already been in a coma and lost to him.
Happy holidays.
Chicago, Illinois.
As Father Stefan Wycazik moved through the halls and wards of St.
Joseph's Hospital for Children, his spirits soared. That was no small
thing, for he was already in a buoyant and elevated state.
The hospital was crowded with visitors, and Christmas music issued from
the public address system. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters,
grandparents, other relatives, and friends of the young patients were on
hand with gifts, goodies, and good wishes, and there was more laughter
in that usually grim place than one might ordinarily hear echoing
through its chambers in an entire month. Even most of the seriously
afflicted patients were smiling broadly and talking animatedly, their
suffering forgotten for the time being.
Nowhere in the hospital was there more hope or laughter than among those
people gathered around the bed of tenyear-old Emmeline Halbourg. When
Father Wycazik introduced himself, he was greeted warmly by Emmy
Halbourg's parents, two sisters, grandparents, one aunt, and one uncle,
who assumed he was one of the hospital's chaplains.
Because of what he'd learned from Brendan Cronin yesterday, Stefan
expected to find a happily mending little girl; but he was unprepared
for Emmy's condition. She was positively glowing. Only two weeks ago,
according to Brendan, she had been crippled and dying. But now her dark
eyes were clear, and her former pallor was gone, replaced by a wholesome
flush. Her knuckles and wrists were not swollen, and she seemed to be
completely free of pain. She looked not like a sick child valiantly
fighting her way back to health; rather, she seemed already cured.
Most startling of all, Emmy was not lying in bed but standing with the
aid of crutches, moving among her delighted and admiring relatives. Her
wheelchair was gone.
"Well," Stefan said, after a brief visit, "I must be going, Emmy. I
only stopped by to wish you a merry Christmas from a friend of yours.
Brendan Cronin."
"Pudge!" she said happily. "He's wonderful, isn't he? It was awful
when he stopped working here. We miss him a lot."
Emmy's mother said, "I never met this Pudge, but from the way the kids
talked about him, he must've been good
medicine for them."
"He only worked here one week," Emmy said. "But he comes back-did you
know? Every few days he comes back to visit. I was hoping he'd come
today, so I could give him a big Christmas kiss."
"He wanted to stop by, but he's spending Christmas with his folks."
"Oh, that's good! That's what Christmas is for-isn't it, Gather? Being
together with your folks, having fun, and loving each other."
"Yes, Emmy," Stefan Wycazik said, thinking that no theologian or
philosopher could have put it better. "That's what Christmas is for."
If Stefan had been alone with the girl, he would have asked her about
the afternoon of December 11. That was the day Brendan had been
brushing her hair while she sat in her wheelchair before this very
window. Stefan wanted to know about the rings on Brendan's hands, which
had appeared for the first time that day, and which Emmeline had noticed
before Brendan himself spotted them. He wanted to ask Emmy if she had
felt anything unusual when Brendan had touched her. But there were too
many adults around, and they would surely ask awkward questions. Stefan
was not yet prepared to reveal the reasons for his curiosity.
Las Vegas, Nevada.
After getting off to a rocky start, Christmas at the Monatelia apartment
improved dramatically. Mary and Pete stopped hammering Jorja with their
well-meant but unwanted advice and criticism. They loosened up and
involved themselves in Marcie's play the way grandparents should, and
Jorja was reminded of just why she loved them so much. The holiday
dinner was on the table at twelve-fifty, only twenty minutes late, and
it was delicious. By the time Marcie sat down to eat, she had worked
off her all-consuming interest in Little Ms. Doctor, and she did not
rush through her meal. It was a leisurely dinner with much chit-chat
and laughter, the Christmas tree twinkling in the background. Those
were golden hours until, during dessert, the trouble started with
surprising suddenness. With frightening speed, it escalated to total
disaster.
Teasing Marcie, Pete said, "Where does a little bitty thing like you put
so much food? You've eaten more than the rest of us combined!"
"Oh, Grandpa."
"It's true! You've been really shoveling it in. One more bite of that
pumpkin pie, and you're going to explode."
Marcie lifted another forkful, held it up for all to see, and with great
theatricality, she moved it toward her mouth.
"No, don't!" Pete said, putting his hands in front of his face as if to
protect himself from the blast.
Marcie popped the morsel into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. "See? I
didn't explode."
"You will with the next bite," Pete said. "I was just one bite too
soon. You'll explode . . . or else we'll have to rush you to the
hospital."
Marcie frowned. "No hospital."
"Oh, yes," Pete said. "You'll be all swollen up, ready to bUTSt, and
we'll have to rush you to the hospital and have them deflate you."
"No hospital," Marcie repeated adamantly.
Jorja realized that her daughter's voice had changed, that the girl was
no longer participating in the game but was, instead, genuinely if
inexplicably frightened. She was not scared of exploding, of course,
but evidently the mere thought of a hospital had caused her to go pale.
"No hospital," Marcie repeated, a haunted look in her eyes.
"Oh, yes," Pete said, not yet aware of the change in the child.
Jorja tried to deflect him: "Dad, I think we-"
But Pete said, "Of course, they won't take you in an ambulance 'cause
you'll be too big. We'll have to rent a truck to haul you."
The girl shook her head violently. "I won't go to a h-h-hospital in a
million years. I won't ever let those doctors touch me .
"Honey," Jorja said, "Grandpa's only teasing. He doesn't really-"
Unplacated, the girl said, "Those hospital people will hhurt me like
they hurt me before. I won't let them hurt me again."
Mary looked at Jorja, baffled. "When was she in the hospital?"
"She wasn't," Jorja said. "I don't know why she-"
"I was, I was, I was! They t-tied me down in bed, stuck me full of
rmeedles, and I was scared, and I won't ever let them touch me again."
Remembering the strange tantrum that Kara Persaghian had reported
yesterday, Jorja moved swiftly to forestall a similar scene. She put
one hand on Marcie's shoulder and said, "Honey, you were never-"
"I was!" The girl's anger and fear burgeoned into rage and terror. She
threw her fork, and Pete ducked to avoid being hit by it.
"Marcie!" Jorja cried.
The girl slipped off her chair and backed away from the table,
white-faced. "I'm going to grow up and be my own doctor, so nobody
else'll stick rmeedles
in me." Words gave way to a pitiful moaning.
Jorja went after Marcie, reaching for her. "Honey, don't."
Marcie held her hands out in front of her, as if warding off an attack,
although it was not her mother that she feared. She was looking through
Jorja, perhaps seeing some imaginary threat, though her terror was real.
She was not merely pale but translucent, as if the very substance of her
was evaporating in the tremendous heat of her terror.
"Marcie, what is it?"
The girl stumbled backward into a corner, shuddering.
Jorja gripped her daughter's defensively raised hands. "Marcie, talk to
me." But even as Jorja spoke, a sudden stench of urine filled the air,
and she saw a dark stain spreading from the crotch down both legs of
Marcie's jeans. "Marcie!"
The girl was trying to scream, but could not. "What's happening?" Mary
asked. "What's wrong?"
"I don't know," Jorja said. "God help me, I don't know."
With her eyes still focused on some figure or object that remained
visible only to her, Marcie began a wordless keening.
New York, New York.
The tape deck still played Christmas music, and Jenny Twist lay immobile
and insensate, but Jack no longer engaged in the frustrating one-way
communication with which he had filled the first few hours of his visit.
Now he sat in silence, and inevitably his thoughts drifted back through
the years to his homecoming from Central America. . . .
Upon returning to the States, he had discovered that the rescue of the
prisoners at the Institute of Brotherhood had been misrepresented, in
some quarters, as a terrorist act, a mass kidnapping, a provocation
meant to spark a war. He and every Ranger involved were painted as
criminals in uniform, and those taken prisoner were for some reason the
special focus of the opposition's anger.
In a political panic, Congress had banned all covert activities in
Central America, including a pending plan to rescue the four Rangers.
Their release was to be arranged strictly through diplomatic channels.
That was why they had waited in vain for rescue. Their country had
abandoned them. At first Jack had trouble believing it. When at last
he believed, it was the second worst shock of his life.
Having won his freedom, home again, Jack was relentlessly pursued by
hostile journalists and subpoenaed to appear before a Congressional
committee to testify about his involvement in the raid. He expected to
have a chance to set the record straight, but he quickly discovered that
they weren't interested in his viewpoint, and that the televised hearing
was merely an opportunity for politicians to do some grandstanding in
the infamous tradition of Joe McCarthy.
In a few months, most people had forgotten him, and when he regained the
pounds he had lost in prison, they ceased to recognize him as the
alleged war criminal they had seen on television. But the pain and the
sense of betrayal continued to burn fiercely in him.
If being abandoned by his country was the second worst shock of his
life, the worst was what had happened to Jenny while he had been stuck
in that Central American prison. A thug had accosted her in the hallway
of her own apartment building as she was coming home from work. He put
a gun to her head, hustled her into her apartment, sodomized and raped
her, clubbed her brutally with his pistol, and left her for dead.
When Jack came home at last, he found Jenny in a state institution,
comatose. The level of care she had been getting was abominable.
Norman Hazzurt, the rapist who attacked Jenny, had been tracked down
through fingerprints and witnesses, but a clever defense attorney had
managed to delay the trial. Undertaking an investigation of his own,
Jack satisfied himself that Hazzurt, with a history of violent sex
offenses, was the guilty man. He also became convinced that Hazzurt
would be acquitted on a technicality.
Throughout his ordeal with the press and politicians, Jack made plans
for the future. There were two primary tasks ahead of him: First, he
would kill Norman Hazzurt in such a way as to avoid any suspicion
falling upon himself; second, he would get enough money to move Jenny to
a private sanitarium, though the only way to obtain so much cash in a
hurry was to steal it. As an elite Ranger, he was trained in most
weapons, explosives, martial arts, and survival techniques. His society
had failed him, but it had also provided him with the knowledge and the
means by which he could extract his revenge, and it had taught him how
to break whatever laws stood in his way without punishment.
Norman Hazzurt died in an "accidental" gas explosion two months after
Jack returned to the States. And two weeks later, Jenny's transference
to a private sanitarium was financed by the proceeds from an ingenious
bank robbery executed with military precision.
The murder of Hazzurt did not satisfy Jack. In fact, it depressed him.
Killing in a war was different from killing in civilian life. He did
not have the detachment to kill except in self-defense.
Robbery, however, was enormously appealing. After the successful bank
job, he'd been excited, exalted, exhilarated. Daring robbery had a
medicinal quality. Crime gave him a reason to live. Until recently.
Now, sitting at Jenny's bedside, Jack Twist wondered what would keep him
going, day after day, if not grand larceny. The only other thing he had
was Jenny. However, he no longer needed to provide for her; he had
already piled up more than enough money for that. So his only reason
for living was to come here several times a week, look upon her serene
face, hold her hand-and pray for a miracle.
It was ironic that a man like him-a hard-headed, selfreliant
individualist-should have no hope but mysticism.
As he brooded on that, he heard Jenny make a soft gurgling sound. She
took two quick, deep breaths and produced a long, rattling sigh. For
one crazy moment as he rose from his chair, Jack half-expected to find
her eyes open, filled with awareness for the first time in more than
eight years, the miracle having come to pass even as he had been
day-dreaming of it. But her eyes were closed, and her face was slack.
He put a hand against her face, then moved it to her throat. He felt for
her pulse. What had happened was not, in fact, miraculous but
anti-miraculous, mundane, and inevitable: Jenny Twist had died.
Chicago, Illinois.
Few physicians were on duty at St. Joseph's that Christmas, but a
resident named Jarvil and an intern named Klinet were eager to talk to
Father Wycazik about Emmeline Halbourg's amazing recovery.
Klinet, an intense wiry-haired young man, escorted Stefan to a
consultation room to review Emmy's file and X rays. "Five weeks ago, she
was started on namiloxiprine-a new drug, just approved by the FDA."
Dr. Jarvil, the resident, was soft-spoken, with heavy-lidded eyes, but
when he joined them in the consultation room, he too was visibly excited
by Emmeline Halbourg's dramatic turn for the better.
"Namiloxiprine ha
s several effects in bone diseases like Emmy's," Jarvil
said. "In many instances it puts a stop to the destruction of the
periosteunl, promotes the growth of healthy osteocytes, and somewhat
induces the accumulation of intercellular calcium. And in a case like
Emmy's, where the bone marrow is the primary target of the disease,
namiloxiprine creates an unusual chemical environment in the marrow
cavity and in the haversian canals, an environment that's extremely
hostile to microorganisms but actually encourages the growth of marrow
cells, the production of blood cells, and hemoglobin formation."
"But it's not supposed to work this fast," Klinet said.
"And it's basically a stop-loss drug," Jarvil said. "It can arrest the
progress of a disease, put a stop to bone deterioration. But it doesn't
make regeneration possible. Sure, it's supposed to promote some
reconstruction, but not the kind of rebuilding we're seeing in Emmy."
"Fast rebuilding," Klinet said, smacking his forehead with the heel of
his hand, as if to knock this amazing fact into his unwilling brain.
They showed Stefan a series of X rays taken over the past six weeks, in
which the changes in Emmy's bones and joints were obvious.
Klinet said, "She'd been on namiloxiprine for three weeks without
noticeable effect, and then suddenly, two weeks ago, her body not only
Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers Page 30
