Harvest

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The boy would not leave her bedside. From the moment the nurses had wheeled her out of Recovery and into the SICU, he had stayed right beside her, a pale little ghost haunting her bed. Twice the nurses had taken him by the hand and led him out of the cubicle. Twice the boy had found his way back in again. Now he stood gripping the siderails, his gaze silently pleading with her to wake up. At least he was no longer hysterical, the way he'd been when Katzka had come across him on the ship. He'd found the boy leaning over Abby's butchered body, sobbing, imploring her to live. Katzka had not understood a word of what the boy was saying. But he'd understood perfectly his panic. His despair.

There was a tapping on the cubicle window. Turning, Katzka saw Vivian Chao motioning to him. He opened the door and joined her outside the cubicle.

"That kid can't stay here all night," she said. "He's getting in their way. Plus, he doesn't look very clean."

"Every time they try to take him away, he starts screaming."

"Can't you talk to him?"

"I don't know any Russian. Do you?"

"We're still waiting for the hospital translator. Why don't you exert some male authority? Just pull him out."

"Give the boy some time with her, OK?" Katzka turned and gazed through the window at the bed. And he found himself struggling to shake off the superimposed image that would haunt him for the rest of his days: Abby lying on the table, her abdomen slit open, her intestines glistening under the OR lights. The boy whimpering, cradling her face. And on the floor, lying in a lake of their own blood, the two men — Hodell already dead, Tarasoft unconscious and bleeding but still alive. Like everyone else aboard that freighter, Tarasoft had been taken into custody.

Soon there would be more arrests. The investigation was just beginning. Even now, federal authorities were closing in on the Sigayev Company. Based on what the freighter's crew had already told them, the scope of the organ-selling operation was wider — and far more horrifying — than Katzka could have imagined.

He blinked and refocused on the here and now: Abby, lying on the other side of that window, her abdomen swathed in bandages. Her chest rising and falling. The monitor tracing the steady rhythm of her heart. Just for an instant, he felt the same flash of panic he'd experienced on the ship, when Abby's heartbeat had started skipping wildly across the monitor. When he'd thought he was about to lose her, and the chopper bringing Vivian andWettig to the ship had still been miles away. He touched the glass and found himself blinking again. And again.

Behind him, Vivian said softly, "Katzka, she'll be OK.The General and I do good work."

Katzka nodded. Without a word, he slipped back into the cubicle.

The boy looked up at him, his gaze as moist as Katzka's. "Ah-bee," he whispered.

"Yeah, kid. That's her name." Katzka smiled.

They both looked at the bed. A long time seemed to pass. The silence was broken only by the soft and steady beep of the cardiac monitor. They stood side by side, sharing a vigil over this woman whom neither of them knew well, but about whom they already cared so deeply.

At last Katzka held out his hand. "Come on.You need your sleep, son. And so does she."

The boy hesitated. For a moment he studied Katzka. Then, reluctantly, he took the offered hand.

They walked together through the SICU, the boy's plastic shoes scuffling across the linoleum. Without warning, the boy slowed down.

"What is it?" said Katzka.

The boy had paused outside another cubicle. Katzka, too, looked through the glass.

Beyond the window, a silver-haired man sat in a chair by the patient's bed. His head was bowed in his hands, his whole body was quaking with silent sobs. There are things even VictorVoss cannot buy, thought Katzka. Now he's about to lose everything. His wife. His freedom. Katzka looked at the woman lying in the bed. Her face was white and fragile-looking as porcelain. Her eyes, half-opened, had the dull sheen of impending death.

The boy pressed closer to the glass.

In that instant, as he leaned forward, the woman's eyes seemed to register one last flicker of life. She focused on the boy. Slowly her lips curved into a silent smile. And then she closed her eyes. Katzka murmured, "It's time to go."

The boy looked up. Firmly, he shook his head. As Katzka watched in helpless silence, the boy turned and walked back into Abby's cubicle.

Suddenly Katzka felt weary beyond belief. He looked at Victor Voss, a ruined man who now sat with his body crumpled forward in despair. He looked at the woman in the bed, her soul slipping away even as he watched. And he thought: So little time. We have so little time on this earth with the people we love.

He sighed. Then he, too, turned and walked into Abby's cubicle.

And took his place beside the boy.