Abby closed her eyes, too terrified to look. She didn't want to be watching when that beam of light flooded into their hiding place. Katzka's grip tightened around her hand. Her limbs were rigid with tension, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps. She heard another scrape of shoes across the ground, another skittering of gravel.
Then the footsteps moved away.
Abby didn't dare move. She wasn't sure she could move; her legs felt locked in position. Years from now, she thought, they'll find me standing here, my skelewn frozen stiff in terror.
It was Katzka who made the first move. He eased towards the opening and was about to poke his head out for a look when they heard a soft whick. A light flared and went out. Someone had lit a match. Katzka went dead still. The smell of cigarette smoke wafted through the darkness.
Somewhere, faintly, a man was calling.
The cigarette smoker grunted out a reply, and then his footsteps faded away.
Katzka didn't move.
They remained frozen, hands clasped together, neither one daring to whisper a word. Twice they heard their pursuers pass by; both times, the men moved on.
There was a distant rumble, like the growl of thunder somewhere over the horizon.
Then, for a long time, they heard nothing.
It was hours later when they finally emerged from their hiding place. They crept down the row of containers and stopped to scan the waterfront. The night had turned unnervingly silent. The mist had lifted, and overhead, stars twinkled faintly in a sky washed by city lights.
The next pier was dark. They saw no men, no lights, not even the glow of a porthole. There was only the long low silhouette of the concrete pier jutting out, and the sparkle of moonlight on the water.
The freighter was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The alarm on the heart monitor was going crazy, squealing as the line traced a chaotic dance of death across the screen.
'Mr Voss.' A nurse grasped Victor's arm, tried to pull him away from Nina's bed. 'The doctors need room to work.'
'I'm not leaving her.'
'Mr Voss, they can't do their job if you're here!'
Victor shook off the woman's hand with a violence that made her cringe, as though struck. He remained standing at the end of his wife's bed, gripping the footrail so tightly his knuckles looked like exposed bone.
'Back!' came a command. 'Everyone back!'
'MrVoss!' It was DrArcher speaking now, his voice slicing through the bedlam. 'We need to shock your wife's heart!You have to move away from the bed now.'
Victor released the footrail and stepped back.
The shock was delivered. It coursed through Nina's body in a single, barbaric jolt. She was too small, too fragile to be abused this way! Enraged, he took a step forward, ready to snatch the paddles away. Then he stopped.
On the monitor above the bed, the jagged line had transformed to a calmly rhythmic series of blips. He heard someone release a sigh, and felt his own breath escape in a single rush. 'Systolic's sixty. Up to sixty- five…'
'Rhythm seems to be holding.'
'Up to seventy-five systolic.'
'OK, turn down that IV.'
'She's moving her arm. Can we get a wrist restraint over here?' Victor pushed past the nurses to Nina's side. No one tried to stop him. He took her hand and pressed it to his lips. And he tasted, on her skin, the salt of his own tears.
Stay with me. Please, please, stay with me.
'Mr Voss?' The voice seemed to call to him from across a long distance. Turning, he focused on Dr. Archer's face.
'Can we step outside?' said Archer.
Victor shook his head.
'She's all right for the moment,' said Archer. 'All these people are taking good care of her. We'll be just outside the room. I need to speak to you. Now.'
At last Victor nodded. Tenderly he lay Nina's hand down and he followed Archer out of the cubicle.
They stood together in a quiet corner of the ICU. The lights had been dimmed for the evening, and against the bank of green screens, the silhouette of the monitor nurse sat silent and motionless.
'The transplant's been postponed,' said Archer. 'There was a problem with the harvest.'
'What do you mean?'
'It couldn't be done tonight. We'll have to re-schedule for tomorrow.'
Victor looked at his wife's cubicle. Through the uncurtained window, he could see her head moving. She was waking up. She needed him at her side.
He said, 'Nothing can go wrong tomorrow night.'
'It won't.'
'That's what you told me after the first transplant.'
'Organ rejection is something we can't always stop. No matter how hard we try to prevent it, it happens.'
'How do I know it won't happen again? With a second heart?'
'I can't make promises. But at this point, Mr Voss, we don't have an alternative. Cyclosporine's failed. And she had an anaphylactic reaction to OKT-3.There's nothing left except another transplant.'
'It will be done tomorrow?'
Archer nodded. 'We'll make sure it's done tomorrow.'
Nina was not yet fully conscious when Victor returned to her bedside. So many times before, he had watched her as she slept. Over the years he had taken note of the changes in her face. The delicate lines that had formed at the corners of her mouth. The gradual sagging of the jawline. The new whisper of white in her hair. Each and every change he had mourned, because it reminded him that their journey together was but a temporary passage through a cold and lonely eternity.
And yet, because it was her face, each and every change he had loved.
It was hours later when she opened her eyes. At first he did not realize she was awake. He was sitting in a chair by her bed, his shoulders slumped with fatigue, when something made him raise his head and turn to her.
She was looking at him. She opened her hand in a silent request for his touch. He grasped it, kissed it.
'Everything,' she whispered, 'will be all right.' He smiled. 'Yes. Yes, of course it will.'
'I've been lucky, Victor. So very lucky…'
'We both have.'
'But now you have to learn to let me go.'
Victor's smile faded. He shook his head. 'Don't say that.'
'You have so much ahead of you.'
'What about us?' He was grasping her hand in both of his now, like a man trying to hold onto water as it trickles away. 'You and I, Nina, we're not like everyone else! We always used to say that to each other. Don't you remember? How we were different. We were special. And nothing could ever happen to us?'
'But something has, Victor,' she murmured. 'Something has happened to me.'
'And I will take care of it.'
