Desperate Measures

22

From above, crouching in the darkness of the sundeck, Pittman watched the taillights recede, then disappear, the sound of the limousines fading into the silence of the night. With a final droning rumble, all the garage doors descended, cutting off the lights inside. The gloom in the area intensified.

Pittman slowly straightened. His legs were stiff. His calves prickled as blood resumed its flow through arteries that had been constricted. He turned toward the French doors for a final look at Jonathan Millgate helpless in his bed, surrounded by monitors, bottles, and tubes.

Pittman’s pulse faltered.

Through the gaps in the draperies, what he saw seemed magnified by the glass panes in the French doors. At the same time, he felt as if he watched helplessly from a great distance. The nurse had left the room, leaving Millgate alone. She had shut the door. Millgate had not been asleep, contrary to what she evidently believed. Instead, he was attempting to raise himself.

Millgate’s features were twisted, agitated. The oxygen prongs had slipped from his nostrils. His IV tubes had become disengaged from the needle in each of his arms. He pawed with both hands, trying to grasp the railings on his bed with sufficient strength to raise himself. But he wasn’t succeeding. His face had become an alarming red. His chest heaved. Abruptly he slumped back, gasping.

Even at a distance, through the barrier of the French doors, Pittman thought he heard Millgate’s strident effort to breathe. Before Pittman realized, he stepped closer to the window. The warning buzzer on the heart monitor should have alerted the nurse, he thought in dismay. She should have hurried back by now.

But as Pittman stared through the window, he was close enough that he knew he would have been able to hear an alarm, even through the glass. Had the sound been turned off? That didn’t make sense. He studied the pattern of blips on the monitor. From so many days of watching Jeremy’s monitors and insisting that the doctors explain what the indicators said, Pittman could tell from Millgate’s monitor that his heartbeat was far above the normal range of 70 to 90 per minute, disturbingly rapid at 150. Its pattern of beats was becoming erratic, the rhythm of the four chambers of his heart beginning to disintegrate.

A crisis would come. Soon. Millgate’s color was worse. His chest heaved with greater distress. He clutched at his blankets as if they were crushing him.

He can’t get his breath, Pittman thought.

The oxygen. If he doesn’t get those prongs back into his nostrils, he’ll work himself into another heart attack.

The son of a bitch is going to die.

Pittman had a desperate impulse to turn, race down the steps, surge toward the estate’s wall, scurry over, and run, keep running, never stop running.

Jesus, I should never have done this. I should never have come here.

He pivoted, eager to reach the stairs down from the sundeck. But his legs wouldn’t move. He felt as if he were held in cement. His will refused to obey his commands.

Move. Damn it, get out of here.

Instead, he looked back.

In agony, Millgate continued to struggle to breathe. His pulse was now 160. Red numbers on his blood-pressure monitor showed 170/125. Normal was 120/80. The elevated pressure was a threat to anyone, let alone an eighty-year-old man who’d just had a heart attack that placed him in intensive care.

Clutching his chest, gasping, Millgate cocked his head toward the French doors, his anguished expression fixed on the windows. Pittman was sure Millgate couldn’t see him out in the darkness. The dim lights in the room would reflect off the panes and make them a screen against the night. Even so, Millgate’s tortured gaze was like a laser that seared into Pittman.

Don’t look at me like that! What do you expect? There’s nothing I can do!

Yet again Pittman turned to flee.