U stared at me, worry clear on his face, and spoke very softly himself. “How are you feeling, Kyle?”
“Not…great. Most of me feels…as one would expect, but… I’m getting more tired, not less, and I’ve got this nasty pain when I breathe.”
“I’m getting the medical team in here. Dash it all, if there are two concoctions in that blood, not one, no wonder…”
He hurried off, efficiency in motion, and I finally, reluctantly, looked at Margo. Yep, the bright hope was gone from her face, leaving it grey and strained.
I reached out and managed to curl my three fingers around her hand. “Everything will be alright, Margo.”
Hill…sniggered. Yes, definitely a snigger. I was doomed, wasn’t I?
“Everything will be fine, Margo,” I told her again. “Whatever happens.”
My heartbeat accelerated, a fey, tingling excitement creeping through my veins. Was I not doomed to a long lonely earth-bound exile after all? Lord, will I be with you soon?
Was I supposed to be sorry? I didn’t feel sorry. I felt…excited. Happy. Relieved. And…yes, sad. Sad for Margo and my family. My family…
“Where are Mum and Dad?” How hadn’t I thought about them before? I suppose between worrying about Hill and Margo and the pain…
Margo swallowed and when she spoke her voice sounded thick. She’d drawn the same conclusions from Hill’s snigger and it made her as miserable as it made me joyful. “We tried to contact them but they’re right under Storm Huraro at the moment. We haven’t managed to get a message through yet. U considered sending someone, but it didn’t seem worth the risk.”
The storm. Of course. It would be leaving a trail of disrupted communications and damaged transport networks behind it.
“We…we didn’t think it was so very, very urgent, of course.” Margo’s voice trembled. “But…well, maybe U will send someone, now.”
How long would it take someone to travel into the storm-hit Free State? And how long would it take my rather older parents to make it back out again and all the way to here—clear across the continent? How deadly the travelling conditions would be.
“No, he mustn’t. It’s too risky.” My other thought—that it would surely be too late—I kept to myself. I wasn’t a doctor, anyway. I might have longer than I thought. I’d already survived this stuff for four days.
“They would want to—”
“No. It’s too dangerous! You can keep trying to get through on the phone, right?”
Margo sighed, but Doctor Fathiya’s arrival stopped her replying. The religious sister seemed grimmer than before and trailed a whole array of competent and professional looking sisters behind her.
She no-nonsensely took the seat Margo vacated and leaned forward to stare at me. “So, your chest’s hurting?”
I nodded and she subjected me to a brisk barrage of medical questions, seeking to pinpoint exactly how I felt and when it hurt and where, then she had me wheeled off.
I spent the rest of the morning being put through scanners and poked and prodded and having my blood drawn. They even stuck a camera inside me, quite my least favourite bit of it all, but eventually I must’ve fallen asleep because I woke up back in my little quiet ward, with a tearfully smiley nurse-sister laying out a meal on the lap table in front of me. Lunch time.
“Good grief, that was exhausting,” I couldn’t help murmuring—once the nice sister had left. Had they…yes. I dropped the morphine ten bars.
“Utter waste of time as well.” Hill smiled smugly, lifted a spoonful of soup to his lips with one tremulous old hand and sipped. Pulled a face and turned to the bread instead.
I thought of Margo, presumably off forcing some food down her anxious throat. Hmm. I ought to try. “I don’t suppose you’d care to trade the antidote for…well, I’m sure we could think of something you’d like.”
Hill barked a laugh. “You’re well behind the times, Kyle. Your Agent Willmott has already offered me a comfortable, private retirement apartment—guarded, since apparently there is some moral objection to letting me go entirely—if I should hand over said item, or even the formula. Since, I quote, it’s not like you’ll be good for much at the farm anyway.”
“I’d have thought that would sound quite good to you, right now.”
“Indeed. But I’m not one to let my own weakness get in the way of completing something I’ve decided upon. Remember what we were saying about emotion and decision making?”
I frowned. “I would have thought, in your situation, such a trade would have been motivated by logic, not emotion.”
“It would be motivated by mere fear of discomfort, surely? Fear is emotion. I made very sure I could not succumb to it.”
When I still raised an eyebrow inquiringly, he added, “I’m saying, I chose a drug with no antidote, you silly boy.”
Finally, his circuitous words made sense.
No antidote.
I waited to feel fear or dismay…but still it didn’t come. If anything, the Lord’s presence grew stronger, enfolding me. Calling me…
I’m sorry, Margo. Mum, Dad… Everyone… This just sucks for you all, so badly.
To Hill, I said, “Care to tell me what the blue stuff does? Other than kill me, I mean?”
Hill smirked. “Oh, you’ll find out soon enough.”
I shrugged. “Ah, well, then. Enjoy your meal, Uncle Reginald.” I bowed my head, said grace, and started sucking my soup through my straw.
Hill shook his head in disgust and peevishly went back to nibbling bread.
If he hoped to see me get all teary about this, he was out of luck. But…a sudden dread struck me, a previously unforeseen ramification unfolding itself before my horrified mind. If I was the only one who really cared if Hill made it to heaven, and I would soon be dead… Oh Lord, help me! Please help me to find the words! How long did I have? Reckoning on how long Hill might have, I’d figured I had months to work on him, maybe even a year or two. Now? Days? Mere hours? Oh Lord, what do I do?
Would Margo carry on trying? Especially if I asked her to? But she was struggling with this, and if ever anyone needed to feel real love, it was Hill. And…and somehow, it just felt like he was my responsibility. Like the Lord had given him to me—or me to him. But how? Now?
Panicking, I reached out and knocked five more bars off the morphine.
“Trust me,” Hill put down his half-eaten bread and shoved his plate away, “you really don’t need to worry about getting addicted to that stuff.”
“Nice to know.” My mind still raced, seeking a secret door, a pickaxe, a ladder, something that would enable me to break into his heart. Nothing. I couldn’t think of anything.
I pushed my own food away. Fear closed my throat, almost choking me. I couldn’t eat another bite.
Uncle Reginald, what will become of you?
“Kyle?”
Once again, my sister’s voice drew me from sleep. Pain struck like hammer blows from my legs, my knee, my hands—and my chest seared with each breath. Aaah, those five bars had made some difference, too right.
Good. That was…good. Struggling to keep my pain hidden, I opened my eyes. Margo. Sitting by my bed again, ashen-faced, her eyes pinched.
Doctor Fathiya sat beside her in a second chair, and U hovered behind them. Both equally grim-faced.
“I’m awake.” I smiled obligingly.
Their answering smiles were tense and short-lived.
“Did you find out what’s going on with me? Um…” Yes, I ought to make sure they knew. “Mr Hill…says that there’s no antidote, I’m afraid.”
“So he claimed.” Unicorn gave Hill a beady look from his blue eyes. “But you’ll forgive me if I don’t take anything he says as Gospel truth. We’ll keep trying to find one, you can be sure. We almost have the two drugs sorted out now. Well, we think so. Knowing there are two, and what they each do, is a big help.”
“See, they’ll find something,” said Margo firmly. “So don’t you worry, Kyle.”
“Wasn’t planning to.”
That won me a frustrated look from my sister, then her gaze shot sideways to Doctor Fathiya and her face tightened still more.
Ah… “So you do know what the stuff does?”
Doctor Fathiya nodded. “It’s a nasty little toxin that almost exclusively attacks the lungs.”
“Makes sense,” put in U. “He’d hardly inject you with something that would damage the organs he wanted to steal.”
Yes, that did make sense.
“It causes gradual cellular deterioration, with increasing pain and eventually loss of lung functionality. The process is slow to begin, but gathers momentum, the destruction proceeding faster and faster until it—well, one could call it a cascade. Blood vessels in the lungs will burst at an ever-escalating rate. Within half an hour of this cascade beginning…” She paused. Checked the fastening of her watch. Drew a breath. “Well, your lungs will fill up beyond the point of viability and…you’ll suffocate.”
I stared at the cross hanging over the window; at the limbs drawn in agony. Oh…they were all waiting for some response from me. “Well…at least it will be quick.”
Doctor Fathiya frowned, as though unsure if I was joking. But I meant it, all right. Compared to what Our Lord had suffered… And after those hours on that gurney…well, anything seemed quick, let alone a mere few minutes of suffocation.
U gave me a sad—and rather apologetic—smile. He’d a bad habit of blaming himself for anything that got past the VSS’s protective efforts. Margo put a hand to her mouth, trying to swallow a sob.
Doctor Fathiya continued uncertainly, “Fortunately, effective palliative care is easy enough. Once the cascade is imminent, you can, well, make your goodbyes—then we will place you under deep sedation. You won’t feel a thing.”
Margo smiled encouragingly in support of this, her eyes swimming. I looked across at Hill, who made no attempt to conceal his satisfaction as he watched my sister’s anguish. My eyes were drawn inexorably back to the cross. There were worse things than a little physical pain and my Uncle Reginald would suffer them all. Forever. Unless I succeeded as God’s cat burglar and allowed Him to break in.
“It’s good to know what’s what,” I told Doctor Fathiya. “But I don’t wish to be sedated.”
Her hand rose slightly towards her mouth. “You don’t… Perhaps I didn’t put it very clearly, Father Kyle. You will drown. In your own blood. It’s a slow, horrible way to die.”
I smiled at her. “Oh, it’s really not that slow or horrible. Please don’t trouble yourself about me. I shall be fine.”
Doctor Fathiya shot Margo a look of appeal. I met my sister’s eyes firmly.
Margo’s expression passed from dismay to despair, as though she recognised I’d made my mind up. “Kyle, surely it would be much better—”
“Margo, I don’t want it. Please don’t make a big thing about this. It’s really not that huge a deal.”
“Not that huge a deal? Kyle!”
“It’s not.”
“It is!”
Since we were clearly in danger of regressing to the youngest days of our childhood, I forbore to reply isn’t and just smiled. Margo huffed slightly—but then she got up and rushed out of the room. I’d made her cry. Again. Blast. Bane would be coming back over here to have words with me if this went on.
“I really hope you will reconsider, Father Kyle.” Doctor Fathiya sounded strained.
“I’ll be sure to let you know if I do. Thank you for looking after me so well, Doctor Fathiya.”
She got up and hurried out, unhappy lines still rucking up her brow.
That just left U, his brow deeply creased as well. “What are you doing, Father Gecko?”
“I’m within my rights to refuse the treatment option.”
“Of course you’re within your rights, but why? I mean, have you stopped to consider how ghastly this will be for Margo?”
I’d rather not think about that. “Maybe we can contrive to ensure she’s not around when it happens.”
“Oh, so she can spend the rest of her life torturing herself with the thought of you going through that without her there to hold your…ah…hand? That’s another terrible idea and I’m not helping you with it. If you care about her feelings, just take the sedation. They won’t do it until the last minute.”
I shook my head.
“Well, I hope you think better of it, I really do.” U turned to go.
“Uh, U? I’d…really like to see Father Omwancha, or any priest, as soon as possible. If you could…”
U nodded silently and strode away, clearly no happier than anyone else.
I sighed, shifting cautiously in a doomed attempt to make myself comfortable. Pain flared in my chest. Ouch. That’d just made it worse. Well, back to work. I looked across at Hill.
His eyes examined me as though I was an insect pinned to a card, but he didn’t speak.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been around much today, Uncle Reginald. I’ve been having a lovely pre-mortis autopsy—or that’s what it felt like.”
Hill laughed and for once it sounded genuine. “Oh, hospital tests are such fun, aren’t they?”
Huh, something we agreed on. Pain and exhaustion sucked at me and I struggled to think of what I wanted to say to him. Bother, I’d never asked how long before this deadly cascade occurred. A day? A few hours? A week?
Well, not a few hours. Or Margo wouldn’t have rushed off, however upset she was.
“I should probably just subcontract out the task of upsetting Margaret to you. You’re doing an awfully good job of it, crazy boy.”
I sighed. “Unintended, I assure you. And it hurts me almost as much as it hurts her.”
“Hence why I feel so fortunate not to love anyone.” Hill at his smuggest.
Huh… “Okay, Uncle Reginald, tell me, what do you think love is?”
He raised an eyebrow. “What is it? It’s that warm fuzzy emotion that makes people do incredibly irrational and sometimes life-threatening things.”
“No, it’s not. That’s a good description of an emotion that is commonly referred to as love, but which could more accurately be termed passion. It exists in various kinds: erotic, familial, amiable, platonic, etc. But it’s not actually love, in the truest sense of the word.”
Hill raised his eyebrow again, a trace of genuine curiosity on his face. “And what do you say love really is, crazy boy?”
“Actual love is not an emotion at all, though it’s commonly accompanied by the emotion. Actual love is an act of the will, to will the good of the other, of the one loved, and yes, to will it up to the point of sacrificing everything, even life itself.”
Hill took a moment to think about this. He looked amused, but more engaged than I’d yet seen him. This really must be something new for him.
“So,” he said at last—yes, definitely amused, “when you protest so adamantly that you—and your invisible friend—love me, you’re merely saying you will my good? You don’t actually have any warm fuzzy feelings for me at all? It makes a little more sense how you do it, in that case.”
“Sorry to explode your new theory, but it so happens that I do have some very warm familial feelings for you, Uncle Reginald. But you are correct that I don’t need to have them, in order to love you. All I have to do is will your good. It’s just hard for human beings to genuinely will good towards someone for very long without becoming emotionally engaged as well.”
Hill remained silent, clearly turning this over in his mind.
“So,” I ventured, at last, “thinking that you do not love your family because you simply don’t feel an emotion is incorrect. If you do not love your family, it is because you choose not to.”
Hill shrugged. “Is that supposed to bother me? Because—especially in light of what you said about the icky, troublesome emotion close following the act of will—it really doesn’t.”
“I’m just pointing out that even a grumpy mean old man like you can
love his family—you simply have to decide to do so.”
Hill snorted. “Well, I certainly choose not to.”
“Shame. You must be so lonely.”
“Lonely?” Hill threw a pointed look around the room and at me. “Right now, a chance of being lonely would be bliss!”
I smiled, not believing him. He’d be bored stiff in a room on his own, and we both knew it.
O Lord, protect me, my chest hurt. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to breathe shallowly. More shallowly. Exhaustion pressed on me. O Lord, stay close. But he was. Nothing like so strongly as when back on that gurney, but he cradled me, and it was impossible for anything to seem too bad, not even the pain or the horrible quick death that awaited me.
“Good grief, are you going to sleep again?”
I caught Hill’s grumble but couldn’t respond. Blackness sucked me down…
MARGO
“Bane?” My voice wobbled unstoppably. I clutched the phone as tightly as I wanted to clutch him. Tears swam in my eyes, blurring the little hospital guest room where I was staying.
“Margo? Are you alright? What’s wrong?”
“He’s dying, Bane!”
“What… Who?”
“Kyle.”
“Kyle…no! But they’d got him stabilised…he can’t be!”
“Hill gave him something else, some poison, to make sure he’d die even if rescued, and we never found out until this morning and it’s too late…” I bit off my words and swallowed hard, fighting for control. “No. No.” My voice sounded desperate, even to me. “It’s not. U’s team are looking for an antidote. They’ll find something. They will.”
“Is that what U says?” Bane sounded subdued.
“He…he says…” I couldn’t lie. “He says they’ll keep on trying, so long as…so long as…” so long as Kyle’s still alive.
“How’s poor Kyle?”
“How’s…” I choked off a sob. “How’s poor Kyle? He didn’t turn a hair when they told him, you’d think he hadn’t understood but he had! He’s fine. I’m the one who’s…who’s upset.”
The Siege of Reginald Hill Page 11