The Select (41 page)

But you did kill me, Tim thought. You
must have. Because this is worse than death. This is
Hell.

MONITORING

Louis Verran noticed the red light
blinking on the recorder. He nudged Elliot.

"How long's that been lit?"

Elliot glanced up at it and shrugged.
"Beats me."

"When was the last time you checked
it?"

"This morning when I came in. Wasn't
blinking then."

With an effort, Verran kept his voice
low and even.

"Well, it's blinking now. And when
it's blinking it means the recorder's been activated. And when the
recorder's been activated it means Cleary's been on the phone. And
in case you forgot, we're monitoring all her phone calls. So do you
think you could spare some time from your busy schedule to listen
to it?"

"Sure, Chief."

Verran shook his head. The best goddam
high-tech voice-activated recorder wasn't worth shit if nobody
listened to it.

He watched Elliot slip on the
headphones and replay the conversation. He looked bored. Finally he
pulled them off.

"Same old crap, Chief. Her mother
wants her to come home Friday. Her old boyfriend wants her to come
home too, even offered to come down and get her but she blew him
off. She's staying."

"She should go. She's bad news, that
kid."

"She thinks Brown's coming back and
she wants to be here." Elliot grinned. "She's got a loooooong wait,
huh?"

"Yeah," Verran said. "But
as long as she's waiting, you keep an eye on that recorder. Anytime
you see that light blinking, you listen right away. Not
later
. Right away
."

Verran almost felt sorry for Cleary.
Her boyfriend was never coming back. There was no way out of the
place Alston had put him.

TWENTY-ONE

Tim watched the day-shift nurses—the
dark-skinned one called Marguerite and another whose name he hadn't
caught yet— string garland and holly around the window on the
hallway. They worked on the far side of the window; apparently
Christmas decorations weren't allowed in the antiseptic confines of
Ward C. They were laughing, smiling, presenting a Norman
Rockwellesque portrait of holiday cheer.

Who on earth would believe what they
were involved in on this side of the window?

And what would a Rockwell portrait of
my right thigh look like? Tim wondered.

All the shifts told him
how well the graft was taking, as if he cared. How long since
Alston had burned him? How long since he'd placed the graft? If
only there was a clock here. Or a calendar. Tim's only measure of
time was his injections. He knew today was Friday—he'd heard
Marguerite say "TGIF" this morning—but
which
Friday? Was it one Friday
before Christmas, or two?

He was betting on two. That made today
the sixteenth of December. Maybe.

He hadn't been placed on his left side
since the graft. He'd been on his right side, faced toward the hall
window for the past few hours. Never since his arrival had he been
rotated to the spot directly in front of it. Each of the other
seven patients on Ward C got a regular turn there, but Tim was
always kept near the back. Why?

Because of Quinn, he guessed. Even
mummy-wrapped as he was, there was still a chance she might
recognize him if she got within a couple of feet.

The thought of her was a deep ache in
his chest. He liked being positioned so he could see some
activity—anything but hours of staring at the ceiling—but he hoped
Quinn wouldn't pass by. He longed for the sight of her, but each
time she walked on after pausing at the window, a part of him
died.

He preferred watching Marguerite and
the other nurse decorating the window.

Go on, ladies. Do a good
job. Take your time. Take all the time you want.

Because the longer they stayed out
there, the longer it would be before his next dose of
9574.

Already his hands were tingling to the
wrists. He'd begun concentrating on his left fingers the instant
the tingling began. He knew they lay on his left hip. He wished he
could see them, to measure his progress.

And he
was
making progress—no question
about that. He could feel his fingers moving, feel the pinky flex,
then straighten...flex, then straighten. He just wished he knew how
much movement he'd gained. He didn't know how far he could trust
his proprioception—he needed to
see
those fingers move to believe it.

Tim noticed one of the
nurses—Marguerite—looking in his direction. He froze his hand in
position. Had she seen the movement? He prayed not. If they saw the
9574 wearing off, they'd give him another shot of it. They might
even start keeping a special eye out for movement. And if they saw
too much they might up his dose.

Tim was sure that would
push him over the edge into madness. All that kept him sane were
these moments when he could feel something,
do
something. He spent his day
waiting for these moments. He lived for them. If they were taken
away...

Marguerite turned and said something
to the other nurse and they both laughed. They went on decorating
the window. Good. She hadn't seen him. He could go on moving his
fingers.

He switched his concentration to his
left thumb.

...flex...

...extend...

...flex...

...extend...

*

Snow.

As she hurried toward Science, Quinn
brushed at a flake that had caught in her eyelashes. The Baltimore
radio stations were all talking about the big snowstorm charging in
from the Midwest. Pennsylvania and New Jersey were slated to take
the brunt if the storm stayed on its present course, with Maryland
collecting a few inches from the periphery.

Normally, she'd be excited. Quinn
loved snow, loved to ski. During college, whenever a snow hit New
England, she and a couple of friends would hop in a car and head
for Great Barrington where her roommate's family had a ski
condo.

But she felt no interest, let alone
excitement, in the coming storm. It didn't matter. Not much seemed
to matter anymore.

One thing the threatened snowfall did
accomplish was the cancellation of the Friday afternoon labs. Since
this was the last day before Christmas break, the administration
had decided to let the students get a head start on the
storm.

Everyone who was going home, that is.
For Quinn it meant an early start in Dr. Emerson's lab. She'd had
lunch, helped a couple of friends load up their cars, and waved
them off to their Merry Christmases.

Merry Christmas.

Not bloody likely.

Another reason for not
going home until the last minute: Quinn wasn't feeling very
Christmasy—anything
but
Christmasy. And Mom always did Christmas up big,
decorating the first floor like she was entering it in a contest.
Everything would be so cheery and warm and happy and Quinn knew
she'd be a horrible wet blanket. If she was going to mope, better
to do it in private.

She shook herself. This had to stop.
Everything was going to be fine, everything was going to be
all—

Why did you leave me, Tim?
Why did you make me care about you and then run off like that?
Why?

She bit back a sob.

"I'm okay," she said softly. "Really.
I'm okay."

She groaned as she entered Science.
The entry vestibule and the lobby were festooned with Christmas
ornaments. There wasn't going to be any getting away from The
Season To Be Jolly.

Nobody was at the security desk. One
of the male guards was holding a ladder while Charlene stood on the
top step and taped a strand of golden garland to the wall. They
recognized Quinn and waved her through.

Fifth was no better. Santa faces,
Merry Christmas greetings, plastic mistletoe, fake holly, and
tinsel garland hung all over the place.

Quinn kept her eyes straight ahead,
glancing left only briefly when she passed the newly decorated Ward
C window, trimmed with tiny Christmas bulbs, blinking
chaotically.

She stopped as a thought
struck her: Here I am in the dumps about my Christmas...what
about
theirs
? Her
gaze roamed the ward, coming to rest on the patient against the far
wall. He appeared male, and his body was long and slim.

Like Tim's, Quinn thought with a
pang.

He was lying on his right side, facing
her. She couldn't make out his eyes between the folds of gauze
wrapped around his head, but he seemed to be looking at
her.

*

Quinn!

Jesus, it was Quinn. And she was
staring directly at him. If only he could reach up and yank the
gauze off his face, or screech her name, or just wave and attract
her attention. Anything but to lie here like a goddam asparagus and
watch her walk away again.

His hand...his left
hand...if he could get it to move now...
now
, when he needed it...to signal
her...something definitive...something that wouldn't look like some
sort of random muscle twitch...if only he knew sign
language...

And then Tim realized that he did know
a sign language of sorts.

*

Quinn stared at the bandaged-covered
face, trying to read something there. She had a feeling he was
staring back at her, trying to tell her something. His body looked
slack, utterly relaxed, yet she sensed a bridled intensity about
him.

Movement caught her eye. His left hand
was twitching where it lay on his left hip. The fingers were
curling into a fist. No, not all of them. Just the middle three.
The thumb and pinky finger remained extended.

And then, ever so slightly, the hand
wagged back and forth.

Quinn felt a smile begin to pull on
her lips. Why, it almost looked like—

As she cried out, her
knees buckled and she fell against the window with a dull
thunk
that echoed down
the hall.

Tim's Hawaiian hang-loose sign...the
patient on the far side of Ward C was looking her way and doing a
crude version of the shake-a-shake-a signal Tim had used in the
casino.

Suddenly hands were gripping her upper
arm, supporting her.

"Are you all right?"

Quinn looked up and saw a nurse
holding her arm, steadying her as Quinn straightened and leaned
against the window frame.

"I..." Her throat locked, refusing to
let another syllable pass.

"You look terrible," the nurse said.
"You're white as a ghost."

I've just
seen
a ghost, she
thought.

She was shaking, dripping with
perspiration. Bile surged against the back of her throat but she
forced it back down.

"What's wrong?" the nurse was saying,
looking at her closely. "Are you a diabetic or
hypoglycemic?"

I probably look like I'm having an
insulin reaction, Quinn thought. I almost wish I were.

She shook her head and started to say
something, to ask about that patient at the far end of Ward C, then
bit back the words.

It couldn't be Tim. Not in Ward C with
the burn patients. Anywhere but Ward C.

If she said anything about it, they'd
think she was losing it. Hallucinating. Breaking with reality. Word
had already spread around The Ingraham about Tim having a breakdown
and running off—pulling a Prosser. The administration would think
she was cracking too. They'd send her home. Maybe for good. One
breakdown per class was more than they wanted to deal
with.

"My period," she said, improvising. "I
always get bad cramps the first day."

The nurse's face relaxed. "I get some
whoppers myself. Come on over here. I'll give you a couple of
Anaprox."

Keeping one hand on the wall to steady
herself, Quinn followed her to the nursing station where she sat,
blotted the beaded perspiration from her face with a paper towel,
and choked down the two blue tablets.

After a few minutes, she felt strong
enough to move on. She thanked the nurse and made it down the hall
to Dr. Emerson's lab where she told Alice that she didn't feel well
enough to work today.

Alice took one look at her and bounded
out of her seat.

"I should say you don't! You look
awful! You might have the flu. Dr. Emerson won't be in until
tonight, so you get right out of here and over to the infirmary
right this minute. As a matter of fact, I'll take you there
myself."

"That's all right. I'll be okay. Just
tell Dr. Emerson I'll be in tomorrow."

Alice shooed her out and Quinn stood
outside the lab, looking down the hallway. The elevators were on
the far side of Ward C. She was going to have to pass the window to
get to them.