The Kingdom of Bones

FORTY-NINE

The first that Tom Sayers knew of it was when the nurses came around asking for volunteers to provide blood for transfusion, and even then he didn’t realize that Sebastian Becker was the emergency case in question. Only when a cross match had confirmed his suitability and they trolleyed him down for the procedure did he discover the identity of the recipient.

Sayers wasn’t the only donor. Five other volunteers were lined up, all able-bodied and noninfected, and all of them were needed to get Becker through the surgery.

Afterward, Sayers told the medical staff all he knew of their patient. Which was actually little beyond Sebastian’s home address and the name of his wife, but enough for them to be able to send off a wire.

He had to stay around the hospital. Becker remained in danger, and there was a chance that Sayers might be called upon again. Blood couldn’t be taken and stored, but needed direct transfusion. After his second session, he all but fainted when he tried to stand. They put him in a chair and took him back to his bed, where he slept for fifteen hours straight.

One of the Sisters told him of Elisabeth Becker’s arrival. She’d come all the way down from Philadelphia alone, an epic journey involving more than two days of hard travel. After what he’d done to their family, Sayers didn’t dare face her. No apology could suffice.

Oh, God…if Becker died now. She’d be turning around and taking her dead husband home. They’d had a boy killed on the road once, half his head taken off by a flying cable, and his widowed mother had come all the way out to the tent show to take his body back with her. They’d all followed the hearse down to the station, and he remembered the sight of the baggage car with the casket on board. It was ebony black with silver handles, raised from the boarded floor on two firm trestles and lashed so that it wouldn’t slide around. An empty chair stood alongside it.

If that was to be Sayers’ gift to the Beckers, after all the other blind damage that his obsession had brought…then let the Lord take him now, for in his time on this earth he’d surely done nothing but harm.

Anyway, he didn’t need to worry about seeking Elisabeth Becker out. She came and found him. He was dressing to leave, but the effort was exhausting him. He looked up, and there she was.

“How is he?” he said. His injury was healing, but his voice still didn’t sound like his own.

“Spare me your concern.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry does nothing for me, mister,” she said. “I had a home, a good man, and a family with a future. Now I’ve got this.”

“The fault is all mine,” Sayers said.

“And may you never be forgiven for it,” she said, and then turned her back on him.