He did not like watching himself, Ashen, sullen, and uncertain, full of determined action but with halting purpose.

In fairness to himself, the image was black-and-white, and a little grainy. His apparent lurch was merely the effect of time-lapse recording.

Allowing for all of that, he still saw an unconvincing figure: shape and shading, but no more substance than an apparition. He appeared to be a stranger in his own home.

He reset the machine. He closed the cabinet doors and put away the stepladder.

In the bathroom, he changed the dressing on his brow. The hook wounds were angry red, but no worse than before.

He changed into a black T-shirt, black jeans, black Rockports. Sunset was less than four hours away, and when twilight pa.s.sed, Billy would need to move as inconspicuously as possible in a hostile night.

Chapter 40.

Gretchen Norlee favored severe dark suits, wore no jewelry, combed her hair straight back from her forehead, regarded the world through steel-framed eyegla.s.ses-and decorated her office with plush toys. A teddy bear, a toad, a duck, a Knuffle Bunny, and a midnight-blue kitten were arranged on shelves in a collection that consisted primarily of dogs that greeted visitors with a brightness of unfurled pink- and red-velvet tongues.

Gretchen managed the 102-2ed Whispering Pines Convalescent Home with military efficiency and maximum compa.s.sion. Her warm manner belied the gruffness of her hard-edged voice.

She embodied no greater contradictions than any person who found temporary balance in this most temporary world. Hers were just more immediately visible, and more endearing.

Leaving her desk to signal that she viewed this as a personal consideration rather than as a business matter, Gretchen sat in a wingback chair catercorner to the chair in which Billy sat.

She said, "Because Barbara occupies a private room, she may have company outside normal visiting hours without inconveniencing other patients. I see no problem, though family usually stay overnight only when a patient has just returned from a hospital transfer."

Although Gretchen had too much cla.s.s to express her curiosity directly, Billy felt obliged to satisfy it with an explanation, even though every word he told her was a lie.

"My Bible-study group has been discussing what scripture says about the power of prayer."

"So you're in a Bible-study group," she said as if intrigued, as if he was not a man whom she could easily picture in such a pious pursuit.

"There was a major medical study that showed when friends and relatives actively pray for a sick loved one, the patient more often recovers, and recovers more quickly."

That controversial study had provided gas to inflate barroom debates when it had hit the newspapers. Recollection of all that boozy blather, not an earnest Bible-study group, had inspired Billy to concoct this cover story.

"I think I remember reading about it," Gretchen Norlee said.

"Of course I pray for Barbara every day."

"Of course."

"But I've come to see that prayer is more meaningful when it involves some sacrifice."

"Sacrifice," she said thoughtfully.

He smiled. "I don't mean to slaughter a lamb."

"Ah. That will please the janitorial staff."

"But a prayer before bed, however sincere, is no inconvenience."

"I see your point."

"Surely prayer will be more meaningful and effective if it comes at some personal cost-like at least the loss of a night's sleep."

"I've never thought of it that way," she said.

"From time to time," Billy said, "I'd like to sit with her all night in prayer. If it doesn't help her, it'll at least help me."

Listening to himself, he thought that he sounded as phony as a TV evangelist proclaiming the virtue of abstinence upon being caught naked with a hooker in the back of his limo.

Evidently, Gretchen Norlee heard him differently from how he heard himself. Behind her steel-rimmed spectacles, her eyes were moist with sympathy.

His newfound slickness dismayed Billy, and worried him. When a liar became too skilled at deception, he could lose the ability to discern truth, and could himself be more easily deceived.

He expected there might be a price for playing a nice woman like Gretchen Norlee for a fool, as there was a price for everything.

Chapter 41.

As Billy followed the main hall toward Barbara's room in the west wing, Dr. Jordan Ferrier, her physician, exited the room of another patient. They almost collided.

"Billy!"

"h.e.l.lo, Dr. Ferrier."

"Billy, Billy, Billy."

"I sense a lecture coming on."

"You've been avoiding me."

"I've tried my best," Billy admitted.

Dr. Ferrier looked younger than forty-two. He was sandy-haired, green-eyed, perpetually cheerful, and a dedicated salesman for death.

"We're weeks overdue for our semiannual review."

"The semiannual review is your idea. I'm very happy with a once-every-decade review."

"Let's go see Barbara."

"No," Billy said. "I won't talk about this in front of her."

"All right." Taking Billy by the arm, Dr. Ferrier steered him to the lounge where the staff took their breaks.

They were alone in the room. Vending machines for snacks and soft drinks hummed, ready to dispense high-calorie, high-fat, high-caffeine treats to medical workers who knew the consequences of their cravings but had the good sense to cut themselves some slack.

Ferrier drew a white plastic chair away from an orange Formica table. When Billy didn't follow suit, the doctor sighed, pushed the chair under the table, and remained on his feet.

"Three weeks ago I completed an evaluation of Barbara."

"I complete one every day."

"I'm not your enemy, Billy."

"It's hard to tell around this time of the year."

Ferrier was a hard-working physician, intelligent, talented, and well-meaning. Unfortunately, the university that turned him out had infected him with what they called "utilitarian ethics."

"She's gotten no better," said Dr. Ferrier.

"She's gotten no worse, either."

"Any chance of her regaining high cognitive function-"

"Sometimes she talks," Billy interrupted. "You know she does."

"Does she ever make sense? Is she coherent?"

"Once in a while," Billy said.

"Give me an example."

"I can't, offhand. I'd have to check my notebooks."

Ferrier had soulful eyes. He knew how to use them. "She was a wonderful woman, Billy. No one but you had more respect for her than I did. But now she has no meaningful quality of life."

"To me, it's very meaningful."

"You're not the one suffering. She is."

"She doesn't seem to be suffering," Billy said.

"We can't really know for sure, can we?"

"Exactly."

Barbara had liked Ferrier. That was one reason Billy did not replace him.

On some deep level she might perceive what was happening around her. In that event, she might feel safer knowing she was being cared for by Ferrier instead of by a strange doctor whom she'd never met.

Sometimes this irony was a grinding wheel that sharpened Billy's sense of injustice to a razor's edge.

Had she known about Ferrier's bioethics infection, had she known that he believed he possessed the wisdom and the right to determine whether a Down's Syndrome baby or a handicapped child, or a comatose woman, enjoyed a quality of life worth living, she might have changed physicians. But she had not known.

"She was such a vibrant, involved person," Ferrier said. "She wouldn't want to just hang on like this, year after year."

"She's not just hanging on," Billy said. "She's not lost at the bottom of a sea. She's floating near the surface. She's right there."

"I understand your pain, Billy. Believe me, I do. But you don't have the medical knowledge to a.s.sess her condition. She's not right there. She never will be."

"I remember something she said just the other day. 'I want to know what it says... the sea, what it is that it keeps on saying.'"

Ferrier regarded him with equal measures of tenderness and frustration. "That's your best example of coherence?"

" 'First do no harm,'" Billy said.

"Harm is done to other patients when we spend limited resources on hopeless cases."

"She's not hopeless. She laughs sometimes. She's right there, and she's got plenty of resources."

"Which could do so much good if properly applied."

"I don't want the money."

"I know. You're not the kind of guy who could ever spend a dime of it on yourself. But you could direct those resources to people who have a greater potential for an acceptable quality of life than she does, people who would be more likely to be helped."

Billy tolerated Ferrier also because the physician had been so effective in pre-trial depositions that the maker of the vichyssoise had chosen to settle long before getting near a courtroom.

"I'm only thinking of Barbara," Ferrier continued. "If I were in her condition, I wouldn't want to lie there like that, year after year."

"And I would respect your wishes," Billy said. "But we don't know what her wishes are."

"Letting her go doesn't require active steps," Ferrier reminded him. "We need only be pa.s.sive. Remove the feeding tube."

In her coma, Barbara had no reliable gag reflex and could not properly swallow. Food would end up in her lungs.

"Remove the feeding tube and let nature take its course."

"Starvation."

"Just nature."

Billy kept her in Ferrier's care also because the physician was straightforward about his belief in utilitarian bioethics. Another doctor might believe the same but conceal it... and fancy himself an angel-or agent-of mercy.