Heartsick

CHAPTER 39

How does it feel?” Archie asks. The codeine had made things better. He is only barely present now. The wounds on his abdomen are red and hard with fluid. He can feel the burning pain of the infections, but he doesn’t mind it. He doesn’t even mind the heavy smell of decomposition that suffocates everything. Sweat clings to his clammy skin and his limbs lie lifeless, but to him, his body feels loose and warm, his blood gelatinous. There is Archie. And there is Gretchen. And there is the basement. It is like they are in a waiting room for death. So he makes conversation.

Gretchen sits in her chair next to his bed, her hand resting on his. “Were you there when your children were born?”

“Yes.”

Her look grows distant as she tries to articulate her thoughts. “I think it must be like that. Intense and beautiful and wretched.” She leans toward him, until he can feel her breath against his cheek, and then brings her lips to his ear. “You think they were random. But they weren’t. There was always a chemistry. I would feel it right away.” Her breath tickles his earlobe; her hand tightens around his. “A physical connection. A death spark.” She turns and looks at their hands folded together, his wrist still bound by the leather strap. “Like they wanted it. I would pluck them out of the universe. Hold their life in my hand. What astounds me is that people get up and go to work and come home and they don’t ever kill anyone. I feel sorry for them because they aren’t alive. They will never really know what it’s like to be human.”

“Why did you use the men?”

She gazes at him flirtatiously. “It was better when my lovers did it. I liked to watch them kill for me.”

“Because then you had power over two people.”

“Yes.”

Archie lets his eyes fall on the corpse on the floor. He can’t see the head from his vantage point, only a hand, and he has watched the flesh darken and swell until it is unrecognizable, a dead bird at the end of a sleeve. “Who’s on the floor?” Archie asks.

She gives the corpse a disinterested glance. “Daniel. I found him on-line.”

“Why did you kill him?”

“I didn’t need him anymore,” she says, running a delicate finger over the skin of his forearm. “I had you. You’re special, darling. Don’t you understand that?”

“Number two hundred. The bicentennial.”

“It’s more than that.”

He is beginning to think he understands her. As if the further he gets from his life, the more she becomes clear to him. Had she been born? Or made? “Who made you drink drain cleaner, Gretchen?”

She laughs, but the amusement is unconvincing. “My father? Is that the answer?”

“Do I remind you of him?” Archie asks.

He thinks he sees her flinch. “Yes.”

“End this,” he says, fruitlessly. “Get some help.”

Her hand flutters in the air for a moment. “I’m not the way I am because of him. I’m not a violent person.”

“I know,” Archie says. “You need help.”

She picks up the scalpel, still stained with his blood, from the tray and holds it against his chest. Then she begins to carve. He can barely feel it. The blade is sharp and she is not cutting deeply. He watches as his ugly bruised skin splits beneath the blade, the blood holding for a moment, oxygenating, before it flows bright red from the wound. That’s the main sensation: the blood running down his sides, leaving trails of crimson that pool under his torso on the sweat-soaked white sheet. He watches her, her small brow furrowed with concentration, doodle on his flesh. “There,” she says finally. “It’s a heart.”

“Who’s it for?” he asks. “I thought we were going to bury the body. Keep them guessing.”

“It’s for you,” Gretchen says brightly. “It’s for you, darling. It’s my heart.” She glances sadly down at Archie’s swollen abdomen. “Of course it will get infected. It’s Daniel. His corpse has desterilized everything. I don’t have the proper antibiotics for a staph infection. The antibiotics I’m giving you will slow it down. But I don’t have anything strong enough to kill it.”

Archie smiles. “You worried about me?”

She nods. “You have to fight it. You have to stay alive.”

“So you can kill me with drain cleaner?”

“Yes.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I’m not crazy,” she insists, her voice a thin reed of desperation. “I’m very sane. And if you die before I let you, I will kill your children, darling. Ben and Sara.” She holds the scalpel easily, as if it is an extension of her body, another finger. “Ben is in kindergarten at Clark Elementary School. I will slice him up. You will do what I say. You will stay alive until I tell you. Understand?”

He nods.

“Say it.”

“Yes.”

“I’m not trying to be mean,” she says, her face softening. “It’s just that I’m worried.”

“Okay,” he says.

“Ask me anything. I’ll tell you anything you want to know about the murders.”

His throat and abdomen throb. Swallowing has become excruciating. “I don’t care anymore, Gretchen.”

Her mouth falters. She almost looks a little hurt. “You’re the head of my task force. You don’t want to take my confession?”

He stares past her, at the ceiling: the pipes, the ducts, the fluorescent light panels. “I’m trying to fight my staph infection.”

“Do you want to watch the news? I could bring a TV down.”

“No.” The thought of seeing his widow on the television news fills him with dread.

“Come on. There’s a vigil for you today. It will cheer you up.”

“No.” His mind searches for something to distract her with. “Let me drink the drain cleaner.” He gives her a pleading look. It isn’t faked. “Come on.” He is so tired. “I want to.”

“You want to?” She smiles with satisfaction.

“I want to drink the drain cleaner,” Archie says emphatically. “Feed it to me.”

She rises and makes the preparations, humming softly under her breath. In the codeine haze, he is unattached to any of it. It is like watching it all happen in a rearview mirror. When she returns, they repeat the exercise from the previous day. This time, the pain is more intense, and Archie vomits onto the bed.

“It’s blood,” Gretchen observes, pleased. “The poison is eating through your esophagus.”

Good, thinks Archie. Good.

He is dying. Gretchen has him on a morphine drip because he can’t keep the pills down anymore. He is coughing blood. He cannot remember the last time she left his side. She just sits there, holding a white washcloth to his face to catch the blood when he coughs, the drool of saliva he can’t swallow. He can smell the corpse and he can hear her voice, but that is it. There is no other sensation. No pain. No taste. His vision has narrowed to a circle a few feet around his head. He is aware of her when she touches him, her blond hair, her hand, her bare forearm. There are no more lilacs.

Gretchen puts her face next to his and gently turns his head so that he can see her, her face shimmering and folding in the light. “It’s time again,” she says.

He blinks slowly. He is bathed in soft, thick, warm blackness. He doesn’t even register what she has said until he feels the spoon in his mouth. This time, he cannot swallow the poison. She pours water down his throat after it, but he chokes and vomits all the fluid up. His entire body spasms, sending a black wall of pain from his groin to his shoulders. He fights for oxygen, and in his alarm, his consciousness is forced back into his body and all of his senses come horribly alive. He screams.

Gretchen holds his head against the bed, her forehead pressed hard against his cheek. He lurches against her hand, screaming as loudly as he can, letting all the pain and fear drive out of his body through his lungs. The effort tears at his throat and the screams turn into choking and the choking to dry heaves. When his breathing returns to normal, Gretchen looks up, and slowly begins to wipe the sweat and blood and tears off his face.

“I’m sorry,” he gasps stupidly.

She sits, her attention fixed on him for a time, and then stands up and walks away. When she returns, she has a hypodermic. “I think you’re ready now,” she says. Gretchen holds the hypodermic up for him to see. “It’s digitalis. It will stop your heart. Then you’ll die.” She touches his face tenderly with the back of her hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll stay here with you until it’s over.”

He is relieved. He watches as she injects the digitalis into his IV tube and then takes her seat at his deathbed, one hand resting lightly on his pale knuckles, the other on his forehead.

He does not think about Debbie or Ben or Sara or Detective Archie Sheridan or the Beauty Killer Task Force. He just concentrates on her. Gretchen is all there is. His only thread. If he can stay focused, he thinks, he will not be afraid. His heartbeat increases, coming faster and faster, until it loses all rhythm to him-so foreign and wrong that it doesn’t even feel like his heart anymore. It is just someone knocking, panicked, desperate, on a faraway door. Gretchen’s face is the last thing he sees when the sudden pain seizes him by the chest and neck. The pressure grows. Then there is a blinding, excruciating white burn and finally, peace.