Dead or Alive

by Grant Blackwood

  Now Pasternak began powering up the equipment: first the EKG, then the ventilator, followed by a self-diagnostic test of the manual external defibrillator. Pasternak then turned his attention to the wheeled cart beside the table, on which lay an array of syringes and bottles. All of this the Emir watched closely.

  He had to be curious, Jack thought, and he must be inwardly terrified. Nobody could be that indifferent to what was going on around him, all the more so a man who was fully accustomed to being the ultimate and total boss of everything that happened around him, used to having his every order obeyed with alacrity. The world around him was no longer in his control. There was no way he could be comfortable with that, but he retained a sense of dignity that was, in its way, rather impressive. Okay, he was courageous, but courage was not an infinite quality. It had its limits, and those in the room with him would be exploring those limits.

  Dr. Pasternak rolled up the Emir’s shirtsleeve and unbuttoned his shirt, then stepped away from the table, reached to the cart, and retrieved a plastic syringe and a glass vial. He checked his watch and looked up.

  “I’m going with seven milligrams of the succinylcholine,” Pasternak said, measuring the amount carefully into the plastic syringe as he withdrew the plunger. “Somebody write that down, please.” On the chart Pasternak had asked Chavez to maintain, Ding wrote the information down: 7mg @ 8:58. “Okay…” the physician said. He stabbed the syringe into the brachial vein just inside the elbow and pushed the plunger in.

  There was no real pain for Saif Rahman Yasin, just the momentary prick of something piercing his skin inside the elbow, and the needle was soon withdrawn. Were they poisoning him? he wondered. Nothing overt seemed to be happening. He looked at the man who’d just stabbed him and saw a face that was waiting for something. That was vaguely frightening to him, but it was too late for fear. He told himself to be strong, to be faithful to Allah, to be confident in his faith, because Allah could handle anything men could do, and he, the Emir, was strong in his faith. He inwardly repeated his profession of faith, learned as a small boy more than forty years before, from his own father at the family house in Riyadh. There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet. Allahu akbar. God is great, he told himself, thinking his profession of faith as loudly as he could in the silence of his own mind.

  Pasternak watched and waited. His brain was racing. Was he doing the right thing? he wondered. It was too late to worry about that, of course, but even so, his mind asked the question. The man’s eyes looked into his now, and the doctor told himself not to flinch. He was the one in control. Completely in control of the fate of the man who’d killed his closest relative, his beloved brother, Mike, the man who’d ordered the man driving the airplane to crash into the World Trade Center, causing the fire that would weaken the structural steel, and dropping the entire Cantor Fitzgerald office a thousand feet to the streets of lower Manhattan, crushing to death more than three thousand people, more than had been killed at Pearl Harbor. This was the face of the fucking murderer. No, he would not show weakness now, not before this fucking barbarian…

  The man was waiting for something, the Emir thought-but what? There was no pain, no discomfort at all. He’d just injected something into his bloodstream. What was it? If it was a poison, well, then the Emir would soon see Allah’s face, and could report to Him that he’d done the Lord God’s will, as all men did, whether they knew it or not, because everything that happened in the world was Allah’s bidding, because everything that ever happened in heaven or on earth was written by God’s own hand. But he had freely chosen to do Allah’s will.

  But nothing was happening. He didn’t know, he couldn’t tell, that his mind was racing at light speed, outstripping everything, even the blood in his own arteries, spreading whatever it was that the doctor had shot into him. He wished it were poison, for then he would soon see Allah’s face, and then he could report on his life, how he had done Allah’s will as best he understood it… or had he? the Emir asked himself, as the final doubts came. It was a time for ultimate truth. He’d done the Lord God’s bidding, hadn’t he? Had he not studied the Holy Koran his entire life? Did he not have the Holy Book virtually memorized? Had he not discussed its inner meaning with the foremost Islamic scholars in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Yes, he had disagreed with some of them, but the nature of his disagreement had been honorable and direct, founded on his personal view of scripture, on his interpretation of God’s word as written and distributed by the Prophet Mohammed, Blessings and Peace be upon him. A great and good man, the Prophet had been, as well he might be to have been chosen by God Himself to be His Holy Messenger, the conveyor of God’s will to the people of the earth.

  Pasternak was watching the sweep-second hand of his watch. One minute gone… another thirty seconds or so, he figured. Seven milligrams ought to be plenty for this application, delivered as it was, directly into the bloodstream. It would be fully distributed by now, infusing itself in all the man’s bodily tissues… and first would be…

  … the flutter nerves. Yes, they’d be first. The widely distributed nerves, the ones that worked peripheral systems, such as the eyelids, right about… now.

  Pasternak moved his hand to the man’s face, striking at his eyelids, and they didn’t blink.

  Yes, it was starting.

  The Emir saw the hand slap at his face but stop short. He involuntarily blinked his eyes… but they didn’t blink… Huh? He tried to lift his head, and it moved a centimeter or so, then collapsed back down… What? He commanded his right fist to close and pull against the handcuffs, and it started to but stopped, falling back down to a resting position on the wooden surface of the table, the fingers unflexing of their own accord…

  His body was no longer his own…? What was this? What was this? He moved his legs, and they moved under the command of his brain, just a little, but they moved as they should, as they had since before his childhood memory had begun, following the commands of his brain, as the body always did. Command your arm, an infidel philosopher had written, and it moves-command your mind, and it resists. But his mind was working, and his body was not. What was this? He turned his head to look around the room. His head did not move, despite his commands-neither would his eyes. He could see the white drop-ceiling panels. He tried to focus his eyes more closely on them, but his eyes were not working as they should. His body was like the body of another man; he could feel it, but he could not command it. He told his legs to move, and they barely fluttered, then froze limply in place. Limp like a corpse.

  What was this? Am I dying? Is this death? But it wasn’t death. Somehow he knew that and-

  For the first time the Emir felt the beginnings of fear. He didn’t understand what was happening. He only knew it would be very bad.

  To Clark it looked as though the man was going to sleep. His body had stopped moving. There had been a few jerks and some little spasms, like a man settling to go to sleep in bed, but they’d stopped with surprising rapidity. The face became vacant, not focused, not proclaiming strength and power and lack of fear. Now he had the face of a mannequin. The face of a corpse. He’d seen that often enough in his life. He’d never thought what it was like for the mind behind the face. When death happened, the problem with that body was over for all time, allowing him to move on to the next problem, leaving this one behind for all time to come. It had never been necessary for Clark to destroy the body. When it died, the body was finished, right? Part of Clark wanted to approach the doc and ask him what was happening, but he didn’t, unwilling to disturb the man in charge of the current operation quite yet…

  He could feel all of his body. It was all a matter of crystal clarity to Saif. He couldn’t move any of it, but he could feel it all. He could feel the blood pumping through his arteries. But he couldn’t move his fingers. What was this? They’d stolen his body from him. It was no longer his. He could feel it but not command it. He was a prisoner in a cell, and the cell was… himself…? What was this? Were they
poisoning him? Was this the onset of death? If so, shouldn’t he welcome it? Was the face of God just moments away? If so, he told his mind to smile. If his body couldn’t move, then his soul could, and Allah could see his soul as clearly as a large stone in the midst of the sea. If this were death, then he would welcome it as the culmination of his life, as a gift he’d given to so many men and women, the opportunity to see Allah’s face, as he would soon do… yes… He felt the air entering his lungs, giving him the last few seconds of life as these infidels stole his life from him. But the Lord Allah would make them pay for this. Of that he was sure. Completely sure.

  Pasternak checked his watch again. Coming up on two minutes, coming up on the last part. He turned and looked at the resuscitator. The green pilot light was on. The same was true of the ventilator. He’d have them when and if he needed them. He could restore this bastard’s life. He wondered what Mike would think of that, but that thought was far too distant for him to latch on to it right now. What happened after death was unknown to living men. Everyone found out eventually, but none could return and relate it to the living. The great mystery of life, the subject of philosophy and religion, believed, perhaps, but not known. Well, this Emir guy was getting a look, of sorts. What would he see? What would he learn?

  “Just a moment now,” Pasternak told those around him.

  The Emir heard that and understood the words. Just a moment until he saw God’s face. Just a moment before Paradise. Well, he’d not gone all the way he’d hoped to go. He’d not become the world leader of the Faithful. He’d tried. He’d tried his best, and his best was very, very good. Just not good enough. That was a pity-a great pity. So much he could have done. Someone else would have to do it now? Ahmed, perhaps? A good man, Ahmed, faithful and learned, good of heart and strong of faith. Perhaps he’d be good enough… The Emir felt the air going in and out of his lungs. He felt it so clearly. It was a beautiful feeling, the very feeling of life itself. How was it that he’d never appreciated it, the beauty of it, the wonder of it?

  Then something else happened-

  His lungs were stopping. His diaphragm wasn’t-wasn’t moving. The air wasn’t coming into his lungs now. He’d been breathing since the moment of his birth. That was the first sign of life, when a newborn screamed its life to the world-but his lungs weren’t filling with air. There was no air in his lungs now… This was death coming. Well, he’d faced death for the last thirty years. At the hands of the Russians, the hands of the Americans, the hands of Afghans who’d not accepted his vision of Islam and the world. He’d faced death many, many times-enough that it held no terrors for him. Paradise awaited. He tried to close his eyes to accept his destiny, but his eyes wouldn’t close. He still saw the panels of the drop ceiling over his head, just off-white rectangles that looked down at him without eyes. This was death? Was this what men feared? How strange a thing, his mind observed, waiting, not with patience but confusion, for the final blackness to overcome him. His heart continued to beat. He could feel it, thumping away, pumping blood through his body, and thus bringing life, bringing consciousness, soon to end, of course, but still present. When would Paradise come to him? the Emir wondered. When would he see Allah’s face?

  “Respiration stopped at three minutes, sixteen seconds,” Pasternak reported. Chavez wrote that down, too. The doctor reached for the ventilator mask, checking again to be sure the system was turned on. He hit the button on the mask and was rewarded by the mechanical sound of rushing air in the rubber mask. Then he took the paddles off the resuscitator and pressed them to the man’s chest, turning his eye to the EKG readout on the small computer screen. Normal sinus rhythm, he saw.

  That wouldn’t last long.

  The Emir heard odd sounds around him, and he felt strange things but was unable even to make his eyes go look for the source of the sounds, locked as they were on the white ceiling panels. His heart was beating. So, he thought rapidly, this is what death is like. Was it like this for Tariq, shot in the chest? He’d failed his master, probably not because he’d been sloppy, just because the enemy in this case had been overly skillful and clever. That could happen to any man, and doubtless Tariq had died shamed at his failure to fulfill his mission in life. But Tariq was now in Paradise, the Emir was sure, perhaps enjoying his virgins, if that was really what happened there. Probably not, the Emir knew. The Koran didn’t say that, not really. Enjoying the favor of Allah. That was sure enough, as he, the Emir, was about to discover. That would be sufficient.

  It started to hurt some, right there in the center of his chest. He didn’t know that when his breathing had stopped, so had stopped the infusion of oxygen into his system. His heart, a powerful muscle, needed oxygen to function, and when the oxygen stopped, then the heart tissues went into distress… and would soon start to die; the heart was full of nerves, and they reported the lack of oxygen as pain to his still-functioning brain. Great pain, the greatest pain a man could know.

  Not quite yet, but going that way…

  His face showed nothing at all, of course. The peripheral motor nerves were all dead, or effectively so, Pasternak knew. But the feelings would be there. Maybe they could measure that on an electroencephalograph, but that would just show traces of black ink on white fan-fold paper, not the searing agony that the tracings represented.

  “Okay,” he said quietly. “It’s starting now. We’ll give him a minute, maybe a little more.”

  Trapped within his nonfunctioning body, Saif felt the onset of pain. It started distantly, but it increased steadily… and quickly. His heart was being wrenched from his chest, as though a man had reached inside with his hand and was pulling it out, ripping the blood vessels as he did so, tearing it loose like wet paper from a destroyed book. But it wasn’t paper. It was his heart, the very center of his body, the organ that provided life to the rest of him. It seemed to be on fire now, burning like kindling wood on open ground surrounded by rocks, burning, burning, burning… inside his chest, burning. His heart was burning alive, burning as he felt it. Not beating, not sending blood to his body, but burning like dry wood, like gasoline, like paper, burning, burning, burning… burning while he lived. If this was death, then death was a terrible thing, his mind thought… the worst thing. He’d inflicted this on others. He’d shot Russian soldiers-infidels, all of them, but still he’d ended their lives, put them through this… and thought it amusing? Entertaining. Part of Allah’s will? Did Allah find this amusing, too? The pain continued to grow, to become unendurable. But he had to endure it. It would not go away. Nor could he. He could not run from it, not pray aloud to Allah to stop it, not deny it. It was there. It became all of reality. It overwhelmed all of his consciousness. It became everything. It was a fire in the middle of his body, and it was burning him up from the inside out, and it was more terrible than he’d ever imagined it to be. Was not death quick in coming? Was not Allah merciful in all things? Why, then, was Allah permitting this to happen to him? He wanted to grit his teeth to fight against the pain-he wanted, he needed, to scream aloud to protect himself from the agony that lived inside his body.

  But he couldn’t command his body to do anything at all. All of reality was pain. Everything he could see and hear and feel was pain. Even the Lord Allah was pain…

  Allah was doing this to him. If everything in the world was God’s will, then had God willed this on him? How was that possible? Was not God a god of infinite mercy? Where the hell was His mercy now? Had Allah deserted him? Why?

  Why?

  WHY ?

  Then his mind faded into unconsciousness, with a final epilogue of searing pain to see him on his way.

  On the EKG readout, the first irregularities showed up. That got Pasternak’s attention. Ordinarily in the OR, as anesthesiologist, it was his job to keep watch on the patient’s vital signs. That included the EKG machine, and he was, in fact, rather a skillful diagnostic cardiologist himself. He had to pay very close attention now. They didn’t want to kill this worthless fuck, and mo
re was the pity. He could have just given him a death such as few men had ever experienced, a fitting punishment for his crimes, but he was a physician, not an executioner, Pasternak told himself, pulling himself back from the edge of a tall and deadly cliff. No, they had to bring this one back. So he reached for the ventilator mask. The “patient,” as he thought of him, was unconscious by now. He pressed the mask onto his face and pressed the button, and the machine shot air into the flaccid, deflated lungs. Pasternak looked up.

  “Okay, mark the time. We’re breathing him now. Patient is doubtless unconscious now, and we’re infusing air into his lungs. This ought to take three or four minutes, I think. Could one of you come over here?”

  Chavez was closest, and came at once.

  “Put those paddles on his chest and hold them there.”

  Ding did that, turning to look at the EKG readout. The electronic tracings had settled down and were repeating themselves regularly but not in sinus rhythm, something his wife might have recognized but to him were just like things he’d seen on TV. To his left, Dr. Pasternak was hitting the ventilator button at regular intervals of maybe eight or nine seconds. “What’s the score, Doc?” Chavez asked.

  “His heart is settled down now that it’s getting oxygen. The succinylcholine will wear off in another couple of minutes. When you see his body moving, then it’ll be mostly over. I’ll breathe him for another four minutes or so,” the doc reported.

  “What did he go through?”