Dean Koontz - Your Heart Belongs To Me

Ryan felt that he had sailed out of a storm into a sunny harbor.

Laura, in her twenties, wore an oval locket suspended from an intricately braided gold chain. The enameled medallion on the front of the locket featured a stylized gold-and-red bird with spread wings, rising.

When Ryan complimented her on the beauty of the locket, the nurse said, “It’s a phoenix. Early nineteenth century. Dr. Hobb gave it to me for my third anniversary.” She registered his surprise, and her fair cheeks pinked as she quickly corrected the impression that she had given him. “The doctor is my father-in-law. And Andrea-Mrs. Barnett, the receptionist-she’s his sister.”

“You don’t think of a medical practice as a family business,” Ryan said.

“They’re a close family,” she said, “and quite wonderful. Blake, my husband, graduated Harvard Medical.”

“Cardiology?”

“Cardiovascular surgery. When he finishes his residency, he’ll join Dougal-Dr. Hobb-in the practice.”

Given the indifference to the idea of family and tradition that characterized both of Ryan’s parents, he envied the Hobb clan.

Instead of taking Ryan directly to an examination room, Laura led him first to Dougal Hobb’s study. “He’ll be with you in just a minute, Mr. Perry.”

Again, he felt as if he were in a private home rather than in a medical office, even though on one wall were displayed the surgeon’s medical degrees and numerous honors.

Because Wilson Mott had provided a thorough file on the surgeon, Ryan did not bother to review the framed items on the wall.

Instead, when Dr. Hobb entered, Ryan stood admiring the cherry-veneer Biedermeier desk with ebony inlays.

Under six feet tall, fit and trim but not pumped, dressed in black loafers, gray wool slacks, a cranberry-red cardigan, and a white shirt without tie, Hobb did not cultivate a power look, yet Ryan felt that a force of nature had entered the study.

Although he had a clear baritone voice, Hobb spoke softly, with the trace of an ingratiating accent that might have been Carolinian. He had a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, but not a leonine silver mane; his brown eyes were direct, though not striking; his features were pleasant, though not handsome. Yet he seemed to fill the room with his presence.

They sat in armchairs that faced each other across a Biedermeier pedestal table with magnificently figured walnut veneer, in order to, as Dr. Hobb put it, “get to know each other.”

Within a few minutes, Ryan understood that Dr. Hobb made such a powerful impression because he seemed, from the first encounter, to be self-effacing, even humble, although his great surgical skills and his success prepared you to expect a fulsome pride if not arrogance, and because he seemed genuinely to care about you, to be motivated by compassion that he could convey without ever sounding either as if he were selling himself or coddling his patient.

“These past three months,” Ryan said, “have been frightening, of course, and dispiriting, but it’s not just the fear and the bouts of depression that leave me increasingly unable to cope. It’s the strangeness of these months, the downright weirdness, the sense that something’s terribly wrong in my life other than just my illness. I keep thinking that someone’s manipulating me, that I’m not in control of my own life anymore, that the medical care I’m being given isn’t the care I should have. I understand that for a guy my age, it’s easy to succumb to paranoia when you’re hit with a diagnosis like this, because it’s so unexpected. I mean, I’m just thirty-four years old, and I can’t get my head around the idea that I’m going to die.”

“We won’t let that happen,” said Dr. Hobb, leaning forward in his chair. “We simply will not let it happen.”

Considering how the odds were stacked against Ryan, he did not think such a confident declaration as the one Hobb had made could be taken seriously, yet that was how he took it. He believed that Dougal Hobb would not let him die, and he was filled with such relief and overcome with such gratitude that his vision blurred, and for a moment he could not speak.

That day, devoting himself almost exclusively to Ryan, Dr. Hobb conducted numerous tests, though he did not put his patient through another myocardial biopsy. He made the reasonable assumption that the lab had properly analyzed the tissue samples that Dr. Gupta submitted.

As a backup procedure, he ordered a recently devised high-tech analysis of Ryan’s blood, looking for the expression of key genes that would confirm abnormal cardiac-muscle function consistent with inherited cardiomyopathy. He found them.

Ryan had no illusions that Dr. Gupta’s diagnosis would be overturned. What he wanted from Dougal Hobb was the hope that came with knowing he was in the care of a brilliant physician who was as committed to the aggressive practice of his specialty as Ryan had been committed to aggressively building Be2Do.

Dr. Hobb prescribed two of the four medications that were part of Ryan’s current drug regimen, dropped two others, and added three.

At seven o’clock in the evening, in his study once more, before sending Ryan back to Newport Coast, the surgeon provided him with a slim medic-alert phone. By pressing only a single button, twice, Ryan would be connected by satellite uplink with an emergency service.

“Keep it on you at all times,” Hobb advised. “Make a habit of charging it on your nightstand every night. But take it out of the charger and with you when you go to the bathroom, in case anything incapacitating should happen to you there.”

He gave Ryan a list of physiological crises-such as the episode of breathing difficulty-in the event of which the medic-alert phone should be used without hesitation.

“And if I’m notified that your waiting is over, that a match has been found for you,” Hobb said, “I’ll contact you through the same medic-alert service. Time is of the essence in these matters. I don’t like to trust to ordinary phones. Unthinkingly, patients turn them off, set them to voice mail. As long as this device is charged, it’s in service. There’s no OFF switch. So keep it charged and keep it with you. The day may come.”

After a two-hour ride in the chartered limousine with Naraka silent and solemn behind the wheel, Ryan returned home.

He had been served a light boxed lunch at Dr. Hobb’s facility, but he’d had no dinner. He searched the refrigerator and put together a meal of sorts.

Lee and Kay Ting were off duty now, and were in their private quarters-doing what, he did not care. He didn’t suspect them of conspiracy any longer.

Or if he did suspect them just a little, he did not worry that they could harm him further. He had taken control of his fate, and no one in his usual circles knew that he had done so.

Although Dr. Hobb might think his new patient eccentric or worse, he had agreed to honor a request not to inform Samar Gupta that Ryan was now under the care of a new cardiologist.

For seven years, Ryan had self-insured because he loathed the insurance-company and government bureaucracies, as well as the endless paperwork, of the health-care system. A $100,000 check, written as a retainer to Dougal Hobb against all future costs, had bought some relaxation of the usual protocols between physicians.

He intended to continue to keep his periodic appointments with Dr. Gupta, though he would not follow any advice given or take any medications provided by that physician.

Although Ryan didn’t suspect Gupta any more than he did Lee and Kay Ting, if Gupta knew of Hobb’s involvement, he would pass the news along to Forry Stafford, and Forry-or his wife, Jane-would tell Sam.