6

Whitman felt Charlie’s heart beating wildly in her breast. Her breath was hot on the side of his neck. His arms came around her and he kissed her wet cheek.

“Don’t,” she said, almost choking on her emotions. “It’s too soon, too soon.”

He just held her then, feeling the involuntary trembling slowly subside, feeling, too, the gathering of her formidable inner strength as she fought to pull herself together.

Her arms fell away from him. “Step away, Whit,” she whispered. “Step away from me.” There was no edge to her voice now.

He retreated over the threshold, out into the hall, and, for a split instant, was uncomfortably reminded of Bill AT&T’s short journey from Charlie’s apartment into the hallway of, he believed, oblivion. Had Bill been simply a time-stamp, a coping mechanism, the latest in a line of males Charlie had been seeing over the last three years? He’d never know, and he’d never ask. The answer might easily be too painful for both of them.

Now that there was a respectful distance between them, now that she had recovered from her small equilibrium break, she said, “If you were considering saying you’re sorry, don’t. There is no excuse for what you did. It was unconscionable.”

“What do you want me to say?”

Something behind her eyes flared, something dark, dangerous, feral. “You should never have come back.”

He spread his hands wide in a gesture of peace, or at least compromise. “But here I am. There’s been a death in the family, and now I need you, Charlie.”

“I don’t give a crap what you need. I only—”

Her voice faded out as her eyes rolled up in their sockets. She began to collapse, and Whitman was there to keep her from cracking the back of her skull on the bathroom’s tile floor.

Her hands were as white and bloodless as a corpse’s. No, he thought, no, no, no. Laying her down gently, he put two fingers against her carotid artery. No pulse; none at all.

Time was of the essence, he knew. Quickly now, he stepped over her, opened the cabinet beneath the sink, hauled out the old-fashioned physician’s bag. From inside, he took out a disposable syringe, two small vials filled with clear fluid, and a larger bottle of alcohol. He swabbed the rubber tops of the vials. Ripping open the syringe packaging, he plunged the needle into the vial of prednisone, filled the syringe halfway. He did the same with the vial of Imuran, until the syringe was full. Flicking his finger against its side, he got rid of any remaining air, then he plunged the needle into Charlie’s arm, injecting her with the serum cocktail. Throwing the empty syringe aside, he gathered her in his arms, rocking her gently, murmuring to her.

“Come on, Charlie, come on, snap out of it, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie,” until it became a kind of chant or invocation, if not a prayer. He remembered taking her to the hospital for the coronary arteriogram and magnetic resonance angiography that, days later, confirmed that she had Takayasu’s disease, an autoimmune inflammation of the arteries that caused terrible headaches, chest pain, high blood pressure, no pulse, and, in extreme cases, burst blood vessels, stroke, retinal damage, and paralysis, all from the impaired blood supply to various organs. Takayasu’s could be controlled with the medications he had injected into her, but since its cause was unknown, it could not be cured.