52

“Dr. Montague asked us to call him if you dropped by,” said the receptionist. “And your brother wants you to give him a call, Mr. Fields, and—” But I had given a wave and a smile and was in the elevator.

I glimpsed the receptionist as the doors slid shut. She was reaching for the phone.

“Good evening, Mr. Fields,” said an orderly.

“It’s a quiet night,” I said.

“Yes, sir,” he agreed, pushing the rolling bin of laundry, “very quiet.”

Then he called back to me, “Did you report in, sir?”

“Of course.”

But I could sense him watching me as I hurried away from him.

The tile floors gleamed. A buffing machine hummed far off, a man directing it methodically from one side of the corridor to another. The hospital at night was subdued, but still very much a place of power, a place where lives were lost.

The floors gleamed too brightly. The murmur of the machine was an orchestra.

“They told us to get permission before we let anyone see her,” said the rent-a-cop at the door.

“I don’t think you have to worry about me,” I said.

His eyes were full of apology. “Dr. Montague mentioned you especially,” said the tall, dark-skinned man.

“You know just a look won’t do any harm,” I said.

The man was pained, leaning to one side, unable to give permission.

“Everyone has procedures,” I said. “You have to have them. Otherwise, you really wouldn’t know what to do when something unexpected happens.”

“This is true,” he said.

“I won’t really go into the room. I’ll just stand in the doorway.”

There was a hesitation of just a second or two. “Right,” he said with a smile, letting me into the room.

She was no longer curled up, but her head was still swathed. Her eyelids were sunken. She had resolved into a creature at once less tortured in appearance, and even further removed from life.

There was a long whisper in the half-dark, and then, after a long time, another long airy syllable. She was breathing. But her breath was so slow it nearly stopped during the turn-around, the waiting period between inhale and exhale.

The word came to me out of old tales, legends: deathbed. A commonplace-sounding word, but the actual bed, the actual death, has the feel of an abyss as one stands at the edge.

There was another sound, too. It was insistent, approaching, a squeak and patter, soles against waxed surface. I could hear the footsteps of people hurrying closer behind me.

Now I knew what it was I had to do.

“Nona,” I said. “Everything will be all right.”

The words had always been sincere, when I had murmured them after lovemaking, uttered them with delight or affection in my voice. Now they were a promise, a truth, a change in my life brought on by the advance of my own knowledge.

I knew the secret.

Life was an exchange, a cluttered trading pit. I knew what I could trade for Nona.

As I left the room Barry ran down the corridor, slowed when he saw me, and fell against a wall, panting heavily. Security guards ran along behind him. The tall, dark-skinned man tucked a transmitter into his belt, and looked at me with something like apology.

When he had recovered his breath, Barry gave my arm a squeeze as he passed me. He switched on a light and bent over Nona’s recumbent body.

“You seem to think you can do anything you want,” said Barry. He switched off the light and tucked in his shirt, still winded, trying to pull himself into something like professional appearance. His eyes looked puffy, and he had that new-born look of someone who has been asleep. I knew what he was about to say. He was about to say how concerned he was about me, how worried he was about what I might do.

Whatever he said, I didn’t hear it.

I was gone.