Renny followed him. He hated the thought of entering Danny’s room, of hearing Danny’s sound, his voiceless scream, like air escaping a punctured tire. Endlessly. It never stopped. The whole time you were in there it went on and on and on. He didn’t know how Father Bill stood it. But he followed the priest into the room. He’d go anywhere, to hell itself to catch the bitch who’d done this to that kid …
But Danny was just as they’d left him, twisting and writhing in open-mouthed agony. Renny could bear only a moment or two, then he had to flee, leaving Father Bill alone.
2
Bill seated himself beside the bed, pulled a Rosary from his pocket, and began fingering the beads. But he didn’t say the usual Our Fathers and Hail Marys. He couldn’t find the words. His mind was saturated with Danny’s ungodly torment.
Ungodly. A fitting adjective. Where was God when Bill needed Him? When Danny needed Him? Where had He been Christmas Eve? On vacation?
Or is He out there at all?
Such a question would have been unthinkable a few days ago. But Bill had run out of excuses.
And he knew them all. All the gentle explanations of why bad things happen to good people, and why even the most devout, most sincere, most selfless prayers often go unanswered. He knew how events often seemed to conspire to work against the best people, against the best things they tried to achieve. But that didn’t mean there was a Divine Hand at work, moving people around, shaping events, checking off names of those who could go on living and those whose time was up.
As Bill saw it, death, disease, rape, murder, accidents, famine, plague—they all had earthly causes, and therefore had earthly solutions. As God’s creatures we were expected to find those solutions. That was why he equipped us with hands, hearts, and minds.
Neither God nor the mythical Satan were the cause of our woes; if the culprits weren’t ourselves or other people, they were time, circumstance, or nature.
Or so Bill had thought.
How did he explain what had happened—what was still happening—to Danny?
From everything Bill knew, from everything he had seen during the past few days, the answer was None Of The Above.
None of the above.
Sure, blame whoever had posed as Sara for taking a knife to Danny. She started it all. But what about the rest of it? The endless pain, the wounds that refused to heal, the unresponsiveness to anesthesia, the transfusions—almost fifty liters had been poured into Danny since his arrival—that seemed to be sucked down some black hole never to be seen again. What of them? Danny wasn’t eating; his kidneys weren’t functioning, so he was putting out no urine; his heart was beating but had no blood to pump; his lungs moved air, but only to fuel that ghost of a scream. It was impossible for him to be alive—every doctor who’d seen him had uttered those same words at one time or another.
Impossible … but here he was.
And what of Herb Lom? A hollow man—not just spiritually, but without internal organs or a nervous system—who had dissolved when Bill punched a hole in his chest.
Good God!… the hole in his chest … the cold … the stench … the slime …
As much as his faith resisted it, as much as his mind saw it as a surrender of the intellect, he could not escape the feeling, the overwhelming belief that something supernatural was at work here.
Something supernatural … and evil.
And Danny was the target.
Why Danny? What had this child ever done to deserve this living hell? He was an innocent, and he was being put through unimaginable torture by a force beyond nature. Something dark and powerful had taken hold of him and was thumbing its nose at the laws of God and man and nature, keeping Danny beyond the reach of humanity’s most advanced medical science.
And deep in his gut Bill knew that the torture would go on as long as Danny lived.
Where there’s life, there’s hope.
Bill had lived by that neat little aphorism for nearly all of his adult life. He’d believed it.
But no more. Poor little Danny’s case broke that rule. As long as he remained alive, Danny had no hope of relief. His life would go on—
No. Not life. Existence was a better term. For what Danny had now was not life. His existence would go on as it had since Christmas Eve—unhealed wounds, unremitting pain, with no hope of relief.
At least not from anything in this world.
Bill pocketed the Rosary and said a silent prayer of his own.
Help him, Lord. Something beyond the natural is causing his torment and so only something else beyond the natural can save him. That’s You, Lord. We can bounce back from any blow Your world hands us, but we are helpless against the otherworldly. That’s why Danny needs You to step in on his behalf. Not for my sake—put his wounds on me, if that will do it. I’ll gladly take them. Just don’t let him suffer anymore. If there’s something that can be done that’s not being done, let me know. Tell me and I’ll do it. No matter what it is, I’ll do it. Please.
Danny’s rasping screams ceased and he opened his eyes.
Bill froze and watched as Danny’s eyes stared about the room, searching, finally stopping when they found Bill. He grabbed the boy’s hand and squeezed.
“Danny? Danny, are you there? Can you hear me?”
Danny’s lips moved.
“What?” Bill leaned closer. “What is it?”
The lips moved again. A whisper escaped.
Bill moved closer still. The breath from the parched tunnel of Danny’s throat was sour as Bill put his ear almost against the dry lips.
“What, Danny? Say it again.”
“Bury me … in holy ground … It won’t stop … till you bury me…”
NINETEEN
1
How long could a week be?
Bill Ryan pondered the question as he swung into one of Downstate’s parking lots. As the guard passed him through, a couple of rag-wrapped derelicts hurried toward his car, shouting and waving. They didn’t appear to be the typical window-washing winos; they almost seemed to have been waiting for him. Bill drove on. No time today to figure out what they wanted.
He left the station wagon in one of the handicapped spots and entered the hospital through an employee entrance.
“Evening, Father,” said the smiling uniformed black woman inside the door. “Happy New Year.”
Bill could not bring himself to say those words. No way was the year that started tomorrow going to be a happy one.
“Same to you, Gloria.”
Only a week here and already he was something of a fixture. The security people knew him, he was on a first-name basis with most of the nurses on all three shifts on Danny’s floor, and the walks he took to stretch his legs between vigils at Danny’s bedside had familiarized him with most of the building that housed Pediatrics. All in one week. One endless week. Thank God Father Cullen had been available to fill in for him at St. F.’s.
But if the seven days between Christmas and New Year’s Eves had been an eternity for Bill Ryan, he knew it must have been longer by an unholy factor for poor Danny.
Bury me … in holy ground … It won’t stop … till you bury me …
Danny’s eyes had closed after speaking and his silent screams began again. He hadn’t spoken since. But those words, those words had tormented Bill for days, echoing through his mind every waking minute. Yes, he had asked God for guidance that day, but the advice he’d received was unthinkable.
Or so it seemed at first.
Things had changed since then. Bill was convinced now that modern medicine offered no hope. The doctors were helpless against whatever force had Danny in its grip. And during the span of Danny’s hospital stay that helplessness had wrought a slow but unmistakable change in those doctors. Bill has seen their attitude mutate from deep concern for a savagely brutalized child to bafflement, and from bafflement to cold clinical fascination with a scientific oddity. Somewhere along the line Danny had stopped being a patient and become an experiment
al subject.
An it.
Bill thought he could understand them. The doctors were in the business of curing illness, treating disease, healing wounds, providing answers. But they could not heal Danny, could not help him in the slightest, could provide no answers to Bill’s questions. Danny’s condition confounded their skills and training, spat on their professional pride. And so the doctors pulled back and switched gears. If they could not help Danny, they would learn from him.
Bill could see it in their flat eyes when he spoke to them: Danny the boy had become Danny the thing. They wanted to experiment on Danny. Sure, they called their plans “testing” and “exploratory surgery,” but their real aim was to get inside him and find out what was going on in there.
So far, Bill had been able to stand in their way. But all that would change the day after tomorrow. The head nurse on days had told him that by mid-morning on January 2 the hospital would have a court order making Danny a ward of the state and giving it legal guardianship over him. The hospital would then have carte blanche; the doctors could experiment on him to their hearts’ delight. He’d be the subject of clinical conferences; they’d bring in all the residents and show them The Boy Who Should Be Dead. And when Danny finally died—when would that be? Five years? Ten? Fifty? Never?—what would they do? Bill envisioned Danny pickled in a jar where generations of fledgling doctors could view his still-unhealed wounds. Or maybe his remains would be put on display like the Elephant Man.
Uh-uh. Not if Bill had anything to say about it.
Word of the court order had spurred him to a decision. The unthinkable became the inevitable.
The nurses at the charge desk on Peds waved hello as Bill passed. He returned the greeting and stopped.
“Where is everybody?”
“Light shift tonight,” said Phyllis, the head nurse on 3-to-11. “Wait’ll you see eleven-to-seven—that’ll be a real skeleton. Everyone wants to party.”
Bill was glad to hear that. He’d expected it, but it was good to have it confirmed.
“I can understand that. It’s been tough around here.”
Her face lost some of its holiday cheer. “How about you? We’re all getting together at Murphy’s after we get off. If you want to come over—”
“Thanks, no. I’ll stay here.”
He would have stopped for a longer chat but didn’t dare. The phone calls were coming more frequently now. If he spent more than a few minutes within ten feet of a phone, it began that unearthly ring … and the terrified voice … Danny’s voice.
He continued down the hall and found Nick sitting outside Danny’s door reading one of his scientific journals. He looked up at Bill’s approach.
“Anything?” Bill said.
He knew the answer but he asked anyway.
Nick shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Thanks for spelling me.”
He squinted up at Bill. “You were supposed to go home and sleep. Did you?”
“Tried.” He hoped he could get away with the lie if he limited it to a monosyllable.
“You look more exhausted than before you left.”
“I’m not sleeping well.” That was no lie.
“Maybe you should get a sleeping pill or something, Bill. You’re going to come unglued if you keep this up much longer.
I’m unraveling even as we speak.
“I’ll be all right.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“I am. Now you get going. I’ll take it from here.”
Nick rose and looked closely at Bill.
“Something’s going on that you’re not telling me.”
Bill forced a laugh. “You’re getting paranoid. Go to the Physics Department party tonight and have a good time.” He stuck out his hand. “Happy New Year, Nick.”
Nick shook his hand but didn’t let go.
“This has been one hell of a year for you, Bill,” he said softly. “First your parents, then this thing with Danny. But you’ve gotta figure things can’t get worse. Next year has to be better. Keep that in mind tonight.”
Bill’s tightening throat choked off anything he might have said. He threw his arms around Nick and held on to him, fighting down the sobs that pressed up through his chest. He wanted to let it all out, wanted to cry out his misery and fear and crushing loneliness on the younger man’s shoulder. But he couldn’t do that. That luxury was not for him. He was the priest. People were supposed to cry on his shoulder.
Get a grip!
He backed off and looked at Nick for what might be the last time. They’d been through a lot together. He’d practically raised Nick. He saw that the younger man’s eyes were moist. Did he know?
“Happy New Year, kid. I’m proud of you.”
“And I’m proud of you, Father Bill. Next year will be better. Believe it.”
Bill only nodded. He didn’t dare try to voice belief in that fiction.
He watched Nick disappear down the hall, then he turned toward Danny’s door. He hesitated as he always did, as anyone would before stepping across the threshold of hell, and sent up a final prayer.
Don’t make me do this, Lord. Don’t ask this of me. Take this matter into your own hands. Heal him or take him. Spare us both. Please.
But when he pushed through the door he heard the hoarse, sibilant, whispered moans, found Danny still writhing on the bed.
Closing the door behind him, Bill allowed one sob to escape. Then he leaned against the wall and squeezed his eyes shut. He felt more alone than he had ever thought possible—alone in the room, alone in the city, alone in the cosmos. And he saw no choice but to go through with what he’d been planning all day.
He went over to the bedside and looked down at Danny’s thin, tortured, ghastly white face. For an instant the boy’s pain-mad eyes cleared, and Bill saw in them a fleeting, desperate plea for help. He grabbed the thin little hand.
“Okay, Danny. I promised to help you, and I will.” No one else seemed to be able or willing to—not the doctors, not God Himself. So it was up to Bill. “It’s just you and me, kid. I’ll help you.”
2
Bill waited patiently through the change of shift, until the incoming nurses had been briefed on each patient by the outgoing crew. The reports were completed more quickly than usual and, with wishes of a happy New Year to one and all, the 3-to-11 shift was on its way out of the building in record time. Party time.
Bill made some small talk with Beverly, the head nurse on 11 to 7, as she checked Danny’s useless IVs during her initial rounds. Then he waited awhile longer.
At 11:45 he scouted the hall. No one in sight. Even the nurses’ station was deserted. Finally he found them. The entire shift was clustered in the room of one of the older children, a twelve-year-old boy recovering from an appendectomy, all watching as a New Year’s Eve show geared up for the traditional countdown to the drop of the illuminated ball above Times Square.
Bill slipped back to the charge desk and hit the OFF switch on Danny’s heart monitor, then hurried back to his room. Working feverishly, he peeled the two monitor leads from the boy’s chest wall, then removed the IV lines from both arms and let the solutions drip onto the floor. He untied the restraints from Danny’s wrists and slid his painfully thin chest out of the posey. Then he wrapped him in the bed blanket and in an extra blanket from the closet.
He checked the hall again. Still empty. Now was the time. Now or never. He turned back to the bed, reached to lift Danny, then paused.
This was it, wasn’t it? The point of no return. If he carried through his plan tonight there would be no turning back, no saying I’m sorry, I made a mistake, give me another chance. He would be accused of a hideous crime, branded a monster, and hunted for the rest of his life. Everything he had worked for since joining the Society would be stripped from him, every friend he had ever made would turn against him, every good thing he had done in his life would be forever tainted. Was what he was about to do worth all that?
; Bury me … in holy ground. The words seared his brain. It won’t stop … till you bury me …
He saw no other way.
He lifted Danny’s writhing, blanket-shrouded form.
Good Lord, he weighs almost nothing!
He carried him along the empty hall to the rear stairway, then down the steps, flight after flight, praying he’d meet no one. He’d chosen this moment because it was probably the only quarter-hour out of the entire year when, unless they were in the middle of a crisis situation, almost everyone’s mind was more or less distracted from his or her job.
When he reached ground level Bill placed Danny on the landing and checked his watch: almost midnight. He peeked out into the hall. Empty. At its end, the exit door. And just as he’d hoped—unwatched. The guard’s seat was empty. And why not? George, the usual door guard on this shift, had always seemed fairly conscientious, but even he’d have to figure that since his job was to screen the people entering the hospital instead of those leaving it, and since no one could get in unless he opened the door for them, what was wrong with leaving his station for a few minutes to watch the ball drop?
Bill lifted Danny and started for the exit. Up ahead he heard voices through the open door of one of the little offices. He paused. He had to pass that door to get out. No way around it. But could he risk it? If he got caught now, with Danny wrapped up in his arms like this, he’d never get another chance.
Then he heard it: the countdown. A mix of voices, male and female, black and white, began shouting.
“TEN! NINE! EIGHT!—”
Bill began to walk, gliding his feet, gathering speed until he was moving as fast as he could without actually running.
“SEVEN! SIX! FIVE!—”
He whisked past the office door, then began to run.
“FOUR! THREE! TWO!—”
As he reached the door he slowed for half a second, just long enough to allow him to hit the lever bar at the same instant the voices shouted, “ONE!”
The noise of the opening door was lost in the ensuing cheers as he rushed headlong into the parking lot. He had parked St. F.’s station wagon illegally, hoping his clergy sticker would buy him some leniency. The last thing he needed now was to find that the wagon had been towed away.
Reprisal Page 22
