A Book of American Martyrs(69)

Would not dissolve into weeping, hysterics. Would not collapse into a paroxysm of self-pity.

What the widow must avoid: self-pity.

They left the slow-moving elevator and were making their way along a corridor of the ground floor of the Broome County Hospital. A strong odor of disinfectant made her nostrils pinch.

Again, a door was being opened for her. A heavy door.

“Please step through here, Mrs. Voorhees.”

Mrs. Voorhees. So carefully enunciated, you would think this was a rare medical condition or illness.

Now she felt a flurry of something like panic. Very much, her instinct warned her not to enter this room.

Yet amid a roaring on all sides she stepped—bravely—into a large refrigerated room humming with ventilators.

Her eyes glanced upward involuntarily. The ceiling was high overhead, covered in slate-colored squares. Frigid air flowed downward from vents in these squares like grimacing teeth.

“Mrs. Voorhees . . .”

The medical examiner was explaining something to her. He seemed less kindly than the other men but perhaps that was her imagination. He was a short square-built gnome-man with a bald head, tufted white eyebrows who dwelt here, in the netherworld below the hospital. He was a physician, of course—a pathologist.

What had Gus said about pathologists?—no malpractice insurance, their patients never complain.

Her brain was exhausted from strain and for a confused moment she worried that she was supposed to know the gnome-man, he’d been a medical associate of Gus’s?

In anyplace where he lived, or spent a duration of time, Gus became acquainted with many individuals and of these, a number were invariably persons of distinction.

Fellow doctors, public health officials. Local politicians—mayor, congressman, senator. Lawyers. By now Gus would know them on a first-name basis.

“It’s a formality but it’s state law. You only have to look briefly, Mrs. Voorhees.”

The roaring of the ventilators made hearing difficult. Or perhaps it was a roaring in her ears.

Gus had told her, many times—It’s just your heartbeat. Breathe calmly, relax. It will subside.

She was being led—inexorably, inescapably—to a table on aluminum rollers, beneath a pitilessly bright light. On the table was what appeared to be a human body entirely covered by a white shroud.

By the dimensions of the body and the size of the (vertical, bare) feet beneath the shroud, you would surmise that this was a man’s body.

Cautiously, the shroud was drawn away from the face and upper body.

“Oh.”

She stepped back. A gust of cold wind pushed her.

But this terribly mutilated individual was not Gus—was he? Almost, Jenna felt a wave of relief.

For it was not Gus after all. Even the hair that looked shredded, clotted with something dark like paint, was not her husband’s streaked-gray hair. There’d been some misunderstanding . . .

She was a visitor here, a guest. She did not want to make too much of such a misunderstanding. For (it was unavoidable to think) her husband’s remains might indeed be in the room, elsewhere. These well-intentioned gentlemen had led her to the wrong table and they had drawn away from the lifeless body the wrong shroud.

She was feeling light-headed. What relief!

Ridiculous errors happened all the time. No one had predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall, for instance. All the brainpower of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, highly trained individuals whose entire careers had focused upon the two Germanys, and yet—no one had seemed to anticipate what would be described in retrospect as inevitable.

No, this body was not Gus Voorhees. Certainly, the (ruined, devastated) face was not his.

Not recognizably Gus Voorhees.

The remains of Gus Voorhees.

“Mrs. Voorhees?”

Her voice was very low, almost inaudible—“Yes.”

“Excuse me? Did you say—‘yes’?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, this is—Dr. Voorhees? Is that what you are saying?”

More clearly she said now, “Yes. It is Dr. Voorhees.”

“It is your husband, Dr. Voorhees.”

Not a question now but a statement. No further reply was expected of her.

Carefully the shroud was drawn back over the devastated face. The body on the table was very still, not breathing. With wonder she stared at the contours of the white shroud, that did not move at all even in the area of the torso where there might (presumably) have been breathing.

For what seemed like a long time then she stood, staring at the body on the table covered by the shroud. Something was unclear to her—what to do? What to do now?

It was an existential predicament. Gus would have understood.

Since there is no reason for doing anything it is difficult to choose which of (pointless) possibilities you will choose to do next.

Or, you will not choose to do.

Her legs were very tired, leaden. Her hands felt oddly heavy, to lift them would require an effort.

Perversely, her head felt light. The veins and arteries were shrinking to mere pencil lines, oxygen was being shut off in her brain.

“Mrs. Voorhees, we can leave now. This way—”

Gallantly an arm was extended, to support her at the waist if required.

“Yes. Thank you.”

They would treat her as if she were a convalescent. Or rather, an invalid.