Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(157)
Doctors, she thought. When they didn't think they were the Pope, they thought they were God.
“Agatha, the paralysis you're experiencing will improve over time with physical therapy. The aphasia …well, reacquisition of speech is more difficult to predict. But with care, with nursing, and most of all with a will to recover, you can live for any number of years.” The doctor turned then to Theo. “She has to want to live, however. And she must have a reason to live.”
She had that, Agatha thought. Damn it to hell and back again, she had that. She would recreate this town to her image of what a sea resort ought to be. She would do it from her bed, she would do it from her coffin, she would do it from her grave. The name Agatha Shaw would mean something beyond an abortive marriage brought to a meaningless early end, a failed motherhood with children either scattered to the globe or tucked into premature graves, and a life defined through the people she'd lost. So she had the will to live and endure. She had it in spades.
The doctor was continuing. “She's enormously blessed in two respects, and we can hang our hopes of recovery on them. Overall, she's in excellent physical condition: heart, lungs, bone mass, muscles. She has the body of a woman in her fifties, and believe me, that's going to serve her well.”
“She was always active,” Theo said. “Tennis, boating, riding. Until the first stroke, she did it all.”
“Hmm. Yes. And much to her benefit. But there's more to life than keeping the body fit. There's keeping the heart and soul fit as well. She does that through you. She isn't alone in the world. She has a family. And family give people a reason to go on.” The doctor chuckled as he asked his last questions, so apparently sure was he of the reply. “Now, you aren't thinking of going off somewhere, Theo? Not planning an expedition to Africa? No trips to Mars?”
There was a silence. In it, Agatha heard the bleeping of the monitors to which she was hooked up. They burbled and hissed just out of sight, beyond her head.
She wanted to tell Theo to stand within her view. She wished that she could tell him how she loved him. Love was balderdash and rubbish, she knew. It was nonsense and illusion that did nothing but wound one and wear one down. It was, in fact, a word she'd never used openly in her life. But she would have said it now.
She felt a longing for him, to touch him and hold him. She felt it down her arms and in her fingertips. She'd always thought touch was meant for discipline. How had she failed to see it was meant for forging bonds?
The doctor chuckled again, but this time it sounded forced. “Good God, don't look like that, Theo. You're no expert in the field and you won't have to rehabilitate your grandmother on your own. It's your presence in her life that's important. It's continuity. You can give her that.”
Theo came close enough for her to see now. He gazed into her eyes and his own looked clouded. They looked, in fact, just the way they'd looked when she'd arrived at that urine-scented children's home where he and Stephen had been taken in the immediate aftermath of their parents’ deaths. She'd said to them, “Come along with you, then,” and when she didn't extend her hand to either of them, Stephen walked out ahead of her. But Theo reached up and grasped the waistband of her skirt.
“I'll be there for her,” Theo said. “I'm not going anywhere.”
S LIAISON OFFICER, BARBARA CAME UP WITH A compromise that all present declared themselves able to live with. Emily had stopped their procession outside the interrogation room, where she'd informed the two men that their access to Fahd Kumhar would be limited to visual access only. They could check him for his physical condition, but they could ask nothing. These ground rules caused an immediate argument between the DCI and the Pakistanis, with Muhannad manhandling the reins of the discussion away from his cousin. After listening to his threats of “imminent community dissent,” Barbara suggested that Taymullah Azhar—an outsider clearly not suspected of anything—act as an interpreter. Fahd Kumhar would hear his rights given to him in English, Azhar would translate anything that the man did not understand, and Emily would tape-record their entire interaction for verification from Professor Siddiqi in London. This appeared to cover all possible permutations of what could happen in the room. Everyone agreed it was a viable alternative to squabbling indefinitely in the corridor. So the compromise was accepted, as are most compromises: Everyone agreed to it; no one liked it.
Emily swung her shoulder against the old oak door and admitted them into a small room. Fahd Kumhar sat in a corner, as far as possible from the police detective—oddly clad in walking shorts and a Hawaiian shirt—who was attending him. He was cowering in his chair like a rabbit cornered by hounds, and when he saw the identity of the newcomers, his gaze skittered from Emily to Barbara and then beyond them to Azhar and Muhannad. It seemed that his body reacted without any intention on his part of doing so. His feet pushed against the wooden floor and forced the chair even farther into the corner. Fright or flight, Barbara thought.
She could smell his incipient panic. The acrid stench of male sweat made the air very nearly unbreathable. She could only wonder how the Asians would interpret the man's mental state.
She didn't have to wonder for long. Azhar crossed the room and squatted in front of his chair. As Emily switched on the tape recorder, he said, “I'm going to introduce myself to him. My cousin as well.” He then spoke in Urdu. Kumhar's flash of a glance from Azhar to Muhannad and back to Azhar indicated that introductions had indeed been made.