“I’m in pain,” Archie said.
“There is a chance,” Fergus said, taking off the glasses and rubbing the lenses with his shirt, “that if you stop taking the pills right now, your liver will be able to repair itself.” He held the glasses up toward the light streaming through the wooden blinds and examined them. Then returned to cleaning them. “If you keep taking the pills, you will either need a liver transplant or you will die.” He put the glasses on and looked at Archie, his expression grave. “And they don’t give liver transplants until you’ve been clean for six months.”
Archie started buttoning his shirt. “That seems reasonable of them.”
“This isn’t a joke.”
Archie looked up at Fergus. Archie felt bad for him. He’d treated him since the beginning. Saved his life. Bent the rules. Written him prescription after prescription. “Slow it down,” Archie said.
“Stop taking the pills,” Fergus said. “Stop drinking. Keep taking diuretics for the edema. Stay away from salt. If you notice swelling in the abdomen we can insert a needle through the abdominal wall to remove fluid from the abdominal cavity.”
“How bad is it going to get?” Archie asked.
Fergus rolled up Archie’s sleeve, pulled a rubber tourniquet out of his medical bag and tied it around Archie’s forearm. “If you start vomiting blood or notice changes in mental function, you call me or you go to the ER.”
Archie nodded.
“I can’t prescribe a medication I know is killing you,” Fergus said, tapping a vein in Archie’s arm. “I’ll write you a few more scripts, so you don’t go cold turkey. And I can get you the name of some treatment facilities.” He retrieved a syringe from his bag, popped the rubber stopper off the end, and slid it into Archie’s arm.
Archie watched as his blood slowly filled the syringe. He’d seen more blood in the past few years than he’d ever thought possible. “I don’t want anyone to know about this.”
Fergus slipped the syringe out and pressed a cotton ball over the bleeding needle wound. “You’re going to need someone to take care of you,” he said.
Archie allowed himself a wry smile, but by the time Fergus looked up it had faded. “I have someone in mind,” Archie said. It was a relief, really. Because if he was going to die, he had nothing to lose. If he was going to die, he could catch her.
CHAPTER
35
Susan was standing at the end of the hall watching a bee tap at a window that overlooked the street. Outside she could see people carrying produce from the market, walking dogs, riding bikes, circling for parking. The bee smacked against the glass again. The skinny cop with big ears from the night before sat in a chair under a painting of an ugly old man. He looked up and smiled. “He’s been at it for an hour,” he said. “The bee. It’s an old window.” He reached up and scratched at one of his big ears. “Bees use UV rays to see. New windows have UV protection. But old ones? The UV goes right through the glass. So the bee can’t see it.”
Susan extended her hand. “Susan,” she said.
“Todd Bennett,” the cop said. “You can call me Bennett,” he added. “Everyone does.”
“You know a lot about bees, Bennett,” Susan said, opening her cell phone.
“I know a lot about windows,” Bennett said.
Susan wasn’t in the mood to talk about glass, or bees, or even protopunk feminist singer-songwriter poets of the 1970s, and she was almost always in the mood to talk about them.
She punched in a Herald number and extension.
Ian picked up the phone at his desk. “Features,” he said. His voice made Susan’s skin crawl. She could taste him in the smooth timbre of it, his skin, his soap. Don’t sleep with the people you work with, her mother had told her. In fact she’d said, “Don’t shit where you sleep,” but Susan had known what she meant.
Susan was trying to be better about that. It was one of the reasons she’d broken up with Derek.
Susan turned away from Bennett and spoke in a low tone. “Ian,” she said, “when are you running the story about Castle and Molly Palmer?”
Ian paused. “When the time is right.”
The bee smacked against the window again. “Meaning?”
“People are still grieving,” Ian said.
Susan wanted to laugh or maybe jam the heel of her palm into Ian’s xiphoid process and drive it into his heart. “You fucker,” she said. “You’re not going to run it, are you?”
His voice grew smoother. “Be patient, babe.”