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 three-to-eleven. "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. More than a few minutes within ten feet of a phone seemed to set off 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.
"Nothing," Nick said.
"Thanks for spelling me, Nick."
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 stood up 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 lie.
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."
* * *
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 three-to-eleven shift was on its way out of the building in record time. It was party time for them.
Bill made some small talk with Beverly, the head nurse on eleven-to-seven, as she checked Danny's useless IVs during her initial rounds. Then he waited a while 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 Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve show geared up for the traditional countdown to the drop of the illuminated apple 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…
There was 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? Georgie, 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 apple 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.