got it right the first time, you get to take your sister to the cafeteria and buy a couple of milk shakes.” Only when Heather had taken her brother out of the room did Farber turn back to Anne. “It was the kind of heart attack we used to call ‘a real doozy’ back in medical school,” he said. “However, your husband has a lot going for him. Not only is he relatively young, but he’s in excellent shape, he’s very strong, and he had a very good team of paramedics working for him.”
Anne suddenly had a feeling that Glen had had a much closer call than she’d been told about. “How bad was it?” she asked.
“About as bad as they come,” Gordy Farber replied. Long ago he’d learned that most people could deal with pretty much anything, as long as they didn’t think things were being hidden from them. “They almost lost him in the ambulance. It was touch and go for a few minutes, but they got him back.”
Anne sucked in her breath in a sharp gasp. “Lost him?” she echoed. “You mean …?” She left the question hanging, then steeled herself to learn as much as she could. She was a reporter, wasn’t she? She’d never left a question hanging in her life. “How close was it?” she asked, and her tone told Gordy Farber that she wanted to hear all of it.
“He stopped breathing, and his heart stopped beating,” he told her. “We got him back but it was a very close call.”
Anne remembered Glen’s inability to remember the word “articulated,” and all the fear she’d felt that day came rushing back to her. “My God,” she breathed. “Is he — is his brain …?”
This time she couldn’t bring herself to finish the question.
“Things look very good right now,” Gordy Farber told her. “He’s stable, and the next day or so will tell the tale. If there are no further incidents, I think his prognosis for a full recovery is excellent.”
“And if there is another … incident?” Anne asked.
Gordy Farber spread his fingers noncommittally. “We’ll cross that bridge if and when we come to it. For now, the important thing is that he’s doing very well, given what happened to him, and in spite of how he looks, he’s already a whole lot better than he was when they brought him in this morning.” He stood up, handing her a pamphlet he’d produced from the pocket of his white coat. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you read this while I go check on my patients. As soon as I finish my rounds, I’ll do my best to answer any questions you may have.”
Anne took the pamphlet, her eyes focusing only on the two major words in its title: Heart Attack. Nodding mutely, she sank back against the harsh material of the small sofa. She sat silently holding the pamphlet for a few minutes, trying to adjust herself to the fact of Glen’s heart attack. Only two days ago — only this morning, really — he’d been so strong, so healthy, so … alive.
And today he’d nearly died.
Once again she thought of him lying in the hospital bed, his face ashen, his body connected to the monitors, looking weak and helpless. What if he didn’t get better? What if he had another — what was it Dr. Farber had called it?
Incident.
But it wasn’t any mere “incident”; it was a myocardial infarction — a heart attack — and another one would undoubtedly kill him.
What would she do if that happened? How would she cope with it? A terrible wave of loneliness and despair washed over her. She was afraid she might cry again, but steeled herself against it. Falling apart was the last thing she needed right now.
She opened the pamphlet, but the words made no sense to her. For right now, she couldn’t deal with it. Right now she had to do something else, something that would take her mind off Glen, if only for a few minutes.
It was only then that she remembered the man who had not survived this terrible day. Richard Kraven.
The man she had watched die in the electric chair only hours earlier. And about whom she should already have written and filed a story. Grasping at work as a way to keep the terrible fear of losing Glen at bay, Anne Jeffers concentrated on constructing a story in her head.
A story of death, but at least not of Glen’s death.
By the time Gordy Farber returned to the waiting room, Anne had not only composed the story in her mind, but called the paper and dictated it into her voice mailbox.
Now, the story filed, she turned her attention back to her husband and listened calmly as the doctor told her what she could expect.
As she listened, her resolve took hold: she would deal with it.
No matter what it took, Glen would not die.
She wouldn’t let him.
CHAPTER 10
The Experimenter lay in near darkness, the walls of his room only faintly illuminated by the pale glow of the streetlamps outside. Though he lay still, he was not asleep, although he knew that soon he would have to sleep.
But not yet. Right now, he wanted to hear the report just one more time.
His fingers stroked the smooth plastic of the remote control, and he could almost imagine that the satiny texture was that of skin.
The skin of one of his subjects.
So long.
It had been so long since he’d dared let himself even think about conducting another experiment, but now it would be safe again.
Safe, at least for a while.
His forefinger pressed gently on one of the control buttons, and the volume on the television rose just enough so he could hear the anchorman’s voice:
“Topping our stories today, Richard Kraven was executed yesterday at noon, Eastern Daylight Time, dying in the electric chair only hours after his final appeals for a new trial were denied. According to Seattle Herald reporter Anne Jeffers, the last person to talk with Kraven before he died, he expressed no remorse for what he’d done, even at the eleventh hour, continuing to proclaim his innocence despite the massive evidence presented in his trial. …”
The Experimenter, lying in the darkness, could barely suppress a gloating chuckle, and fleetingly wished there were someone he could share the joke with. Still, it wouldn’t be long before the whole world understood his joke.
How long had it been since he had carried out the last experiment?
So long ago he had almost forgotten how it felt to see the look in his subjects’ eyes when they began to feel sleepy and he assured them that they mustn’t worry, that all was going to be well.
He could remember more clearly the keening whine of the saw as it cut through their sterna, and his fingers moved reflexively as he recalled the warm pleasure of sinking his hands deep within the thoracic cavity, slipping them between the two warm masses of the lungs, closing them around the strongly beating hearts.…
The Experimenter uttered an all but inaudible groan of remembered pleasure.
Now he could begin again.
Now he would prove to them that they’d executed the wrong man.
For more than two long years — ever since they’d finally made their arrest, finally acted on all the evidence he’d let pile up — he’d been waiting for this day.
This day, and the ones to come when he would begin his experiments anew, expanding his knowledge, exercising his power, proving to the mindless fools who had executed Richard Kraven that they’d made a mistake, that they had been wrong. Not for the first time, the Experimenter wished he could play the fly on the wall and watch their expressions as they examined his newest subjects.
They would recognize his work immediately — of that there was no question whatsoever. But there was also no question whatsoever that they would deny the truth. Instead they would search for inconsistencies, search for
