Frank De Felitta - Audrey Rose

After leaving the restaurant, Brice Mack returned to Roosevelt Hospital to check on Hancock’s condition.

The time was twelve twenty-seven when he entered the anteroom of the intensive care unit. A nurse informed him that Dr. Pignatelli, Hancock’s personal physician, was with the patient now. At twelve forty Dr. Pignatelli emerged and, flashing the lawyer a quick smile, briefly conferred with the nurse before turning to the lawyer. He told him that Hancock’s prognosis was good, his vital signs were improved, and barring a setback, he seemed to be making excellent progress. It was still too soon to tell when he would be able to authorize the heavy program of activity Brice Mack had earlier outlined since Hancock wasn’t off the critical list as yet.

Brice Mack felt fatigue press down on him. What Pignatelli was saying was that Hancock wouldn’t be well enough to testify in the morning. Which left Mack with the tricky problem of having to vamp till the old boy was ready. That meant bringing on other witnesses—but who? Not Hoover. Not now. Not ever, if he could help it. Nor the Templetons. Maybe the doctor—Dr. Kaplan—he’d be good for a morning. And Carole Federico. He might be able to string them out for a day or so.…

“Would you care to see him?” Dr. Pignatelli’s voice cut in on the lawyer’s somber musings.

“Is it allowed?”

Pignatelli laughed. “It’ll do him good. He’s just awakened from a long nap, and he’s bored to distraction.”

It wasn’t difficult to pick out James Beardsley Hancock in the large, brightly lit, antiseptic room. Every other patient was enclosed within the inviolate privacy of screens and curtains. James Beardsley Hancock was fully exposed to view, sitting rigidly up, with the mattress raised to its highest position, like an enthroned king, imperiously surveying his domain through eagle-bright eyes.

The old man stared straight at the lawyer coming across the room toward him, and a smile spread across his face, a smile that seemed genuinely glad and fiercely self-assured, a smile that said, “Look! I’m still here. I have not left this earth life, not quite yet.”

Encompassed by gurgling bottles and TV monitors, each reporting a phase of his illness, and hampered as he was by tubes and wires that seemed to sprout from every orifice of his body including his mouth, which held a thermometer, James Beardsley Hancock could not say a word, or offer Brice Mack his hand, or even wave him into a chair. He could only express his pleasure at seeing his guest with eyes that glowed and a head that gently nodded.

“Well, sir, this is a pleasure,” Brice Mack said, pulling up a white metal chair to the bedside and sitting down. “I didn’t expect to be let in.”

A nurse arrived to take the thermometer out of Hancock’s mouth and to register its reading on a chart at the head of the bed. Before leaving, she carefully checked the tubes and wires attached to his body and critically studied the TV monitors.

Hancock sighed. “That’s better.”

His voice was strong, resonant and, as always for Brice Mack, a pleasure to listen to. For a long space of time they sat in silence, smiling at each other, and then the lawyer saw a look of sorrow come over the hard, bony face and a mistiness cloud his eyes.

“I must apologize to you, Brice, and to Mr. Hoover, for my“—the flicker of a smile returned—“my unscheduled truancy.”

The lawyer grinned and made a demurring gesture with his hand.

“Tell me,” Hancock continued, “how is the case going for him?”

“It’s going.” The lawyer shrugged. “It’ll be all right.” He laughed rather nervously. “Once we get you up there, we’ve got it made.”

Hancock nodded sagely and reached for a slim book which was on the bed a few inches away from his right hand.

“I’m boning up for my part.” He smiled and ran his thumb along the side of the pages. “Louis Fiquier. French philosopher. Makes a good case for reincarnation. Good for our case.” His smile broadened. “Convince the skeptics.” His fingers opened the book at a page marked by a tiny folded corner. “Read here, Brice,” he said, and pushed the book slightly toward the lawyer.

Mack rose and, reaching out for the book, found his hand suddenly enclosed by Hancock’s in a strong grip. Startled, he raised his eyes to Hancock’s eyes and found a twinkling mischief in them.

“Maybe even convince the most stubborn of skeptics,” Hancock said pointedly.

Brice returned his smile and gently disengaged his hand from Hancock’s. Sitting back in his chair, he opened the book, which was entitled The Tomorrow of Death, to the indicated page and began to read. After a moment of silence, Hancock’s deep voice ordered, “Aloud, please.”

Brice Mack cleared his throat and, in a voice soft enough so as not to disturb nearby patients but loud enough to be heard above the cacophony of beeps and squeaks of the heart machines and pacemakers, read.

“ ‘Some men are endowed with all the benefits of mind; others, on the contrary, are devoid of intelligence, penetration and memory. They stumble at every step in their rough life-paths. They can succeed in nothing, and Fate seems to have chosen them for the constant objects of its most deadly blows. Why are they here on earth? God would be unjust and wicked if He imposed so miserable an existence upon beings who had done nothing to incur it, and have not asked for it. But God is not unjust or wicked; the opposite qualities belong to his perfect essence. Therefore the unequal distribution of evil on our globe must remain unexplained, unless we admit the plurality of human existences and reincarnation—that is, the passage of the same soul through several bodies—then all is made wonderfully clear. We have a soul that we must purify, improve, and ennoble during our stay on earth, or, having already completed an imperfect and wicked life, we are compelled to begin a new one, and thus strive to rise to the level of those who have passed on to higher planes.…’”

When Brice Mack looked up, he was certain that Hancock had fallen asleep. His eyes were closed; a soft, peaceful stillness was upon his face. About to rise and leave, the lawyer was stopped by Hancock’s voice.

“You see, Brice,” he said in the quietly modulated, wandering way of a person on the edge of sleep, “without the doctrine of reincarnation, it is not possible to justify the ways of God.”

His voice trailed off, and again be seemed to drift off into a drowse. Mack remained seated, waiting to see if sleep had indeed overcome him. His eyes flickered down to his wristwatch. It was one ten. Apparently, even this slightest movement alerted Hancock, for his eyes fluttered open and remained watchful, seeking the intruder who had disturbed his slumber. There ensued a passage of time—no more than a few seconds—during which the old man re-formed his senses, reestablishing the time and place of the space he occupied, and, finding it, relaxed again in the security of its knowledge.

“It’s all right,” he whispered scarcely audibly. “We all experience levels of dying in our daily lives.… We’re just so used to life and death being opposites … that we don’t allow ourselves to have these thoughts.…”

His speech was so low that Brice Mack could hardly distinguish his words.

“And yet just drifting off into sleep, that twilight hour, is a different level of consciousness and very much … what part of death … is like.…”

Hancock’s eyes suddenly snapped open. He seemed at first to be staring at Mack, then through Mack, and beyond him, beyond the walls of the room, into some vast ethereal infinity beyond the spatial confines of the known world, wherein was revealed to him a vision which brought a radiance to his face, a surprised and wondrous look of utter joy and longing and needing and finally, at the end, an expression of bliss so intensive and absorbing as to cause his whole body to vibrate in its divine totality. His mouth opened, and in his last gurgling breath, he choked out the words “Oh, my!”