Your Heart Belongs to Me (10 page)

At 8:40 Monday evening, as Ryan ate a Stilton-cheese sandwich with cornichons and worked at the computer, George Zane called with the results of the blood tests.

In an exhaustive analysis, the two blood specialists and their lab assistants had discovered no traces of poisons, drugs, or other problematic chemicals in the 40 milliliters that Zane had drawn from Ryan.

“They could have missed it,” Ryan said. “No one’s so good, they don’t screw up now and then.”

“Do you want me to take additional samples,” Zane asked, “and find someone new to analyze them?”

“No. Whatever it is, it’s too subtle to be detected by the standard tests. You could drain me of every drop, employ a thousand hematologists, and I’d learn nothing more than I know now.”

Ryan flushed the sedatives down the toilet and ordered a pot of coffee from room service.

He felt that time was running out for him, and not primarily because his appointment with Dr. Samar Gupta, to receive the results of the myocardial biopsy, was little more than eighteen hours away.

As the evening waned and then on past midnight, the contours of Teresa Reach’s lips and teeth and oral cavity became his universe, so seductive and all-consuming that he never went to bed, but fell asleep in the office chair, in front of the computer, sometime after three o’clock in the morning, his search for truth still unrewarded.

From Denver to John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, cosseted in the corporate Learjet, Ryan from time to time studied the photograph without benefit of computer enhancement, wondering if the clue that he sought might be hidden in Teresa’s hair, in the delicate shell of her one revealed ear, or even in the folds of the pillow that was visible to one side of her face….

The plane touched down and taxied to the terminal less than an hour before Ryan’s appointment with the cardiologist.

Rather than compromise his secrets by having Lee Ting meet him at the airport with a car, Ryan had arranged for a limousine company to provide transport. They sent a superstretch white Cadillac and a courteous driver who did not feel that conversation was part of his job description.

In the limo, all the way to Dr. Gupta’s office, Ryan stared at Teresa’s dead face.

He had slid into a state of mind that was not characteristic of him. The confusion that had overcome him in Denver had thickened to such a degree that he was no longer merely confused but confounded, his mental faculties overwhelmed by what he had learned, by what he had experienced, and by his failure to make sense of any of it.

Being confounded for the first time in his life would have been sufficient to sap his spirit, but he felt as well a quiet resignation building in him, which was worse because he had not thought himself capable of any form or degree of surrender.

His parents’ selfishness and their indifference to him had only inspired him to achieve, not only later in life but also as a child, when he had determined never to be like them.

In business, he had seen every setback as an opportunity, had viewed every triumph as a challenge to achieve even more. He never surrendered, never capitulated, never so much as yielded except when he ceded his position on one issue in order to gain a much greater advantage on another.

He would have liked to believe that this growing resignation harbored in it an element of fortitude that would stave off despair. But fortitude was endurance animated by courage, and with every turn of the limousine’s wheels, he felt more isolated from his previous sources of strength and less able to summon courage.

He began to wonder if his every act these past five days—the entire investigation into Rebecca Reach and Barghest, all of it—had been only a desperate attempt to distract himself from considering the news that he was likely to receive at the appointment with the cardiologist this afternoon. Loath to accept a mortal diagnosis about which he could do nothing, perhaps he had busied himself seeking a bogeyman whom he could more readily engage in battle.

When they arrived at the medical building in which Dr. Gupta had his offices, the limo curbed in a no-parking zone.

Ryan slid Teresa’s photograph into the manila envelope.

The chauffeur got out from behind the wheel and stepped to the rear of the car to open Ryan’s door.

In the grip of unreason, Ryan took the dead woman’s photograph with him, not to show it to the cardiologist, merely to be able to hold it, as if it were a talisman, the power of which might prevent him from descending the final steep step between resignation and despair.

TWENTY-TWO

C
ardiomyopathy,” said Dr. Gupta.

He sat with Ryan not in an examination room but in his private office, as though he felt the need to deliver this news in a less clinical, more reassuring environment.

On a shelf behind the desk, in silver frames, were photos of the physician’s family. His wife was lovely. They had two daughters and a son, all good-looking kids, and a golden retriever.

Also on the shelf stood a model of a sailboat, and two photos of the Gupta family—dog included—taken aboard the real vessel.

Listening to his diagnosis, Ryan Perry envied the cardiologist for his family and for the evident richness of his life, which was a blessing quite different from—and superior to—riches.

“A disease of the heart muscle,” said Samar Gupta. “It causes a reduction in the force of contractions, a decrease in the efficiency of circulation.”

Ryan wanted to ask about cause, the possibility of poisoning that Forry Stafford had mentioned, but he waited.

Dr. Gupta’s diction was as precise as ever, but the musicality of his voice was tempered now by a compassion that imposed on him a measured solemnity: “Cardiomyopathies fall into three main groups—restrictive cardiomyopathy, dilated, and hypertrophic.”

“Hypertrophic. That’s the kind I’ve got.”

“Yes. An abnormality of heart-muscle fibers. The heart cells themselves do not function properly.”

“And the cause?”

“Usually it’s an inherited disorder.”

“My parents don’t have it.”

“Perhaps a grandparent. Sometimes there are no symptoms, just sudden death, and it’s simply labeled a heart attack.”

Ryan’s paternal grandfather had died of a sudden heart attack at forty-six.

“What’s the treatment?”

The cardiologist seemed embarrassed to say, “It is incurable,” as if medical science’s failure to identify a cure was his personal failure.

Ryan focused on the golden retriever in the family portrait. He had long wanted a dog. He’d been too busy to make room for one in his life. There had always seemed to be plenty of time for a dog in the years to come.

“We can only treat the symptoms with diuretic drugs to control heart failure,” said Dr. Gupta, “and antiarrhythmic drugs to control abnormal rhythms.”

“I surf. I lead a fairly vigorous life. What restrictions are there going to be, how will things change?”

The cardiologist’s hesitation caused Ryan to look away from the golden retriever.

“The primary issue,” said Dr. Gupta, “is not how restricted your life will be…but how long.”

In the physician’s gentle eyes, as in a fortuneteller’s sphere, Ryan saw his future.

“Your condition is not static, Ryan. The symptoms…they can be ameliorated, but the underlying disease is not arrestable. Heart function will steadily deteriorate.”

“How long?”

Dr. Gupta looked away from Ryan, at another photo of his family that stood on his desk. “I think…no more than a year.”

Wednesday night, writhing in pain on the floor of his bedroom, Ryan had expected to die right there, right then. In the days since, he had anticipated being felled at any moment.

A year should, therefore, have seemed like a gift, but instead the prognosis was a psychic guillotine that cut through him, and his anguish was so intense that he could not speak.

“I could tell you about advances in adult stem-cell research,” said Dr. Gupta, “but there’s nothing coming within a year, perhaps nothing ever, and you aren’t a man who would take comfort in such wishful thinking. So there is only a transplant.”

Ryan looked up from the envelope containing Teresa’s photograph, which he gripped with both hands, as if it were a buoy keeping him afloat. “Heart transplant?”

“We’ll register you with UNOS immediately.”

“UNOS?”

“The United Network for Organ Sharing. They ensure equitable allocation of organs.”

“Then…there’s a chance.”

“Frequently the results of a heart transplant are quite good. I have a patient who has lived the fullest life for fifteen years with a new heart, and she’s still going strong.”

Instead of ameliorating Ryan’s anguish, the possibility that he might escape death through a transplant rendered him even more emotional.

He did not want to be reduced to tears in front of Samar Gupta, and in searching for something to say that would help him stave off that embarrassment, he returned to the central theme of the past few days: “Could I have been poisoned?”

Dr. Gupta frowned. “Surely not.”

“Dr. Stafford did mention it as a possible cause of an enlarged heart. Though he also did…dismiss it.”

“But in studying the biopsied tissue,” the cardiologist said, “I feel quite sure your case is familial.”

“Familial?”

“Inherited. The cell characteristics are classic for a familial attribution.”

“You’re quite sure,” Ryan said, “but not certain?”

“Perhaps nothing in life is certain, Ryan.”

Having successfully repressed his tears, Ryan smiled thinly and said, “Except death and taxes.”

Dr. Gupta received Ryan’s smile with gratitude, and smiled himself. “Although at least the IRS will give you your day in court.”

TWENTY-THREE

I
n the days following his appointment with Dr. Gupta, Ryan surrendered to fits of denial during which he spent hours obsessively searching medical sites on the Internet for the latest developments in the treatment of cardiomyopathy.

When he found no scientific news dramatic enough to lift his spirits, he switched to alternative-medicine sites. Eagerly he sought stories about patients cured with the bark of an exotic Brazilian tree or with a tea brewed from the leaves of a plant found only deep in the jungles of Thailand.

Again and again, he read a thick packet of material about heart transplants, provided by Dr. Gupta. On each reading, his admiration for the skill of contemporary surgeons gave way to frustration over the imbalance between the number of patients in need of transplants and the number of organ donors, and to impatience with the system established by the health-care bureaucracy that was authorized to address that imbalance.

As he struggled to adjust to his radically altered future—or lack of one—Ryan avoided Samantha by pretending still to be in Denver on business.

Before seeing her, he wanted to live with his diagnosis long enough to begin to accept it. He intended to be in control of himself when he shared the news with her, because regardless of what happened between them, the meeting would be perhaps the most important of his life. He needed to be sufficiently composed to remain alert to every nuance of what she said, to every subtlety of her expressions and her body language.

The photo of Teresa continued to intrigue Ryan.

On the flight home from Colorado, he had brought the photo-analysis workstation that Wilson Mott established for him in the Denver hotel. It now stood on the desk in the retreat off the master bedroom.

When he could not ascertain if in fact a foreign object was lodged in the dead woman’s mouth, he next divided the photograph into eighty one-inch squares, enhanced them one by one, and analyzed them exhaustively. Some revelatory item might be snagged in her lustrous golden hair or half folded in a pillow crease. Or perhaps in a way impossible to fully imagine, a faint mark on her face might provide a clue that linked Teresa’s death to Ryan’s current crisis.

After he had studied twenty squares over two days, however, he began to feel that he was engaged in a foolish quest, that the photo had electrified him solely because Teresa was Samantha’s twin, which made seeing her in this condition seem like a clairvoyant glimpse of Sam’s death, therefore a profound shock.

Eventually he switched off the computer, intending to abandon his analysis of the portrait.

Although the digitized photo on the monitor no longer held any fascination for him, though he was weary of it, the original eight-by-ten glossy still riveted him when he extracted it once more from the manila envelope. He was pierced again, as he had been pierced in Spencer Barghest’s study, by the conviction that with this photograph he was trembling on the brink of a discovery that would do more than explain all of the recent weirdness, that would also and literally
save
him.

In business, over the years, every hunch proved worth pursuing. But his recent moments of irrational speculation, his newly developed tendency to paranoia, might be the consequences of the compromised efficiency of his heart, the diminished oxygenation of his blood. In that case, his intuition could no longer be trusted, nor could he be sure that his thinking would always remain as clear as it had once been.

He did not for a moment dwell on the unfairness of receiving a death sentence at thirty-four. In this case, as with any negative turn in life, you could whine or you could act. Action offered the only hope.

Unlike in business, where courses of action in an emergency were constrained only by the sharpness of your wits and your willingness to work hard, options in a health crisis were more limited. But Ryan refused to be a victim. If a way existed to escape the grim prognosis that bound him, he would discover how to slip the knot and cast off the ropes.

While he adjusted to his condition and rapidly educated himself about organ-sharing protocols and transplant-surgery techniques, he expected to be felled momentarily by another sudden seizure, but he wasn’t stricken. Dr. Gupta had prescribed three medications that apparently, for the time being, were repressing the symptoms that had recently plagued him.

Through Thursday, he remained in the master suite and did not once venture elsewhere in the house. He didn’t want to see anyone, because he worried that during even innocent conversation, he might imply—or someone might infer—that he had a serious health problem. He did not want a hint of his condition to reach Samantha before he was ready to break the news to her.

On Kay Ting’s voice mail, he recited a list of meals and snacks that he would prefer and the times at which he would like to receive them. These deliveries were made by food-service cart and left in the elevator alcove outside the master suite.

Sometimes, when he fell into a hypercreative flow state while writing a piece of software, Ryan passed days like a hermit, living in his pajamas and shaving only when his beard stubble began to itch. Therefore, this regimen would not strike the household staff as peculiar.

He didn’t worry much that what he ate and drank might be laced with poison or with hallucinogenic drugs. Since suspicion had led him to Rebecca Reach and then to Spencer Barghest in the house of the modern-day mummies, the Tings and other household employees seemed to be the least likely of the people in his life to be conspiring against him.

Besides, the damage to his heart had already been done. The poisoner, if one existed, would achieve nothing by administering superfluous doses but would risk revealing his identity.

The dreams of sunken cities, lonely lakes, and demon-populated palaces no longer troubled Ryan’s sleep. He heard no unexplainable tapping, no moth or bird or gloved hand rapping at any window, wall, or chamber door.

Perhaps receiving a precise diagnosis and a sobering prognosis had focused him so entirely on a
real
threat that his mind no longer needed to expend nervous energy on imaginary menaces, and in fact could not afford to do so if he were to concentrate on surviving until a heart became available for transplantation.

By Friday, he was prepared to share his dire news with Samantha. He called her to say that he was home from Denver, and that he hoped to see her for dinner.

“What if we try that new restaurant you were so hot about last week,” she suggested.

“These have been a busy few days, Sam. I’d rather we had a quiet evening, just us. Is your place okay?”

“I’m all cooked out, Dotcom. You bring deli, and it’s a deal.”

“See you at five-thirty,” he said, and hung up.

He considered bringing as well the death photo of Teresa, in case the evening took a turn that required cold questions and hard answers.

After looking once more at the dead woman’s portrait, Ryan decided that even if reason arose to be more suspicious of Samantha than he had yet allowed himself to be, using this picture to shake her confidence would constitute a cruelty of which he was not capable.

He returned the photo to the envelope, which he stowed in a desk drawer.