Virgin (40 page)

The room spun
about her as she stared at a pale, grizzled, wizened old man with thin white
hair and sunken features. His hospital gown seemed to lay flat against the
mattress. Wires and tubes ran under that gown, a clear tube ran into his right
nostril, a ribbed plastic hose protruded from his mouth and was connected to a
respirator that pumped and hissed as it filled and emptied his lungs. His eyes
were closed.

He looked dead.

She moved to
the side of the bed, opposite of where a nurse was swabbing the inside of his
mouth with some sort of giant Q-tip.

"What are
you doing?" Carrie asked.

The nurse
looked up, another young one, blond. They all
seemed
young in here. "Just running a lemon swab over his oral membranes. Keeps
them moist. Makes him more comfortable. You must be his daughter. Your
brother's mentioned you a lot but he said you couldn't come."

Carrie could
only nod.

The nurse
dropped the swab into a cup of water on the bedside table. "I'll leave you
two alone."

Carrie fought
the urge to grab her and hold her here.

No! Please
don't leave me alone with him!

But the nurse
hurried off. Carrie thanked God he was asleep. She'd do what she came here to
do and then leave.

"I forgive
you," she said softly.

Who knew what
torment he'd been going through during Mom's illness? Perhaps something had
snapped within him . . . temporary insanity. There was a good chance he'd never
done anything like that before or since. One aberrant period in an entire life
. . . true, that period had scarred both his children for the rest of their
lives, but now, at the end of his days, it was time for forgiveness. These were
words Carrie had thought she'd never say, but her time with the Virgin had
brought a change within her, a softening. Humans are frail, and there is no sin
that cannot be forgiven.

"I forgive
you," she repeated.

And his eyes
opened. Watery blue, struggling to focus, they narrowed, then widened. He saw
her, he knew her. A trembling hand lifted, grasped her fingers where they clung
to the side rail.

Touch . . . he
was touching her again!

It took
everything Carrie had not to snatch her hand away and run screaming from the
CCU. She hung on, quelling the urge to vomit as he squeezed her fingers in his
arthritic grasp.

And then he loosened his grip and his finger began to caress the
back of her hand. She felt her intestines writhe with revulsion but she kept
her hand where it was.

He's half out
of his mind, she told herself. Disoriented . . . doesn't know what he's doing.

But then she saw the smile twisting his lips, and the look
in his eyes. No repentance
there, no guilt . . . more like fond memories.

Carrie pulled
her hand away. She wanted to run but she stood firm. Maybe she was projecting.
Wasn't that what they called it when you saw what you expected to see? Maybe he
was just glad to see her and she was misinterpreting his responses. After all,
she hadn't laid eyes on him in fourteen years . . .

. . . but a day
hadn't passed that his memory didn't haunt her.

She couldn't
run now. Not after she'd made it this far. Besides, she'd come here on a
mission.

To give him a
chance.

She glanced
around. All the nurses were busy. She pulled out the Ziploc bag filled with the
filed nails from the Virgin and dipped a finger into the powder. Originally
she'd planned to mix it with a few drops of water and let him drink it, but
with all these tubes running in and out of him, she didn't see how that would
be possible. But that citrus swab looked perfect.

She pulled it
from the plastic cup, transferred the powder from her fingers to the swab, and
then leaned over the bed.

He was still
looking at her with that . . . that expression in his eyes. She shuddered and
concentrated on his mouth, slipping the swab through his open lips and running
it across his dry tongue and up and down the inside of his cheeks.

His smile
broadened. His hand reached up to grab her wrist but she pulled back in time to
avoid him.

"There,"
she said softly. "I've done my part. The rest is between you and
God."

He continued to
stare at her, grinning lasciviously. She couldn't stand it anymore. She'd done
her duty. No use in torturing herself any longer.

"I'm going
to go now," she said. "I never--"

Suddenly his
smile vanished and he began to writhe in the bed. Carrie heard the beeps of his
cardiac monitor increase their tempo. She glanced up and saw the blips chasing
each other across the screen. She smelled something burning, and when she looked
down, black, oily smoke was seeping out
around
the edges of his hospital gown. The skin of his arms began to darken and smoke.

"Nurse!"
Carrie cried, not knowing what else to do. "Nurse, what's happening?"

By the time the
blond nurse reached the bedside his writhing had progressed to agonized
thrashing. Smoke streamed from his now blackened skin and collected in a dark,
roiling cloud above the bed as he tore the respirator tube from his throat and
belched a steam of black smoke with a hoarse, breathy scream.

The nurse
gasped. "Oh, my God!"

At that instant
he burst into flame.

The nurse
screamed and Carrie reeled away, raising her arm to shield her face from the
heat.
He was burning! Dear sweet Jesus, the whole bed was engulfed
in a mass of flame!

No . . . not
the bed. Carrie saw now that the bed wasn't burning. Neither was his hospital
gown. Nor the sheets.

Just him.

The CCU
dissolved into chaos. Screams, shouts, white-clad bodies darting here and
there, shouting into phones, brandishing fire extinguishers, dousing the bed
with foam, with white jets of carbon dioxide, but the flames burned on
unabated, crisping his skin, boiling his eyes in their sockets, peeling the
blackened flesh from his bones, and still he moved and writhed and kicked and
thrashed, still alive within the consuming flames.

Still alive . .
. still burning . . .

And then when
it seemed that there was nothing left of him but his skeleton and a crisp
blackened membrane stretched across his bones, he stiffened and arched his back
until only his heels and the back of his head touched the mattress. He remained
like that for what seemed an eternity, exhaling his last breath in a prolonged,
quavering ululation, then he collapsed.

And with his
collapse, the flames snuffed out.

All was quiet
except for the long high-pitched squeal of his flat-lined cardiac monitor. The
nurses and orderlies crowded around the bed, covering their mouths and noses as
they gaped at the blackened, immolated thing that had once
been Walter Ferris, lying stiff and twisted in his
unmarred, unscorched hospital gown.

Sick with the
horror of it, Carrie staggered back, fighting to maintain her grip on
consciousness. She turned and stumbled toward the swinging doors, the voices of
the CCU staff echoing above the howl of the monitor . . .

"Christ,
what happened?" . . . "An oxygen fire?" . . . "Naw, look at
the bed--not even scorched!" . . . "What happened to the smoke alarms?
How come they never went off?" . . .
"Damnedest thing I ever
seen!" . . .

Out in the hall
Carrie stepped aside to let the hospital's emergency crew pass. She leaned
against the wall and retched.

She'd come here
to forgive him . . . she
had
forgiven him.

Apparently
someone else had not.

ARCHDIOCESE TO CLOSE ST. JOE'S

John
Cardinal O'Connor has announced that the Archdiocese of New York will

temporarily
close St. Joseph's Church until the Diocese and Vatican officials have time to

evaluate the
phenomena surrounding the relic displayed on the altar of the Lower Manhattan

church.

"Let's
just call it a cooling-off period," the Cardinal declared at a news
conference

yesterday.
"In the present climate of crowds, hysteria, and conflicting claims of
right of

ownership,
clear, reasoned, dispassionate judgment is quite nearly impossible."

St.
Joseph's parishioners will he instructed to attend services at St.
Mark's-in-the-

Bowery until
their own church is reopened.

The
city has announced it will clear the area around St. Joseph's in order to allow

Church
investigative teams to do their work without interference.

The
New York Post

Emilio stood
back and watched the police herd the Mary-hunters from the street in front of
St. Joseph's. The hordes of the faithful were reluctant to go and protested
vociferously. Some protested with more than their voices, crying they had
driven thousands of miles to be healed and weren't about to be turned away now.

But they were
indeed turned away. And some of those who would not leave voluntarily were
either dragged away or driven away in the backs of paddy wagons.

By whatever
means necessary, the entire block was cleared by nightfall. The church doors
were locked and a police cordon was set up across each end of the street.

Emilio shook
his head in admiration. He didn't know how he had done it, but he saw the
senador's
hand in all this. There were still roadblocks before him, but the
senador
had cleared the major obstacle between Emilio and the relic.

The rest was up
to him.

Already he had
a plan.

IN THE PACIFIC

20deg N, 128deg W

The storm
continues to gain in size and strength as it races along its northeasterly
course. It

now stretches
one hundred and fifty miles across as its cumulonimbus crown reaches to forty

thousand feet.

The spinning
core of its heart increases its speed, and the entire storm moves with it. The

swirling mass
of violent weather is aimed toward northern Mexico.

22

Manhattan

Decker honked
and yelled and edged the D'Agostino's truck through the crowd until it nosed up
against one of the light blue "Police Line" horses that blocked
access to the street ahead.
Beyond the barrier the pavement stretched dark and empty in
front of St. Joseph's, illuminated in patches by the street lamps. An island of
calm in a sea of frustrated Mary-hunters.

"You know
what to say?" Emilio said.

Decker nodded.
"Got it memorized."

He jammed some
gum into his mouth and slid out from behind the wheel as one of the cops
approached.

Emilio watched
from his spot in the middle of the front seat. Molinari slouched to his right,
trying to look casual with his elbow protruding from the open passenger window.
Emilio was keeping a decidedly low profile at this point in their little
mission. Decker and Mol sported extra facial hair, glasses, and nostril
dilators to distort their appearances, but Emilio had gone to the greatest
length to disguise himself. He'd added a thick black beard to augment his
mustache, a shaggy wig, and a navy-blue knitted watch cap pulled low over his
forehead, almost to his eyebrows. He was often caught in the background when
the
senador
was photographed leaving his office or his car, and he
didn't want the slightest risk of being identified later.

"Street's
closed, buddy," the cop said. "You gotta go down to--"

"Gotta
delivery here," Decker said, chewing noisily on the gum as he fished a
slip of paper from his pocket. "The rect'ry."

"Yeah?
Nobody told me about that."

"We
deliver alla time, man. Youse guys maya shut down da choich, but dem priests
still gotta eat, know'm sayin'?"

As the cop
stared at Decker, Emilio winced and closed his eyes. He heard Mol groan softly.
Decker was laying it on thick. Maybe
too
thick.