Miracle

by Deborah Smith

  “I’ll call him myself.”

  “Before you proceed?”

  Sebastien rose to his feet furiously, ready to fight anyone who tried to delay him. “I will make all the decisions concerning my child. As head of the transplant unit I make this decision. If you have a problem with that, you no longer belong on my staff.”

  “But hospital protocol—”

  “Does not apply to my daughter. I take full responsibility. I’ll perform both the removal and the transplant.”

  “Mother of God! To do this to your own child … how can you?”

  How can I not? Sebastian thought. “We have work to do,” he said crisply. “And no time to waste on ethical debates.” He gathered his strength and sent the coordinator a look so full of warning that the man nodded jerkily and hurried away.

  Power. Privilege. He would use them to full advantage today, knowing that this would probably be the end of them.

  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 sever
e 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.

  Because Amy still refused to be part of Elliot’s private life, he paraded gorgeous women around the set to annoy her. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that any jealousy she felt was minor compared to her wish that he’d stop harassing her and settle down with one of his playmates.

  “Which one is that?” the show’s makeup artist whispered, as they watched a leggy blonde in a black bodysuit stride into Elliot’s dressing room and shut the door.

  “Another model-actress.” Amy turned resolutely and walked down the hall toward the office area.

  “Oh, one of those hyphenated creatures.” The makeup artist followed, anxious for more information, as was everyone else on the show’s staff. They liked to stay one step ahead of Elliot’s activities and quicksilver moods. “Has she ever acted in anything?”

  Amy chuckled. “Sure. She’s starred in several deodorant commercials. I suspect that most of her talent is in her armpits. I just hope she doesn’t give Elliot some strange venereal disease. At her age, it might be diaper rash.”

  The makeup artist began giggling. Suddenly the door to Elliot’s dressing room flew open. Amy pivoted warily as he lunged into the hall, bare-chested, his black dress slacks half-zippered and hanging low on his abdomen, a cordless phone clenched in one hand. He looked stunned. Spotting Amy, he yelled, “I want to talk to you right now!”

  She steeled herself and walked slowly toward him. When she reached him she smiled benignly. “You bellowed, magnificent one?”

  He jabbed a finger toward the phone. “You’re working the clubs at night! You traitor!”

  Her stomach twisted. She had known this day would come, but she dreaded what might happen next. “I’m not a traitor. The material I use in the clubs wouldn’t work for you. I’m not taking anything away from my writing for the show.”

  “I don’t care! You’re sneaking around behind my back, trying to compete with me, trying to make a fool out of me!”

  “You’re doing that without my help.” She laid a hand on his arm. He pulled away. Inside the open door to the dressing room, the blond model-actress lounged on a white sofa, catlike, eyes wide and ears perked. Amy shut the door, then faced Elliot again. “What I do after I leave here every night is my own business.”

  “I ought to fire you.”

  “Go ahead. I need this job, but I won’t quit working the clubs.”

  He paced the corridor. He threw the phone on the floor and shook his fists at her. “You’re gonna push me too far one day, and you’ll be out of here! Just wait until you have to beg for another bank loan to pay your old man’s extra doctor bills. You won’t be so cocky if that happens again. And I’ll know when you’re desperate. I’ll know, and I’ll make you squirm.”

  She felt as if she’d been punched. “How did you find out about that loan?”

  “I hired a private investigator! That’s how I find out anything I want to know about you these days. And believe me, baby, I’m gonna check up on you even more from now on. I’ll know what clubs you work at night, and how much you get paid, and who you’re with when you’re not working.”

  Her sense of violation almost overwhelmed reason. She wanted to slap him; she wanted to sink to his level and hurl ugly accusations. It was the way she’d often felt around Pop when she was growing up. Back then she’d hated herself for being too afraid to fight back; now she realized that she’d misinterpreted some of the fear. She just hadn’t wanted to fight on Pop’s level. It was dignity, not fear, that had kept her quiet.

  Calmly she reached out and touched the smear of bright pink lipstick on Elliot’s stomach. “She’s one of the hungry ones, Elliot. Don’t let her eat you alive.”

  His mood changed at her touch, and his chin quivered. “I don’t want her. I want you. I want you to love me again.”

  She felt white-hot inside. Between clenched teeth she said, “Spyin’ on me is not my idea of romance.”

  “Okay. No more private investigators. I swear.”

  He leaned forward, and she feared that he’d try to kiss her. At that moment several staffers ambled into the hallway, and Elliot drew back. “Got to get ready for the show,” he said gruffly. He hesitated. “You’re never gonna get anywhere with a stand-up routine, baby. The competition is crazy—you know that. I don’t want to see you get
your heart broken.”

  Thanks for the encouragement she thought bitterly. “I’ll take my chances.”

  He clamped his mouth into a hard line and went back into the dressing room. Before he slammed the door she glimpsed the blonde hurriedly tucking something into a tiny black purse on the couch beside her. She brushed at her nose and smiled toward Elliot.

  Amy stared at the closed door in grim recognition. Then she hurried to her office and began making phone calls to every friend and acquaintance she had. There was no doubt that Elliot would keep spying on her.

  She alerted dozens of people, including Jeff Atwater, warning them that Elliot was on a rampage. They promised to sidetrack anyone who asked for information about her.

  Even though Mary Beth was in the middle of negotiating the sale of her talk show to a national distributor, she took time to savor Elliot’s paranoia. Amy could almost see her predatory, slit-eyed look of contemplation. “Sugar,” Mary Beth drawled finally, “any private dick who tries to con me for information will get his dick ripped off.”

  “A ‘no comment’ will do.”

  After she hung up the phone she realized that she felt dirty, and when she examined the feeling she understood why. This must be like going through an ugly divorce, where you kept asking yourself how you ever could have loved the mean-spirited stranger wanting to hurt you. And what did it say about your judgment to have chosen such a man in the first place?

  She put her head in her hands. The truth was that she’d never loved Elliot, that she’d always been drawn to his work more than to him, that she wouldn’t have put up with his problems for so long if he hadn’t been the key to the career she wanted. Her sacrifices on his behalf couldn’t obscure the fact that she had used him as much as he’d used her.

  Sebastien leaned against one of the fieldstone columns that supported the veranda roof. Filling his lungs with night air, he absorbed the scents of freshly turned soil, forest, grape vines, and mild winter air. This small California valley had been poured full of everything that was good about the earth, and living here for the past two months had helped him find what was good about himself.