The Woman in the Fifth (44 page)

'It doesn't matter.'

'It
will
matter to you.'

'Torture me, ruin me some more, even take my life . . .'

'Harry, you don't know what you're saying.'

'I know exactly—'

But I couldn't finish that sentence, as I suddenly doubled over, coughing wildly. Phlegm filled my mouth and, for a few moments, I felt as if I was drowning. Margit stood up and guided me into the toilet where she held me as I coughed up black gunk into the sink. Then she led me into her kitchen area and opened a cabinet and handed me a canister of oxygen. Check that: the exact same make of oxygen which had been given me in hospital. I took it from her with relief and pried off the cap and clasped the mouthpiece in my teeth and took two deep blasts of the oxygen. It helped. After a third blast, my breathing eased.

'Let me guess,' I said. 'You got the canister at the hospital where I was recovering from your pyrotechnics?'

'Perhaps . . .'

I stood up, tucking the canister under my arm.

'You should leave that here for the next time,' Margit said.

'There's not going to be a next time.'

'Yes, there will.'

'Don't count on it.'

'You'll be here – because you'll have to be here. But Harry – think carefully before you decide to terminate your minor obligations—'

'
Obligations?
I'm not indebted to you for anything.'

'You called out for me when you were about to die . . . and then you didn't die.'

'You are not my savior, and you are not seeing me again.'

'Don't make me force you back here.'

'Do whatever you want to do,' I said. And I left.

Half an hour later I was back in the hotel, curled up on the bed, a blanket over me, the plastic wastebasket from the bathroom near me in case I had another phlegm attack. But I now expected to have the roof of my room collapse on me, or to be attacked by a platoon of poisonous bedbugs, or to start spitting up internal organs (surely she couldn't orchestrate something so invasive). I touched my neck and felt the still-moist wound she had made with her teeth. '
You've just fucked a dead woman who made you bleed
.' I covered my head with a pillow.
This can't be happening.
I also thought of a lifetime of afternoon liaisons stretching out in front of me – all in service of some surreal notion that I had a permanent guardian angel lurking in my corner, as long as I screwed her twice a week.
You have no proof.
How she taunted me with that phrase. But my anguished attempts at disbelief were quickly superseded by a realization that had taken hold of me in hospital and had only been reinforced by my encounter with Margit that afternoon:
This was all very real.
And I did take seriously her threats to bring further harm to me if I didn't meet my 'obligations' to her. But I didn't care anymore. Let her take my life. It meant so little to me now.

I holed up in the room until one the following afternoon, finally venturing out for something to eat. I stopped in an Internet café. There was only one email in my inbox: a long missive from Doug, telling me the details of Robson's suicide. He also said that Susan had gone to ground. She had been officially dismissed from the college, and was also now under FBI investigation to see if she was, in any way, involved in Robson's extracurricular 'business'.

I did call her yesterday and she sounded rough. Word has it that she has been suffering from appalling depression – who can blame her – and that Megan is understandably traumatized by what has happened. If you could get back here for a few days, I think it might do Megan some good. If you broach this idea with Susan, I sense she will respond positively to it.

After reading this, I used a search engine to find all the up-to-date press reports on Robson's suicide. There were plenty of them. Susan's dismissal from the college had also merited a few paragraphs in the news reports, crossreferenced with the scandal which had forced me out of my job. That was the thing about a media feeding frenzy – it engulfed everybody, and I could only begin to imagine the grief that my poor innocent daughter was taking at school for her parents' crimes and misdemeanors.

Switching back to my Internet server, I wrote Susan:

I am genuinely sorry to hear of your terrible problems. I just want you to know that I am here to help. As I mentioned in our last phone call, I would also very much like to reestablish contact with Megan, and would be most happy to come back and see her, if she is willing to see me. If you want to contact me by phone . . .

And I supplied the number for the hotel and for my room there.

I checked my email the following morning and night. No reply. Otherwise I spent most of the day in my room, reading and sleeping and having the occasional bout of hack coughing. The following day there was also no email from Susan. I went to the movies – Hitchcock's last film,
Family Plot
. I managed a fifteen-minute walk by the Seine. At 5 p.m. I returned to the hotel, missing my rendezvous with Margit.

I waited for the sky to fall in. It happened late the following night. The phone in my room rang just before midnight. It was Susan. She could barely talk.

'Megan was knocked down by a car on her way to school today. A hit-and-run driver. She's still unconscious with a broken leg and a fractured pelvis and they don't know if she's suffered any brain damage, but the fact that she doesn't respond to . . .'

She started weeping uncontrollably. She managed to get out a few more words, saying that she'd been taken by ambulance that afternoon to University Hospital in Cleveland where they had the best neurology department in the state. 'I'm calling from there right now,' she said. 'It doesn't look good. It doesn't . . .'

She broke off, unable to speak anymore. I told her I'd get the first plane out tomorrow morning. Then I hung up and staggered into the bathroom and fell down in front of the toilet and got violently ill. When I could heave no longer, I started to cry.

'
Don't make me force you back here.
'

'
Do whatever you want to do.
'

And she had done just that.

I didn't sleep. I wandered the streets all night. I found a twenty-four-hour Internet café near Les Halles and went online and discovered there was a 9 a.m. flight to Chicago that morning, with an onward connection to Cleveland at 2 p.m. local time. Had I been in possession of a functional credit card I would have booked the flights on the spot. Instead I returned to the hotel and asked the night man to book me a taxi leaving for the airport at 5 a.m. The guy on the desk – his name was Tadeuz, he was Polish – was fantastically kind when I told him why I had to rush back to the States. He said he would hold my room for me at no charge ('It's a quiet time for us'), and was a little surprised when I said I would definitely be back in Paris within forty-eight hours.

'But do not worry, sir. If we need the room we can always pack up your things and store them. If your daughter's condition hasn't improved . . .'

My daughter's condition will only improve if I present myself at 13 rue Linné at 5 p.m. in two days' time.

I was at the airport by six. I paid cash for a round-trip ticket to Cleveland via Chicago, returning to Paris that evening. I phoned Susan on her cellphone from a kiosk inside the departure lounge. It was just after one in the morning in Ohio. She sounded exhausted and stressed beyond the limits of endurance. 'She's still unconscious,' she said, her voice barely a whisper. 'The MRI has shown some bruising to the brain, but the neurologist still cannot determine how damaged it is. The fact that she's not responded to any stimuli is, he admitted, very worrying. The next twenty-four of hours will be critical.'

'I'll be there by two p.m. your time. Meanwhile, try to get some sleep.'

'I don't want to sleep. I just want my daughter back.'

I felt sick. And helpless. And crazed. Did Margit put Megan in the way of the car that hit her? Susan had yet to tell me the details of the accident . . . but in my more rational moments, I couldn't help but think that Margit had set this up as a near-facsimile of the accident that had killed her daughter and husband. But say she hadn't set it up? Say it was all just terrible happenstance? What then? And what if Megan died? '
You never get over the loss of a child. Never.
'

When the plane took off and I felt my diaphragm starting to contract, I could again hear the pulmonary specialist tell me I'd be risking death by flying. Ten minutes later, as we reached cruising altitude, I felt a crushing pain in my chest. The large woman seated next to me said to her friend, 'Oh my God, he's having a coronary!' and rang for a hostess. Two of them arrived, looking very concerned.

'Are you all right, sir?'

I explained it was just a little breathlessness after a lung injury ('You were actually caught in a fire!' one of them said), and asked them if they had any oxygen. One of them disappeared, returning moments later with a canister. I gripped the mouthpiece between my lips and blasted myself three times.
Presto.
The pain dissipated, but the anguished thought that Megan might die continued to clobber me.

'I think we might be able to find you somewhere more comfortable for the remainder of the flight,' one of the hostesses said.

I was escorted to the rarefied confines of Business Class and a seat that turned into a bed. I accepted pillows and a duvet. I went into the bathroom and changed into the sleeper suit they provided. I popped a Zopiclone. I returned to the seat. I hit myself with two more blasts of oxygen and passed out for six hours. It was the first proper sleep I had received in days – and when I awoke thirty minutes outside of Chicago, I felt that, at least, I would be able to function, no matter how terrible the next twenty-four hours might turn out to be.

The landing was tricky – the decompression causing my diaphragm to turn vise-like again. Two minutes before we hit the runway, the pressure was so bad I felt as if I was starting to strangle. The oxygen did little good . . . until we were on the ground and I could re-blast myself for a solid minute, emptying one of the canisters in the process.

I had similar problems in the air between Chicago and Cleveland, emptying another whole canister en route and feeling completely breathless by the time I reached University Hospital half an hour after landing.

The Neurological Unit was located on two floors in a new wing of the hospital. ICU was at the far end of a hallway. I was escorted inside by an attending nurse. She said my timing had been good, as the neurological resident was on the ward right now. 'I must warn you that walking into the unit always unnerves people the first time, and you might find all the apparatus around Megan rather disturbing. If you find you can't take it – and many people can't – just let me know and we'll get you out of there straight away.'

Her bed was at the end of the unit. That meant walking past patient after patient, all unconscious, all looking submerged by wiring, monitors, probes, drips and a spaghetti junction of tubes. When I reached Megan's bed, I felt as if I had been kicked in the stomach. There was nothing different about all the apparatus engulfing her. It was simply the realization that this was my little girl, being kept alive by all this medical paraphernalia, including a ventilator that let out an ominous
whish
as it regulated her breathing. Her long blond hair had been hidden inside a white surgical cap – but her face, though bruised, was, as always, angelic. Susan was seated slumped in a chair, looking more tired than I had ever seen her. Her face was drawn, her shoulders hunched, her eyes sunken, her nails ravaged. A man in a white coat was talking to her in a calm voice. I approached Susan and put my arm around her shoulder. She reacted stiffly to this – no hello or greeting, and she quietly disengaged herself from my attempt at a supportive hug . . .

something the doctor noticed immediately.

'This is Megan's father,' Susan said tonelessly.