“Not quite the edge I’m accustomed to, but I’m sure it will suffice,” he said. He looked up. “As you so rightly pointed out, Mr. Collingwood, we don’t have three days. I want my wife, and you’re going to tell me where she is. If you don’t, I will insert the blade of this knife between various of your vertebrae, severing your spinal cord at that point. The longer you refuse to talk, the higher I will go. I have been a surgeon for more than thirty years and, however hard you’ve tried to ruin my reputation, the fact remains that I am highly skilled in these matters.”
My eyes snapped to Sean’s and I saw the shock there, but the respect, too. It sickened me. I took a step forwards, stumbled and would have fallen if Sean hadn’t grabbed me, propped me back upright against the nearest wall.
I slumped, pressing an arm across my belly like I was shielding it from witnessing any of this. I imagined a minute fetus sucking cells out of my brain, building itself out of my DNA, somehow absorbing the imprint of everything I’d seen and done. I shut my eyes.
“Here,” Sean said. “You look like you could use these.”
I opened my eyes again, to see he was holding my bottle of Vicodin in his outstretched palm. You were not supposed to take it with alcohol, I remembered sharply, or if you were operating heavy machinery, or had liver disease. Or if you were pregnant.
And if Vondie
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m fine.”
My father had circled behind Collingwood, who tried to twist with him but the restraints brought him up short. He was starting to sweat.
My father stopped directly behind him and laid his gloved fingers very carefully on the man’s lower spine, right around his belt line. I saw the quiver of reaction, quickly stilled.
“Injuries to the lumbar or sacral region of the spinal canal usually result in decreased control of the legs, hips and anus,” my father said, matter-of-fact, as though he was delivering a lecture to a group of his medical students. “There is also the likelihood of bowel, bladder and sexual dysfunction.”
Collingwood let out a shaky laugh. “You can’t do this, Doc,” he said, and I wondered if it was us or himself he was trying to convince. “Meyer there, or your little girl, now, they’ve got the look. I’ve seen enough killers in my time to know. But you? You’re a doctor—sworn to
“Quite so,” my father agreed easily. “Just as I imagine that
They were the same words Collingwood himself had used to Terry, back in the lobby. He couldn’t possibly have known that, of course. Just fate running one of those odd parallels.
My father walked his fingers slowly a little farther up Collingwood’s back. The government man was thin enough that the ridges of his vertebrae stood out like the plates of a prehistoric stegosaurus, just as easily defined.
“Damage to the thoracic spine results in paraplegia,” my father went on. “You’re likely to retain control of your hands but not your abdominal muscles, so you will not only be confined to a wheelchair and catheterized, but you will have to be strapped in like a rag doll.”
“Pretty pictures you’re painting, Doc,” Collingwood said. He was sweating badly now, and even he heard the desperate edge, the false bravado, in his tone. But he had guts, I’ll give him that. “I can’t say I approve, but you have, ah, a certain style.”
“How’s this for a ‘pretty picture,’ Mr. Collingwood?” my father snapped, his face tight and white across his bones. “Spending your days tied to a wheelchair, shitting into a bag, pissing into a tube, and never having another hard-on for the rest of your life.”
My mouth dropped open, I know it did. My father was cold and clinical and there were times when I would have sworn he had ice in his veins, but I’d never heard him stoop to crudeness. Never heard him really swear, or lose his temper, or make an off-color remark. That shocked me more than the violence of what he was proposing.
It must have taken Collingwood aback, too. He was silent as my father’s fingers walked higher still, to somewhere up above his shoulder blades. “Cervical injuries are the most debilitating,” my father went on, toneless again now, his outburst forgotten. “They normally result in what is known as full or partial tetraplegia—complete paralysis. C-7—here—is the last point at which you can still expect to live any kind of independent existence. You may have some control over your arms, but your hands and fingers will be compromised.”
“The Afghanis beat the soles of my feet, flayed the skin off my back, broke both my arms, my hands, and my left leg in three places,” Collingwood said, like he was clinging on to the conviction that whatever was about to happen now would not—could not—be worse. “They left me to die in the mountains.”
“Yes,” my father said distantly, “but you didn’t die. And you must have known that, should you survive, there was every chance of recovery.” He moved slower now, counting off each rise. “C-6 means you’ll entirely lose the use of your hands. C-5 and C-4—you might perhaps be able to move your shoulders and biceps, getting weaker, naturally. At C-3 you lose diaphragm function. You’ll need a ventilator to breathe.”
His fingers were almost at the back of Collingwood’s neck now, delicate, light.
“I don’t think you need to know about anything higher—the atlas and axis. You’d be dead. And I have no intention of letting you take the easy way out.” He leaned closer, so he could almost whisper in Collingwood’s ear. “Not like your people gave poor Jeremy Lee the easy way out. But that was after his spine had collapsed over a period of months, causing chronic pain as well as a gradual paralysis. Do you consider it ironic, Mr. Collingwood, that the same fate is going to befall you?”
He stepped back, seemed to shake himself, glanced at Sean’s expressionless face but carefully avoided mine. “The incision itself will be excruciating—albeit briefly,” he said. “You might want to hold his legs.”
“Wait a minute—” Collingwood sounded breathless, but that could just have been from the way he was hanging. He twisted again, struggling now. Sean anchored his legs while I stood as a helpless bystander, unable to stop the sudden runaway plunge of thoughts inside my head.
“You don’t have a minute,” my father said. He steadied the tip of the knife against the skin covering Collingwood’s spine. “You have participated in the deaths of two people of whom I was extremely fond. You have ruined my career, ordered the torture of my daughter, and now you are holding my wife. Say good-bye to your legs, Mr. Collingwood.”
His hand slid forwards and the blade penetrated, sending a vivid viscous spill of scarlet across the pallid skin.
Collingwood shrieked. His body voided, but still the overwhelming stench in that room was sweat and blood and fear. Sean let go and staggered back as if, right up to that point, he’d believed my father was bluffing. A part of me had believed it, too.
Collingwood’s knees buckled, so he was hanging entirely from his arms. I saw his spine flex, saw the ripple of vertebrae as he collapsed, then realized that he was still moving his feet. Still capable of doing so.
My own legs refused to keep me upright and I slid, very slowly, to the base of the wall.
“The next cut,” my father said, unconcerned, mopping away some of the ooze with Collingwood’s own tattered shirt, “will be for real.”
“She’s in the lab!” Collingwood almost screamed it. “In the research lab. Second level. They haven’t touched her. They’re waiting for my orders. They haven’t touched her! Please! You have to believe me.”
My father paused, stepped back. His expression was carefully blank, but I saw the throb of veins pulsing at his temple and could only feel some minor relief that this was having an effect on him after all.
“Why?” It was Sean who spoke, recovered enough for his tone to be as dispassionate as my father’s. “Why should we believe that a man who held out for three days against Afghani tribesmen would give us the truth so easily?”
“I am!” Collingwood yelped. “I am. I swear to God. Jesus. Why would I lie?”
“Because you know what would happen if she’s already dead?” Sean said, arms folded, head tilted slightly.
