by Sonali Dev
He was on her in a second, his hands on her shoulders, violence in his eyes. She panicked. Age-old terror cramped in her belly. She scrambled back, shaking.
Almost as forcefully as he’d grabbed her, he let her go, as disgusted at her fear as she was. But despite his own pain, he had seen her terror.
Before she could free fall into the whirlpool of her memories, she focused on Jen and forced the words out. “Her killers are roaming free.” Thinking about the violence that had killed Jen almost choked her, hitting too close to home. “You’re letting those bastards run free. How can you do that?”
This time he turned around and ran to the stairs, desperate to get away from her words. His legs lost purchase, and he almost went flying down the staircase. But he grabbed the railing and righted himself, somehow making it down the steps on the strength of those arms, lean and roped with starved muscle.
She ran after him. “Don’t you care?”
He ignored her and kept moving down the isolated deck.
“Jen thinks you care.”
He stopped. His fists so tight at his sides, tendons and muscles knotted and jutted against his skin in the harsh lights attempting to illuminate the night.
She had to turn him around.
He started walking again, dragging himself past the neatly arranged deck chairs as empty as his eyes had been. The wind was too high tonight and they had no audience.
She couldn’t let an opportunity like this go. She followed him. He was going to turn around. Somehow she just knew he was. He had to.
“I’m not a psychic,” she called out. “I swear to you.” She knew she had to be patient, give him as much time as he needed to come around. But every minute that ticked by was a minute she shouldn’t be here. Please, please turn around.
“I just need five minutes. Please.” She was begging. But she’d do so much more. She’d do whatever it took.
He stopped. He turned around. His white shirt billowed in the breeze, curving inward and hollowing out his moonlit form. Well, wasn’t the universe just poetic tonight?
She walked up to him, hooking her focus on her own movements, not on the anger on his face. Not the broken trembling in his body. It was just the waves and the ship. The ringing in her ears was just the wind whistling. Empathy, sympathy, generosity were luxuries people like her couldn’t afford. Don’t deviate from the script, she told herself. Do not deviate from the script.
She planted herself a few feet from him and grounded herself in the moment, mirroring the way his body was rooted to the spot, absolutely frozen. Except his thumb. His thumb worked furiously on the thick gold band on his ring finger, spinning it and spinning it.
“You have five minutes.” For all his stillness he was a rock loaded on a catapult, ready to fly out of her hands.
But she had her five minutes.
“I’m not a psychic or a medium. I’ve never seen a ghost, or any dead person. But . . . but I’ve been communicating with Jen.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and his thumb went crazy on his ring. Other than that he didn’t respond.
“She, your wife, she loved you very mu—”
“What do you want? Is it money?” He opened his eyes and looked at her and she felt a little sick.
“I feel like I know her.”
“How much do you want?”
* * *
The girl with Jen’s hair whipping around her face like flames in a storm looked fragile enough for the wind to carry her away, and yet she was clobbering him with her bare hands, uprooting him like the Incredible Hulk going to work on a tree.
She ignored his question the way she was ignoring the windstorm raging around them. Composed. She was so damn composed. No guilt on her face for sucking at his pain, pecking at it like a sharp-beaked vulture.
He’d seen too many of these scavengers on the streets of Mumbai, the villages in Malawi, the lanes of Peshawar. One glimpse of exposed innards and they thought it was their moral right to feed off them because they were starving.
But for what she was making him feel, for even mentioning Jen’s name, he was going to make her regret ever finding him. He was going to make sure she never did this to another human being again. It had been so long since he’d felt anything but dead, the sheer volume of his anger made him sway on his feet.
“I told you, I don’t want your money. I just need to tell you what Jen—”
“Stop saying her name. Stop fucking saying her name.”
“Okay, I won’t say her name, but I do need to tell you what she wants you to know.”
“Oh and what is that? My bank account number? My debit card PIN maybe?”
“At least hear me out, Nikhil.”
“Don’t say my name either. You have one minute left. After that you don’t say anything to me at all. Ever.”
Instead of opening her mouth and parroting the same drivel she’d been laying on him, she unzipped her sweatshirt. It instantly billowed around her, bloating her tiny form. In the floodlit night her cheeks flamed with an almost bruise-like flush.
She looked down at the shirt she was wearing under the sweatshirt and lifted her fingers to the buttons. For one terribly potent second, her hands trembled in place before she took a breath and started unbuttoning her shirt.
What the hell? She’d just tried the “I see dead people” routine on him and now she was going for seduction?
Her fingers clutched the edges of the shirt and started peeling them apart. He was about to turn away. He’d seen enough. But her hands stopped after opening the shirt only a sliver, exposing no more than a mere inch of her sternum.
His eyes locked on that narrow, exposed strip of skin.
She held the fabric in place as the wind tried to pry it apart. The lamp behind him hit her like a spotlight. She lifted her chin, elongating her neck.
His eyes traced the exposed strip of flesh and his dead heart slammed to life in his chest.
Etched into the pale bronze skin was a clean, straight, pink gash starting at the base of her throat and slashing her chest in half right down the center.
“I have your wife’s heart,” she said so quietly that if the words had been any different he would never have heard them.
A surgical scar.
Holy mother of God.
Jen’s heart.
She had his Jen’s heart.
He lifted his hand and reached for her. He didn’t know why he did it. But Jen’s heart was right here, her DNA, her tissue, her. Alive and beating.
The girl sucked in a breath and stepped back, moving away from his outstretched hand as though it were a live wire. She pulled her shirt back together and went to work on her buttons. The scar disappeared behind black cotton and trembling fingers.
“I’m sorry.” He had no idea why he was apologizing, but she had looked so terrified when he tried to touch her, it just came out.
“I’m sorry,” she said at the exact same time, and that accidental crash of words snapped her out of wherever she had gone.
For a few moments, neither one of them moved or spoke.
What could he say to her?
Give it back? Give back that thing beating in your chest. It isn’t yours.
“I’m so sorry,” she said again. The sympathy in her voice struck a match to the fuse hanging from him. Another blast of rage exploded inside him.
“How do I even know you’re telling the truth?”
“I am. My name is Jess Koirala. You can look it up. I was on the national donor registry for five years before I got her heart . . . Jen’s heart. It’s part of the Government of India medical records.”
“No. I mean heart surgery is a physical procedure. It can’t—” He had no idea what kind of madness this was, but God, he wanted what she was saying to be true. He wanted it so badly, his entire being vibrated with the effort to break free from a lifetime of medical knowledge. He’d seen it a million times with patients’ families. They’d take hope anywhere they found it. They’d dig up a mou
ntain with their bare hands if hope sat at the center of it.
“I’m a physician. This doesn’t happen,” he said more to himself than to her. A flat line was a flat line. A period. Done. You could scream and pray and pump someone’s chest until their ribs splintered beneath your hands. But that door, once slammed shut, was closed forever.
She pressed an unsteady hand to her chest, over the pink slash she’d just flashed at him and then hidden away. “How would I know all the things I know? She tells me things. Intimate things. You went to Scotland for your honeymoon. You were together for four months in Malawi after your wedding and then she left the MSF for a chance to work in Dharavi in Mumbai.”
“Anyone could find that out. Anyone could look that up or ask someone we know.”
“But how would I know how upset you were about her taking it.”
“I was not—”
“Yes, you were. She knew you were, even though you didn’t say anything.”
He turned away from her, needing to move. Jen was one of the most private people he knew. These weren’t things she would share with anyone casually.
* * *
Nikhil walked to the railing and stared out at the ocean. His body remained upright but he looked like she had slid a knife between his ribs.
She knew she had him.
With cruelty she wished she didn’t possess, she twisted the knife. “Jen knew you wanted her to wait until you had worked through your posting in Lilongwe. She wished it hadn’t happened when you two were fighting about the baby.”
He made a pained sound.
Maybe she shouldn’t have brought up the baby. But she was desperate. She needed him insensate with pain, unable to think. “Yes. I know about the baby too. The only reason she left when you were angry was because she knew you would come around. She was that confident of your love. And you did come around. You understood.”
Something wet hit her face. It wasn’t raining, and they were too high up on the ship for surf sprays. But the wind was high enough to carry teardrops. She couldn’t think about his tears right now.
“Did you know her in Mumbai?” He spoke without turning around. “You could only know these things if she told them to you.”
“She did.”
He spun around. “Stop saying that. Stop fucking saying that. Even if you do have her heart. She’s dead. Her heart is just a physical organ. There’s no way—”
“You think I don’t know that? I thought I was going crazy. For months I haven’t been able to stop it. But she won’t go away. Why would I come all the way here from Mumbai? Why would I make this up?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. But I’m sure you’re going to tell me. You want something from me. What is it?”
“You’re right. I want you to do what Jen wanted.”
“And what would that be?”
“She was—”
“Actually, forget I asked. I can’t believe how stupid—No. I’m not getting sucked into this. Just leave me alone.”
He turned around and started walking away.
“You have to believe me, Nikhil. Please.” She chased past him and pushed her body between him and the elevator lobby, blocking his path.
He met her eyes with absolute, undiluted loathing. “No. I don’t have to believe you. Because what you are saying is nuts.”
“I know it is. But sometimes you just have to have faith. Sometimes you have to leap first to see if your parachute will open.” It was beyond cruel to throw that at him.
Those were the words he’d used to convince Jen to marry him.
All the color drained from his face, one feature at a time, turning his skin sallow under the lights. “How do you—?” He leaned into the elevator button. “Whatever you’re up to, it’s . . . How do you even know that?”
“I told you. Jen told m—”
“Stop it.” He covered his eyes with his hand and it was a relief to not have to look at them. “Please.”
But she had no mercy to give him. “No one else can do this. Jen was working on something. And it’s unfinished. If you don’t help, all the work she did is useless.” She took a breath and fought to steady her voice. “Nikhil, Jen needs you.”
The elevator arrived with a ding, and he limped in. “I think you have that backward.” It was the last thing he said before the elevator doors squeezed him from sight, still unconvinced, leaving her with empty hands. All the weapons in her arsenal used up.
4
Being pregnant is like being ill without a cure. Unless you count bringing a baby into the world as a cure. Nic will never know how terrified I am of that. He believes I’ll learn to love being a mom. God, I hope he’s right.
—Dr. Jen Joshi
It had been a while since Nikhil had felt smart. But even his sustained and deliberate disconnection from his lifelong nerd status couldn’t excuse the asinine direction of his thoughts. “What if she’s telling the truth?” he kept thinking.
After starting the day with that, there was only one way the rest of the day could go: down the crapper. Right where he’d thrown up his Jack every night for two years along with a slow supply of his insides.
Evidently, he had also thrown away ten years of medical education and every iota of common sense.
Jess Koirala was either a really good actress or she was one of those metaphysical types who actually believed the crap she was handing out.
But what if it wasn’t crap?
And there it was again. He rubbed the stubbly back of his head as though that could erase the stupidity.
No. It was crap. But it was impressively well-executed crap. Whatever she was planning, she had pulled it off brilliantly—catching him at the lowest point of his day, or highest, if you were measuring blood alcohol levels. All the disappearing around corners, the trembling fingers, the dark clothes. That hair.
Then there was the scar. He couldn’t get that slash of raised skin out of his head. Even though he hadn’t touched it, he could feel its pliant thickness against his fingers like a memory he hadn’t created yet.
He had to stop this. He might suck at what he did now, but he had been a damn good physician in his past life. Organ transplants transferred no feelings, no memories, no personality traits from donor to recipient. It was just a spare part being installed in a different machine. That’s all.
That is all.
So Miss Koirala was up to something.
It was time to find out what it was, and once he did he was going to make her regret ever defiling Jen’s memory.
Without giving himself time to think, he yanked open a dresser drawer. Right behind his wallet, tucked at the very back of the drawer, was a plain white business card.
He checked the alarm clock on his nightstand. It was six a.m. Which meant it was still late afternoon in Mumbai. DCP Rahul Savant, the card said next to a hand-scrawled number.
Rahul Savant. The cop’s name brought on a vivid rush of memories. Jen’s body being lifted into the ambulance. The endless lineups of criminals. Identifying the bastards, but getting absolutely no satisfaction from it, only more anger and the crazed desire to kill them with his bare hands.
The questions that had gone on even after he had put the bastards in prison.
And then that day when DCP Savant had upended his already upended world.
Jen was helping us with an investigation.
He would never forget the look on the cop’s face when he had told Nikhil that his wife had lied to him. Kept such a huge secret from him. Put herself in danger. Put their baby in danger. Left him out. Left him.
Jen’s murder wasn’t a random crime, the bastard had said, looking at Nikhil as though he understood what Nikhil was feeling. Someone was using Jen’s donor registry database to steal organs. She had all the evidence we need to put these bastards away. We need your help finding it. You owe her that.
Those words had shut everything down, destroyed everything, his anger an inferno so consuming it had burned down who h
e had been and left behind this charred, smoking mess that he didn’t know what to do with.
The bastard had put Jen in danger. He had cost Jen her life because he hadn’t done his job and protected her, and he had the gall to tell Nikhil what he owed his wife. Nikhil had told him and his smarmy politician boss to go to hell.
The only way I will ever help you is if you bring my wife back.
The politician had thought Nikhil was kidding. The smile that had split his face had reminded Nikhil of a wound that needed suturing. But Nikhil had meant it. It had felt like the only way anything would ever make sense again. He’d been right because nothing had made sense since then.
Before he could slide the business card back in the drawer, he dialed.
The cop answered on the first ring. “DCP Savant.”
Nikhil almost hung up.
“Hello? Who’s speaking?”
The bastard didn’t have the right to sound this calm. “This is Nikhil Joshi. Calling from America.” Technically, they were in Jamaica right now, but he didn’t think the cop would care.
“Dr. Joshi?” The cop’s voice went from distracted to focused so fast Nikhil might have found it funny, if it hadn’t kicked off that sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. “How are you, Doctorsaab?” The relief in his voice was so acute it was almost as if he’d spent the past two years sitting by the phone, waiting for Nikhil to call.
Two years. It had been two years since Nikhil had told him to go to hell, left India, and stopped answering his incessant phone calls, and he sure as hell was never going back to the country of his parents’ birth ever again.
“I’m just peachy. Thanks.” Yeah, the party never stopped. “You got a minute?”
“For you? I have all the time you need. Can you hold on for just a minute? Don’t hang up, okay?”
Nikhil’s finger hovered over the off switch on the phone. He heard some gruff instructions being thrown out. “Okay, I’m back. Thanks for calling. I’ve been trying to reach you. There’s been a theft—”
Nikhil cut him off. “I need some information.”
Rahul huffed out a laugh. “Yeah, you and me both.” The cop had seemed so angry, so dark and brooding, when Nikhil had last seen him, his laugh, even though it was entirely humorless, scrambled Nikhil’s already-inside-out brain.