Intervention

by Robin Cook

  27

  5:15 P.M., TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2008

  NEW YORK CITY

  Monday and Tuesday had been good days for everyone, except James, who had to field a call from Luke on both mornings, neither of which provided encouraging news. After Shawn and Sana had left each day for work, Luke had informed the cardinal that the devil was being completely resistant to Luke’s attempt at changing Shawn’s mind. Instead, Luke had had to report that Shawn was becoming resistant to even discussing the issue. James’s response had been to encourage him to pray harder and not to give up, and that James and the Church were counting on him to eventually succeed. He explained that persistence would be key.

  “Have you explained to him how much his casting doubt on the Blessed Mother’s assumption will affect you?” James had asked, trying to be helpful and encouraging, as he had no plan C.

  “As much as he’ll allow me,” Luke had responded, “although now he immediately changes the subject whenever I bring it up. He’s even threatened to ask me to leave.”

  “How about his wife?”

  “She’s been most hospitable,” Luke had said. “She has made up for him and then some. I’m convinced that if I can change his mind, she will agree as well. She’s not nearly as committed as he.”

  “Please keep trying,” James had said. “There’s still a good portion of the week left.”

  Other than making the two calls to James and having little luck with Shawn, Luke had enjoyed himself immensely, despite the continued uneasiness of being out in the world and exposed to sin. Both mornings Sana had awakened early and prepared a sumptuous breakfast for Luke, explaining to him that she loved to cook and was continuously disappointed that Shawn didn’t care if they had fast food or gourmet food. Luke had confessed that in contrast to Shawn as well as his brothers, he loved to eat good food and had been rewarded with an outstanding dinner the night before and looked forward to the same that night.

  Even more than the food, Luke had enjoyed Sana coming home early on Monday, the day before, saying that she’d made wonderful progress on her DNA studies and had gotten the pulp samples already into the PCR stage, which Luke had not understood at all. Not that it mattered, since Sana had used the free time to take Luke out to buy him clothes that fit instead of wearing Father Karlin’s, which didn’t.

  For Luke shopping had turned out to be a delightful experience, as he had not shopped for clothes for as long as he could remember, and he appreciated Sana’s input as he tried things on and struggled over choices. He’d also enjoyed the festive holiday atmosphere with a mere fourteen shopping days left before Christmas. Then to cap the day, Sana and Luke had stayed up after dinner to enjoy another fire, while affording Sana a turn to tell her life story and even her current problems. Luke had been sympathetic when his impressions had been confirmed that Shawn was not treating her as Shawn did when they were first married, particularly in the intimacy realm, as Luke knew that Shawn slept in a guest room on the second floor while Sana slept in the master bedroom on the third floor. Although Luke did not pretend to understand everything Sana said, he had told her that he’d pray for her, and that he couldn’t understand why Shawn did not want to sleep with her, because he thought she was beautiful.

  “Thank you for the reassurance and the prayers,” Sana had said. “But, to be truthful, at this point, I prefer not to sleep with him.”

  Similar to Sana, Shawn had made real progress as well over the previous two days. He’d reached the stage he’d hoped for, where the unrolling of the first scroll was proceeding much more rapidly. Monday he’d finished only a single page, but that day, Tuesday, he’d done more than two. Taking the time to read the unrolled portion, he was also feeling better about Simon not being quite the ogre he was reputed to have been. Even though he recognized that Simon was writing about himself, Shawn thought the better he came off as a person, the better witness he would be to the identity of the bones.

  “Luke!” Sana called up the stairs. She and Shawn had just arrived home. When she heard Luke answer in the distance, she assumed he was saying his afternoon prayers. “We are home!” She then followed Shawn into the kitchen, where she unpacked the groceries they had just bought. While she was busy doing that, Shawn poured himself some scotch as his first cocktail of the evening. Just a few days previously, Sana had gotten disturbed at Shawn’s progressive drinking, but not that night. In fact, she wanted him to drink as much as he pleased, as it caused him to retire early. As had been the case the two previous evenings, she was looking forward to spending time with Luke without Shawn’s interference or Luke’s attempt to bring up the progressively incendiary Virgin Mary issue, which he’d been unflaggingly continuing to do, despite Shawn’s increasingly negative response.

  It had been two good days for Jack as well, and mainly because it had been good for JJ and Laurie. When Jack had returned home Monday evening, Laurie had reported that JJ had had the best day he’d had in months, with no crying whatsoever. Jack expected a similar story that evening, because Laurie had called him about three p.m. to say things had been going similarly all day.

  Taking the stairs by two or three steps at a time, Jack poked his head into the kitchen. As he assumed would be the case, Laurie was involved with dinner preparations, and JJ was contentedly playing in his playpen. Jack quickly went over to Laurie, gave her a quick peck on the cheek, and looked in on JJ. To Jack’s delight, the boy smiled.

  “I believe he’s going to allow us to have a real dinner tonight,” Laurie said.

  “Fabulous,” Jack replied. “Are you going to feed him and put him to bed beforehand?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “With him as content as he is, I’d like to play basketball for an hour or so.”

  “I think that’s a good idea,” Laurie said. Then with a wink she added, “Just don’t get yourself too tired.”

  Jack enjoyed thinking about what she had in mind for the evening as he wasted no time getting into his basketball gear and heading back down the stairs. With JJ apparently feeling as well as he was over the last two days, Jack tried to keep his excitement in check to avoid future even more serious disappointments, but everything was going so well that it was difficult. The previous morning he’d gone back to see Bingham yet again and asked for some time off, not to avoid coming into the office but just from autopsies. As he’d suggested he would, Bingham had agreed immediately, although he’d asked Jack, in return, to at least sign out the murder case where the on-call ME had forgotten to have the hands bagged, so the issue could be put to bed. Jack had been happy to inform him it had already been done.

  Freed from additional autopsies, Jack had been able to spend more of both days with Shawn and Sana, where things were also going well as moving along at a rapid pace. Sana expected to do the mitochondrial sequencing the next day, which Jack and James were hoping would tell them where the individual whose bones they were had originated. The question being whether they were from the Middle East, in which case they might still be the Virgin Mary’s, or from Rome, where they’d been ultimately buried, meaning they couldn’t be the Virgin Mary’s. As Jack ran across the street and entered the playground, he thought it ironic that just when he’d found the perfect distraction, JJ was doing better than he had for more than a month. Jack wondered if it would be appropriate with such a change to have JJ’s mouse antibody level tested in case they could again start his treatment.

  As far as Luke was concerned, the dinner had been equally delicious as it had been the evening before and so different from what he was accustomed to, it was beyond his ability to describe. Unfortunately, what also had been the same was Shawn’s behavior. He’d totally refused to talk about the issue with the Virgin Mary and the ossuary, and, with scotch before dinner and wine making him drunk, he’d taken himself up to his room, supposedly for a short rest. By a little after nine, when Sana and Luke had finished the dishes and had come into the living room to stoke the fire and enjoy their Coke and wine, he stil
l hadn’t appeared.

  “I think I’ll check on Shawn,” Sana said, putting down her wine and before allowing herself to truly relax.

  “He’ll be fine,” Luke protested, preferring not to see the inebriated and frustrating man again that evening.

  “I’m thinking more about us than him,” Sana said with a smile while heading for the stairs.

  Luke sat on the couch and listened to her footfalls on the stairs and the squeaking of the joists as she went into the room Shawn was using. Luke pondered her comment. He wasn’t sure what she meant, so when she returned he asked her.

  “I meant I wanted to get up there now before I was settled,” Sana said, making herself comfortable with her feet on the coffee table, “and before we were into some interesting conversation.” She was eager to hear more of his story than the rote version he’d told her.

  “Is he okay?” Luke asked. He couldn’t help but remember his father and the violence alcohol engendered.

  “He’s on the bed and passed out, if that’s your definition of okay.”

  “Since we talked about it last night, I still don’t know why he stopped sleeping with you.”

  “It’s simpler now than it was six months ago when it was more his idea than mine. We’ve grown apart. Have you noticed how little we touch? What I’m talking about is little things, like my putting my arm on his shoulder, like this.” Sana was sitting to Luke’s right, so she lifted her left arm and casually draped it across Luke’s shoulder behind his neck. Then she pulled her arm back and laid it along his leg with her hand on his knee. “Or even just sitting close with my arm on his knee. When we were first married, we both did such little physical things that were no more than an urge to let the other know that we were together, and that we were enjoying being together, like I’m doing to you. But all that stopped, and as I said, at first it was him, but now it is us. At first I thought it had something to do with our large age difference, but now I’m not so sure: I’m afraid it is more.”

  Luke felt a sudden heat enter his leg and travel up toward his groin. He was infinitely conscious of Sana’s arm against his thigh and that her hand was ever so loosely clasped over the top of his knee. It was as if her fingers were on fire.

  Sana was completely unaware of the emotional avalanche she’d unwittingly started in Luke’s mind, with its backed-up hormonal overload. She’d placed her arm and hand near him in what she thought was a platonic way, but it was also a physical reminder of how close she felt toward him, and she assumed he felt the same way toward her, as they had been trading extremely private thoughts and feelings since he arrived. In fact, Luke was the first person to whom Sana had verbalized the growing problems with her downward-spiraling relationship with Shawn. As a direct consequence, she felt Luke understood something about her hidden life, forming a bond, an attraction like a brother and sister, a special place in her mind, that even though Luke appeared to be a mysterious man-child, he projected an emotional perception older than his apparent years. After all, Sana reasoned, he had seen things on his own about her relationship with Shawn and had commented, and he was only a little more than three years younger than she.

  For the moment, Luke wasn’t thinking. He was feeling. The heat from Sana’s hand was still burning against his knee, and now the length of her arm was doing the same, all the way up to the point of his hip. Each heartbeat he could feel pulsate in his swelling penis while his testicles contracted under him into painful knots. He needed relief. He needed to move, which caused the muscles in his legs and groin to begin to contract in rhythmical spasms.

  Sensing Luke’s muscular contractions, Sana started. She was sitting directly next to him, and she suddenly spun around to face him, her left hand dragging innocently up his thigh. Seeing perspiration dotting his forehead and his dazed expression, her first horror was that the man-boy was having a heart attack. She stood up at once and tried to get him to lie down. But he fought her, and fought her with overwhelming strength so that the pushing match was short-lived.

  “Okay!” she cried. “You’re hurting me!” He had grabbed her wrists and was compressing them to the point of shutting off the blood supply to her hands.

  As if waking from a kind of seizure or at least a daze, Luke let go of Sana, who immediately recovered her wrists and rubbed them to restore circulation.

  “My God, you hurt me,” Sana complained, still massaging her wrists.

  As if in a postictal state, Luke merely stared at Sana. He didn’t try to talk, merely stared at her with a flaccid, shell-shocked face.

  “Are you all right?” Sana asked. Even his eyes seemed glazed. His mouth was slack, with lips slightly parted. Although the firelight made his complexion difficult to judge, it seemed to her it was more pale than it had been earlier. “Luke! Are you all right?” Sana repeated. She reached forward with both hands to grip his shoulders and give him a little shake. “Talk to me, Luke! I need to know if you are all right.”

  Leaning forward, Sana studied Luke’s face. His eyes, which had been recently focused on her lips, now slowly rose. She could see that he was returning to the present, wherever he’d been, but it was a disturbing present. Instead of being the happy person he’d been, he was returning angry and censorious. Before he spoke, which Sana could tell he was about to do, it suddenly dawned on her what had happened. She couldn’t help but smile, especially because now that she thought about it, she couldn’t understand why it had taken so long.

  “You had an orgasm, didn’t you?” Sana questioned with relief and even humor. “I think I’m right. Well, don’t be embarrassed on my part. I think it’s terrific. Congratulations. I’ll even take it as a compliment. It is reassuring to know that someone finds me sexually attractive, even if my husband doesn’t.” Sana had carried on in an attempt to forestall embarrassment on Luke’s part, as it was her impression that he’d never had sex with a woman, not that what they had done was sex but because his response was certainly dependent on sex. It was her hope that despite the traumas he’d experienced since puberty, there was a chance he could turn out normal.

  “Whore!” Luke yelled suddenly.

  “Excuse me?” Sana said. She’d heard, but she didn’t want to hear such nonsense, certainly not from Luke, her special friend.

  “Satan,” Luke snapped.

  “Oh, really?” Sana questioned contemptuously. “So it’s like your mother and father all over again. The victim is at fault. This time it was all up here, my friend,” Sana added, while reaching out with her index finger to touch Luke’s head.

  Luke viciously batted Sana’s hand away, causing her to briefly cry out in pain. “Satan’s whore,” he snapped, in the grittiest voice he could muster.

  “Well, that’s that,” Sana said, babying her hand. “I thought you were doing well on the religious-fanatic chart, but I suppose I was overly hopeful about your progress. As for your welcome here, I have to warn you that it’s getting very thin. As for me, I’m going to bed with a locked door, so even if you consider apologizing, I’ll hear it tomorrow. Needless to say, I do think it in your best interest to apologize. Good night!”

  Sana strode toward the stairs, while behind her she could tell that her mini-lecture had fallen on deaf ears. Luke let out a final “Satan, be damned for all eternity” as Sana started up the old, noisy stairs.

  28

  9:43 A.M., WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2008

  NEW YORK CITY

  By nine-forty-three a.m., James was already in his office clearing his mail and answering e-mail. It amazed him how much of the business of the archdiocese was accomplished by e-mail, and he regularly attributed most of his thirty percent productivity increase to his adaptation to the new technology. What it did magnificently was speed the spread of information and eliminate many otherwise-lengthy telephone calls. For James the latter effect was so crucial.

  He’d been up that morning from well before six; he’d already read his Breviary, showered, and shaved while listening to the news. He’d said M
ass with his staff and breakfasted with the Times before repairing to his study, where he now sat. At ten he was due in the “consulter’s” room, where he was to meet with the chancellor and the vicar general, where he was debating possibly dropping the first words about the ossuary problem, when the phone rang. Checking the LED screen, he snapped it up immediately because it said ARCHDIOCESE, which James knew would be Luke Hester.

  “Good morning, Your Eminence,” Luke said the moment James had said hello. “I believe I have some good news for you.”

  James rocked forward in his seat, his pulse quickly speeding up. He happily envisioned Gabriel the Archangel on the line. “Has he changed his mind?” James demanded gleefully. From chatting with Luke on the two previous days, James had essentially given up hope on plan B and worried that a plan C did not seem to be in the offing.

  “Not yet, but I’m sure he will.”

  “That is heavenly music to my ears.”

  “I hope you will always hold me in high esteem for this,” Luke said. “This has not been easy.”

  “I never imagined it would be,” James admitted. “Actually, I’m somewhat surprised, considering how made-up his mind was. Yet I always believe, once a faithful Catholic, always a faithful Catholic, and I always believed that about Shawn Daughtry despite his anticlerical bluster. Should I call him to congratulate him?”

  “Not until tomorrow or all will be ruined.”

  “Then I should gladly wait until the morning. What argument did you finally choose?”