Under the Knife(3)

He could not, he would not, let that happen. He squeezed his eyelids and fists together harder.

Morgan.

He stirred.

It was Jenny, her voice as distinct and clear as if she were standing right next to him.

Jenny told him it was okay to cry.

He knew that it was the kind of thing that in life she would have encouraged him to do. Out of the mouths of lesser women, such advice would have sounded trite—the pedestrian psychobabble of daytime talk-show hosts and banal self-help books. But not from Jenny. Never from her.

It’s okay, she whispered.

He thought it over. Should he cry? Do what she’d empowered him to do when she was still alive? Acknowledge all of his emotions: the good and the bad? As she would surely want him to do now if she were standing here at his side?

But Jenny wasn’t here. Not really. And as much as he loved her—had loved her, he corrected himself—he was finished with these foolish sentiments. For good. He would no longer wallow in self-pity, as if he were some pig rooting through the foul muck of its pen.

No.

He had to be done with them. Because emotions were weak. Because acknowledging them meant he would never escape the searing pain of her loss. He needed to purge himself of this ridiculous mawkishness.

His fingernails had grown long and firm during the distraction and grief of the past several weeks, through her illness and its bleak finale, and they bit into the soft skin of his palms. It hurt.

It hurt a lot.

Good.

He made slight scraping motions with his fingers to force the nails deeper, drawing blood as he felt them break the surface of the skin, and concentrated on the physical pain to distract himself from the psychological.

Morgan.

She sounded more distant now.

In a way, it should be straightforward. Like closing a business deal, or solving an engineering problem. He just needed to approach things analytically: think it through with the precision, the elegance, of a mathematical equation. He would refocus his energies, redirect these irritating emotions into more meaningful and productive pursuits. But what kinds?

Scrape, scrape, scrape. His fingernails sunk into the compliant flesh. His clenched hands shook. He could feel his palms becoming slick with blood. He pictured it oozing through the gaps between his fingers and dripping onto the ground beneath him. Red dew drops on green grass.

The revelation came to him in a moment of sudden, perfect clarity.

Of course.

The answer was simple.

The grief receded, limping away like a wounded animal.

He relaxed his fists and opened his eyes. The urge to cry was gone. He examined with indifference the four crimson streaks running in series across each of his palms: the eight fingernail-inflicted stigmata trickling tiny red rivulets. He drew a handkerchief out of his pants pocket, wiped his hands clean of the blood, and dropped the soiled handkerchief on the ground, not knowing, or caring, who would pick it up.

He listened for Jenny.

Nothing.

Because, really, what else mattered now?

There was, actually, one thing.

A singular task that required his attention.

A task to which he would bend every fiber of his psyche until completed.

He removed a small notebook from his suit-coat pocket. It was old, with a worn, black-leather cover. Most of its pages were covered in writing. Some had been carefully scotch-taped to preserve their integrity. He flipped toward the back, to the first blank page, and drew a mechanical pencil from the same pocket. He clicked the pencil three times to extend the thin cylinder of lead beyond the tip of its sheath.

He began to write.

He bore down hard. Twice, the pencil lead snapped. Twice, he replaced the leading edge with three sharp reports—click, click, click—of the mechanical pencil. He wrote slowly and with exacting penmanship. When he was finished, he inspected the name he had written.

Dr. Rita Wu.

He stared at it for a moment, then drew an empty box next to her name, as if she were an entry on a to-do list. He closed the notebook and returned both it and the mechanical pencil to his coat pocket.

I’m going to kill her.

And he knew, with absolute certainty, that he would.

But first he would make her suffer.

The way Jenny suffered.

And he would rob her of something precious.

The way I’ve been robbed of something precious.

And balance would return to the universe.

Finney turned and walked back to the car, beside which the thick man waited.

He did not look back.





One Year Later





RITA


There was darkness.

And then there was her name.

“Dr. Wu?”

A voice probed the dark, cleaving it like a searchlight. The darkness was familiar and, in its familiarity, comforting; the voice, intrusive and discordant, was not. Rita drew away from it and embraced the dark, as if she were a little girl pressing herself against her mother’s leg.

But the voice would have none of it.

“Dr. Wu?” It was a woman.

Darkness still, but sensations were resolving themselves, bit by bit, from nothing.

“Do you want me to go get some help?” A second voice, also female. Breathier. Huskier.

“No. She’s breathing. And she’s warm. She’s just asleep. Grab some blankets, though, will you?”