The description of that kid in the OR. How all his bones broke when Nick had made him crash to the ground.
And Emily: End it, Sam. Emily: Whatever it takes. Before there are more innocent victims.
You finally knew how royally everything was fucked.
What I thought about now was how I had held Nick in my arms. That milky haze in his eyes appearing and disappearing like clouds of mist rushing by. How it had dizzified me and how Nick had only calmed down cuz I had managed to calm him down. Why hadn’t I fallen like everyone else, as I was standing on the rim of the abyss and had looked right in?
You finally had your answer to that, too.
Even in the abyss, I’d still seen Nick. My Nick.
And that’s why he was my responsibility. I was the one who had to do something about it.
But what? And where was he now?
Suicide was no longer my prime concern at this point, cuz the check marks on my WhatsApp messages had turned blue. So he’d read them—at 8:23 this morning, to be exact. So Nick had been enough himself—the Maudit too busy, what do I know, eroding or something—to check his WhatsApp. What’s more, Nick had been somewhere with network coverage. Wi-Fi. A charging station. My fears that, in a coupla weeks, we’d find his remains in the mountains, eyes picked out by birds and lips drawn back from big, dead teeth while Nick had settled for an astral existence in his Maker’s lap, turned out to be unfounded. But according to Julia, he didn’t come home to the chalet either, so where the hell was he? And what did he have up his sleeve?
Something, that’s for sure.
No matter what I texted, he didn’t text back. No matter how often I called, he didn’t pick up. After a while his phone was off again. And me, lips tight. The scuffs in my temples deeper and deeper.
Julia—breaking character—had been a nervous wreck since this morning. I’d told her the whole story, crawling ahead from one highway job site to the next—give me one more baustelle sign and I’ll plow my car straight through it. But all we had today was time. Time and unlimited data. Julia couldn’t clarify why she’d had such a foreboding feeling of unease. It was indeterminable, a meandering shadow, and of course my story didn’t make her feel any better, so each time I had her on the line, every hour I obsessive-compulsively called her back, she said Please hurry up, bro. Please come quickly . . . and consequently, my fear flared up, cuz she really might be in actual trouble, should Nick unexpectedly come back. In hindsight, in hindsight—so I kicked that pedal a coupla inches deeper.
Aaand . . . brakes. Even before Mannheim the rain was gushing down. The autobahn jammed tight. Drumming on the wheel, right leg restless-legging out of control over the accelerator, and then it was one thirty and the phone rang.
A +41 number. Switzerland.
And I thought, You don’t wanna hear this.
Nope, I sure as hell didn’t, but this was my poisoned cup. I had to drink it up.
So I answered. “Bonjour?”
In French, the dude on the other end says, “Good afternoon, this is Dr. Alain Rambert from the Clinique Esthétique Le Chatelard in Montreux.” Through the Beats, his voice trembling with trepidation, he says, “Am I speaking with Sam Avery?”
What you need to know is that Alain Rambert is an alias I just vamped up, cuz I honestly have no idea what the guy’s real name was. Cuz right then, with a two-second delay, the meaning of Clinique Esthétique had hit me—its true meaning, with all its implications—and that shut off everything that had come before. I felt my heart freeze in my chest. Felt my eyeballs drying up and saw white in the rearview mirror, a whole lot of white, bloodshot white. Suddenly I got it. I got everything. Oh no. No no no no no. Nick had made the biggest mistake of his life.
In the distance, I heard myself say, “Do I get a complimentary tooth bleaching if I say yes?”
“Er, no sir. I’m calling with a grave message. Are you acquainted with a Nick Grevers?”
“Yeah, I’m his partner.” In crime, I thought.
“Ah, I’m glad I got hold of you. Monsieur Grevers provided your number as the family contact person. You are probably aware that he had a scar revision appointment at the clinic today?”
“Of course,” I said, and in my thoughts I followed the whole trail of Nick’s bandages, hand over hand, into the darkness. Loop by loop I unwound it, and who you came across in the dark was Cécile, who had changed them before she ran screaming from the CHUV. Who you came across in the dark was Dr. Genet, who had operated beneath them before and, less than a month later, his brain in ruins, had put an end to his life. Loop by loop you followed it deeper into the darkness, and then you saw yourself, peeking through them before those black birds flew out from under them. There was little Naomi, who had seen them hanging off the shadow on the edge of her bed, “all in loops.” Faster and faster, and after you’d unwound all the strips you saw, in the center of the darkness, Nick, trembling and apathetic, coming to himself again in a corner of his hospital room—Nick, who saw them dangling from his face, stinking of wound cream, while all around him a terrible tragedy was unfolding.
It came out when he took off his bandages. For months, he had let the pressure build up. Cut him in his face? You might as well release the Kraken.
“Of course,” I repeated. My voice distant, as if from a thick mist: “I just thought it wasn’t till two weeks from now?”
Enough time to talk him out of the whole unholy idea.
“That was supposed to be the case”—the surgeon just as distant—“but we had a cancellation. Monsieur Avery . . . I don’t know how to tell you this.”
“Is Nick all right?”
“I can’t say. There is no easy way to explain this, so I’ll just lay it out as it is: Monsieur Grevers walked out in the middle of the operation.”
And I said, “Walked out.” Thinking, I can work with that. Then, Oh, Jesus, what’s the damage? See here: the flexibility of the human brain. See also: total shock. Take your pick.
“But wasn’t he under sedation?”
“Yes, he was, and that’s what’s so strange.” What came to mind was Emily’s patient. The kid whose body rose up as if he were flying. He’d been under sedation. “Considering the size of his scars, we put him under general anesthesia. He was on a ventilator, and both his heart rate and the EEG showed he was unconscious. We had just started the procedure when things started to go wrong.”
What exactly? Nick had woken up, that’s what had gone wrong. The anesthetist rushed to assist, of course, but Nick shoved him aside, and then it all happened very fast. Nick’s eyes opened like a sleepwalker’s, seemingly blind and rather lugubrious, the doc said. And without a word, he’d torn out the IV and intubation and walked away. Bleeding like a pig from the incision in his scar.