Miracle (46 page)

By the time the operation was arranged, she had been off life support for thirty minutes. She lay on the operating table, breathing in shallow, irregular gasps which grew weaker as Sebastien watched. Without the machines she was dead already. No, she had never really lived, never sensed the world around her, never had even the most basic awareness of herself, of being loved and pitied.

Standing beside her fragile little form, Sebastien didn’t let himself think about what he was going to do; later he would agonize over the memory, but for now he forced himself to look at her without emotion. He gave directions to his nurses and residents in the same low, firm voice he always used. They responded in silence, all of them subdued, many of them angry. He noted the frowns above their masks, the unnatural quiet, the way they avoided brushing against him around the crowded table.

He knew what they were thinking: that another surgeon should be performing this task; that a loving father would not be able to divorce himself from his feelings; that he viewed his daughter as a monstrosity to be used and disposed of quickly.

Five minutes later she stopped breathing. “Let us begin,” he told them.

The cutting didn’t affect him—watching the frail chest open more with each soft crunch of the heavy scissors—nor did the finer work of opening the pericardial sac that surrounded her heart. It was only when he saw what was left of her life making its last flutter of movement—so tiny, and yet so determined—that he almost cried.

But this, at least, will live
.

And several minutes later, when her heart lay free and quiet in his hand, only waiting to be resurrected, he was at peace.

Marie flung herself to the foot of the hospital bed and spat at him. “Bastard! Monster!” Sobbing hysterically, she pounded the bed’s metal foot rail with both hands. “I never saw her alive again after they took her from the delivery room!”

He stood quietly, rooted to the floor by exhaustion so complete that his feet felt bolted down. He had only taken time to change his bloody scrubs for clean ones before coming to see if she was awake. She was, though still groggy from the sedative. He told her what he had done, expecting the worst reaction, knowing that their marriage was over, and only sorry that they had not ended it before birthing a tortured child.

“How could you?” she screamed. “You killed her! You didn’t even wait for her to die before you mangled her as if she were no more than a laboratory experiment!”

“She was never alive, not in any sense we consider human.”

“Not human in
your
ruthless world! Not human when you wanted to use her for your work!”

“Another baby is alive because of her. That was the only contribution she could make. Don’t you understand? She had dignity and worth. There was a reason for her to be born, because of what I did.
She was not a mistake.
”

“Stop rationalizing! You didn’t love her, and you couldn’t wait to be rid of her! Well, now you can be rid of me, too! I despise you! I’m leaving you!”

“I don’t know why we’ve put up with each other for so many years. Convenience and practicality, I suppose. You don’t have to leave. Keep the house. I’ll go.”

“Go! Go straight to your place in hell! It was the blackness in you that kept us from having a child! You should have died with your mother all those years ago. You were meant to die! I thought that I could conquer the evil auras
around you, but no one can. She doomed you, and all you will ever see are the shadows of life!”

There was truth in what she said, but not enough truth. Sebastien turned to leave. “My mother was only a victim of my father’s selfishness.”

“Oh, let’s talk about your father. Yes, yes, fine timing, Sebastien.” Marie gave a shriek of laughter. “I thought you were so perfect for me. I didn’t want to love anyone after my first husband died. And you didn’t care about being loved. Perfect.” She surged forward, chin thrust out, eyes glittering. Her voice became a soft, vicious taunt. “Your father agreed.”

Sebastien pivoted unsteadily and grasped the bed rail. “Tell me what you mean.”

“I mean that he
asked
me to visit you in Africa. That we talked about it many times before I actually went. That he wanted me to marry you and bring you home, where you belonged. And I, like a fool, listened to him.”

“My father doesn’t just talk. He bribes. What did he offer you?”

“Bribes? You hate him so, you always think the worst of his motives. He wanted to give everything to you—control of the family businesses, a world of opportunities that no mere
doctor
would have—but he knew that you would always throw them in his face. So he made plans to bestow everything on your eldest son. A family fortune, a small empire—all for our first son. Bribe? There was none, merely the understanding that I would never keep him from his grandchildren and that he would make your first son his heir.”

The impact of his father’s manipulation caught Sebastien like a staggering punch. All these years Sebastien had taken satisfaction in the belief that he was punishing his father for the sins of the past. Now he realized that his father had not been punished at all, or even outmaneuvered. Except now. There would be no more children. There would be no more marriage. No avenue for manipulation. A victory for Sebastien, but at a terrible price.

Swaying with rage and frustration, he stared at Marie. “You considered my father’s promises worth this struggle
we’ve endured for so many years? Was your ambition that obsessive?”

“Yes! We would have had a tolerable marriage—you must admit—if we’d had children. but now, now even I give up on you. Smile, Sebastien, you’ve disappointed your father magnificently this time!”

Sebastien flashed a hand forward and clasped her throat. He knew exactly how much pressure to use to frighten, but not to hurt. She made a choking sound and clung to his wrist. Her eyes met his in fury and fear as he leaned close to her. “Did you love our daughter?”

Tears slid down her face. “Yes.”

“Then keep her memory. It’s the only legacy your foolish ambition has gotten you.”

He let go of her and she crumpled, burying her face in her arms and crying poignantly. He looked at her with disgust, at seven years of a marriage that should never have happened, and would not have happened if his ambition and pride had not made him blind to his emotions.

He went to his father’s office that afternoon and told him about the baby. There would not be an heir to the de Savin name. The news defeated Philippe de Savin as nothing else ever had; Sebastien watched the elegant old back slump and the blue eyes cloud with fatigue. Age seemed to capture him in only a few minutes’ time.

“You still have Annette’s children to manipulate,” Sebastien reminded him. “Even if they don’t bear the de Savin name, I’m sure you’ll warm to the idea eventually.”

“Get out,” his father said, and sank down in his desk chair with his back to Sebastien. “I can’t fight you anymore.”

Sebastien laughed bitterly. He would never believe that.

Christian d’Albret gave him an ultimatum—resign from the hospital or suffer severe censure for breaching protocols. He had known from the moment he had decided to end his daughter’s feeble imitation of life that he was
stranding himself in a jungle of rules designed to pacify the clergy and the politicians. Technically, he had taken the heart from a dying baby rather than a dead one.

Had not Christian been personally involved, the matter would have been forgotten. There was an understanding among physicians where medical dilemmas involving themselves or their families were concerned. But Christian had feared and disliked him for years, and Sebastien knew he’d supplied the perfect opportunity for revenge. His father-in-law, filled with rage, was determined to cut down Sebastien’s pride, marriage, and career with one swift stroke.

“Do you think you’ll be welcome at any other major hospital in the country?” he asked Sebastien. “No. I’ll make sure of that. Take your career, Doctor—what’s left of it—and see if anyone will even let you through their doors. Oh, and I’ll use your father’s influence to make doubly certain. He’s as furious about this as I am.”

“Not furious,” Sebastien responded softly. “The baby was only a girl, you see. But he enjoys this chance to humble me.”

Sebastien left the office. All he had to show for years of dedication was a bleak sense of failure when he contemplated the future. He knew that he was still a leader; that he would be a leader again, but the emptiness that had clung to the fringes of his life for so long threatened to overwhelm him.

Marie filed for divorce, then left for an extended stay with relatives in Lyons. Sebastien secluded himself at their home and sent the servants away. He let himself drift, sleeping at odds hours of the day and night, eating only as an afterthought, reading ponderous books of philosophy that no longer made sense.

One night he took the lacquered box out of his armoire and from it removed the old revolver. He took the gun apart and cleaned it carefully, put it back together, then left it on a table. For the next few hours he glanced at it each time he entered the room, not really thinking the thought, but aware of it, nonetheless. Finally he indulged the morbid
fascination; he tempted his own fate. Was he doomed, or not?

Near dawn he took the lacquered box from the bottom drawer of the armoire again; this time he removed the box of cartridges. Snatching the gun and box of cartridges into his hands, he walked out onto the balcony. A white moon hung low in the autumn sky.

He touched the tip of the gun’s barrel. Would it be a cowardly thing to do, or just the fulfillment of a fate that had been chasing him since childhood? The
Ankou
had been waiting almost thirty years to rectify a mistake, and Sebastien was tired of feeling its cold, unforgiving stare at his back.

No one will care. Do it
. His breath short, his hands moving with sure, swift intent, he opened the cartridge box and dug his fingers inside. They touched the round, dimpled token and its gnarled chain.

Sebastien jerked the necklace from the box and held it in the moonlight, stunned and disbelieving. Logic told him that one of the maids, or perhaps even Marie, had found the necklace where he’d thrown it in the hedges and for some unknown reason had tucked it inside the cartridge box.

No. His hands shook. His legs gave way and he sat down on the balcony’s cold stone floor. All the time he continued staring at the token. He knew a sign when he saw one. It gleamed in the light, reminding him that he had once had a chance to be more than the sum of bitterness and pride. Suddenly he realized the horror of what he had been considering only seconds earlier, and he knew that he had to change his life entirely if he was going to survive.

He had to start a new life where he could nurture emotions that had been shriveled through years of neglect. And when he felt strong again, he had to find Amy.