I started down the hall and he called softly, “Other left.”
So I turned back and hurried the opposite way. Behind some of the locked doors came sounds: moans, screeches, strange whoops; and behind other doors just silence. Maybe those rooms were empty, but I doubted it, and somehow the silence was more disturbing than the muffled screams.
I took the elevator to the second floor. The hallway here was a lot more crowded than my floor, which had all the ambience of a haunted house. Nurses and orderlies were everywhere, and doctors with stethoscopes around their necks and white lab coats billowing around them as they hurried to the next life-threatening emergency. Nobody paid any attention to me. In a hospital, just like anywhere else, I guess, you see what you expect to see. I was just another orderly hurrying along like all the other, real orderlies.
I stepped into Samuel’s room and eased the door shut behind me. There wasn’t much light and I stood with my back against the door for a few seconds, waiting for my eyes to adjust. I heard the hiss of an oxygen feed and the soft, steady beep-beep of a heart monitor. To my right was a row of cabinets. To the left were the bed and the screens showing Samuel’s heart rate, temperature, and blood pressure.
He looked very pale except for his eyelids, which were black as charcoal. If it weren’t for the squiggly lines on the monitor and the beeps, I might have thought I was too late.
“Samuel?” I whispered. “Samuel, it’s me, Alfred.”
He was muttering something under his breath, the word a barely audible hiss. I leaned closer and thought I heard him say “Sofia.” Sofia? Who was Sofia?
“It’s okay,” I said, patting his shoulder through the covers. “I’m getting you out of here.”
“Sofia!”
“No,” I said. “Alfred.” Maybe Sofia was the name of his nurse.
I pulled open the drawers to the cabinet on the opposite wall until I found one containing an open box of scalpels, each one individually wrapped in paper. I tore off the paper, exposing the blade.
A gift then—not a treasure.
I went back to his side.
“I met your replacement,” I told him. I laid the scalpel on the pillow beside his head and pulled back the covers. Practically his entire upper body was encased in white gauze.
“He’s a little creepy, like you, only a different kind of creepy. More supersuave creepy than undertakerlike creepy.”
I slowly peeled back the bandages. I didn’t look at the wound. I looked at his homely, hound-dog face, the sunken cheeks, the prominent jaw, the deep lines across his forehead.
“He says OIPEP wasn’t responsible. I don’t know. It sure seems OIPEPish to me, but I wasn’t an operative like you, so I don’t know everything they’re capable of.”
I picked up the scalpel and held it for a long time, the diamond-edged blade hovering an inch above my left palm, already laced with scars. I had saved him once from the grip of demons in Chicago. And before that I had cut myself open to heal Agent Ashley in the Smokies. But having done it before didn’t make it any easier now: it takes a special act of willpower to slice yourself open.
“The main thing is,” I whispered, as much to me as to him. “The main thing is I’m in a real jam now and it’s either the rest of my life in a funny farm or in a prison, and I don’t like those choices. I’ve got to find a third way and you’ve got to help me find it.”
I ran the blade along my palm and blood welled around the shiny metal.
“In the name of the Archangel Michael ... the Prince of Light ...”
I lowered my bleeding hand toward his stomach.
“... in the name of Michael, who fell with me through fire ...”
His hand shot upward and grabbed my wrist before I could touch him.
He spoke without opening his eyes.
“No . . .”
Then his eyes came open. The muscles of his neck bulged as he forced out the words.
“Not your will. Not ... your ... will!”
I tried to force my hand to his belly, but he was very strong. It was like some bizarre version of arm wrestling.
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “I can heal you.”
“No,” he gasped. “It is not ... ”
He took a deep breath and I could hear something rattling in his chest.
“Well, it wasn’t for that phony deliveryman to decide either,” I snapped back. “Now stop being stupid and let me get this over with ...”
His head came off the pillow and he spat out with such intensity I jerked backward, “Not your choice! Not my choice!”
I tried to pry his long fingers away from my wrist, but weak as he was he was still too strong for me. His head fell back onto the pillow and he closed his eyes, pulling hard for air.
“I will not let you, Alfred,” he whispered.
“Maybe it isn’t my decision, you ever think of that?” I asked. “Maybe all this happened so I could be here to save you. I didn’t ask for this, you know that.”
I yanked my hand away and held my clinched fist against my chest. The blood seeped between my fingers, staining the white shirt red.
“What’s it for, anyway, if I can’t use it?” I demanded, but he didn’t answer. I wondered if he had passed out. “Huh? Why did this happen to me if I’m not supposed to save people with it?”
Someone stepped into the room. Maybe they heard me in the hallway; I was talking pretty loud. It was an orderly, who grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me away from Sam’s bed.
“You’re not supposed to be in here.”
“You don’t get it,” I said, ripping away from his grasp and stumbling back toward Samuel’s bed. “I can save him. I can save everyone.”
The orderly grabbed me again and pulled me toward the open door and into the hallway. Droplets of my blood fell to the floor, like I was marking a trail back to Sam. I kept shouting at the orderly to let me go, that I could save him; I could save them all. I had saved them before, saved the whole world—twice—and I could empty out this hospital, every hospital and hospice and cancer ward, and no one would ever need to be sick or hurt again.
“What else is it for?” I hollered as he gave up trying to reason with me and forced me facefirst toward the floor. “What is it for?”
A hand pushed my head straight down, and I turned my broken nose to one side and pressed my right cheek against the cold white tile. My throbbing left hand was inches from my nose and I could see my blood, shining in the light.