Jenny reached into the pocket of the cardigan she was wearing, her hand closing around the vial of potassium chloride she’d lifted from a drug cart this morning. To the touch it felt cool and benign. But injected into a vein, the drug would freeze the heart in mid beat, providing a quick and painless death. And it was untraceable at autopsy. Jack had told her about it five or six years ago, following the death of a resident who’d used the drug on himself.
“I won’t let you suffer, sweetie,” Jenny whispered to Kim’s unmoving form, knuckling a tear from one sunken eye. “I will not let you suffer...”
* * *
A pinpoint of light, flickering and diamond-hard, appeared in the seamless landscape of black. It hung there a time, star like, until it was joined by another, each point throwing off threads of illumination, like distant searchlights. Soon, two others appeared, creating the precise geometry of a constellation. Now four others poked holes in the dark and in a matter of seconds the process went exponential, the previously impenetrable blackness shredding before a hail of searing white bullets of light.
Then the darkness was gone and the flash of a nuclear epicenter filled Kim’s brain. In the hurricane force of it, her body jerked.
* * *
Jenny jumped off her chair, slopping coffee onto her jeans. “She moved.
She moved
.”
A nurse rushed into the room as a second spasm seized Kim’s body, spiking her hands up in a warding-off gesture.
Jenny clutched the nurse’s arm. “Did you see it?”
The nurse nodded, smiling guardedly.
“Is it a good sign? Is she waking up?”
“I don’t think it’s a bad sign,” the nurse said. “I’ll call Doctor Sanders.”
“Okay, good,” Jenny said, watching as the nurse left the room. Then she was leaning over Kim, murmuring into her ear. “Can you hear me, baby? It’s your mom. Can you hear me?” She had to restrain herself against trying to shake Kim awake. “Please, baby, can you hear me?”
But Kim lay utterly still. Jenny took her limp hand. The despair loomed up again, huge and inexhaustible, but this time she refused to submit to it.
Sanders came in, smiled tentatively at Jenny and began examining Kim, shining a pen light in her eyes, testing various reflexes. When he was done he turned to Jenny.
“I don’t want to create any false hope here,” he said, “but I think she’s beginning to lighten up.”
* * *
Paul showed up a few hours later. Jenny hadn’t seen him in days and was startled by the change in him. He was skittish and gaunt, hunted looking. His bright eyes stared out of purple-rimmed sockets and his thin frame seemed to float inside his rumpled clothes. He wavered in the doorway, as if unsure of what to do.
“Paul,” Jenny said. “Are you all right?”
He glanced behind him, then stepped into the room. “Jen. About Jack...”
Jenny took him into her arms. “God, Paul, is that what’s bothering you?” She could feel him trembling against her. “You had no other choice. I would have done the same thing.”
“Thanks,” Paul said. “Thanks, Jenny. But that’s not the only reason I came.” He stepped back from her embrace. “Is there someplace we can talk?”
“It’ll have to be right here,” Jenny said, pulling up another chair. “Kim moved a while ago and I want to be here in case it happens again. Doctor Sanders thinks she might be waking up.”
Paul stared at Kim for a beat, then sat down. “Craig Walsh called me this morning,” he said. “He told me some things I feel you should know. Things I’ve suspected from the beginning, but never had the courage to verify.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your miscarriages, Jen. They weren’t your fault.”
Jenny regarded him quizzically, as if he’d just spoken in tongues or challenged one of her most deeply held beliefs. In a sense, he had.
Paul said, “When you were investigated for infertility fifteen years ago, Jack never submitted a sperm sample. And the fetuses were all malformed. Genetically malformed. Craig feels terrible about having kept this from you all this time, but it’s a secret he’s kept out of fear.”
“Jack?”
Paul nodded. “He threatened Craig, told him if he ever breathed a word of this to you, he’d beat him to death.”
Jenny said nothing. Though the news didn’t surprise her, it stunned her just the same. But it vindicated her, too.
“It was him, Jen. You’re fine. With the right partner, you could have as many babies as you want. But Jack could never let you know that. To be less than a man was his only fear, and he couldn’t face it. Better to punish you than to admit the flaw in himself.”
She’d wondered about that more than once. It was a known fact that the incidence of spontaneous abortion and congenital malformation was higher in operating room personnel. But at the time, the wondering had seemed a sacrilege.
Paul said, “I’m sure my timing is lousy on this, but I felt you ought to know. I thought it might help.”
“It does,” Jenny said. “In a sick sort of way, it really does.”
Paul looked at his feet. “While I’m confessing, I might as well go all the way.” His eyes rose to meet hers, his wan complexion turning crimson. “I’m gay.” The words hung in the air for a moment, then Paul snorted laughter. “Can you believe it? The new millennium and Paul Daw is finally coming out of the closet.”
Jenny touched his hand. “I suspected.”
“Weren’t fooled by all the ladies?”
“I guess I didn’t think that much about it. Did you really think it would matter to me?”
“No. I guess not. I was just so afraid my mother would find out. It’d kill her, Jen. She’s had a bad heart since I was a kid, and...” Tears hazed his eyes. “My father was a violent homophobe. I didn’t know that until the day he caught me ditching class in the tenth grade with my first...friend. We were in the bathroom at home. Experimenting. I wasn’t even sure back then.” Paul shook his head. “He beat us both up. Pretty badly. I thought he was going to kill my friend. He said he
would
kill me if Mother ever found out or even suspected. He died ten years later, but by then I’d gotten so used to keeping it a secret...”
“So Chris is...”
“The guy I was talking to on the phone that day in the office? Yeah. Mr. Right. Right then. I’ve had some lousy luck, long-term. They just don’t understand...” He stood. “Jen, I’ve got to go. I hope Kim is okay. I’ll drop by again in a couple of days.”
Jenny caught his hand. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. No, that’s a lie. I’m scared, Jen. Scared shitless. I don’t think I can sit in that courtroom with Jack’s eyes on me and tell them what I know.”
“You’ll do fine. You’ll do what you have to do.”
“I hope you’re right,” Paul said. Then he left.
* * *
A scream filled Kim’s mind. Keen and primal, it overlaid the white fire of her awakening neurons like the shriek of a jet spewing napalm. She was not yet aware, not on any conscious plane, but at some primitive level, where the delineations between species grow indistinct, she writhed in terror. Her nervous system was coming abruptly awake, but like a huge and untended generator it faltered before the sudden overload. Scrambling to resume their accustomed functions, her synapses whizzed and crackled like pinwheels. Garbled messages streaked to and fro, out-stripping the capacity of her weakened body to respond. Muscles twitched and tightened, threatening to snap the bones they spanned. When this excruciating tetany could no longer be sustained, Kim began to convulse.
* * *
When Kim’s seizure began Jenny was drowsing in her chair. Sixteen hours had passed since Kim first moved. In that time Jenny had left the room only twice to empty her bladder. She’d taken her meals at Kim’s bedside and refused Richard’s offers to take up the vigil while she caught a few winks on the cot in the family room. In her exhaustion she might have slept through the entire episode had the monitors not started to squeal and the staff come charging in.
A nurse barged past Jenny, almost dumping her out of her chair. Dr. Sanders strode in and began injecting something into Kim’s IV.
“Get some restraints on her,” he said. His thin face was flushed as he turned to Jenny. “I think you’d better leave.”
“I’m staying.”
“Then keep out of the way. Jesus—”
Kim’s body jackknifed, her bandaged head levering upward. Her arms scissored in an exaggerated hugging gesture, dislodging the syringe Sanders was holding and sending his glasses flying off his face. Then she arched back the other way, disconnecting herself from the ventilator.
Jenny bulled a nurse out of the way and jumped onto the bed, sprawling herself across Kim’s chest. “It’s me, honey, it’s your mom. Please, please,
stop
this. Oh, baby, please hear me...”
Sanders said, “Get her out of here.”
Then Jenny felt herself being lifted off the bed. Her first instinct was to fight, to kick and claw until they let her go. But as the two burly orderlies lofted her away, Jenny realized it was out of her hands. It always had been. They set her on her feet in the waiting area, which was blessedly abandoned, hovering around her now as if afraid she might launch herself at them at any moment.
“I’m all right now,” she told them. “They probably need you back inside.”
“It’d be better if you waited here, ma’am,” the taller guy said. He was breathing hard and Jenny could see faint scratch marks on his face. “Someone will come and get you when...”
“I understand,” Jenny said. “I’ll wait right here.”
When the orderlies left, Jenny did something she hadn’t done since she was a little girl. She sank to her knees and prayed.
* * *
“I’ll be frank, Mrs. Fallon.”
“Jenny.”
“Jenny.” Sanders cleared his throat. “The seizures are not a good sign. They could indicate permanent brain damage. And the seizures themselves may do further harm.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I think we should get the tracheostomy done, that’s number one. Then we’ll have to sort out some anticonvulsants for her. We’ll do a CAT scan, see what that shows, but...”
“Am I ever going to get my daughter home?”
“I don’t know,” Sanders said. “I honestly don’t know.”
As the doctor turned away, Jenny’s hand found the vial in her sweater pocket.
Okay, sweetheart
, she thought without qualm.
I won’t let you suffer. I will not let you suffer.
* * *
Not counting his lawyer, Jack had had only one visitor since his arrest. The visit had surprised and amused him, and, perhaps to add flavor to the stale run of days, he’d decided to turn it into a bit of sport. He’d made the trek to the visitation area with only the mildest curiosity. And there, on the opposite side of the Plexiglas, sat Karli Warner, the petite, starry-eyed nurse from neuro, the black telephone receiver already pressed to her ear. When Jack sat in front of her and smiled, Karli’s lips took up a girlish tremble.
“Oh, Doctor Fallon, I...”
“Under the circumstances, Karli, why don’t you call me Jack.”
This seemed to please her. “Yes, okay. Jack. I, the reason I came, I just couldn’t believe it when I heard. I still don’t believe it. Not you. Never you. I would have come sooner, but they—”
“What do you really want to tell me, Karli?”
Karli cut her eyes away, unprepared for his directness. “I wanted you to know that I believe in you. That I...support you. And—”
“You want to fuck me?”
Karli flinched, a betraying blush rising to her cheeks. In truth, she wanted nothing more. But his crudeness undid her. She’d always imagined the encounter in a more romantic light.
Leaning closer, Jack placed an open palm on the smeared Plexiglas. As if following some half-baked script, Karli followed suit, her small hand almost childlike against his.
He said, “Karli, that was rude of me.” She was gazing openly at him now, a pretty, dark-haired girl of twenty-four. “Listen, if I get out of here somehow, you know, and I can see my way clear, could I...come see you?”
Karli’s eyes grew eager. Jack could see the excited bound of her heart, a rhythmic flutter in the thin cords of her neck.
“That would be wonderful. But, how...?”
“Let me worry about that. Where would I find you?”
“They took my purse, I’ve got nothing to write with.”
“Just tell me,” Jack said. “I’ve got an excellent memory.”
Karli recited her address, stumbling over the street number.
“Got it,” Jack said. He withdrew his hand from the partition and leaned back in his chair. “I’ve got to go now, Karli, but until I see you again, I want you to think about this.” He glanced behind him, then leaned closer to the partition, fixing Karli’s unblinking gaze. “Those people in the hospital? I killed them. Every last one of them. More, in fact, than anyone will ever know.”
Karli’s mouth dropped open.
Jack smiled. “I’ll look you up when I get out.”
* * *
Jack thought of Karli’s visit now, as he stepped out of his cell into the day room, a half dozen men milling around, talking and smoking. He wondered if she’d left town.
“Hey, Fallon.”
Jack turned to face three fellow inmates: an enormous black guy with a gold hoop through his nose and a bodybuilder’s swollen torso; a tall, wiry longhair plastered with tattoos; and a short, compact brawler with quick eyes and a jaw like a shovel blade. Of the three, Jack judged this one the more dangerous. They formed a loose circle around him, like dingoes.
Grinning, Longhair said, “Big motherfucker, ain’t he?”
“Yeah,” the short one said. He tucked an unlit stub of cigarette into his mouth. “But you know what they say, the bigger they are...”
Longhair grabbed his crotch and finished the thought. “The sweeter they suck.”
Bodybuilder slid into Jack’s space. “You see that suit gawkin’ down at you?”
Jack lifted his gaze to the catwalk, ten feet up. Staring down at him through a glass wall stood a thin man in a tan suit. Mirrored sunglasses concealed his eyes. His mouth was a tight, bitter slash. There were no guards in sight.
“I see him.”
“Well, it turns out one of the kids you fucked over is that boy’s niece. You follow?”