TWENTY-SIX
In bed, lying clothed atop the covers, Samantha rested her head on Ryan’s chest, cuddled into him, his right arm around her.
Exhaustion nearly immobilized him. He felt weighed down and wrung out.
They had endured a rite of passage in their relationship, the acknowledgment that even as young as they were, Death was a presence at their dance, their life together finite.
Like him, she probably had much she wanted to say but no energy to say it and, at the moment, possessed no words adequate to express her thoughts.
They dozed but did not sleep deeply, changed positions but held fast to each other.
When at last she spoke again, Samantha’s voice was small and lacked her usual spirit. “I’m afraid.”
“Me too. That’s okay. They’ll match me to a donor. I’ll get a heart.”
“I know you will,” she said.
“I will.”
“You will if anyone will. But you’ve got to be careful, Ryan.”
“I’ll do everything the doctors say.”
“You especially. You, being you, have to be careful.”
“I won’t try riding any sharks.”
“You’ve got to let it happen however it will.”
“It’ll happen.”
“I’m afraid.”
“I won’t just fade away,” he said. “That’s not me. You know that’s not me.”
“I’m afraid for you,” she said.
“I’ll handle it, Sam.”
“Don’t handle it. Just let it develop.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m not afraid.”
“Sometimes it’s good to be afraid,” she said. “It keeps you clear and squared away.”
Much later, he said, “Marry me.” She did not reply, but he was sure that she was awake. “I know you’re there.”
“Yeah. I’m here.”
“So marry me.”
“It’ll look like I married you because you’re dying.”
“I’m not going to die.”
“Everyone’ll think I married you for your money.”
“I don’t care what they think. I never have. Why should I now?”
“I love you. I’ll stay with you through this if you just let it happen. Every step of the way through all of it, but you have to do what Dr. Gupta says.”
“He’s my doctor. Of course I’ll do what he says.”
“I know you. I know you so well. I so much want you to be right…to be all right at the end of this.”
“Then marry me.”
“I’ll marry you when it’s over, when everything is right.”
“After the transplant, you’ll marry me?”
“If you relax. Just relax and accept and let this thing happen like it should.”
“Then you’re my reward,” he said.
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
He said, “You’re all I want, Sam.”
“It’s got to be right.”
“We are right. We’re perfect together.”
“We are, we really are, day to day,” she agreed.
“So there you go.”
“So if you’ll just let this happen the way it will, just relax and go with it the way it wants to happen, then I’ll know we’ll also be right not just day to day, but year after year.”
“Okay. I can chill out. Is that what you want?”
“You’ve got to be so careful, Dotcom.”
“Just watch me chill.”
“So very careful. I’ll be there all the way, but you have to listen to me.”
“Yes, dear.”
“I’m serious. You listen to me.”
“I will.”
“You listen to me.”
“I’m listening.”
Clinging tightly to him, Samantha said, “Oh, God, I’m so afraid.”
Dozing, they eased apart. Parting, they woke. Waking, they clung again to each other. That was the rhythm of their night.
At dawn, she woke once more to a separation, but felt for him and found him with an urgency that suggested she expected him to be gone. Stirred from sleep by her search and her touch, he held her close, but closeness was no longer quite enough.
Their lovemaking was different from any Ryan had known, rich with desire for a perfect union, yet without lust, giving without taking, receiving without wanting. Tender, selfless, almost innocent, this was a sweet celebration of life, but more than a celebration, it was a commemoration of all they had been to each other to this point in time, to this fulcrum of their lives, and it was a solemnization of a commitment to be two in one henceforth, to be as one, always one, one forever.
Even after Ryan had received a virtual death sentence from his cardiologist, such a moment of beauty and joy was possible, which not only gave him hope but also stropped a sharper edge on his determination to live.
This consummation at dawn was his high tide, his lifetime-best surf, a perfect set of double overhead swells, and it was not in his nature to imagine that what came thereafter would be not more of the same and soon a new life with a new healthy heart, but instead error, disorder, terror, anguish, and loss.
The storm.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Ryan sailed through the psychological testing and was added to the heart-recipient list of the United Network for Organ Sharing.
Following the diagnosis of cardiomyopathy and his revelation of his condition to Samantha, he was spared the dreams that had plagued him for a week. The city in the sea, the lake of black water, and the haunted palace had been deleted from his nightly itinerary.
No other dreams arose to trouble him. He slept well each night and woke rested or at least rested enough.
In lonely moments, he no longer heard the curious rapping that—at windows, at doors, in bathroom plumbing, and from a plasma TV—had insisted upon his attention.
His sense of being watched, of being the object of a sinister conspiracy, blew away with the dreams and with the phantom knocker. A fresh air came into his life, and cleared from his head the stale miasma of unreason as if he had merely been suffering from a pollen allergy.
He experienced no further episodes of deja vu. Indeed, he suspected that if he returned to Denver and located the small park with the aspens, that place—and the church adjacent to it—would not affect him as it had before.
As for knowing, before he saw it, what the crucifix would look like above the altar at St. Gemma’s…
Over the years, he had been inside a few Catholic churches, attending weddings and funerals. He didn’t remember any of those altars, but he assumed that perhaps a crucifix in one Roman church was much like that in another. Uniformity might even be required. He must have known what he would find in St. Gemma’s only because he had seen the identical crucifix—or one nearly like it—at one of those weddings or funerals.
He attributed the calm and clarity that purged his paranoia to the medications that Dr. Gupta prescribed, including a diuretic to control heart failure and an antiarrhythmic drug to correct abnormal heart rhythms. His blood was better oxygenated now than it had been, and toxins once dangerously retained were being flushed from his system more efficiently.
Irrationally, he had feared that a scheming poisoner, a modern-day Medici, might be among his household employees. Ironically, the only poisoner had been the very heart within his breast, which by its diminished function had clouded his mind and fostered his delusions, or so he concluded.
Through October and November, Ryan’s greatest problem proved to be impatience. As others awaiting transplants received their hearts or perished, he moved up the list, but not fast enough.
He remained acutely aware that Samar Gupta had given him at most one year to live. A sixth of that year had passed.
When he saw TV news stories about traffic accidents involving fatalities, he wondered if the deceased had signed organ-donor cards when getting their driver’s licenses. Sometimes the knowledge that most people did not donate would inspir
e an angry rant. This was not fair to those against whom he railed, because during all the years that he’d been in good health, he never signed such a card, either.
Now enlightened, through his attorney he arranged to donate what organs, if any, might be of use to others after his body succumbed to the ravages of cardiomyopathy or, alternately, if he received a transplant but died anyway.
By December, Dr. Gupta had to adjust Ryan’s drugs and add two more medications to his regimen in order to prevent the return of the frightening and debilitating symptoms.
The cardiologist used arcane medical terminology to avoid words like deterioration. But Ryan had no doubt that his condition was deteriorating.
He did not feel much different from the way he had felt in September, except that he tired more easily now, and he slept longer than he had in those days.
When he looked in a mirror, he noticed only small changes. A slight bloat. Sometimes a persistent unhealthy flush in his cheeks, at other times a gray-blue paleness of the skin under his eyes.
He became impatient not only with his progress up the waiting list but also with Samantha. Sometimes she tested his forbearance.
For one thing, he felt that she had too much confidence in the organization that compiled the list and selected the recipients.
If Ryan had managed his business with the kind of unwarranted assumptions and the tolerance for bureaucratic inertia that he saw in this particular medical community, he would not have become a wealthy man. Since lives were at stake here, he argued that these gatekeepers should be more—not less—efficient than he had been while building a social-networking empire on the Internet.
She would listen to little complaining on the subject before reminding him that he had promised to weather this waiting period with a relaxed attitude. He had pledged not to try to handle what in truth he could not control, but to let it unfold as it would.
“Dotcom, you worry me,” she told him now. “This restlessness, these spells of anger. This isn’t good. It doesn’t help you. You’re wound too tight.”
Week by week, Ryan developed more exotic strategies to survive, investigating all manner of alternative-medicine treatments that might supplement what any cardiologist could do for him, everything from rare substances obtained from the spores of rain-forest ferns to psychic healing.
With sympathy, reason, and humor, Samantha provided a reality check to each treatment scheme that he considered adopting. Although he knew she was right, sometimes her acerbic humor seemed to be cold sarcasm, her reason mere pessimism, and her sweet sympathy insincere.
Ryan suspected that his sour moods and his frequent spells of restlessness and agitation were caused by his medications. A review of the side effects listed for each drug confirmed his suspicion.
“I’m sorry, Sam,” he told her more than once. “It’s these damn drugs. I’m not myself. Next thing, I’ll be growing hair on my palms and howling at the moon.”
He knew that he was exhausting her, that her work on the novel had come almost to a halt. He began to give her more time to herself, though she protested that she would be there for him all day, every day, until he was restored to full health, with a new heart.
On December 12, they had dinner in a restaurant where white tablecloths, Limoges china, crystal, and waiters in white jackets set both a mood and a standard.
This wasn’t one of those Newport Beach high-end meat markets that layered on the style but catered to upscale singles who chose their dinner companions from the opportunities at the bar. Here the clientele was older, quieter, with at least a veneer of class, often with that old-money charm and grace that made even true class seem somewhat tacky by comparison.
Between the appetizers and the entrees, Ryan told Samantha about Dr. Dougal Hobb, a prominent cardiologist and cardiovascular surgeon with offices in Beverly Hills.
“I think I might switch to him,” he said.
Surprised, she asked, “What’s wrong with Dr. Gupta?”
“Nothing. He’s fine. He’s all right. But Dr. Hobb is so highly regarded. He’s really at the top of his profession.”
“Will it affect your position on the waiting list?”
“No. Not at all.”
“What does Forry Stafford say?”
“I haven’t discussed it with him.”
“Why not? He recommended Dr. Gupta.”
In any restaurant, he and Samantha usually preferred a table in a corner, to allow them greater privacy, but on this occasion they sat at the center of the establishment. The elegant room sparkled, a treat for the eyes, and it lay all around them.
“I will call Forry,” Ryan said. “I just haven’t yet.”
“Dotcom, is this just change for the sake of change, just more restlessness?”
“No. I’ve given this a lot of thought.”
Assisted by a busboy, their waiter arrived with the entrees and presented each dish with sufficient flourishes to confirm the excellence of the service without descending to showiness.
As they began to eat, Ryan changed the subject. “You’re so lovely tonight. Everyone is taken with you, the center of attention.”
“Well, we are at the center of the room, you’ll notice. And I suspect most of these people know who you are, which makes me very much the supporting act.”
She let him lead her down conversational byways, but in time she returned to Hobb. “Before you leave Dr. Gupta, talk to Forry.”
“I will. But they don’t get better than Dougal Hobb. I even had a complete background done on him.”
“Background?”
“By an extremely dependable security firm. To see if he’s had any malpractice suits filed against him, personal problems of any kind.”
Her blue-green eyes did not darken, but her mood underwent a tidal change. “You had a private detective scope him out?”
“It’s my life on the line, Sam. I want to be sure I’m in the best possible hands.”
“Forry is your friend. He sent you to the best. He wants the best for you.”
“Dr. Hobb has never had a complaint lodged against him, let alone a legal action.”
“Has Dr. Gupta?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I’m sure he hasn’t.”
“I don’t know. But listen, Dr. Hobb’s private life is without a stain, his finances are in perfect order, his marriage is rock-solid, his—”
Putting down her knife and fork, she said, “You’re scaring me.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Why?”
“Can’t you hear yourself? You’re trying to handle this, take charge, but it’s fundamentally not yours to take charge of.”
He answered her concern with a sheepish look. “Be to do. It’s not just the cute name of a company. It’s a life philosophy. Taking control is a hard habit to break.”
“And trusting people is a difficult habit to establish, Ryan, not least of all for people like you and me, considering where we come from.”
“You’re right. All right. I know.”
“We can shape our fates,” she said, “but we can’t control them. You can’t control death. You need a team here. You need to make these decisions only after consultation.”
“I’m consulting with you right now.”
She neither broke eye contact nor replied.
“Okay,” he said. “You’re right. I won’t do anything until I’ve talked to Forry and Dr. Gupta. And to you.”
She drank some of the Cabernet. She put down the wineglass. She surveyed the glittering room, requiring other diners to look away from her.
Her attention on Ryan once more, she said, “Sweetie, trust the people who care for you. Trust me especially because I understand you so well, so very well, so entirely—and I love you.”
Moved, he said, “I love you, too.”
“If you knew me as completely as I know you,” she said, “you might not love me.”
“Impossible. What a thing to say.”
“N
o, it’s true. Human beings are such knotted, desperate pieces of work—it’s a rare thing to know one completely, to the core, and still love him. Or her. I don’t need dessert. Do you?”
She had so riveted him that her change of subject did not at first compute, and he stared at her as though she had switched from English to some obscure Russian dialect.
Then: “Oh. No. I don’t need dessert.”
“Maybe after the wine, a double espresso.”
“That sounds good.”
She said no more about Dr. Hobb or about the knotted, desperate nature of humanity, but spoke of happier things.
Over the espresso, she favored Ryan with an affectionate smile that gladdened him, and as chandelier light danced in her eyes, she said, “See, Winky, you could have taken me to the farthest corner of the room, and even in that privacy, I wouldn’t have scalped you or even boxed your ears.”
Little more than one day later, on December 14, at home alone, as he awaited the sleep that for hours had eluded him, comforted by the glow of a bedside lamp that he was loath to turn off these days, Ryan suffered a sudden breathing problem.
He inhaled without relief, as if the air he took in were going elsewhere than to his lungs, although his belief that he was drawing full breaths might have