James Patterson - Tick Tock

When he swung again, he broke my jaw. My face, my entire self, felt cracked, like a jigsaw puzzle being taken apart.

Bleeding badly, almost unconscious, and barely able to breathe, I was going down heavily, like a foundering ship, when I heard it.

"Freeze!"

I didn't know whose voice it was. At first I thought it might have been God's. Then I recognized its familiar tone, its pitch, its power.

It was the voice of authority that they'd taught us at the Police Academy. It was a cop's voice, I realized. A sole cop's voice crying in my wilderness, and it was the sweetest sound I'd ever heard.

"Relax, relax. We're just messing," Apt said, raising his hands as he got off me.

Then I heard it again.

"Freeze!"

But the voice was different now. Same tone of authority, but from someone else. Incredible. It was another cop! The cavalry.

"Freeze, fucker!" called a woman a moment later.

"You heard her. Put your hands up!" called another voice.

"Down, down!"

Now I heard a litany of voices, a choir. I realized they were my neighbors. Breezy Point's Finest, a regiment of vacationing cops to the rescue.

"On your knees, shit-ass!"

What happened next was a blur. Apt screamed, and then there was a cracking sound. Actually several of them. Cracking and popping like firecrackers going off all around me, and I turned my face down into the sand like a fed-up ostrich and passed out.

"Okay, okay. C'mon, c'mon. Let's pick it up."

I woke up with a start, still lying facedown but staring at the blurring ground. I felt about twenty hands on me, running me across the sand. The face next to mine was Billy Ginty's, my neighbor, an anticrime cop from Brooklyn. I saw another guy from my block, Edgar Perez, a horse cop sergeant with a disabled kid. There was a big burly son of a bitch in a Mets jersey, and I realized it was Flaherty. He was holding me as gently as a baby, his face red as he ran.

My friends and neighbors, all of them heroes, were trying to save my life.

We suddenly stopped somewhere. I wanted to thank Flaherty, to apologize, but he shushed me.

"Don't you dare go out now," he said. "They're getting you a chopper. You're going for a ride on the whirly bird, you lucky dog."

"Mike, Mike," Mary Catherine said from far away.

From somewhere close by, I could hear Ricky crying. Oh, thank you, God. He was all right.

"Tell him it's okay. I'm okay," I said or attempted to. I gagged as I swallowed blood, salty and thick like metallic glue.

"Stop, Mike. Don't try to talk," Mary Catherine said, next to me now.

My cell phone started to ring.

"I got it. I got it. It's for me," I gurgled as I reached for it.

Then Mary Catherine took it out of my pocket and tossed it. My eyes fastened on it in the sand where it glowed on and off, ghostly and blue as it rang and rang and rang.

Then I looked up at Mary Catherine. I remembered how magical she had looked that night diving into the water. I wished we could both do that now. Walk down to the beach, hand in hand, go under the waves where it was quiet and dark, quiet and peaceful down in the tumbling warmth.

I'm at the window in the bedroom of my apartment.

A strange nickel-colored light fills the streets. The streets are empty. No cars, no people. The lustrous light winks off endless rows of empty windows. Off to my right beyond the buildings is the Hudson River, but I can't see any current. Everything is as still as a painting. The curtains blow in on my face for a moment and then fall back, still, and I know time has stopped.

I'm sitting back against the headboard of my bed, which is funny because my bed isn't anywhere near the window, only now it is. Then I realize it's not my current apartment on West End Avenue. It's actually my old place, the tiny studio Maeve and I rented on a sketchy run of Riverside Drive after we got married.

Just as I realize this, arms suddenly embrace me from behind. I want to turn, but I can't. I'm paralyzed. Hair stands up on the back of my neck as a chin rests on my shoulder.

Michael, a soft Irish-accented voice whispers in my ear.

It's my dead wife, Maeve. She's alive. I can feel the warmth of her hands, her breath in my ear, on my cheek. I check myself, feel my side where Apt stabbed me, feel my face for the dent in my fractured face, but everything is impossibly smooth. An incredible sadness rises in me like an overflowing spring.

No, she admonishes me when I start to cry.

But it's over, I cry.

No, she says again as a finger wipes away a tear and presses against my lips.

It's not the end. There is no end. That's the good part. How are all my babies?

I have trouble breathing, I'm crying so hard.

Baby, you should see Juliana. She's so brave and capable, just like you. And Brian, he's this huge, wonderful, polite young man.

Just like you, Maeve says.

And the rest of them. Eddie's so funny, and Trent. The younger girls have left me in the dust, honey. Pink is cool one second, then it's so babyish. I can't keep up. Oh, God, you'd be so proud of them.

I am, Michael. I see them sometimes. When they need me, I'm with them. That's another good part.

I reach out and suddenly hold her thin wrist. I move over to her hand, run my finger over her wedding ring.

I made it back to you. I knew I would. I never doubted it.

When she squeezes my hand back, my sadness evaporates, and I'm overcome with a pulsing warmth. I'm being filled inside and out with peace. Suddenly there's a pop, and a rushing sound fills my ears, like water roaring violently through a pipe. The bed starts to shake.

Will you show me everything? I say, holding on to her hand for dear life.

Of course, Michael, she says as she lets go of my hand. But not now. It's not the right time.

But I don't want to go back, I yell. Not yet. I have so many questions. What about us? What about Mary Catherine?

I know you'll be good to her, Michael, Maeve yells over the increasing roar. I know you. You would never play with a person's heart.

That's when I turn.

But Maeve isn't there.

Nothing is. Everything is gone. My room, the block, the city, the planet. There is nothing but the roar, and my breath and sight fail as it swallows me whole.

First, there was just blackness and pain and a relentless chirping beep. It was like a bird had gotten inside of me somehow and was trying to peck its way out. Two large predator birds. One in my side, one in my face.

I opened my stinging eyes. Outside the window beside me, sun sparkled off an unfamiliar parking lot. On a highway in the distance, cars passed normally under a blue, cloudless sky.

A red-haired nurse with her back to me was moving some kind of wheeled cart in the corner. When I opened my mouth to call to her, I tasted blood again. I felt dizzy and weak, and nausea crowded up on me, and I slipped under again.

Next time I woke up, my eyes adjusted to the gray shapes. At first I thought there were people hovering above me, but then I realized they were balloons. Red and blue and shimmering Mylar ones. About as many as floated out of Carl's chimney in the movie Up.

I looked away from them, wincing in pain. My face and my side were hot and tight with an itchy, horrendous stinging. The head-to-toe tightness was the worst. I felt like a sheet being pulled apart.

"Thank the Lord. Oh, thank you, God," someone said. It definitely wasn't me.

A second later, Seamus's face appeared.

"Please don't tell me it's last rites."

"No, no, you've got at least another fifty years to suffer in this vale of tears, you crazy SOB. You scared the H-E-double-hockey-sticks out of us all."

"How long have I been out?"