Almost as much as he hated English teachers, John Falkirk also hated nurses, whether they were dressed in white uniforms or green scrubs or were naked in a porno film. Just because they knew the difference between simethicone and simvastatin, could recognize the early symptoms of numerous diseases, could change the bedsheets with the patient in the bed, and could give injections without causing an embolism, they thought that they were superior to their patients, as though they didn’t also empty bedpans. Bustling here and there with annoying self-importance, not one of the nurses at Mercy Hospital could have pulled off the execution of a Supreme Court justice with a secretly induced heart attack or would have had the nerve to put a bullet in the head of an influential political activist who made the mistake of believing his party actually adhered to the principles that it espoused. In an overpopulated world, nothing was noble about nursing back to health and saving the lives of those people who were not essential to the function of the state, which were maybe 90 percent of them.

The only medical personnel whom Falkirk hated more than nurses were physicians. The one who treated him was Dr. Nolan Burnside, a thirtysomething whiz kid who looked like a TV doctor and had the so-cool breezy manner and the knock-’em-dead smile of an actor who knew he was destined to be the number-one box-office star in a year or two. He supposedly injected a local anesthetic to block the nerves carrying the message of disaster from the wound to the brain, but the torment did not relent. In fact, as Burnside disinfected the torn flesh, stopped the bleeding, and sewed twenty-six stitches by hand, the pain increased, so Falkirk broke into a sweat that seemed as thick as hot gravy, cursing both the God he didn’t believe in and the Devil he knew to be real. Burnside, evidently a graduate of the Quackery School of Medicine at the University of Humbug, had the impudence, the brass, to subtly imply that the local anesthetic was effective and that the pain must be psychosomatic. This insolence earned him a death warrant, which would be served as soon as Falkirk obtained the key to everything and amassed the power that would make him untouchable. Oblivious of the truth that his days were numbered, Burnside joked with the nurses, who were all charmed by the bastard. He probably banged the prettiest of them, standing up in a supply closet, while his patients died in agony of sepsis.

The bullet passed entirely through Falkirk, tunneling the flesh, missing major arteries and veins and bones. Had it been an inch to the left, the results would have been devastating. A half inch the other way, the round would have done nothing worse than score the surface of his thigh, requiring no other attention than a bandage. The wound didn’t need a drain. Burnside applied the bandage and scheduled him for discharge the following day, but Falkirk refused to stay overnight. He wanted a prescription for a painkiller that would leave him clearheaded, a cane, and immediate release.

“As an NSA agent,” Dr. Burnside said, “you may have authority from coast to coast and border to border, but in here, Mr. Falkirk, I am in charge.”

Throughout the procedure in the ER cubicle, Vince Canker—who thought he had some psychic ability and that his mother, who’d died a week earlier, had recently been trying to reach him from the Other Side—stood in one corner. He was dressed in black for the Shadow Canyon operation, as was Falkirk, and he wore a sidearm in plain sight. With his flat, hard face and eyes the color of burnt butter, he was of such disturbing appearance that both Burnside and the various nurses had pretended that he wasn’t present, as if on eye contact his drilling stare could take a core sample of their souls.

Now Falkirk asked Canker to bring in Louis Wong from the corridor, where he was standing guard outside the cubicle. Louis’s father was Chinese, his mother Irish. He had the dreamy face of a Buddha shrine and the clear, green eyes of a Killarney choirboy. He was dressed in black as well, and with a sidearm; but neither the doctor nor the nurses would think that his stare could skewer their souls. Rather, he had the air of a sly man who would do you with a knife.

Louis brought with him a fresh pair of black pants that another agent had delivered to replace the torn and blood-soaked pair that Falkirk had been wearing. In the ICU cubicle, he closed the door and blocked it, while Vince Canker moved to the foot of the bed to stare more pointedly at Burnside.

The physician’s handsome face didn’t pale. His posture remained loose limbed and confident. Although the curve of his matinee-idol smile didn’t appear to change, it didn’t really qualify as a smile anymore.

“A bottle of painkillers, a double prescription,” Falkirk said. “And a cane. Now.”

Burnside was a proud man. “Even if I wanted to oblige, there are hospital protocols—”

“Fuck the protocols, Nolan.” Falkirk sat up on the edge of the bed. “I noticed you wear a wedding ring. What’s your wife’s name?”

Burnside hesitated to answer, and then said, “I don’t see what that has to do—”

“You don’t need to see what it has to do,” Falkirk interrupted. “I assure you, Nolan, if you don’t answer me, you’ll wish you had.”

Another hesitation. Then: “Cynthia.”

“Do you and Cynthia have children?”

“Two. We have two children.”

“What are their names and ages?”

“Jonathan is four. Rebecca is six.”

Falkirk nodded. “Sweet. A nice little family. Hostages to fortune. Very brave of you to have a family. A man alone has much less to lose.”

Burnside met Falkirk’s stare for a long moment. Then he glanced at Vince Canker and quickly away. “You’re not NSA agents.”

“Our ID is genuine, though our true employers operate from far deeper in the state than the National Security Agency. Do you want to test me, Nolan, and discover just how deep?”

Although the physician said, “This is outrageous,” his voice was marked more by fear than outrage, more by resignation than by fear.

“Think of me as a troll, Nolan. A troll who lives far down in the deepest of deep caverns. Trolls take whatever they want from your world, whatever treasures, whatever pretties, and no one ever follows them down into their caverns to retrieve what they’ve taken, because no one believes trolls exist.”

As if time must be flowing at a different rate in the cubicle than beyond it, Nolan Burnside seemed to have aged noticeably in but a few minutes.

“I’ll get the pills and the cane.”

“Call a nurse and order her to bring them,” Falkirk said. “I need you here to help me get into this clean pair of pants. You’ll put on my socks and shoes for me, too. And kneel down to tie the laces.”

75

Jeffy enjoyed mundane work like mowing the yard, cleaning the house, doing laundry, preparing meals, and polishing Bakelite radios to restore their luster. When engaged in tasks of that nature, he seemed to have two minds. One remained focused intently on the chore before him, and the other floated free to contemplate or to search for inspiration. His contemplation involved the purpose of his life, the meaning of the world, what he had done wrong, and what he might yet do right. The inspiration he sought always involved thinking of things to make Amity’s life more fun and interesting, to keep her spirits high and help her fulfill the potential she possessed in abundance. When Amity was very young, Jeffy’s free-floating mind wrote funny poems and stories about magical animals to entertain her. By the time she was five, he gave much thought to how best to homeschool her, which continued to occupy his mind year after year. He had daydreamed of teaching her to surf, and she had learned how to thrash the waves. Now they had the joy of the sea to share. Recently she’d been learning to sail. For him, work was pleasant because it was also a chance to dream, and when work was done, the day was theirs for living out those dreams.