“Unless, of course, you have problems with receiving compensation from me.”
“No, but my guess is that it will be coming from GEM Tech, right?”
“Yes, but you’re participating in clinical research for me, and God knows I can use the help. And you can use the money.”
Was this ever true. Nearly forty thousand dollars remained to be paid off in student loans. And on a salary of seventy thousand dollars, she’d be paying it back for years. Plus her car was beginning to break down, and her wardrobe was full of gaps, and her credit card debts were mounting up.
“Also, you’re the last person who’s going to look the other way if there’s a problem.”
“What exactly would I be doing?”
“Compiling data on meds and behavior from the clinical nurses, maybe even taking note yourself of any changes in the behavior of patients.”
“How long do I have to think it over?”
He nodded down the path. “Until we reach that tree. And the rate is fifty dollars an hour.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“So is GEM’s potential profit.”
“How many times can I sell my soul to them?”
Nick laughed. “Do I hear a yes?”
Screw it. “Yes.”
“Good.”
They jogged silently for a few yards. “By the way,” she said, “is Jordan Carr working with you on the Jack Koryan case?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“Why do you ask?”
“He requisitioned a blood assay of Mr. Koryan.”
“He did?” Nick looked genuinely surprised.
“Then later he asked Alice to fax it to another number. I checked,” she said. “It’s the office of Gavin Moy.”
“Gavin Moy?” Nick nearly stopped, but he caught himself and continued his pace again.
For several moments they jogged along without further comment. But René sensed a festering behind Nick’s silence and the way he stared at the water as if half-expecting something to surface.
33
BY MID-OCTOBER, BETH HAD CUT HER visits with Jack at the rehab center to once a week. In spite of the aggressive efforts at sensory and motor stimulation, the staff at Greendale had failed to elicit any on-command response from Jack. He could breathe on his own, cough on his own, make occasional meaningless sounds. But for all practical purposes, Jack was dead.
Meanwhile, Yesterdays opened to rave reviews in both the Boston Phoenix and the Boston Globe. Because Beth had no interest in the restaurant she had sold Jack’s share to a cousin of Vince’s.
And Jack slept.
And one night at the Bristol Lounge in Boston’s Four Seasons Hotel Beth met George King, an investor from McAllen, Texas. He was in town for a week of meetings. He was a kind, handsome man, and they spent the evening together walking through the Boston Garden. His wife had died the year before of breast cancer. To Beth’s mind they shared a common loss. On the eve of his departure, they shared his hotel bed.
And Jack slept.
When she visited Jack again, Beth felt less conflicted with devotion and honor than she had been. She knew she was slightly neurotic, more concerned with herself, thinking that she could end up like one of those family members waiting seventeen years for their loved one to wake up. But she had to be honest with herself. That just wasn’t her. She was no bedside wife. Besides, she had considered leaving him before all this happened. If he were awake, he’d understand.
When the nurses left, Beth laid her hand on Jack’s and, her eyes pooling with tears, she kissed him softly on the forehead. “I’m sorry, Jack,” she whispered.
The next day she filed for divorce.
34
“WHO’S FUZZY SWENSON?” RENÉ ASKED Christine Martinetti.
Christine looked startled. “How do you know about Fuzzy Swenson?”
“Your father. He was a little confused the last couple times I was in and asked if I was Fuzzy Swenson’s sister.”
“I don’t know about her, but Fuzzy Swenson was a buddy of Dad’s in Korea. He’s got a picture of him in his room.”
“I saw it.”
“What did he say about him?”
“Nothing. Just that he thought I was his sister. Also became a little agitated.”
Christine nodded and sighed. “I think his real name was Samuel. He was in a POW camp with Dad in North Korea. He died over there and I guess it was pretty bad what happened to him because Dad never talks about it. Funny thing is that he’s beginning to talk more about his Korea days—the good stuff. Maybe it’s the Memorine.”
“Maybe. His cognitive test scores are beginning to improve.”
They were sitting in the conference room on the locked unit having coffee and waiting for Louis to finish his shower. Christine, who was about René’s age, lived in Connecticut and visited her father maybe once a week.
“He’s otherwise so healthy. He could live another fifteen years.”
“Absolutely.”
Christine was silent for a few moments. “From what I’ve read, nobody ever dies of Alzheimer’s. They die of heart attack or cancer, but not the disease itself, right?”
“Yeah, it’s usually some prior condition. But if they’re in advanced stages and are confined to wheelchairs or a bed, they’re susceptible to internal infections and pneumonia.”
“Because they forget how to walk and eat. So they starve to death.”
René nodded at the primal reality. “By then they’ve lapsed into a coma, and the family usually decides to discontinue feeding and not to take any extraordinary measures to resuscitate.”
“I don’t want him to go like that.”
“Of course not.”
“I don’t think I could take it.”
DNR. One of the countless antiseptic shorthands.
It’s what René had finally yielded to. Do not resuscitate. To spare her own father from pain and more humiliation. Because she did not want him to linger on until the basic circuitry of his brain had become so gummed up that he had lost memory of how to breathe. It was that raw eventuality that caught up to her—when she had come to accept the fact that he would never recover, that no matter what she did or what the doctors came up with he would never come back but continue to descend into the disease. So she signed the DNR order. And the day he died was a release for the both of them. Her only compulsion was to be with him at the moment of his death. And when that came, she held him in her arms and told him over and over again that she loved him, that he and Mom had given her a beautiful life, and that he was going to be with her soon. Of course, he heard none of René’s words. And even if he did, they meant nothing to him. They were for her.
His breathing came irregularly, in short gasps and long intervals. Then in a long thin sigh that seemed to rise out of a fundamentally held resignation of all living creatures, he died. In a blink his life and all that had gone into making him who he was ended. She held her face to his and sobbed until she thought her heart would break. When the nurses came, they sat with her. Then they left to give her one final moment with him.
For the last time she kissed him on the forehead and whispered, “Tell them I remember you.”
Against that memory flash René forced a bright face and matching voice. “Well, if he continues to improve the way he has, that may not happen.”
“You really think it’s working, that he may actually recover?”
“It’s really too early to say for certain, but from what I’ve seen around here the signs are very promising.”
“God, I pray it’s true.”
René felt the tug in her chest again. “Me, too.”
An aide stuck her head into the room. “He’s all ready.”