of his head again. There, just a few steps away, was the man who, twenty-four hours earlier, had put a pistol to the back of his neck. Two. Crossed out. 2009. Voicemail again. Hymer knew she could see he was calling even though it was almost midnight. Her phone was practically glued to her hand and was always going off at every... Sample complete. Ready to continue?