He said to Berger, “Check out the ledge, doctor. I have my own guardian angels.”
“Well. Hawks?”
“Peregrine falcons. Usually they nest higher. I don’t know why they picked me to live with.”
Berger glanced at the birds then turned away from the window, let the curtain fall back. The aviary didn’t interest him. He wasn’t a large man but he looked fit, a runner, Rhyme guessed. He seemed to be in his late forties but the black hair didn’t have a trace of gray in it and he was as good-looking as any news anchor. “That’s quite a bed.”
“You like it?”
The bed was a Clinitron, a huge rectangular slab. It was an air-fluidized support bed and contained nearly a ton of silicone-coated glass beads. Pressurized air flowed through the beads, which supported Rhyme’s body. If he had been able to feel, it would have felt as if he was floating.
Berger was sipping the coffee that Rhyme had ordered Thom to fetch and that the young man had brought, rolling his eyes, whispering, “Aren’t we suddenly social?” before retreating.
The doctor asked Rhyme, “You were a policeman, you were telling me.”
“Yes. I was head of forensics for the NYPD.”
“Were you shot?”
“Nope. Searching a crime scene. Some workmen’d found a body at a subway-stop construction site. It was a young patrolman who’d disappeared six months before – we had a serial killer shooting cops. I got a request to work the case personally and when I was searching it a beam collapsed. I was buried for about four hours.”
“Someone was actually going around murdering policemen?”
“Killed three and wounded another one. The perp was a cop himself. Dan Shepherd. A sergeant working Patrol.”
Berger glanced at the pink scar on Rhyme’s neck. The telltale insignia of quadriplegia – the entrance wound for the ventilator tube that remains embedded in the throat for months after the accident. Sometimes for years, sometimes forever. But Rhyme had – thanks to his own mulish nature and his therapists’ herculean efforts – weaned himself off the ventilator. He now had a pair of lungs on him that he bet could keep him underwater for five minutes.
“So, a cervical trauma.”
“C4.”
“Ah, yes.”
C4 is the demilitarized zone of spinal cord injuries. An SCI above the fourth cervical vertebra might very well have killed him. Below C4 he would have regained some use of his arms and hands, if not his legs. But trauma to the infamous fourth kept him alive though virtually a total quadriplegic. He’d lost the use of his legs and arms. His abdominal and intercostal muscles were mostly gone and he was breathing primarily from his diaphragm. He could move his head and neck, his shoulders slightly. The only fluke was that the crushing oak beam had spared a single, minuscule strand of motor neuron. Which allowed him to move his left ring finger.
Rhyme spared the doctor the soap opera of the year following the accident. The month of skull traction: tongs gripping holes drilled into his head and pulling his spine straight. Twelve weeks of the halo device – the plastic bib and steel scaffolding around his head to keep the neck immobile. To keep his lungs pumping, a large ventilator for a year then a phrenic nerve stimulator. The catheters. The surgery. The paralytic ileus, the stress ulcers, hypotension and bradycardia, bedsores turning into decubitus ulcers, contractures as the muscle tissue began to shrink and threatened to steal away the precious mobility of his finger, the infuriating phantom pain – burns and aches in extremities that could feel no sensation.
He did, however, tell Berger about the latest wrinkle. “Autonomic dysreflexia.”
The problem had been occurring more often recently. Pounding heartbeat, off-the-charts blood pressure, raging headaches. It could be brought on by something as simple as constipation. He explained that nothing could be done to prevent it except avoiding stress and physical constriction.
Rhyme’s SCI specialist, Dr. Peter Taylor, had become concerned with the frequency of the attacks. The last one – a month ago – was so severe that Taylor ’d given Thom instructions in how to treat the condition without waiting for medical help and insisted that the aide program the doctor’s number into the phone’s speed dialer. Taylor had warned that a severe enough bout could lead to a heart attack or stroke.
Berger took in the facts with some sympathy then said, “Before I got into my present line I specialized in geriatric orthopedics. Mostly hip and joint replacements. I don’t know much neurology. What about chances for recovery?”
“None, the condition’s permanent,” Rhyme said, perhaps a little too quickly. He added, “You understand my problem, don’t you, doctor?”
“I think so. But I’d like to hear it in your words.”
Shaking his head to clear a renegade strand of hair, Rhyme said, “Everyone has the right to kill himself.”
Berger said, “I think I’d disagree with that. In most societies you may have the power but not the right. There’s a difference.”
Rhyme exhaled a bitter laugh. “I’m not much of a philosopher. But I don’t even have the power. That’s why I need you.”
Lincoln Rhyme had asked four doctors to kill him. They’d all refused. He’d said, okay, he’d do it himself and simply stopped eating. But the process of wasting himself to death became pure torture. It left him violently stomach-sick and racked with unbearable headaches. He couldn’t sleep. So he’d given up on that and, during the course of a hugely awkward conversation, asked Thom to kill him. The young man had grown tearful – the only time he’d shown that much emotion – and said he wished he could. He’d sit by and watch Rhyme die, he’d refuse to revive him. But he wouldn’t actually kill him.
Then, a miracle. If you could call it that.
After The Scenes of the Crime had come out, reporters had appeared to interview him. One article – in The New York Times – contained this stark quotation from author Rhyme:
“No, I’m not planning any more books. The fact is, my next big project is killing myself. It’s quite a challenge. I’ve been looking for someone to help me for the past six months.”
That screeching-stop line got the attention of the NYPD counseling service and several people from Rhyme’s past, most notably Blaine (who told him he was nuts to consider it, he had to quit thinking only about himself – just like when they’d been together – and, now that she was here, she thought she should mention that she was remarrying).
The quotation also caught the attention of William Berger, who’d called unexpectedly one night from Seattle. After a few moments of pleasant conversation Berger explained that he’d read the article about Rhyme. Then a hollow pause and he’d asked, “Ever hear of the Lethe Society?”
Rhyme had. It was a pro-euthanasia group he’d been trying to track down for months. It was far more aggressive than Safe Passage or the Hemlock Society. “Our volunteers are wanted for questioning in dozens of assisted suicides throughout the country,” Berger explained. “We have to keep a low profile.”
He said he wanted to follow up on Rhyme’s request. Berger refused to act quickly and they’d had several conversations over the past seven or eight months. Today was their first meeting.
“There’s no way you can pass, by yourself?”
Pass…
“Short of Gene Harrod’s approach, no. And even that’s a little iffy.”
Harrod was young man in Boston, a quad, who decided he wanted to kill himself. Unable to find anyone to help him he finally committed suicide the only way he was able to. With the little control he had he set a fire in his apartment and when it was blazing drove his wheelchair into it, setting himself aflame. He died of third-degree burns.