Season Of Strangers Part 31

"Patrick! For G.o.d's sake-what's wrong?"

He jerked violently as another spasm shook him, his body slamming backward against the bricks. "They've started...the removal process. I didn't think it would begin...until sometime tomorrow."

Julie's heart constricted. They couldn't be taking him. Not now. Not yet. Dear G.o.d, don't let them take him now. He grunted and clamped his jaw, and Julie gripped his arm to help him steady himself.

"They're hurting you. Why are they hurting you?"

"They're...taking me...all the way out," he panted. "The other times, part of me remained in Patrick's body. No one's ever...been in this long. Apparently...Division is harder than Unification."

Julie clutched his shoulder, which was corded with tension and felt hard as steel. "Tell them you have to stay," she pleaded, frantic now, seizing on the chance she had suddenly glimpsed. "Tell them it hurts too much-you'll have to stay here. Tell them-"

He pressed a trembling finger against her lips to stop the words. "I have to go. You know that. They won't let me stay." A violent spasm shook him, doubling him over, his stomach knotting in agony. His legs buckled beneath him and he slowly collapsed to the cement.

"Patrick!" Julie knelt beside him, desperate now, knowing it was useless yet unwilling to let him go. "You can't go now. Now yet. Please...please don't leave."

A well-dressed couple stopped a few feet away, studying the stricken man with concern. "Somebody better call an ambulance," the husband said. "Looks like this guy is having a heart attack."

Several people stopped and turned, began to press forward. A heavyset woman peered through the circle of onlookers, jerked her cell phone out of her purse and quickly dialed 911. Through the window of the cafe, Julie saw someone pointing frantically toward the street and a waiter rushed off to make the same call.

Julie sat down on the sidewalk beside where Patrick lay, his body shaking all over. With trembling hands, she lifted his head into her lap and began to smooth back his hair. "I'll never forget you, Patrick. Never."

He found her hand, struggled to lift it, pressed it against his lips. "Goodbye, my love. Wherever I am, you'll always be with me."

"Patrick..." She bent her head over his, her tears falling freely now, a flood of wetness that ran down her cheeks. "I love you," she whispered. "Patrick, I love you so much."

But Patrick couldn't hear her. He couldn't hear the wail of the ambulance siren as it raced down Wilshire Boulevard in a futile attempt to reach him. He couldn't hear her heartbreaking sobs as she whispered his name.

Beneath her cold hands, his heart beat only faintly. A meager breath feathered past his lips.

"No..." Julie whispered, burying her face against his chest. "It's too soon. The day isn't over. Please don't take him yet."

But they didn't hear.

The ambulance attendants tore her away from him as they frantically worked over his chest, but as soon as he was loaded onto the stretcher, she reached out and took hold of his hand. In the back of the ambulance, they forced oxygen past his lips, used defibrillator paddles to try to get his heart beating again, but nothing they did would work.

They must have known there was no hope of reviving him for they let her hold on to his hand all the way to the hospital. All the way there, she watched the flat white line of the heart monitor, listened to the dull beep of defeat. The siren screamed as she bent over his body and pressed a final soft kiss on his lips. Then she sank down in the chair beside his lifeless body and sobbed against his chest, a river of tears soaking through the front of his shirt.

Val stood in the transporter room aboard the Ansor, dizzy and disoriented, his body still shaking all over. Grief weighed him down like a shroud and his usually crystal-clear mind refused to work. Along with his overwhelming sadness, he couldn't seem to see. He closed his eyes and tried to fight the numbness, the ache that throbbed like a wound in his chest. He tried to block the pain that he had brought with him, the knifing sorrow of losing Julie.

His throat ached. He felt a gauzy robe draped around him, blinked and at last he could see. All ten members of the High Council stood in the chamber, forming a semicircle around him. They had come to observe the final stages of the first successful Unification that had lasted such a long length of time.

"Commander?" Calas Panidyne moved closer. "Commander Zarkazian, are you all right?"

He tried to speak, but the words lodged in his throat. He wasn't all right. He felt torn apart and it wasn't from the physical battering he had taken.

"Commander?" One of the ministers walked toward him, her robes floating softly out behind her. He couldn't remember her name. "What has happened to you, Commander?" She studied his features, reached out and ran her fingers over his face. They came away covered with wetness.

"That cannot be what it looks like." He heard the note of awe in a second minister's voice. "It simply cannot be."

"He's...crying." A member of the group came closer. "There are pictures in the archives that show what it looked like." But Val knew it couldn't be true. Torillians hadn't cried for ten thousand years.

"That's not possible," Panidyne argued. "Tear ducts are nothing but useless glands. They evolved out of use eons ago."

Val reached up and touched his face, felt the astonishing wetness. He thought of Julie and wanted to cry all over again.

The female minister gently touched his shoulder. "Something terrible has happened to him, can't you see? What is it, Commander? Can you tell us what happened?"

"Yes, Commander, please." Another minister pressed forward, third council, one of the more aggressive members of the group. "When you were here before, we saw that you were different, that your time on Earth had changed you. Can you explain what has occurred?"

He wiped away the last few drops of wetness, thinking of Julie, of the grief still pulsing through him. Even as Patrick, he had never cried.

He looked at them with a face full of sorrow. "As you said, my time on Earth changed me. Part of me is human now. I believe it always will be."

Silence fell over the group.

The female minister was the first to speak. "And what you are feeling...is that what made you cry?"

He nodded.

"What do you call such a feeling?"

"The emotion is known as grief. It comes from excessive sadness."

"And this sadness arises because you had to leave?"

"Yes."

"You aren't saying you wished to remain?" Panidyne seemed incredulous. "You're a respected, well-known scientist on Toril. Surely you wish to return to the life you led before."

He only shook his head. It was useless and yet he could not stop himself from speaking the truth. "Toril is no longer my home. Another place calls out to me as no place ever has. Earth is where I wish to live. I believe I will die on Toril."

Soft murmurs rolled through the small group of observers. There was not the slightest chance they would let him remain, yet at the look on the ministers' faces, a kernel of hope took root in his chest. He was afraid to let it grow, knew that it would only mean more pain.

Hope and fear. Emotions that only made him realize how human he had become.

They talked for a moment more, then Panidyne turned in his direction. "If we were to grant your wish and allow you to remain, you would lose your Torillian strengths. Your lifetime would be no longer than a human's. Your body would be susceptible to the same diseases, the same failings. Your children would merely be human."

As Patrick he might have smiled. "I am aware of that."

"And yet you wish to remain?"

"Above all things."

Panidyne turned back to the members of the council. For long moments they discussed the pros and cons of such a move. "Perhaps, in some way," Panidyne suggested, "we might later benefit from having one of our own on Earth."

One or two disagreed but only briefly. The sight of the unexpected tears on his face seemed to be forever burned into their minds.

They spoke quietly among themselves, then Panidyne ended the discussion. "So then we are agreed?" He returned the look each minister gave him. When his attention returned to Val, there was an unreadable expression on his face.

"Our decision is to let you remain on Earth, Commander. Perhaps it is an unwise choice, but under the circ.u.mstances, all of us have agreed. However, if we are to rejoin you with the human, we must do so quickly. There is little time left to spare."

Hope and joy crashed through him in thundering waves. He was almost afraid to believe it. The female minister urged him forward, toward the transporter he had arrived in, and the others fell in behind. The joy in him grew. He was going back to Earth. Returning to Julie. Going back where he belonged.

Patrick was going home.

Twenty-Three.

The wail of the siren echoed off the buildings along the Boulevard as the ambulance wound its way toward Cedar Sinai Hospital. The traffic had been heavy, slowing the vehicle nearly to a halt, making the long journey seem to take forever. Julie heard the siren only vaguely. Sitting next to the gurney on which Patrick lay, her cheek pressed to his chest, her fingers clutching his hand, the world was a vague, distant blur. Her mind was gratefully numb, dull with grief and loss.

In a corner of the ambulance, one of the attendants stared out the window, giving her privacy for her sorrow. The ambulance attendants had exhausted every avenue in an effort to restore Patrick's heartbeat. Now he lay quietly on the gurney, each of them resigned to failure.

Julie almost felt sorry for them. It was hardly their fault Patrick couldn't be saved. In truth, he had died long ago.

Against her cheek, his skin felt cool, no longer warm and enticing. Still, she didn't move away. Soon he would be gone from her forever.

They had almost reached the emergency entrance to the hospital when a sharp beep sounded and Julie lifted her head. Another beep cut into the silence, then another. Several more echoed loudly through the speakers of the heart monitor.

"What the h.e.l.l?" The attendant jerked to his feet, started toward the machine, whose wires were still attached to Patrick's chest.

"What...what is it?" Julie tried to make sense of what was happening, why the young attendant was madly shouldering her out of the way, but her mind was still too numb to comprehend.

"Get the paddles! His heart is trying to start up again."

"No way," said the second attendant. "Not after all this time."

The first attendant grabbed the paddles of the defibrillator. "Stranger things have happened." He was ready to go into action but his gaze stayed fixed on the heart monitor, which had set up a sharp rapid series of pulses, then begun an even throbbing that made a constant, high-low pattern across the screen.

"What's happening?" Julie asked, staring down at Patrick.

"His heart has started beating on its own." The attendant grabbed the oxygen mask dangling near the side of the gurney. Julie gasped as Patrick's lungs sucked in a great breath of air even before the mask had time to reach him.

"Holy s.h.i.t!" The attendant's eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets. "He's started breathing!"

"H-he's breathing? H-he's alive?" It was impossible. He couldn't be alive. Val Zarkazian was gone.

Which meant Patrick Donovan should be dead.

The attendant checked Patrick's pulse, found it growing stronger every second. "I've never seen anything like it. We tried everything we knew and we couldn't bring him back."

Julie said nothing. She didn't understand what was happening and suddenly she was afraid. Patrick was breathing again. It looked as though he was going to live. But Val had sworn he wouldn't be returning. What if the man on the gurney wasn't Patrick. What if it was somebody else? Nothing seemed impossible anymore.

She waited tensely as the ambulance attendant worked over his patient, inserting a fresh IV, making sure the patient's condition was stable. All the while Julie sat in the shadows, afraid to believe yet unable to stop the aching hope that was building inside her chest.

Dear G.o.d, if all of us really are your children, won't you please help this one?

Perhaps He heard her, because a few minutes later, Patrick's eyes cracked open, an intense cerulean blue. For a moment he seemed uncertain where he was, and Julie held her breath, praying a miracle had happened-that it wasn't some horrible intergalactic joke.

Let it be him. Oh, dear G.o.d, please let it be him.

His gaze sought hers, caught and held. The harshness eased from his features and a corner of his mouth curved up. She grabbed onto his hand. He lifted it a bit shakily and pressed her fingers against his lips.

"I'm just Patrick now," he said, his voice deep and rough. "And I'm eleven million dollars in debt. Will you marry me?"

Tears burned her eyes. Julie's heart crumbled inside her chest. It was Patrick. Her Patrick. No man had ever looked at her the way he did. She tried for a smile but her lips trembled instead. She finally forced the answer past the thick lump in her throat.

"Of course, I'll marry you. How could a woman say no to a man who has crossed a galaxy to be with her?"

His fingers tightened around her hand. "I love you," he whispered as the ambulance rolled into the emergency entrance of the hospital. Then the doors flew open and a dozen white-uniformed medical personnel swooped into the rear of the ambulance.

He was grinning when they wheeled him away.

Twenty-Four.

Tony Sandini stood next to Vince McPherson in the locker room of the Chicago Health and Fitness Club. Vince had been playing a little racquetball while Tony indulged himself in a long relaxing ma.s.sage. They had just finished a nice hot shower and were getting ready to go into the snack shop for something to eat.

"So what's the word on the Brookhaven deal?" Vince dried the back of his neck, then began to work on his curly dark brown hair. He was in good shape for a man in his late forties. He couldn't imagine letting himself run to fat like his friend Tony did. "That Bonham chick with the pension fund give the okay yet on the Westwind trust deed sale?"

Sandini grunted. "As a matter of fact that was one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. The pension fund turned down the purchase. We got to find somebody else or give up and try somethin' different."

"Something different like what? Wringing the money out of that stupid b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Donovan? If you recall, that's what I wanted to do in the first place."

Tony dragged the towel back and forth across his beefy shoulders, shaking the thick slab of fat on his belly. "If this Westwind scam woulda' worked, we'd of all made a pot load of dough. The way things are going, it looks like we shoulda' done it your way."

"You think Donovan went against us with the pension fund?"

"I don't know, but I gotta hunch he might have."

Vincent pulled on his shirt, a nice white cotton knit, and began to fasten the b.u.t.tons at the throat. "I hear the p.r.i.c.k's back in the hospital. Another heart attack or something."

"From what I heard, he's off the drugs and booze. Pretty-boy Donovan's probably screwin' himself to death."

McPherson chuckled. "I hear Woody Nicholson's out on the Coast. Why don't we send him over to see Donovan, deliver a little get well card, if you know what I mean? Tell him to let Donovan know, in no uncertain terms, he's got ten days to come up with the money he owes us, or he isn't gonna like what happens."