His broken ribs just weren’t healing. Although Danny was supposed to keep resting, he’d started running in the mornings again, determined to get back to his old life. But the weeks still dragged on endlessly for him, until finally, at the beginning of October, he said impatiently, “I’m going out to the gym. I want to see if I can do at least a little. You want to come?”

A sense of foreboding crept over me. Even walking up stairs and vacuuming were painful for him—there was no way he was going to kickbox in this condition. But I knew there would be no talking him out of it, so I agreed.

“You drive,” he said, pressing the keys into my hand.

“Danny, one of these days, you’re going to have to get over your fear of driving.” Ever since the accident, he’d refused to drive with me sitting beside him. I didn’t want to drive that battleship of a car, and I found his refusal ridiculous as well, since he was perfectly capable of driving on his own.

“I’m not afraid of driving, I’m afraid of getting in an accident with you in the car.” He went around to the passenger side. Now wasn’t really the time to argue about this, I decided. Danny was already setting himself up for disappointment at the martial arts center, and accepting he would have to wait even longer to start training again would be hard enough for him.

Sighing, I got behind the wheel. I had to admit that the car really was fun to drive, though I felt pretty overwhelmed by its size.

Danny’s mood brightened considerably as we stepped into the gym. Immediately, he headed for the two rings at the back. I tried not to look toward the corner where Christina and I had sat so often, watching him.

Dogan came over and hugged Danny. He’d called several times, wondering how we were doing and when we’d finally show our faces around here again.

“Got ten minutes?” Danny asked. “I want to see if I’m ready to start again.”

“Of course, Dan. For you, always. I’ve been waiting for you for weeks.” He seemed genuinely delighted to see Danny—which made sense, since he was Dogan’s best employee and most successful student.

Dogan swung himself up into the ring and somersaulted over the ropes, the way Danny had often done in the past. Entering the ring like that was a tradition of theirs. At that moment, I hated Dogan for doing it.

Danny pulled off his shoes, socks, and sweatshirt, and climbed into the ring far less elegantly. After a short warmup, they started fighting, and within about a second, I could tell it wasn’t going to work. Danny didn’t have a chance in hell. He was focusing so hard on blocking out the pain that he didn’t manage a single hit. He was far too slow, as well, and in noticeably worse condition. His left leg had always been his most effective weapon, but now he just couldn’t get it into the air. Dogan went very easy on him, but when he landed a blow that was more implied than anything, Danny held up a hand to interrupt the fight.

“What’s wrong, Dan?” Dogan bent forward, peering at his student intently. It was totally incomprehensible to him that Danny could neither parry his attacks nor launch any himself.

Panting heavily and covered in sweat, Danny fell backward against the ropes. “Just give me a quick break.” He struggled to get himself together again and recoup his strength.

“You’re not healed up yet,” Dogan said.

“Let’s go,” Danny said, giving his trainer the sign for the next round. Immediately, he took another blow. He stumbled back but used the opportunity to try his best tactic: he feinted a low kick at his trainer’s shin, and when Dogan moved to block it, Danny launched a high kick at his temple. He got the leg up, but he shrieked in pain as the blow connected. Thrown back by the force of his own kick, he skidded backward and lost his balance, landing flat on his back with another shriek.

“Everything okay?” Dogan quickly knelt beside him and held out his hand.

I buried my face in my hands, trying to hold the burning tears back. Danny, my Danny, who could have easily taken five guys at once a year and a half ago, was now lying flat on his back with his arms splayed out, unable to get to his feet. At that moment, I knew with absolute certainty that he would never get back to his old condition.

Danny refused to let Dogan help him up. If there was one thing nobody could break, it was his endless supply of willpower and his boundless pride. He would keep both of those until his death. He would find a way to die free and unbroken.

Slowly, he turned over onto his stomach and crawled away on all fours, only managing to straighten once he was outside the ring. After he’d gotten dressed again, he went up and shook Dogan’s hand. “Thank you,” he said. “For everything. Tell my students I’m sorry. I can’t do it anymore.”

“Dan, what…?” Dogan blinked at him, but Danny turned away without explaining and left the gym for the last time.

I murmured something about being in touch and then hastened after Danny. When I finally caught up, he was already standing beside his car, wincing in pain, his right arm pressed against his ribs and his left hand supporting his weight against the door. His breathing was ragged, the air whistling in his lungs. “I can’t drive,” he said quietly, suppressing another shriek of pain as he dropped into the passenger seat.

“Does it hurt a lot?” I asked as I maneuvered what I secretly thought of as Danny’s new battleship out of the parking lot.

“No, not at all.” He forced a smile. “I’ve never felt better.” Then he pressed his forehead against the window and stared out in silence.

I hadn’t even finished parking the car when he got out and ran into the house. I locked the car and slowly followed him inside. I wouldn’t have to run any longer, I realized. The nightmare had finally caught up to us. The day I had always dreaded had come. It would all be downhill from here. We were skidding toward the chasm—and there was no stopping us.

 

As expected, I found Danny in the bedroom. He was lying on the bed, wailing into his pillow. He’d left the door ajar, and I pushed it open so I could go in and sit beside him. “Danny, I’m so sorry,” I said, stroking his back. “It was just too soon. What did you expect with two broken ribs?”

“Can you please just leave me alone for a while? I need to try and deal with this somehow.” He pulled the blanket up over his head and went back to crying.

Sighing, I got up and called Leika over so that we could go for a walk. How many times had I sighed in the past few weeks? Would it ever stop?

After just a couple of minutes, I returned to the apartment, but the BMW was gone. I found a note on the kitchen table:

Back before midnight.

Don’t worry. I’m fine.

The note was in English. He was slipping into English more and more often lately, both in speaking and writing. It was a sign that he was really distracted.

As I waited, I spent a long time staring out the window, first into the yard and then out to the horizon. There was still no sign of Danny when I went to bed. It was nearly midnight when I heard his car pull in.

“Where were you?” I asked as he walked into the room holding a paper bag. Before I’d even finished asking the question, I knew the answer. “Oh, God, Danny. No! Don’t. Please, please, don’t do this!” Rage boiled up within me like lava inside a volcano.

“If I’m going to die anyway, it might as well at least be painless.” He sat down on the floor and shook the contents of the bag out beside him.

My anger evaporated as quickly as it had come, turning to fear and worry. “That stuff really will kill you, I hope you know,” I whispered, pointing to the foil packet of white powder.

“Heroin itself isn’t actually harmful,” he protested. “Most of the damage comes from the stuff they cut it with.”

“Which is also in there.”

“In this crap, yeah,” he said. “But I ordered some better-quality stuff that doesn’t mess up your body as much. They said I could pick it up next week. It’ll be enough to last me until I die.”

“God, Danny!” I cried. “What’s happened to us? Am I supposed to praise you now because you can afford better drugs than the rest of the world?”

“You’re not supposed to do anything. This is my decision.” He went and got a coffee spoon, dripped a little citric acid onto it, and shook the white powder on top. Then he held a lighter underneath the spoon.

“Danny!” I screamed at him. “Quit this shit!”

“I’m not going to ask your permission, and you’re not going to be able to stop me, either!” He pulled out a disposable syringe and a needle, and then he put them together.

Suddenly, I began to panic. “Do you even know how to do that? It’s dangerous!”

“Did you know,” he said as he drew the now-liquid heroin into the syringe, “that the most dangerous thing about fixing is that you might contract HIV? Funny, huh?”

“Hilarious. Do you know how to do that?” I repeated.

“Even half-dead junkies can manage it. It can’t be all that hard.”

“You can’t shoot that stuff right away. It could kill you. You’re supposed to just smoke it at first.” At least, I thought that was how it worked. Hadn’t the girl in Zoo Station said that at some point?

“I’m sure as hell not going to start smoking. That’s gross. Anyway, this is such a low dose that it won’t be a problem. Plus, I’m just injecting it under my skin, not straight into my bloodstream, so the effect won’t be as strong.”

I shook my head desperately. “You really have lost your mind.”

“I know, but dying is easier when you’re crazy.” Danny pinched the skin on his right forearm, stuck the needle into the fold, and emptied the entire syringe without hesitation.

We waited for several minutes. Nothing happened.

“How do you feel?” I asked after a while.

Danny shrugged, more slowly than usual. “Pretty dazed. Everything’s kind of surreal. And I’m nauseous.”

“Serves you right,” I grumbled, but he wasn’t listening anymore. He dropped over onto his side and lay there, half curled up, on the floor. He was in about the same position as Leika, who was lying in her basket on the other side of the room. Both were asleep. It was restless sleep, not very deep, but at least they were sleeping. I wanted to sleep, too—to dive into another world and forget everything around me. Part of me wished that Danny had given me some of that stuff. If it helped you forget even half as well as he’d once said, then I wanted some, too.

 

It was nearly dawn when I took my blanket off the bed and joined him on the floor. Despite how warm it was inside the house, he was ice-cold. I snuggled up close to him and threw the blanket over us both. It was the first and only time he didn’t wake up when I lay down beside him.

Leika got up from her spot as well and curled up against Danny’s other side, as if she wanted to help me warm him up. I watched the two of them, listening to their breathing as I waited impatiently for the sweet relief of sleep. Not daring to take my eyes off Danny, I kept dozing off and immediately startling awake again. I was too afraid he might have been poisoned the way Christina had.

It was almost noon when he finally opened his eyes. He’d never slept that late, in all the time I’d known him.

“How do you feel?” I asked immediately.

Danny stared at me blankly for a minute or two before finally managing to sit up slowly. He shook his head in confusion. “I feel like I got trampled by a herd of water buffalo. What happened last night?”

I gave him an accusatory stare. “You shot yourself up full of that crap!” I pointed helplessly at the remains of his drug binge.

“Yeah, I remember that. But after that? What happened after that? I can’t remember a thing.”

“You went to sleep. That’s all.”

“I slept until now? That’s crazy. Sleeping tablets are a joke compared to this stuff.” In fact, he still seemed really out of it. It wasn’t like him to take so long to wake up.

“Danny, please don’t ever do that again,” I begged. “Please. I sat up half the night worried sick about you.”

“I haven’t slept that well in years,” he said evasively, wobbling to his feet. “If you need me, I’ll be in the bathroom—I’m sick as a dog. I guess I need to think all of this over some more.”