The door was partially closed. Rather than push it open, he squeezed inside. A woman in white was bent over Danny’s head doing something to the boy’s mouth. Sweeney didn’t want to startle her but she seemed unaware of his presence. Finally, he cleared his throat.
She didn’t respond. Didn’t turn or flinch.
He said, “Excuse me?”
In a low voice, she said, “You must be the father.”
“I’m sorry to bother you—” he began and she cut him off.
“You’re not bothering me,” she said. “I’ll be with you in just a second.”
He took it, for some reason, as a request to wait outside. He stepped back into the hall and then felt stupid when he heard her say, “Where’d you go?”
He stepped back inside. She was standing now, stroking Danny’s forehead. And she was stunning. Tall and lean, she gave off an immediate impression of physical strength and, just beneath that, even in the archaic nurse’s whites, a kind of dark carnality. Her hair was black and long, brushed back over her head, barely tamed and at odds, somehow, with the uniform. Her eyes were a brown or a blue that was so deep they appeared black. But it was her cheeks that dominated the face — high and protruding and just short of jeopardizing her beauty. Sweeney noticed she had what may have been the longest fingers he had ever seen, and they were holding what looked like a miniature bottle of catsup in her free hand. He gestured to the bottle and said, “What have you got there?”
She held the bottle out in the air. He stepped forward, grabbed it, looked at the label, and said, “What the hell is this?”
“Just what it says. Tabasco.”
Sweeney looked up at her and waited for the explanation. There was a clipboard resting on Danny’s stomach and the woman picked it up and hugged it.
“What were you doing with this?” Sweeney asked.
“I was swabbing a half teaspoon onto your son’s tongue.”
He felt anger coming on now and, right behind it, the fear that he’d lose control.
“And who told you to do this?”
“Your new best friend,” she said.
He looked down at Danny and then back at the nurse.
“Alice,” she said. “The amazing Dr. Peck.”
He stood there trying simultaneously to process the words and calm himself.
He said, “Who the hell are you?”
She came to him and took the Tabasco from his hand. He surrendered it and she shifted the clipboard under one arm, took Sweeney by the elbow, and walked him into the hall. The light was better and he got his first close look at her.
“I’m Danny’s nurse,” she said, releasing his arm and extending her hand. “Nadia Rey.”
He shook and forgot to introduce himself.
“Is this a standard thing? Putting Tabasco on a patient’s tongue?”
She nodded. “In some cases.”
He tried to think, tried to gauge how upset he should be.
“You don’t think that’s intrusive?”
Nurse Rey brought her own tongue out and wet her top lip before she said, “Does Danny like spicy foods?”
It caught him off guard, her referring to his son as if he existed in the waking world. Before he could reply, she said, “There’s no wrong answer, Sweeney. If he did, then we’re rousing a favorable memory. And if he didn’t, then the possibility for response is even stronger.”
She’d called him Sweeney. Not Mr. Sweeney. As if they’d already met.
He said, “And was there any response?”
“He just arrived here today,” she said. “It’s too early to start looking for signs.”
“I’m aware of that,” he said.
She looked down the corridor beyond him but she said, “Did you get lonely down in the vault?”
He followed her gaze but the hall was empty. He turned back to find she was staring at him. “It’s a little slow,” he said.
“There’s really no need for a pharmacist,” she said. “It’s just a state requirement for licensing.”
He wondered if he should take offense at the comment. But he was glad to have someone to talk to and he wanted to prolong the conversation.
He changed his voice and said, “So you met Danny?”
She smiled for the first time. “Danny and I are going to be good friends,” she said and there was nothing patronizing or phony about it. He was about to ask her if he could buy her a coffee, but she looked at her watch and said, “Are you looking for the game? Did Ernesto fill you in?”
He didn’t know what to say.
“Look,” she said, “it’s not like I approve. I’m down here doing my rounds.”
He nodded and said, “I can see that. I’m not accusing you of anything.”
“It doesn’t make any difference to me,” she said, “if you want to play or you want to talk to them about it. But whatever you do, if you want some advice, handle it yourself. You don’t want to bring either Peck in on this. You just got your son settled in here.”
“Who said anything about Peck?”
“They’re up in 306,” she said.
“Thanks,” Sweeney said. “I’ll go talk to them.”
“Do whatever you want,” she said. “I’ve got to get back to work.” Then she turned and started toward another room and he heard her mutter to herself, “Fucking Ernesto.”
8
In its day, Harmony Prosthetics had provided something resembling wholeness to generations of the maimed and the amputated around the globe. At one time, it was the second largest replacement limb, bone, socket, and eyeball manufacturer in the world, shipping “artificial anatomicals,” as the catalogs called them, to every industrial sector on the planet. Founded by the Hanger family in the wake of the Civil War, the company prospered for a century, bingeing on government contracts with every martial conflict, and reinvesting in R & D during the periods of peace. But markets and technologies tend to change and those that can’t adapt die ugly deaths. And in the end, so it was with Harmony, which had succumbed more than a decade earlier to a combination of blows from both its Asian rivals and the miracles of microsurgery.
All that was left of this proud enterprise was the factory on Grenada, in the heart of Bangkok Park, a classic red brick mill, six stories tall and a full block wide. It had once employed two shifts of three hundred men each, and its smokestacks loomed over all of Bangkok like crosses on the road to Rome, spewing the plumed black smudge of rubber and plastic by-product seven days each week. Since then, most of the smokestacks had half fallen, leaving battered towers crumbling lazily beneath Quinsigamond’s toxic rains. And the mill beneath the stacks was a mausoleum of fiberglass hands and silicon palates, housing the typical urban scavengers — rats, pigeons, cockroaches, and, of late, a pack of nomadic bikers known as the Abominations.
Run by Buzz Cote, a burly veteran of the crank wars, the Abominations were classic renegades. Unaffiliated and proud of it, they swooped into towns like a plague, announcing their presence but never their agenda. Coming to Quinsigamond out of Phoenix, they found their way to the Harmony as if it were the ancestral home. They installed themselves in the mill and put their bikes on display in the gravel lot next door, as if taunting the local gangs, daring an offensive.
It had been six months since Buzz and his creatures arrived but, so far, no one had challenged them. Which was, to Buzz, a mixed blessing. Tranquillity begat productivity, but it tended to make the boys edgy. And being in one place for too long made them downright pissy. That’s when they started to fight amongst themselves. With any luck they’d be pulling out of the city in another week or two but Buzz knew, from experience, you don’t rely on luck. So tonight, he was sending the boys out on a run, to let them gorge on a little speed, maybe find a roadhouse where they could kick some ass and steal some poon.