Hours later, the door to the office opened and a short, fat Russian waddled in. He was dressed in an ill-fitting suit and looked like an unsuccessful plumber. “I am Dr. Durov,” he said. “I am in charge of your husband’s case.”
“I want to know how he is.”
“Sit down, Mrs. Temple, please.”
Jill had not even been aware that she had stood up. “Tell me!”
“Your husband has suffered a stroke—technically called a cerebral venous thrombosis.”
“How bad is it?”
“It is the most—what do you say?—hard-hitting, dangerous. If your husband lives—and it is too soon to tell—he will never walk or speak again. His mind is clear but he is completely paralyzed.”
Before Jill left Moscow, David telephoned her.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” he said. “I’ll be standing by. Anytime you need me, I’ll be there. Remember that.”
It was the only thing that helped Jill keep her sanity in the nightmare that was about to begin.
The journey home was a hellish déjà vu. The hospital litter in the plane, the ambulance from the airport to the house, the sickroom.
Except that this time it was not the same. Jill had known it the moment they had allowed her to see Toby. His heart was beating, his vital organs functioning; in every respect he was a living organism. And yet he was not. He was a breathing, pulsating corpse, a dead man in an oxygen tent, with tubes and needles running into his body like antennae, feeding him the vital fluids that were necessary to keep him alive. His face was twisted in a horrifying rictus that made him look as though he were grinning, his lips pulled up so that his gums were exposed. I am afraid I can offer you no hope, the Russian doctor had said.
That had been weeks ago. Now they were back home in Bel-Air. Jill had immediately called in Dr. Kaplan, and he had sent for specialists who had summoned more specialists, and the answer always came out the same: a massive stroke that had heavily damaged or destroyed the nerve centers, with very little chance of reversing the damage that had already been done.
There were nurses around the clock and a physiotherapist to work with Toby, but they were empty gestures.
The object of all this attention was grotesque. Toby’s skin had turned yellow, and his hair was falling out in large tufts. His paralyzed limbs were shriveled and stringy. On his face was the hideous grin that he could not control. He was monstrous to look at, a death’s head.
But his eyes were alive. And how alive! They blazed with the power and frustration of the mind trapped in that useless shell. Whenever Jill walked into his room, Toby’s eyes would follow her hungrily, frantically, pleading. For what? For her to make him walk again? Talk again? To turn him into a man again?
She would stare down at him, silent, thinking: A part of me is lying in that bed, suffering, trapped. They were bound together. She would have given anything to have saved Toby, to have saved herself. But she knew that there was no way. Not this time.
The phones rang constantly, and it was a replay of all those other phone calls, all those other offers of sympathy.
But there was one phone call that was different. David Kenyon telephoned. “I just want you to know that whatever I can do—anything at all—I’m waiting.”
Jill thought of how he looked, tall and handsome and strong, and she thought of the misshapen caricature of a man in the next room. “Thank you, David. I appreciate it. There’s nothing. Not at the moment.”
“We’ve got some fine doctors in Houston,” he said. “Some of the best in the world. I could fly them down to him.”
Jill could feel her throat tightening. Oh, how she wanted to ask David to come to her, to take her away from this place! But she could not. She was bound to Toby, and she knew that she could never leave him.
Not while he was alive.
Dr. Kaplan had completed his examination of Toby. Jill was waiting for him in the library. She turned to face him as he walked through the door. He said, with a clumsy attempt at humor, “Well, Jill, I have good news and I have bad news.”
“Tell me the bad news first.”
“I’m afraid Toby’s nervous system is damaged too heavily to be rehabilitated. There’s no question about it. Not this time. He’ll never walk or talk again.”
She stared at him a long time, and then said, “What’s the good news?”
Dr. Kaplan smiled. “Toby’s heart is amazingly strong. With proper care, he can live for another twenty years.”
Jill looked at him, unbelievingly. Twenty years. That was the good news! She thought of herself saddled with the horrible gargoyle upstairs, trapped in a nightmare from which there was no escape. She could never divorce Toby. Not as long as he lived. Because no one would understand. She was the heroine who had saved his life. Everyone would feel betrayed, cheated, if she deserted him now. Even David Kenyon.
David telephoned every day now, and he kept talking about her wonderful loyalty and her selflessness, and they were both aware of the deep emotional current flowing between them.
The unspoken phrase was, when Toby dies.
33
Three nurses attended Toby around the clock in shifts. They were crisp and capable and as impersonal as machines. Jill was grateful for their presence, for she could not bear to go near Toby. The sight of that hideous, grinning mask repelled her. She found excuses to stay away from his room. When she did force herself to go to him, Jill could sense a change in him immediately. Even the nurses could feel it. Toby lay motionless and impotent, frozen in his spastic cage. Yet the moment Jill entered the room, a vitality began to blaze from those bright blue eyes. Jill could read Toby’s thoughts as clearly as if he were speaking aloud. Don’t let me die. Help me. Help me!