Do No Harm

Chapter 46

David pulled into the garage and made his way back through the house to his bedroom, removing his clothes as he walked. He stood at the foot of the bed in his boxers, watching through the bare window as the rain came down in sheets.

Bed felt soft and divine, even more comfortable for the storm brewing outside. He put in his earplugs and burrowed beneath the covers. A roll of thunder rattled the windowpane above his head, but not loudly enough to wake him.

As he slept, rain drummed softly on the roof.

A lick of lightning lit the sky, throwing the outline of David's window, a skewed, yellow rectangle broken at the bottom by the waving tips of fronds, against the far wall. A few moments later, another low rumble vibrated through the air.

When lightning lit David's window again, the outline cast against the wall was broken by a man's silhouette. Wide and distorted, it remained perfectly still above the frenzied waving of foliage shadows. The lines of the silhouette were so distinct that even the water dripping from the man's oversize head was visible. The black form seemed to float on the far wall, hovering over David's sleeping body.

It flickered on the wall for only a moment before the room fell back into darkness.

His slick loafers skidded on the kitchen linoleum, and Peter felt his balance go. He let himself topple over stiffly, so as to keep his legs straight and out of the way, and broke his fall evenly with his arms and chest. If there was one thing he knew, it was how to fall well.

Getting up, however, was usually a bit more difficult. He took stock of his limbs. His right kneecap, exposed between the two strips of metal that ran down the length of his leg, throbbed a bit. Lying on his side on the cold kitchen floor, he tugged at his pant leg and it hiked up over his calf before catching on his brace. A few more tugs and his knee came into sight. It would swell nicely, but the skin was not broken. Even so, he'd probably have to dig his ortho cane out of the closet and use it for the next few days. Which he hated.

Peter turned back onto his stomach, his breath stirring a few toast crumbs near the base of the counter, and pushed himself up and back onto his stiff legs. A nearby stool gave him the grip he needed, and he walked his hands slowly up its metal back, careful not to let it skate out, his legs sliding to vertical beneath him.

His pant leg remained stuck up over his knee, the fabric tangled in a bolt at the joint. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with a cupped hand and began the slow waddle back to his bedroom, trying not to think about what would happen when he was seventy. Or eighty.

His hands found their familiar places, places where the wallpaper had been worn thin, the counters polished to a shine. Leaning against the bathroom counter, he brushed his teeth. When he turned to his bed, he noticed the thin water stain left across his pant thighs from the counter.

He removed his shirt and belt, then unbuttoned his pants, and let them fall. The tangle over his right knee remained, and he worked the pant leg out from where it had wedged in his brace. Shuffling a few steps to the bed, he turned and sat, then released the catches near his knees that permitted his braces to bend. Breathing hard, he removed his shoes and tossed them toward the closet, where they landed in a pile of stretched, distorted footwear. He lifted his feet from the puddle of his pants and then, finally, removed the leg braces. Red indentations lay in bands across his thighs and along the outsides of his heels. Near these indentations, the skin was dry and cracked, and his eyes rolled back in his head as he rubbed them.

He lifted his legs into bed, assisting with his hands, and wiggled to get himself under the covers. He noticed he'd forgotten to close the blinds, and he stared at his own reflection in the dark window, confronting an inexplicable sense of unease that took a few moments to dissipate. Given the steps he'd have to go through to get back up, the window was a good ten minutes away.

The nightstand lamp, on the other hand, was only an inch out of reach. He had to roll over to get to the switch. A soft click and the room was bathed in darkness.

He fell into a deep and immediate sleep.

Dalton swung open the front door, wearing a threadbare red-and-white striped bathrobe. He saw Jenkins standing out in the pouring rain, and lowered his hand so his gun rested against his thigh.

Water pasted Jenkins's hair to his head. He blinked twice to clear it from his eyes, but made no move to enter. "You look like a fucking candy cane," he said.

"You drove over here at two in the morning in the rain to tell me that?" One of the girls called from down the hall, and Dalton leaned away from the door. "It's okay. Go back to sleep!" He reached out, fisted Jenkins's shirt, and pulled him inside. Jenkins followed him into the kitchen.

Dalton turned on the light and a mouse scurried under a cabinet. He removed two Old Milwaukees from the refrigerator and sat at the table. "Don't knock the robe," he said. "It was Kathy's. I like sl- " He slid one can across the table at Jenkins and opened the other. "It was Kathy's."

Jenkins had pulled his chair out from the table so he faced the wall. He slouched in the chair, his posture unusually lax. Dalton waited patiently. After a while, he finished his beer and reached across the table for Jenkins's, which sat full. He was halfway through that one before Jenkins spoke. "I can't see her," he said.

"Nance?"

He nodded. "I can't go in there anymore. I tried yesterday, but I got to the curtain and couldn't pull it aside. She called out, asked who was there, and I turned and left."

Dalton sipped his beer. He cleared his throat but didn't speak.

"My little sister," Jenkins said. "She meant more to me than anything in the world."

The only noise was the quiet ticking of the cracked plastic clock above the sink.

"I wish she was dead," Jenkins said. After a moment, Dalton realized he was crying. He was an inexperienced crier, all gasps and jerks. Dalton walked slowly to the light switch and flicked it back off, then returned to his seat.

"Thanks," Jenkins said.

They sat quietly in the darkness, Dalton occasionally sipping his beer.

David awakened at three in the morning, and it was as though he'd never fallen asleep. The same images had followed him from exhaustion into sleep, and then back out again. Diane dabbing ceaselessly at the weeping wounds on her face. Their kiss at the park. Tame as it had been, his kiss with Diane had been wonderful. It had also been unsettling, and he suddenly realized why. He had grown accustomed to feeling other people's flesh only when examining them. He asked himself whether some part of him was as fearful of human contact as Clyde was.

After forty minutes of lying in darkness, David rose from his bed. He sat in the living room and tried to read a medical journal but could not concentrate. Changing into workout clothes, he went into the garage and ran on the treadmill for a half hour. After his shower, he lay in bed again, studying the ceiling, the plants scraping softly at the dark window overhead.

At five, he fell into a fitful sleep, full of jerks and tremors. He awoke several times, bathed in sweat, the sheets wrapped around his legs. At six o'clock, he rose and showered again, went to the study dripping wet, and raised the drape from the cockatoo's cage.

He watched the bird slowly awaken, like a mechanical toy coming to life. "Where's Elisabeth?" it asked. "Where's Elisabeth?"

At six-thirty, a sudden and irresistible urge to do laundry seized him. He grabbed the hamper from his bedroom and sorted his laundry carefully by color, washing the dark blues with the blacks and browns, and leaving the light blue scrubs for the next load. As he awaited the washer's chime, he sat in the laundry room and watched the appliance vibrate and hum.

When he finished, he stood over the warm mound of clothes on his bed and began to separate the items. With the slow automatic movements of a robot, he lined the socks in pairs, stacked his boxers, folded his shirts in tight military rectangles.

His scrub bottoms were all folded identically, and he laid one pair on top of another until they rose like a smooth blue tower. One of the pant legs was a half inch out of line with the others and he pulled it out and refolded it, refolded it, refolded it, his hands working in short concise movements until they began to tremble and then the stack blurred before him and he turned to sit on the bed, using one hand to lower himself slowly, and the sobs seized him from the chest up, his breath coming in short choking gasps, and he covered his eyes with a cupped hand though there was no one there to see and wept for the first time in two years.