If I Should Die

by Hilary Norman

  “Bomb technicians,” Joanna King said.

  “Known as bomb techs or bombers to the initiated,” Bobby Goldstein embroidered.

  “Goldstein’s an expert now,” King mocked.

  Lally looked away from the men in their protective clothing and the cardiologist still listening to them so carefully. She tried to focus on Joanna King, just as elegant and statuesque as she remembered, and on dear, kind-faced, humorous Bobby Goldstein.

  “You can’t begin to imagine how grateful I am that you’ve come here for me,” she told them. “But are you sure it’s safe for you to be doing this?”

  “We wouldn’t miss it for the world,” King said.

  “Personally, I came for the pizza,” Goldstein grinned. “Chicago’s where it all began, you know.”

  “I think you’ll find that was Italy,” King said, drily.

  “Not the real thing,” Goldstein argued. “The real thing started in a place called Pizzeria Uno right here in Chicago, which is where I vote we all adjourn to when this nonsense is over.”

  “I’m with you,” Lally said.

  Joe had brought Chris to her room, fleetingly, just before she’d come down to the OR, and the evidence that he was all right had been a joyous relief, yet the bandages on his hand and his stricken face were proof enough that her fears for him had been justified. And then Hugo had been there too, and there had been no time for explanations, and she’d said her farewells to them all at the elevator up on the third floor, had embraced them and refused to let any of them come any further with her, and frankly it had been almost a relief to have the elevator doors slide shut, blocking off their three anxious, stressed-out faces.

  “How was Florida?” Joanna King asked.

  “Beautiful.”

  “We heard your boyfriend went chasing down there after you, and brought you back in a private jet.” Goldstein’s eyes twinkled behind their spectacles. “Is it true?”

  “Pretty much,” Lally said, “except he isn’t my boyfriend.”

  “Sounds like he ought to be,” King commented.

  “Lally, my dear, I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.” Lucas Ash, handsome as ever, came striding towards her with one of the astronauts. Lally’s stomach, steadied slightly for a moment by the banter, took a new dive. “Ready when you are.”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” she answered.

  The man beside Ash removed the head part of his bomb suit, and Lally saw that it was Tony Valdez.

  “Hi, Tony,” Lally said.

  Valdez’s grin was bordering on lazy, his whole demeanour deceptively calm and laid-back. “I just want to tell you that none of us believes we’re going to be needed here today,” Valdez said. “The stuff on the windows, our suits, the firemen outside the door – it’s all purely precautionary.”

  Lally didn’t know what to say. Her mouth was very dry.

  “Okay,” Ash said, gently. “Want to get up on the table, Lally, so we can make a start?”

  “Not really,” she said, hoarsely.

  “I’d sooner have done this in a catheter lab, the way we did it the first time around,” Ash said. “But apparently this suits the rest of the team rather better, so I thought I’d better fit in. It looks more forbidding, but it makes no real difference.”

  Lally got up on the table.

  “Since you’re an old hand at this,” Ash said, “I don’t need to waste time explaining everything to you, except just to say that what we’re going to do first is exactly the same as we did before, only in reverse order.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we all take a deep breath, and I put in a new pacemaker.” Ash smiled at her. “Not one, I hasten to add, made by Hagen Pacing.”

  “Poor Mr Hagen,” Lally said. “He called me. He was so upset.”

  “I know,” Ash agreed. “I met him, too.”

  Sitting upright on the flat, terrifying operating table, Lally had never felt more vulnerable. She remembered the first time, remembered how afraid she had been, afraid of the procedure, afraid of pain, afraid of it not working. Afraid of dying. She remembered Charlie Sheldon telling her that the pacemaker implant would be nowhere near as nice as a day on the beach, but nowhere near as nasty as having a tooth pulled. She knew now that, compared to this, the first operation had been a day on the beach.

  “Music,” she said, suddenly.

  Everyone looked at her as if they feared she’d flipped out.

  “Last time we had music,” she said. “Mozart.”

  “Did we bring our tapes?” Lucas Ash asked Joanna King.

  “Of course.”

  “You want Mozart, Lally?” the doctor asked.

  “I’d prefer Prokofiev, but I don’t mind.”

  Joanna King was already checking through the cassette tapes in a cardboard box. “No Prokofiev. Will Tchaikovsky do?”

  “Maybe Mozart might be better.” Lally managed a grin. “Less exciting.”

  “She means she wants the doc calm, not dancing,” Goldstein said.

  “Mozart it is,” King agreed.

  Valdez approached the table, a pair of protective goggles in his gloved hand.

  “Take them away,” Ash said, irritably. “I told you I won’t have anything impairing my vision.”

  “They’re not for you, Doctor, they’re for Miss Duval.”

  “What for?” Lally asked.

  “Just in case,” Valdez said.

  “Forgive me,” Lally said, startled by the calm of her own voice, “but if the worst does happen, I don’t think I’ll be worrying about my eyes.”

  “Fair enough.” Valdez smiled at her and moved away.

  “Anyone have any more interruptions?” the doctor asked.

  No one said a word. Mozart flowed softly into the room.

  “All set, Ms King?”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  “All right, Lally?”

  “Yes, thank you.” Her voice was down to a whisper.

  “Then we’ll begin.”

  Chris and Hugo sat in the waiting room on the third floor in silence, both men surrounded by plastic coffee cups and encased in their own private thoughts and fears, self-recriminations and rage and impotence. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked on. Outside, down on the streets, the gentle whir of early morning traffic grew gradually louder.

  From time to time, Hugo looked across at Webber, saw the sling and the bandaged hand, and the evidence that the man had been sick was etched all across his face, and though no one had told him what had gone on, Hugo knew it had something to do with Lally, and the guy looked like a goddamned hero. And Hugo hadn’t liked him before, but now he hated him for that, hated that he, who had loved Lally for so long, had been unable to do a thing to help her.

  Chris felt Barzinsky’s dislike, and in other circumstances he might have pitied the man, but right now his own mind was jammed with other emotions, none of them too pretty. Guilt upon guilt upon guilt, weighing him down, guilt about abandoning Andrea and Katy, guilt about failing Lally; for neither his escapade with her brother, nor his brush with death, nor his performance as a corpse had achieved a fucking thing so far as she was concerned – she was still down there in the OR facing the nightmare on her own, and Duval and Morrissey hadn’t even wanted to let him see her before they took her down, had told him he looked too lousy, that Lally would go into surgery worrying about him, that she had enough problems without adding to them. But Chris had insisted, and so they’d given him just one minute, and she’d taken one look at his hand and arm and though he’d told her that it was nothing, that he’d taken a bit of a fall, he could tell she didn’t believe him, and so after all that he probably had added to her burden, and oh shit, he didn’t like himself too much . . .

  The door opened and Morrissey looked in. Hugo jumped up, but Chris found his legs would hardly move.

  “News?” Hugo asked.

  Morrissey shook his head. “Too soon.”

  Hugo sat down again.

  “You
should be resting,” Morrissey said to Chris.

  “No chance.”

  “You should at least put your feet up.”

  “I will,” Chris said, not moving.

  “How’re you feeling?” the doctor asked.

  “About a thousand per cent better than I was.”

  “But still pretty lousy?”

  “I’m okay,” Chris said. “Thank you.”

  Hugo’s irritation level rose again. “Why can’t we wait down there, closer to the OR?”

  “It’s off-limits.” Morrissey was looking haggard. “Even to me.”

  All three men thought about the reason why. All three shuddered.

  In spite of Mozart, the atmosphere in the operating room was thick enough to slice as Lucas Ash injected local anaesthetic close to the area where he would cut the recently healed skin above Lally’s left breast.

  “All right?” he asked gently.

  “Fine,” she lied.

  “You will be,” he said.

  She looked through his little fold-up glasses into the keen blue eyes.

  “Thank you,” she said, softly.

  “Haven’t done anything yet.”

  “Thank you, anyway.”

  She closed her eyes, and tried to project herself out of the OR. She thought about Chris and how awful he’d looked when he’d come in, finally, to see her, and she knew that all her bad feelings about him had been justified, and even in that brief moment they’d shared she’d realized for sure – if there had been any real doubt – that she was in love with him. Now, keeping her eyes shut, she built up a mental picture of him, remembered the way he’d looked in the harbour at Key West, the relief on his face when he’d found her. She remembered the flight to Chicago, the bad weather and the shock and fear all mixed up together, only the knowledge that Chris was beside her keeping her going. She remembered their one evening together at her house in Stockbridge, with Katy asleep upstairs in her bedroom. She remembered what a loving father he was, and what a concerned husband, and she remembered that he’d left his daughter, at a time when she needed him so badly, because Lally was in danger, and she hadn’t really had a chance to tell him how she felt about that, and maybe it was as well, because there was still Andrea at home, and whatever happened here today, Chris would have to go back to face his wife and their problems. But still for now, it was so good to think about him, to think about his face, his strength, and she fastened onto that, held it tight in her mind.

  “Ready to start now, Lally,” Dr Ash said.

  Lally opened her eyes.

  “You’re clear on what I’m going to do, aren’t you?”

  She nodded, unable to speak.

  “You understand that when we’ve disconnected the first pacemaker, an external device will take over temporarily, until the new one’s in place. Just to avoid any unlikely hiccups.” Ash smiled. “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She felt, rather than saw, the bomb techs in their astronaut suits move closer to the table; felt the tension rise, like mercury in a thermometer, as King focused on her X-ray pictures, Valdez hovering beside her, scanning the images of the pacemaker generator box and its wires. And again, she looked into Lucas Ash’s face, into those clear, intent eyes. And she trusted those eyes, trusted his fingers, and when he told her to lie absolutely still now, she obeyed him without a word.

  When Schwartz came to, he was in another place. Not in his room, but in an unfamiliar, cold place, with white walls and steel trolleys and a curious odour. He was lying on a hard, unyielding bed, and his vision was blurred, and his arms and legs were so heavy he could hardly move them.

  There was a shape beside him, looming over him.

  “Who’s there?” His voice came out slurred and thick.

  “Almost ready,” a man said.

  He blinked his eyes hard, and his vision cleared a little. Dr Kaminsky was standing to his left, wearing a green gown, a mask over his nose and mouth, a hypodermic in his hand.

  “What’s going on?” Schwartz tried to sit up, but it was impossible, and he realized there was another man behind him, holding him down by the shoulders. “What have you done to me?”

  “Just relax, Mr Schwartz,” Kaminsky said.

  “I want to get up – ” Schwartz struggled for a second, but he was too weak, and he felt so heavy. “My legs,” he moaned. “My eyes – I can’t see – ”

  “That’s just the sedative we gave you – you were a little distressed, remember?” Kaminsky’s voice was soothing. “Now try to be calm.”

  “What are you doing to me?” Schwartz’s voice was so slurred, his mouth was so dry, he was having trouble swallowing.

  “We’re preparing you for your pacemaker,” Kaminsky said, pleasantly.

  Schwartz shook his head violently. “No – I told you no pacemaker.”

  “You signed a consent, Mr Schwartz.”

  “I signed nothing!”

  “Sure you did. When you were transferred from Chicago Memorial. You signed it then, remember?” Kaminsky squirted fluid from the end of the syringe the way he’d seen countless actor-doctors do it in movies. “We have to save your life, Mr Schwartz, we’re bound by medical ethics to save your life.”

  “More lies.” Schwartz moaned. “You can’t do this.”

  “We have to,” Kaminsky said.

  “You can save lives, too,” another voice said, softly.

  Schwartz turned his head towards the voice, tried to focus but failed.

  “Who is it?” Another man, gowned and masked. He couldn’t see his face. The terror grew. “Hagen – is it Hagen?”

  “One last chance, Siegfried,” the voice said.

  “Oh, dear God, help me.” Schwartz moaned again.

  “You help us, we’ll help you,” the man told him.

  He came closer, and Schwartz saw that it was not Hagen, but the lieutenant, and he was holding some papers. And his mind cleared a little then, and he remembered the documents, the records of his work – his brilliant, heroic work – and for a moment, he was utterly, perfectly lucid again.

  “You’re bluffing, Lieutenant.”

  “No.” Joe moved right in to the table. “I give you my word.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “One last chance,” Joe said. “To be Siegfried, the true hero, instead of one of them.”

  “Man and metal,” another voice whispered.

  Schwartz turned his head, and Kaminsky was holding up the oh-so-familiar generator box of a pacemaker in his gloved hand.

  “Man and metal,” Kaminsky said. “That’s what you fear most, isn’t it, Siegfried? More than death, more than Hagen?”

  “Are you going to tell us what we need to know?”

  Schwartz turned his head again, and the lieutenant was there, with the papers in his hand, and his face was so calm, so set, so evil.

  “Last chance,” Kaminsky said.

  And every terror that had ever haunted Frederick Schwartz, from his earliest nightmares all the way to this final horror, seemed to swirl around in his brain, blanketing him, swamping everything, confusing it all, all the long-held motivations and desires for justice and vengeance, turning his blood to ice and his bowels to water.

  He believed them now.

  “I’ll tell you,” he whispered.

  “Do you swear it?” the lieutenant asked, his face taut as a mask.

  Kaminsky held the pacemaker box over his face, so close to his lips that he could almost taste the metal on his tongue. “Sure you won’t change your mind?”

  “I’ll tell you,” Schwartz whispered again. “I swear it, on my mother’s memory. I’ll tell you everything.”

  Ferguson-Kaminsky turned away. Joe came closer.

  Lally’s eyes were tightly closed, and she could feel Lucas Ash’s breath on her neck, steady and light and calm, like his hands.

  “I have it,” he said, very quietly.

  She heard a soft flutter of activity around the operating table.
r />   “Lally, the external pacemaker’s taken over for now. You feel okay?”

  “I think so,” she whispered, her eyes still shut.

  Another long minute passed.

  “It’s out,” he said.

  Lally half opened her eyes. She saw it, in the palm of his latex-covered hand. She kept very still, hardly daring to breathe, heard movement to her right, saw another hand, more thickly gloved, outstretched to take it.

  “Careful,” Lucas Ash said, gently, as it left his palm. “It’s slippery.”

  The other man dropped it.

  “Jesus!”

  It was like watching a slow-motion horror sequence in a movie. The little bloodied metal box sliding off the gloved hand, starting to tumble through the air, free-falling, spinning as it descended through space –

  “No way!”

  Joanna King’s tackle was the most graceful, the most sublime, anyone in the room had ever seen. Her two hands outstretched and cupped, catching the box as her body hit the linoleum floor, knocking the breath out of her.

  No one said a word.

  A second gloved pair of hands took it from King’s, the movements steady now, confident, perfect.

  Lally raised her head a little way, saw the box put inside a small containment vessel that, in turn, slid smoothly into a larger one. She saw the two astronauts pick up the container, saw them start walking, calmly, slowly towards the exit, and the swing doors opened, and she heard voices outside, hushed, almost reverential, and she heard the slow squelching tread of rubber soles on linoleum, and they were walking away.

  The doors swung closed. The Hagen pacemaker was gone.

  Goldstein walked over to King, still on the floor, and gave her his hand to help her up.

  “Lawrence Taylor,” he said, “eat your heart out.”

  “That was some tackle,” Ash agreed.

  “Not bad,” King said, dusting herself off, “if I say so myself.”

  Lally lay back on the table. A wave of emotion welled up in her, a mixture of laughter and tears, of delayed panic and inexpressible relief.

  “If my heart survives that,” she said, shakily, “it’ll survive anything.”