Die Again Tomorrow (30 page)

CHAPTER 57

F
orty-eight nerve-wracking hours needed to pass before Galileo's prognosis would become clear. Isabel knew this, but like everyone else on the ship, she couldn't resist lining up outside the ICU on deck 1 for an opportunity to glimpse his lifeless body and pay her silent regards. During the first few hours, the line stretched out the hospital door and backed up to the stairwell.

All the researchers, doctors, and support staff had woken up that morning to the staggering news of his death, along with Chris's betrayal and escape. More than thirty people deluged Isabel's cabin at 7
A.M.
to drill her—some furious, others in tears—about what had happened during the night. She groggily related the entire sequence of events, from Richard's punched eye and the hospital confrontation that culminated in Greg's vicious knifing to Chris's theft of the X101 and her desperate last-minute retrieval.

“It should work,” she declared to the anxious crowd. “I mean, he wasn't dead long enough for his whole brain to die, right?”

Her statement was met with a troubled silence, and Isabel knew what they were all thinking: The X101 came with zero guarantees. It hadn't yet been tested on someone who'd died of blood loss. Even though Galileo had received the necessary injection, been cooled down to 70 degrees, and undergone a blood transfusion and surgery to repair his gutted stomach, he was still dead—in the clinical sense, if not necessarily in the permanent, irreversible sense. So far, his monitors registered no heartbeat and no brain waves.

Isabel sensed there was also something else upsetting the group, making them trade anguished looks: Galileo had used up the very last dose of X101. And Chris, the only one who knew how to make it, was no longer around to engineer it from scratch. The video surveillance of him in the lab would not be enough by itself to enable them to synthesize the formula. Those precious few milliliters had contained a sacred promise—to fund the Network's costly experiments as long as everyone working there was alive. The painful realization descended on the researchers like a collective sucker punch: Without a perfect sample left to analyze, the drug—and their future security—was lost.

Isabel could offer them no comfort. They stumbled out of her cabin with a shattered stupefaction she recognized all too well. She'd experienced the same feeling after her father's sudden heart attack: It was the struggle to reconcile yourself to your hellish new reality. No matter how strenuous your denial, the truth waited like an unavoidable snake, ready to sink its fangs into your flesh at every turn.

 

 

Seven hours into the waiting period, around 11
A.M.
, Richard was discharged from St. Luke's. When he returned in a taxi, Isabel was the only person there to welcome him. He emerged onto the dock with a wry smile and a black patch over his injured eye. His cheekbones seemed to have grown sharper and his step slower, lending him an air of tired dignity. She ran down the ramp to throw her arms around his neck.

“Ahoy, mate,” he joked, hugging her tightly. His musky odor combined with the pungent smell of the hospital's antibacterial soap.

She planted a kiss on his lips. “I'm so glad you're okay.”

It felt almost foreign to smile, as if her facial muscles had forgotten how. She linked her arm through his and led him back up the ramp into the ship.

“Me too,” he said. “They took off my patch this morning and I could see—it was blurry as hell, but I'll take it.”

“Will it get any better?”

“In time, yeah, once all the inflammation goes down. Apparently I lucked out with one of the city's top retinal surgeons.”

“It's about time someone around here caught a break.”

He frowned at her dejected tone. “Did I miss something?” They were heading through the deserted dining area, past clusters of tables that were usually set for lunch by noon, but today remained bare. “And where is everyone anyway?”

She sighed. “They're visiting Galileo . . . on deck one.”

“As in, the hospital?”

Maybe it was the sincerity of his worry or the depth of her own, but that was when she broke down. Right there, in the middle of the dining hall, she fell against his chest and sobbed. He embraced her without a word, cupping the back of her head and stroking her hair. After a minute, the whole story poured out amid her hiccups and sniffles.

His good eye widened in horror throughout, especially during the violent parts with Greg, and when she finished, she felt as drained as if someone had deflated her down to two dimensions. She exhaled a shaky breath.

“Well,” he said gently, “there's nothing we can do but wait.” He pushed a stray curl behind her ear. “We might as well get some rest. You haven't slept in two days, have you?”

She shook her head. The heaviness of her eyelids startled her; she hadn't noticed until now. But since he'd mentioned it, she realized that a fog of exhaustion was clouding her brain and permeating her bones. She hadn't felt so fatigued since . . . well, since her own death.

“Come,” he said, taking her by the hand. “I'm putting us to bed.”

 

 

The ship was rocking underneath her when she woke up later that evening. The clock on Richard's nightstand read 10:09
P.M.
She'd passed out beside him for a solid ten hours, longer than she'd slept at a stretch since her college days. She ran a quick calculation in her head: They were more than eighteen hours into the waiting period for Galileo. That meant less than thirty to go.

Richard was still snoring softly; Captain lay curled up on his pillow, their noses an inch apart. She tried not to wake either of them as she crept out of bed to look out the porthole. The sky was surprisingly pitch-black, which it never was in Manhattan. She saw no outlines of buildings, no pointy spires lighting up the distant skyline. The ship must have disembarked from the city.

Her stomach was growling. She tiptoed out of Richard's cabin and made her way up to the dining area to rummage around for leftovers. That was, if the service crew had even bothered to make anything. The rigidity of their schedule seemed to have collapsed along with their leader. Sure enough, she found nothing in the refrigerator but some raw chicken, an unmade salad, and a two-day-old platter of meatloaf.

As she set about heating up the meatloaf in the microwave, she heard footsteps approaching the kitchen. She poked her head out to see Theo trudging toward her, wearing the same sweatpants and black V-neck he'd been in since the previous night. His tight shoulders and morose expression mirrored her own.

“Hey, you,” she said. “Hungry?”

He nodded. “Starved.”

“I'll warm you up a plate.” She gestured to a stool in front of the counter island. “Take a seat.”

“Thanks.” He offered her a limp smile, his cheerful dimple noticeably absent.

“So where are we?” She gestured toward the kitchen's circular window; outside, a multitude of stars glittered across the sky like spilled sequins. “Clearly not New York.”

“We're about fifteen nautical miles off the coast, in international waters. We couldn't risk staying.”

“Because of Chris?” The microwave dinged. She removed the plate she'd prepared for herself and served it to Theo instead.

“Yeah. He's a liability now.”

“I'm just glad he's gone. I couldn't take seeing his little smirk ever again.”

“Amen.” Theo thrust his fork into the meatloaf as she warmed another slice.

She let him eat in silence for a minute. When the microwave beeped again, she couldn't help noticing the clock on the display.

“Twenty-nine more hours.”

“I don't know how I'm gonna wait that long.” He sank his fingers into his disheveled hair. “I feel like I might explode.”

“Any change?”

“His heartbeat's back now. Real faint, though.”

“That's great!” She slid onto a stool across from him with a grin. “Isn't that a really good sign?”

Theo shrugged. “Yeah, but still no brain waves. But he's only at 87 degrees at the moment, so it's still too early.”

“They warm him a quarter of a degree Celsius an hour, right?”

“Exactly. Good memory.”

It was discouraging to think that even though his heart was beating again, he was still dead—legally—as long as his brain was gone. If someone went crazy and pulled the plug, it wouldn't be murder.

“What if he stays brain-dead?” she blurted.

Theo winced, and she immediately regretted asking.

“We don't have to think about that,” she said. “Never mind.”

“I'd authorize them to . . .” He lowered his gaze. “I'm his next of kin. I know he wouldn't want to be kept on machines.”

“Well, let's wait and see. I think he has a real shot.” Of course she had no idea if he did or didn't; the complex chemical interactions of the X101 with dying neurons was far beyond her comprehension, but what else could she say?

When Theo looked up at her, his lips were curved in a grateful smile. “I meant to tell you,” he said, “good job before. You really came through there.”

“Thanks.” Her heart lifted like a helium balloon, lighter than air. “You have no idea how much that means to me.”

With eight hours to go, the anxiety on the ship was festering like an actual living organism. It seemed to exist of its own accord: thickening the air, wrinkling people's foreheads, shutting down their stomachs, closing all the labs.

To distract herself, Isabel used the satellite phone to call and check up on Joan. When she answered, her voice sounded tired but also buoyant, as if some great invisible hurdle had been cleared.

“Isabel!” she exclaimed. “Thank you for calling. How's our agent friend, is he okay? I've called all the local hospitals but no one knows a thing about him.”

“We took him . . . out of state. He's still critical, so it's touch and go right now.”

“Oh. I'm so sorry, I still can't believe what my—what Greg did.”

The recollection of the unspeakable moment made them both go quiet.

After a few seconds Isabel hazarded a follow-up: “Is he in custody at least?”

“Of course, he's already been arraigned and entered a guilty plea. I'm sure he'll end up in prison for the rest of his life.”

Isabel felt a weak satisfaction at justice served, but more than that, she was overwhelmed with sadness for Joan.

“Do you need help or anything? I mean, where do you go from here?”

“Oh, honey, don't worry about me, I'll be okay.”

“For real? You're not just saying it?”

“I've still got my son and my grandkids and my mind, and I've come to realize that's pretty much all I need. Anything else is gravy.”

Her sincerity filled Isabel with both admiration and relief. It was astonishing how strong some people could be in the worst possible times. In the truest sense, she thought, Joan deserved the title
survivor.
They both did.

“That's good to hear,” she said. “We should keep in touch.”

“I would like that very much.” Isabel could hear the smile in her voice. “You know, I owe you a thank-you.”

“You do?”

“I was blind for so long. Thank you for helping me see the truth.”

 

 

At 4:15
A.M.
, just a few minutes before the forty-eight-hour mark, the entire population of the ship gathered around Galileo's bedside in the ICU. Isabel and Theo sat closest to him, on either side of his head; Richard hovered behind her with a hand on her shoulder. The several dozen researchers, doctors, service staff, and nurses completed the tight cluster.

Galileo lay with his eyes closed underneath a white sheet. The monitors connected to his chest and forehead were beeping in quiet, regular intervals. There was no longer a tube down his throat, now that he could breathe on his own, and the recent MRI of his brain had come back clean, but Isabel knew better than to celebrate just yet. One horrific scenario was still possible: even if his brain had recovered function, his time without oxygen might have left his nervous system paralyzed—so he could be left locked in, unable to speak or move, but fully conscious. She could imagine no worse fate.

Nobody spoke. The only motion was the gentle swaying of the ship beneath their feet. Each minute seemed interminable. Every five to ten seconds, Isabel glanced up at the plain white clock on the wall above Galileo's head. She was too nervous to squirm, as though any movement might disrupt the fragile chance of his recovery. Across from her, though, Theo kept cracking his bony knuckles and sighing.