So why were my hands shaking? Why was my mouth so dry? Why was my head aching again, and from more than just Daggett’s elbow? I wished I had gelcaps. I tried stroking Jenn’s hair but with gloved hands there was too much static for it to be reassuring. For either of us. I went back to holding her shoulder.
“Hello?”
We all turned to see Jim Reimer in the chapel entrance, his mask lowered, an unperturbed look on his face.
“He’ll be all right,” Reimer said. “The bullet tore a furrow up the back of his scalp but caused no grievous damage.”
“A doctor who speaks English,” Ryan said.
“They teach that in Boston,” Reimer said. “We stitched the wound closed and gave him something for the pain and some antibiotics he needs to take until they’re gone. You may need to repeat that to him when he’s a little less groggy.”
We trooped out of the chapel and back to the makeshift surgery. Frank was lying on the table, his head bandaged, staring dully at the ceiling.
“You saved us,” I said to him.
He turned his eyes to me, struggling to bring me into focus. “Wasn’t trying to,” he said. “I just wanted one of you to get him.”
“We did.”
“Then I’m thanking you.”
“We all do,” Stayner said. “He put us through a nightmare. It went against everything we believe in.”
“So does your fee,” I said.
“I don’t know what you mean. I told you I give every cent of his money away.”
“I’m talking about the congressman’s money. The rabbi was getting a quarter-million,” I said. “I can’t believe you’d take less.”
His face coloured a moment, then he put his shoulders back and assumed the posture of the great surgeon who must never be questioned or second-guessed. “This is not the time for this. Everyone,” he said to his people, “start packing up.”
“No,” Marc McConnell said. He was behind me, the last one to have come into the room. And he was pointing his gun at Stayner.
“What are you doing, Marc?” Stayner asked.
“Be quiet. I want all of you behind the table. Now!”
There was no point in any of us drawing on him. In the crowded room, a crossfire would be deadly. Slowly we moved to the far side of the table where Frank lay.
“Get him off the table,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“We came here tonight to save my wife. And that’s what we’re going to do.”
“Marc,” Lesley said. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about her,” McConnell said, pointing the gun at Jenn. “Daggett was going to kill her, wasn’t he? He was going to take all her organs and sell them. Right?” He kept the gun trained on Jenn and looked at me. “Right?”
“Right.”
“I don’t want to kill her,” he said. “And I don’t want all her organs. Just the one. One kidney. She can live with one. Without it, Lesley is going to die.”
“You can’t do this,” Lesley said.
“Yes I can.” He swung the gun back at me and said, “Get him off the table or I’ll shoot your friend, I swear.”
“You do that, you’re dead,” Ryan said. “Before you get a second shot off.”
“I don’t care. If Lesley dies, I might as well too.”
“Marc, please,” his wife said. “This isn’t the way.”
“What is? To keep waiting for a phone call that never comes? To watch you get thinner and paler and weaker? Tired all the time, thirsty all the time. You’re still young, Les, you don’t deserve this.”
“No one does,” she said. “But what does that change?”
“Look at her,” he said, pointing at Jenn. “She’s probably never been sick a day in her life. From the time I first saw you, Les, first fell in love with you, you were battling. You were under ninety pounds before your lung transplant, remember?”
“Of course I do.”
“Lugging around that oxygen tank wherever we went. And then you got healthy again and you were the most beautiful woman in the world, and you still are, but look at you, honey, you’re dying again. Day by day, inch by inch, you’re slipping away from me and I can’t watch it happen again.”
“Put the gun down,” she said. “Before you hurt someone.”
“I can’t …”
“Put it down. We’ll find another way.”
“No.”
“Marc!” Her voice got harsher. “Put it down now.” Her hand reached out and snatched a scalpel from a tray covered in green cloth. She put its tip to the vein in her wrist and said, “I’ll cut myself open if you don’t.”
His eyes, already tearing, widened in disbelief. “No.”
“I’ll do it, Marc. I’d rather die right now than go slowly without you. With you locked up in jail for this.”
She pressed the scalpel harder. The skin around the tip went white as pearl. “Oh, God,” McConnell said, and his gun hand came down. Ryan stepped forward and took it from him.
I looked at Jenn, expecting to see relief, but she was looking at Lesley McConnell, her own eyes flooded. She said, “I’ll do it.”
At least three people in the room, me included, said, “What!”
“I want to do it,” she said.
I said, “Jenn, you can’t.”
“He’s right,” she said. “I’m a big strong farm girl from southern Ontario. Never been sick a day in my life. I’ve always taken it for granted and now I don’t.”
“You can’t decide this on the spot.”
“I was as good as dead an hour ago.”
“Ms.-God, I don’t even know your name,” Lesley said.
“Jenn Raudsepp.”
“Well, Ms. Raudsepp. Jenn. It’s an incredible thing for you to say, especially after what you’ve been through. But you can’t make a decision like this on the spur of the moment.”
“Why not?”
“You’ve had no time to think-”
“If I do I might change my mind.”
“Which is why you should.”
“If I may interrupt this noble gesture for a moment,” Stayner said. “What you’re contemplating is impossible anyway. We don’t know a thing about tissue or antigen matches. And this room is beyond non-sterile now. We’d be risking both of your lives.”
“Then I’ll come back to Boston,” Jenn said.
“You shouldn’t have to,” he said. “George Riklitis has already been found to be a perfect match for Mrs. McConnell, and has already agreed to be her donor. Only now we’ll arrange for it to be done at the hospital, Marc, totally above board, within the week. Your wife will get her kidney, I promise you. And the very best of aftercare. Beyond that, my advice as her doctor is to allow us all to pack up and get the fuck out of here.”
The McConnells left first; they had the most to lose if the place was raided. The congressman wouldn’t look at me or shake my hand, wouldn’t even look at Jenn, but Lesley threw her thin arms around Jenn and held her and whispered her thanks more than once before going off to change her clothes. I told McConnell to wipe down everything he and his wife might have touched.
Stayner left next, leaving his team to clean up without him. The rest of them got to work packing up their equipment. Ryan and I used alcohol wipes on all the surfaces of the locker room where Frank and the team members had changed.
When we were done, Ryan asked Jenn to stay with Frank and motioned me out into the hall. “How many are still alive?”
“Two,” I said. “The guy on the loading dock, Denny-”
“Don’t tell me his name.”
“And the one in the trunk.”
“We can’t leave them to talk to the cops.”
“They don’t strike me as big talkers.”
“With all these bodies, they’ll talk. The one with the leg, he knows your name, where you’re from. And I got a problem with that, since it could lead back to me. And I am not going to put my family at risk so two of Daggett’s fuckheads can come after them.”
“The guy on the dock only saw me with a mask on. And he never saw you.”
“Bet he still knows your name. Look, I did everything you asked, Jonah. I dropped everything and came down to help you. I stood with you. I fought with you to get Jenn back. I killed again. And again.” He pushed past me and went out toward the loading dock. I wouldn’t hear the silenced weapon from where I stood. But I knew the spitting sound would echo in my mind long after it died out.