Her eyes passed over the empty corridor, but nothing appeared out of place. She shook her head in a vague attempt to clear it. What on God’s green earth was bothering her? Nothing. Nothing at all. Everything was peaceful and quiet. Or maybe it was the very quiet that needled her. Maybe it was the sense of pure desolation that gave her reason to pause. And yet, when something was so quiet, so damn still, it was almost like someone was making it like that, like someone was standing so still that the whole room does the same.
Janice decided not to use the stairs just yet. Instead, she walked toward the lab at the other end of the hallway.
THIS was something George had not planned.
Shit! What the hell was the dumb bitch doing?
Relax, George. What harm can she do?
She can see me. Hell, she definitely will see me.
Then you’ll have to take care of that problem, won’t you?
Damn. He hated deviations from his plans, and the fat nurse was a big goddamn deviation.
Okay, calm down. There’s no need to panic.
But she’s coming this way!
He could clearly hear the nurse walking toward him. She stepped hesitantly but with authority. He wondered how his employer would react to the death of the old nurse. Not too happily, George imagined. Very pissed off, in fact. But George could not worry about that now. He had far bigger worries. He had to get to Michael Silverman before the damn doctor returned.
He pressed his back against the nook in the lab doorway and waited. From the sound of her footsteps, the old lady could not have been more than ten steps away. He reached into his pocket and slid out his stiletto. She was only a yard away now.
His muscles tensed in preparation.
TWO floors below Sara hobbled next to Reece Porter. “Reece?”
“Yes.”
“How did he look to you?”
Reece Porter shrugged. Immediately after hearing Michael’s statement, Reece had left the Knicks’ locker room, taken a taxi to the Seattle airport, waited eight hours for the next available plane to New York, flown across the entire country, spent the day trying to find out where Michael was, located Sara at Dr. Simpson’s office, and then obtained permission from Harvey to visit Michael.
A damn long twenty-four hours.
“Mikey looked okay,” he said at last. “Just tired mostly.”
“From the SR1, I think,” Sara added. “I’m glad you came, Reece. It means a lot to him.”
Reece shrugged. “So how are you feeling?”
“I’m fine.”
“Uh-huh. Sure you are.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Your walk, for one thing. It looks like somebody did a deep freeze on your leg.”
It was true. Her leg had been cramping up all day, the soreness clenching down on the very bone with sharp teeth. Every step was a new adventure in pain. “I’ll be all right. It’s just a little stiff.”
“Then wait here,” Reece said. “I’ll get the car.”
“I can walk.”
He shook his head. “I swear, Sara, you can be as big a pain in the butt as Mikey. Just wait here and stop being so goddamn stubborn. Sit over there.”
With a weak smile she did as he asked.
“I parked in the visitors’ lot on One Hundred Sixty-seventh Street,” Reece continued, heading for the exit. “Give me ten minutes.”
“I’ll be here.”
She glanced about her surroundings. There were two armed security guards at the door plus two plainclothes policemen in cars outside the clinic’s door. Her leg throbbed as though her heart had dropped down into the area above her ankle. She would soak it when she got home. Yes, she would take a long, hot bath, find a good book, smother herself with blankets and pillows and . . .
And what?
Lie there and worry, she guessed. When she had first been told about Michael’s condition, the news did not really reach her. It was as though her mind had built a barrier—more like a sieve actually—which only let in the facts but kept out the emotions and ramifications. Unfortunately, the holes in the sieve were beginning to widen. They were opening up enough to allow reality to seep into her conscious thoughts.
Sara had done a few stories on the AIDS epidemic. She had seen what it could do to a person, how the virus could eat you alive from the inside. Her mind began to swirl with the devastating images, and like the horror AIDS inflicted, the images lunged at her in no particular order.
Wasted bodies now little more than a defenseless battle zone for disease: Kaposi’s sarcoma; pneumocystis carinii; lymphoblastic lymphoma; fierce fevers over 105 degrees; respiratory infections; whole body systems collapsing; mental deterioration; delirium to the point of babbling like an Alzheimer’s patient; every breath an intolerable struggle; lungs filling with fluid until a tube was shoved through the rib cage in order to drain them; getting weaker before your eyes, so weak that even eating becomes impossible; in and out of comas; a handsome young face changing overnight into a haggard skull-mask; healthy physiques disintegrating into little more than brittle bones with skin hanging off; painful and unsightly purple lesions everywhere; sores inside the mouth so thick that swallowing produces only choking sounds; no control over bowel movements; constant, inescapable agony; eyes that can actually see Death standing around the corner, waiting patiently to step forward and claim its conquest . . .
And the fear of the disease, the confusion, the discrimination. Even now, 25 percent of the American people were so ignorant about AIDS that they actually believed it could be transmitted from just donating blood.
No, there was nothing pretty about AIDS, nothing romantic, nothing Gothic, nothing cinematic. There was just pain, horror, and death. With AIDS, your body and mind fought a constant battle against agonizing illness after agonizing illness. You suffered through one devastating bout after another, no time to recover, like a weakened club fighter who is forced to go yet another round with the champ. But against AIDS there was no chance for the one-punch comeback.
Eventually, you lost.
She replayed what Harvey had told Michael and her no more than an hour ago about his visit from Raymond Markey. And yet, when she considered the cruel severity of the AIDS virus, her mind could not comprehend his words. Could someone really be trying to prevent a cure? Could someone really be trying to turn back the clock, delaying a cure for tens or even hundreds of thousands of fellow human beings? The weight of the cruelty boggled the mind.
Could someone be so desperate to keep the AIDS virus alive that they would murder? It made no sense. And all of this just made her want to talk to Michael more, want to, at the very least, look in on him one more time before heading home.