Life Support (40 page)
"Touched what?"
"The body."
"Another one?"
"I'm afraid so."
Dvorak followed the cop out of the foundation pit, both of them stumbling their way up to the fence.
"It was in the trunk of the car," the cop panted as he climbed.
"Which car?"
"Dr. Yarborough's Lincoln. The one we followed here from the Howarth building. Looks like he was bringing a last-minute addition to the burial. We sure didn't expect to see that when we popped open his trunk."
They walked past the gathering of elderly onlookers and crossed to Yarborough's car, parked by the fence. Detective Sheehan was standing beside the open trunk. "Tonight they come in threes," he said.
Dvorak shook his head. "I'm not sure I can handle much more of this tonight."
"You feeling okay, Doc?" ,.
Dvorak paused, thinking about the night that lay ahead. About0 the hours it would take him to reach Toby's bedside. The delay could not be helped, this he had to do. .
He took a pair of latex gloves from his pocket. "Let's get on withX this," he said and looked into the trunk. , Sheehan trained his flashlight beam on the face of the corpse.
For a moment Dvorak could not say a word. He stood gazing at the girl's face, at the bruise marring that fragile skin, at the gray eyes, open and soulless. Once there had been a soul there, once he had seen it, shining brightly. Where are you now? he wondered.
Somewhere good, I hope. Somewhere warm and kind ..
and safe.
He reached down and, gently, closed Molly Picker's eyes.
The sound of nurses laughing in the hallway roused Dvorak from a fitful sleep. He opened his eyes and saw daylight shining in the window. He was sitting in a chair by Toby's hospital bed.
She was still asleep, her breathing slow and steady, her cheeks flushed. Most of the dirt had been wiped away from her face last night, but he could still see a few grains of sand sparkling in her hair.
He rose and stretched, trying to work the kinks out of his neck.
At last a sunny day, he thought, staring out the window. Only the smallest wisp of a cloud drifted in the sky.
Behind him, a voice murmured, "I had the worst nightmare."
Turning, he met Toby's gaze. She held out her hand to him. He took it warmly in his and sat down beside her.
"But I didn't dream it, did I?" she said.
I' "No. I'm afraid it was all too real."
She lay silent for a moment, frowning, as though trying to gather all her fragments of memory into one comprehensible whole.
"We found their medical records," said Dvorak.
She looked at him, her eyes questioning.
"They kept data on all the brain implants. Seventy-nine files, stored in the basement of the Howarth building. Patient names, operative notes, follow-up head scans."
"They were compiling data?"
He nodded. "To back up their claims of success. By the look of it, the implants did have benefits."
"And hazards too," she added softly.
"Yes. There was a cluster of patients early last year, when Wallenberg was still using aborted fetuses. Five men received their implants from the same pooled fetal cells. They were all infected at the same time. It took a year for the first one to come down with symptoms."
"Dr. Mackie?"
He nodded.
"You said there were seventy-nine files. What about all the other patients?"
"Alive and well. And thriving. Which presents a moral dilemma. What if this treatment really does work?"
By her troubled expression, he knew she shared his concerns. How far do we go to prolong life? How much of our humanity do we sacrifice?
She said, suddenly, "I know where to find Harry Slotkin." She looked at him with startling clarity in her eyes. "Brant Hill�the new nursing home wing. A few weeks ago, they poured the foundation."
"Yes, Wallenberg told us."
"Wallenberg did?"
"They're at each others' throats now. Wallenberg and Gideon against the Trammells. It's a race to pin the blame. Right now, the Trammells seem to be in the worst trouble."
Toby paused, gathering the courage to ask the next question. "Robbie?"
"It was Richard Trammell. The gun was registered to him. We expect ballistics will confirm it."
She nodded, absorbing the painful information in silence. He saw tears flash in her eyes and decided he would wait to tell her about Molly.
This was not the time to burden her with yet more tragedy.
There was a knock on the door, and Vickie stepped into the room. She looked paler than she had last night, when Dvorak had seen her visiting Toby. Paler and strangely afraid. She paused a few feet away from the bed, as though reluctant to approach.
Dvorak stood up. "I think I'll leave you two alone," he said.
"No. Please," said Vickie. "You don't have to go."
"I'm not going anywhere." He bent down and gave Toby a kiss. "But I will wait outside." He straightened and crossed to the door.
There he paused.
Glancing back, he saw Vickie suddenly break free of some invisible restraint. In three swift steps she crossed to the bed and took Toby into her arms.
Dvorak brushed his hand across his eyes. And quietly left the room.
Two Days Later The ventilator delivered its twenh breaths per minute, each whoosh followed by a sigh, the deflation of ribs and chest wall. Toby had found the rhythm soothing as she combed her mother's hair and bathed her limbs and torso, the washcloth gliding across landmarks she had come to know so well. The star-shaped patch of pigment on the left arm. The biopsy scar on the breast. The arthritic finger, bent in a shepherd's crook.
But this scar on the knee�how did Ellen get it? Toby wondered. It looked like a very old scar, well healed, almost invisible, its origins lost in the forgotten reaches of her mother's childhood. Gazing at it under the now.
bright lights of the ICU cubicle, she thought, All these years Mom has had this scar, and I never noticed it until now.
"Toby?"
She turned and saw Dvorak standing in the cubicle doorway. Perhaps he'd been there for some time, she hadn't noticed his arrival. That was simply Dvorak's way. In the day and a half she'd been hospitalized, Toby would awaken and think she was alone. Then she'd turn her head and see that he was still sitting in her room, silent and unnoticed, watching over her. As he was doing "Your sister's just arrived," he said. "Dr. Steinglass is on his way upstairs."
Toby looked down at her mother. Ellen's hair was splayed across the pillow. It looked not like the hair of an old woman but the luxurious mane of a young girl, bright as windblown sheets of silver. Toby bent down and touched her lips to Ellen's forehead.
"Good night, Mom," she whispered, and walked out of the cubicle.
On the other side of the viewing window, she took her place beside Vickie. Dvorak stood behind them, his presence felt though unseen.
Through the glass they watched Dr. Steinglass enter the cubicle and cross to the ventilator. He glanced at Toby, a silent question in his eyes.
She nodded.
He turned off the ventilator.
Ellen's chest fell still. Ten seconds passed in silence.
Vickie reached for Toby's hand, held on tight.
Ellen's chest remained motionless.
Now her heart was slowing. First a pause. A stumbled beat. Then, at last, the final stillness.
From the moment we're born, death is our final destination, thought Toby. Only the date and time of our arrival is unknown.
For Ellen, the journey was completed at two-fifteen, on this afternoon in late autumn.
For Daniel Dvorak, death might come in two years or in forty years. It might be heralded by the tremor of his hand, or arrive without warning in the night while his grandchildren sleep in the next room. He would learn to cope with that uncertainty, as people coped with all the other uncertainties of life.
And for the rest of us?
Toby pressed her hand against the glass and felt her own pulse, warm and strong, in her fingertips. I've already died once, she thought.
This was a brand-new journey.
the end.
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