John Saul - Black Lightning

“Your husband’s asleep, but I don’t see how it could be a problem if you want to look in on him for a minute.”

“How’s he doing?” Anne asked as the nurse escorted her into the CCU.

“Actually, a lot better tonight. I think he fell asleep after dinner, and when he woke up, he was a human being again. But frankly, if I were you, I don’t think I’d wake him up right now. The best thing for him is just to let him sleep.”

The nurse quietly pulled Glen’s door open, and Anne peered inside. A soft glow of light from the street beyond the window bathed his face. Though he was still attached to the heart monitors, he was starting to look once more like the man she’d married. The last vestiges of the anger she’d felt toward him that afternoon and evening evaporated, as did the worry his uncharacteristic behavior had caused. Feeling much better, she stepped back from the door and let Annette Brady close it again. “Suddenly I feel kind of silly,” Anne confessed as the two of them walked back toward the unit’s main doors. “I suppose I should have just called, but suddenly I feel about Glen the way I used to feel about my kids when they were babies. Being told they’re okay is one thing, but you don’t really believe it until you see it for yourself.”

“Not a problem,” the nurse assured her. “Believe me, we have wives coming in here every night, at all hours. On the other hand, husbands,” she continued, “hardly ever show up at odd hours. Amazing how weak the maternal instinct is in the American heterosexual male.” Anne started toward the elevators, waving a final good-bye as the nurse warned her to be careful if she was going to walk home. “That woman who got killed the other night was only a few blocks from here, you know.”

And she was a hooker who picked up the wrong john, Anne thought as she rode the elevator back to the ground floor, instantly reminding herself that all Shawnelle Davis had been trying to do was earn a living, something for which she certainly hadn’t deserved to die. In almost conscious defiance of Annette Brady’s warning, Anne left the hospital through the main doors and started up Sixteenth East. As she strode up the sidewalk, moving from pools of light into dark shadows, then emerging into the light again a few seconds later as she neared the next streetlamp, she suddenly had a feeling that she was being watched. Pausing, she scanned the street ahead of her, then turned around.

She was alone.

Gazing up and down the street once more, finally satisfied there was no one lurking in the shadows ahead, Anne walked on until, reaching the corner of Thomas Street, her nerve deserted her and she turned left, quickening her step as the brighter lights and heavy traffic of Fifteenth beckoned. By the time she reached the corner, the prickly sensation on the back of her neck had eased, and as she started northward, she began to feel as if she’d just played the fool.

The Experimenter stepped back from the window as Anne Jeffers turned the corner and disappeared from his view. She’d felt him watching her, of that he was absolutely certain. She’d sensed a presence, though she had no idea it was his presence. He’d seen her scan the streets, hesitate, then scan them again, the way he himself always did, watching warily to be certain no one was paying too much attention when he began focusing on a new subject for his experiments.

Soon it would be time to begin again, time to take up the work once more. His fingers twitched with eagerness in the dimness of the room as he anticipated the feel of plunging his hands once more into the very center of life, experiencing again the thrill of holding a living, throbbing organ in his palms, exhilarating once more to the towering sensation of holding the power of life and death within his very grasp.

He’d already decided that Anne Jeffers would be the subject of one of his experiments this time. He would toy with her first, of course, just as he’d been toying with her for years. But when her time finally came, and it was finally her body he opened up, her life force he experienced, he might even keep her awake, so that she could share the exhilaration with him.

There were ways to do that, ways he’d learned about in the years during which he suspended his work. He would have to experiment with the needles, but he was looking forward to that, as he looked forward to all his experiments.

Not so long now. Soon it would all happen. Soon he would hold Anne Jeffers in the palms of his hands. Soon … soon …

“All right, here are the rules.” Gordy Farber leaned forward in his chair and pointed a pencil at Glen as if he were a recalcitrant ten-year-old rather than a forty-three-year-old architect. “You can go home today, but that doesn’t mean you can go back to the kind of life you were living before, understand?”

Glen rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and began parroting the instructions Farber had already laid out in such great detail that Glen felt as if they were branded onto his eyelids. “No going to the office, get plenty of rest, eat healthy meals, and get plenty of exercise.” As Farber reddened slightly, Glen grinned. “Shall I also take Geritol every day?”

“It wouldn’t hurt,” Farber groused as he shifted his attention to Anne, who had taken the day off to get Glen settled back into the house after almost two weeks in the hospital. “I’m counting on you to make sure he doesn’t cheat. If he behaves himself, I don’t see any reason to worry about a repeat of this little incident.” He swung back to Glen and once more assumed the stern demeanor of a schoolmaster. “On the other hand, if you go back to sitting at a drawing table all day, eating nothing but hamburgers and french fries for lunch, and sucking up twenty-five cups of coffee a day, I can almost guarantee you’ll be back here within a year. Or less. Assuming they even get you this far next time.”

“What about the stairs?” Anne asked. “Should he really be going up and down them all the time?”

“If you didn’t have them in the house, I’d make him go buy a stair-climbing machine,” Farber replied. “I don’t want him out running right off the bat, but there’s no problem with stairs, and I want him to start walking at least a mile a day.” Glen uttered an exaggerated groan, which Farber ignored, forging ahead with the lecture he’d given heart patients so often he could do it in his sleep. “And as for sex,” he finished, finally touching on the subject most of his patients wanted to know about first, “as far as I’m concerned, it’s one of the healthier forms of exercise available, so feel free. Any questions?”

Glen hesitated. Should he mention the memory lapse he’d had last Saturday? Even as he formulated the question in his mind, he knew he wouldn’t. After all, it had only happened the one time, and he was sure it was nothing more than a brief side effect of one of the drugs they’d been stuffing into him. All he really needed was to get out of here, get home, and start living his life again. “How could there be?” he asked, standing up. “Is that it?”

Farber came around from behind his desk, accompanying the Jefferses to the door. “Just keep an eye on yourself. If anything seems strange, or not right, let me know. And if you experience any pains in your chest or arms, don’t write it off to heartburn. Get over here right away. And, most important, don’t either of you start feeling like Glen’s some kind of invalid. He’s not. Just go home and get on with your lives.”

A few minutes later, when Anne slid her car into the parking space she was lucky enough to find right in front of their house, Glen got out and automatically opened the back door to begin transferring his suitcase, and the box full of the clutter that had migrated into his hospital room over the last ten days, back into his home.