Ridley Pearson - The Angel Maker

Tegg used the dart gun next, administering a strong dose of Valium. He would hold off on the Ketamine until he had him up in the cabin. "He's going to sleep, that's all," he told the woman in a blatant lie. How many times had he spoken this line to pet owners? What a strange euphemism. Washington did not attempt to remove the dart. His will was broken. Strangely, that hurt Tegg most of all.

The first few incisions went beautifully. I should be videotaping this, he thought. His patient lay before him, an eight-inch incision in his chest. Again, he longed for Pamela's assistance and support. He had grown to depend on her, an uncomfortable feeling, a sort of attachment that he couldn't fully accept.

He thought through the procedure carefully now, for this was exactly where he had made his mistake twenty years before. He pushed the thought of the police from his mind. He pushed away his temporary anger at Pamela. He tried to transcend it all-to establish a quiet place in his mind from which to commence.

He reviewed each detail: He would split the sternum with the sternal saw; place and lock the sternal retractor, opening the chest cavity; open the pericardial sac; identify and immobilize all the vessels leading in and out of the heart; flush the heart with cold — solution; place ice around the heart; collect and centralize all the vessels; cut the heart out and place it immediately in ice. He congratulated himself on how effortlessly he recited the various steps. Not so terribly difficult. One step at a time. He checked, insuring that any and all instruments he might possibly need were within easy reach. They were. Ready now …

He switched on the sternal saw. The Ketamine, Valium, and Versed paralyzed and relaxed the man, but left his eyes open in a vacant stare. Tegg was distracted by those eyes. Without Pamela by his side, whom he normally used as a sounding board, describing each detail of the procedure like a pilot running down a checklist, Tegg found himself looking at those eyes, engaging his patient in a monologue. The electric saw hummed noisily. A sternal saw requires an upward pressure in order to cut the bone and still remain at a safe distance from the tissue beneath it-the heart. With the sternum exposed, Tegg fed the saw under the lower edge of the sternum into the chest cavity, slipping the edge into the lot made to accept it.

This was the very same procedure Tegg had failed to execute properly twenty years before. Seemed like yesterday, now that he had this saw in hand. Seemed so much like yesterday, that yesterday came right out Of his subconscious. His mind played tricks on him: it wasn't Washington on the operating table, it was Thomas Kent. His eyes were open. He looked dead already. One second Washington; the next Thomas Kent. Back and forth: black skin, white skin, positive, negative. "You're a fake!" He recalled this man's words clearly. But I'm not, he thought. I'll show you. Stemum goes in the mouth of the saw-he could remember performing this procedure on cadavers, never a hitch. He could remember assisting Millingsford a dozen times. Never a hitch. "Stop staring," he told his patient. He hadn't bothered with conventional anesthesia because Washington wouldn't be around after this, and it was usually Pamela's job anyway. The harvest would be over in thirty minutes or so-what was the worry?

It was those eyes. Was he awake? "Stop staring," Tegg beseeched the man for a second time.

He flipped on the switch. Sternum goes in the mouth of the saw Only for a fraction of a second did he glance at those eyes. "A fake!"

Too long. He neglected to maintain the constant upward pressure required of the saw. Suddenly, the donor s warm blood, like water from a burst pipe, sprayed into Tegg's eyes and blinded him. At the same time, he was flooded by his memories again. Was this nothing but the same nightmare he had lived with for twenty years? For a moment he stepped back, believing it was, but his surroundings-the plastic walls and ceiling-alerted him that this was for real. He jumped back to work, literally throwing the saw to the cement floor with a crash.

He attempted to contain his mistake, which was like expecting the Dutch boy to hold back the flood, like trying to piece a blowout back together from the scraps of a tire found in the breakdown lane. He enlarged the chest incision, gaining access to the heart by reaching beneath the sternum. He quickly packed the wound with cloth, applying pressure with his hand. He plugged the hole in the man's heart with the cloth and pinched the tough muscle shut. But he was all out of hands. The hemostats-the clamps were just off to his left, lying there waiting for him, staring at him, glinting in the light, but his hands were fully occupied. Pamela! If only … Frantically, he released the heart and made for the clamps. Blood erupted like a geyser. He began furiously clamping anything he touched. The bleeding slowed and stopped. For a moment he thought he had contained it, but then he looked up at the monitor and realized the patient was dead. in abject horror, in fear of total failure, Tegg worked at a frantic pace. There was far too much blood on the chest for him to see what he was doing. His movements, usually smooth and controlled, came out of him as small explosions. He retrieved the saw, opened the chest and let his fingers be his eyes. The organ was ruined. The saw had inflicted a two-inch incision in the left ventricle. Had it only been the pulmonary artery …

Tegg ignored the error-not his, but the saw's, he tried to convince himself-and removed the heart properly. He cradled it in his hands and sank slowly to the floor, exhausted. Could he never get it right? he wondered. Only one more try, and if he failed at that what would Wong Kei do to him? He'd have his heart, that's what! The police, Wong Kei, the heart he held in his hands, Pamela's refusal to help him. It felt like some kind of conspiracy! He had to rise above this, to overcome. "Practice makes perfect," he mumbled, looking down at the heart still cradled in his hands. "Practice makes perfect."

Sharon Shaffer trembled in the center of her cage, wrought with fear. There was nothing to measure this fear against, nothing to compare it to. At first, the pain had distracted her. Pain was a matter of tolerance, tolerance a matter of attitude, attitude a matter of choice. She chose to be strong, calling on her higher power to see her through. Thus far it had. Her wounds were both terrifying and painful. She could only see out of her left eye now, but maybe that was a blessing, for all she saw were the vicious, angry eyes of the restless pit bulls boring down onto her. She concentrated not on her losses but her strengths. In order to regain the confidence required to escape, she would need every available faculty.

Her central focus had been, and continued to be, gaining her freedom. People made mistakes, even people like him, and she was ready to seize the moment.

Fifteen minutes after The Keeper had left the building, she went to work with a determination she had not allowed him to see. She hoped that his impression of her was that she was weakened to the point of total exhaustion-a necessary ruse if she was to have any hope of taking him by surprise. In fact, quite the opposite was true: She was much stronger than she looked.

That morning she had spotted a hypodermic needle covered in dust, pushed into the corner of the adjacent cage where the building's corrugated metal met the chain link of the kennel wall. She saw it not as a needle but as a potential weapon.

Given the right moment, she could take an eye out with it. Blind him. jump him. When he returned with Michael, he would be distracted. If she could only get that needle, it might be the perfect time for an attack. Lure him into the cage by moaning and gripping her side …

The problem was how to reach clear across the adjacent cage, snag the needle, and drag it all the way back. She had decided to craft a fishing line out of the only two materials available: the plastic I.V. tube hooked up to her arm and string from the burlap sack. Having spent the last twenty minutes unweaving a portion of the burlap sack and knotting pieces of it together, she now had an eight-foot length to use as a fishing line.