Reprisal

NINETEEN

How long could a week be?

Bill Ryan pondered the question as he swung into one of Down-state's parking lots. As the guard passed him through, a couple of rag-wrapped derelicts hurried toward his car, shouting and waving. They didn't appear to be the typical window-washing winos; they almost seemed to have been waiting for him. Bill drove on. No time today to figure out what they wanted.

He left the station wagon in one of the handicapped spots and entered the hospital through one of the employee entrances.

"Evening, Father," said the smiling uniformed black woman inside the door. "Happy New Year."

Bill could not bring himself to say those words. No way was the year that started tomorrow going to be a happy one.

"Same to you, Gloria."

Only a week here and already he was something of a fixture. The security people knew him, he was on a first-name basis with most of the nurses on all three shifts on Danny's floor, and the walks he took to stretch his legs between vigils at Danny's bedside had familiarized him with most of the building in which Pediatrics was located. All in one week. One endless week. Thank God Father Cullen had been available to fill in for him at St. F.'s.

But if the seven days between Christmas and New Year's had been an eternity for Bill Ryan, he knew it must have been longer by an unholy factor for poor Danny.

Bury me… in holy ground… It won't stop… till you bury me…

Danny's eyes had closed after those words and he hadn't spoken since. But those words, those words had tormented Bill for days, echoing through his mind every waking minute. He had asked for guidance, but the advice he'd received was unthinkable.

Or so it had seemed at first.

Things had changed since then. Bill was convinced now that modern medicine offered no hope. The doctors were helpless against whatever force had Danny in its grip. And during the span of Danny's hospital stay that helplessness had wrought a slow but unmistakable change in those doctors. Bill had seen their attitude mutate from deep concern for a savagely brutalized child to bafflement, and from bafflement to cold clinical fascination with a scientific oddity. Somewhere along the line Danny had stopped being a patient and become an experimental subject.

Bill thought he could understand them. The doctors were in the business of curing illness, treating disease, healing wounds, providing answers. But they could not heal Danny, could not help him in the slightest, could provide no answers to Bill's questions. Danny's condition confounded their skills and training, spat on their professional pride. And so the doctors pulled back and switched gears. If they could not help Danny, they would learn from him.

Bill could see it in their flat eyes when he spoke to them: Danny the boy had become Danny the thing. They wanted to experiment on Danny. Sure, they called their plans "testing" and "exploratory surgery," but their real aim was to get inside him and find out what was going on in there.

So far, Bill had been able to stand in their way. But all that would change the day after tomorrow. The head nurse on days had told him that by midmorning on January 2 the hospital would have a court order making Danny a ward of the state and giving it legal guardianship over Danny. The hospital then would have carte blanche; the doctors could experiment on him to their hearts' delight. He'd be the subject of clinical conferences; they'd bring in all the residents and show them The Boy Who Should Be Dead. And when Danny finally died—When would that be? Five years? Ten? Fifty?—what would they do? Bill envisioned Danny pickled in ajar where generations of fledgling doctors could view his still-unhealed wounds. Or maybe his remains would be put on display like the Elephant Man's.

Uh-uh. Not if Bill had anything to say about it.

Word of the court order had spurred him to a decision. The unthinkable became the inevitable.

The nurses at the charge desk on Peds waved hello as Bill passed. He returned the greeting and stopped.

"Where is everybody?"

"Light shift tonight," said Phyllis, the head nurse on three-to-eleven. "Wait'll you see eleven-to-seven—that'll be a real skeleton. Everyone wants to party."

Bill was glad to hear that. He'd expected it, but it was good to have it confirmed.

"I can understand that. It's been tough around here."

Her face lost some of its holiday cheer. "How about you? We're all getting together at Murphy's after we get off. If you want to come over—"

"Thanks, no. I'll stay here."

He would have stopped for a longer chat but didn't dare. The phone calls were coming more frequently now. More than a few minutes within ten feet of a phone seemed to set off that unearthly ring… and the terrified voice… Danny's voice.

He continued down the hall and found Nick sitting outside Danny's door reading one of his scientific journals. He looked up at Bill's approach.

"Anything?" Bill said.

He knew the answer but he asked anyway.

"Nothing," Nick said.

"Thanks for spelling me, Nick."

He squinted up at Bill. "You were supposed to go home and sleep. Did you?"

"Tried." He hoped he could get away with the lie if he limited it to a monosyllable.

"You look more exhausted than before you left."

"I'm not sleeping well." That was no lie.

"Maybe you should get a sleeping pill or something, Bill. You're going to come unglued if you keep this up much longer."

I'm unraveling even as we speak.

"I'll be all right."

"I'm not so sure about that."

"I am. Now you get going. I'll take it from here."

Nick stood up and looked closely at Bill.

"Something's going on that you're not telling me."

Bill forced a laugh. "You're getting paranoid. Go to the physics department party tonight and have a good time." He stuck out his hand. "Happy New Year, Nick."

Nick shook his hand but didn't let go.

"This has been one hell of a year for you, Bill," he said softly. "First your parents, then this thing with Danny. But you've gotta figure things can't get worse. Next year has to be better. Keep that in mind tonight."

Bill's tightening throat choked off anything he might have said. He threw his arms around Nick and held on to him, fighting down the sobs that pressed up through his chest. He wanted to let it all out, wanted to cry out his misery and fear and crushing loneliness on the younger man's shoulder. But he couldn't do that. That luxury was not for him. He was the priest. People were supposed to cry on his shoulder.

Get a grip!

He backed off and looked at Nick for what might be the last time. They'd been through a lot together. He'd practically raised Nick. He saw that the younger man's eyes were moist. Did he know?

"Happy New Year, kid. I'm proud of you."

"And I'm proud of you, Father Bill. Next year will be better. Believe it."

Bill only nodded. He didn't dare try to voice belief in that lie.

He watched Nick disappear down the hall, then he turned toward Danny's door. He hesitated as he always did, as anyone would before stepping across the threshold of hell, and sent up a final prayer.

Don't make me do this, Lord. Don't ask this of me. Take this matter into Your own hands. Heal him or take him. Spare us both. Please.

But when he pushed through the door he heard the hoarse, sibilant, whispered moans, found Danny still writhing on the bed.

Closing the door behind him, Bill allowed one sob to escape. Then he leaned against the wall and squeezed his eyes shut. He felt more alone than he had ever thought possible—alone in the room, alone in the city, alone in the cosmos. And he saw no choice but to go through with what he'd been planning all day.

He went over to the bedside and looked down at Danny's thin, tortured, ghastly white face. For an instant the boy's pain-mad eyes cleared, and Bill saw in them a fleeting, desperate plea for help. He grabbed the thin little hand.

"Okay, Danny. I promised to help you, and I will." No one else seemed to be able or willing to—not the doctors, not God himself. So it was up to Bill. "It's just you and me, kid. I'll help you."