"Finn, even if we're just sent away, I'd like to go by."

"As you wish, Megan. As you wish."

Chapter 17

At the information desk, as Finn expected, they were told that no one except immediate family could see Andy Markham.

Megan was distressed, and looked at Finn. "Maybe we could at least buy flowers and leave them for him."

The woman on volunteer duty at the desk was middle-aged with short, curly red hair and a gaunt but sympathetic-looking face. She cleared her throat and told them. "I'm sorry. They won't allow flowers in the intensive care unit. Perhaps if you come back in a few days, he'll be better, and in a regular room."

"What are they calling his condition right now?" Finn asked.

"Critical but stable."

As Finn watched Megan, he knew she was certain that Andy Markham was never going to get any better.

"Perhaps we could buy a card and write a get well note in it," Finn said.

Megan glanced at him with a quick smile of appreciation. "We'll do that," she said softly, though again, he was certain his wife believed Andy would never read the note. Still, it was something that could be done.

"I'll go buy a card in the little gift shop, and be right back," he said, and turned to leave Megan by the desk.

The shop was small. It took him only a minute to find an appropriate card. When he returned to the desk, however, Megan was gone.

Panic seized him. It felt as if skeletal fingers of iron were wrapping around his heart. For a moment, he couldn't breathe. Then, controlling himself seemed the greatest effort he'd ever made. His fingers nearly bit through the counter when he leaned against it to ask the redhead at the information desk, "Where is my wife?"

He must have concealed his fear with greater effect than he had imagined, for she didn't scream or shout for the police. She frowned, as if aware of his underlying tension, and answered him as pleasantly as she could. "Martha came by for her."

"Martha? You know Martha? You do mean my wife's Aunt Martha?"

"I know Martha, of course—it's a small town. Most residents come here with their aches, pains, and accidents. Martha is friends with most of the doctors—and she volunteers here as well." She looked as if she didn't want to say more to him—as if the hospital was engaging in policies that might not be quite fair

—but then she sighed and explained, "Martha may be the closest thing to next-of-kin old Andy has.

They're not related, but they've known one another for years. Bickered as much as anything, but Martha came in as soon as she heard about Andy, and the doctors believe a friendly voice can sometimes break into the mind of a person in a coma. So… Martha took your wife up for just a second."

Finn exhaled, staring at her. "He's not going to make it, is he?"

"I'm not the doctor," she said softly. He was surprised, especially in his present mood, that she seemed to look into his eyes and be willing, despite herself, to talk to him. She shook her head and told him,

"Andy's an old, old man. He received some terrible injuries. Being thrown by a speeding car… it's kind of like being beaten by a dozen lead pipes, you know. Anyway, it's all in the hands of God, now."

"Thank you," Finn told her.

She smiled at last. "Take a seat in the lounge there. She won't be but a minute. My friend Dorcas is the nurse in charge of Andy's room—no one will be in there for more than a minute or two, I assure you. I'd tell you to go on up, but Dorcas would be risking her job if any more people tried to get in, especially if Andy does… well, you know. If things don't go well for Andy."

"I understand," Finn said, and he did. But he leaned against the counter idly, and when a visitor came in to ask for directions to the maternity ward, he carefully gazed over the counter. He was glad to see that the computer screen was drawn to a list of room numbers.

He pretended to push away from the counter, take a seat, and glance at a magazine. But as soon as the redhead's attention was taken again by a new visitor, he stood and headed for the elevators.

Efficiency was the order of the day in Dorcas Brandt's arena of care. Megan found herself suited up in a matter of minutes—Andy didn't have any kind of a contagious disease, but apparently at his age and in his condition, pneumonia could be the final straw. Masked and gowned, she entered the room with Martha and Dorcas.

Martha, a glaze of tears about her eyes, was still silent as she came by Andy's bedside.

Andy was a maze of tubes. Thin, almost transparent little lines helped him to breathe. An IV brought sustenance into his veins and kept him hydrated. A monitor watched his heart. Both of his eyes were blackened, or so sunken that they appeared to be so. Amazingly, he had suffered no broken bones—he had simply been bruised from head to toe and knocked unconscious. He had never come to, but had sunk into the coma, despite every effort made to revive him in the emergency room. But his heart was still beating, and his lungs were working on their own. And, Dorcas had assured Megan, there was plenty of activity going on in old Andy's mind.

He looked like hell.

There were stitches running across the top of his forehead; his white hair had been shaved away from that area of his skull. His cheeks were cadaverous.

"Andy, you silly fool, what were you doing out on the road like that!" Martha said softly. She glanced at Dorcas, who nodded to her. Martha gently took his hand. "Andy, you've got to wake up, let us know you're all right."

There was no movement from Andy. Not a flicker of his eyelids.

Martha stroked a finger down the too apparent vein in his hand, then moved over to whisper to Dorcas at the rear of the room. Megan moved forward. She bit lightly into her lower lip because she felt a sting in her eyes as well—if she'd never met the man, she would have been moved by his condition.

"Andy, you're a fighter. And they need you around here, you know," she murmured. Feeling somewhat inadequate—and something of a fraud, she certainly wasn't a lifelong friend—she took his hand as she had seen Martha do.

"Come on, Andy, you've got to make it."

She felt the slightest flinch against her fingers, where he touched her hand. Her eyes were drawn there, as if she could thereby verify the movement. Nothing. But when she glanced toward his face again, her breath caught in a sudden wheeze; her heart seemed to stop.

His eyes were open. They stared at her, and somehow beyond her. He seemed to be looking at something beyond the room.

He moved his lips.

She couldn't hear his words.

She moved closer against him, and heard what didn't even sound like a voice, more like a mechanical rasp.

"Bac-Dal wants you. I must be there. Will be there. The evil must be stopped. The evil… there!

Bac-Dal wants you."

Megan dropped his hand, her jaw working as she backed away from the bed.

"Martha! Martha… Dorcas. He's moving, he's speaking!" she said. She turned to the women.

Both instantly ceased their whispered conversation and hurried over to the bed.

"There—" Megan began.

There. Andy's eyes were closed. His lips were closed as well. He lay just as he had lain.

Dorcas opened one of Andy's eyes and checked it with her pin light flashlight, drawn from her nurse's scrubs pocket. She opened the other, checked his pulse, and stared at the monitors that surrounded the bed.

After a moment, she shook her head, and stared at Megan hard.

"No, dear, he couldn't have spoken. And if he moved, I'm afraid it was a simple reflex. His condition is completely unchanged." She stared at Megan as if wondering if she were a hopeful idiot, or someone trying to create havoc for an unknown reason.

"But… I saw his eyes open. I saw his lips move. I heard him," she insisted.

Martha set a hand on her shoulder. "What did he say, dear?"

"He said—"

Megan hesitated. With Dorcas staring at her—and with whatever reputation she might have already gained in town with her nightmare screaming—she wasn't going to tell the truth. Or what she believed to be the truth. Looking at Andy now, it did appear as if he'd never moved. Frankly, he looked as if he were already dead. Those parched lips couldn't have formed words.

But they had.

Very afraid, she still hesitated.

"I don't know what he said," she lied. "I only know that he spoke."

"Who the hell is that?" Dorcas demanded, looking past Megan, and more than a little irritated by now.

Megan swung around. Finn was outside in the hallway, staring through the glass windows. He was looking at Andy and didn't see Dorcas, and then Martha, and herself, staring out at him.

"My husband."

"Doesn't anyone understand the concept of a waiting room?" Dorcas demanded. She was a gaunt woman herself. Her white shoes seemed huge against her skinny ankles. She was tall, though, and despite her fragile-looking frame and the fact that she had to be nearing sixty, she had the appearance and demeanor of a woman who was tough as nails.

Dorcas looked back at Andy again, shaking her head with sympathy and concern. She gazed at Megan again. "You just want him to be okay," she said with greater patience. "You want him to speak.

Sometimes, we imagine things. In fact, when interns start in the morgue, they're often convinced that we've made mistakes in the wards, because the body… the body is filled with so many gases, and death brings on changes that create reflex action. Sorry," she said wincing. "I really didn't mean to mention the word morgue. Andy may make it. But he's got to get through tonight. Please, let's go on out. Your husband is making me nervous. He looks like a giant transformer or something, about to meld through the glass."

Megan tried to smile. She couldn't.

They didn't believe that Andy had spoken.

She knew that he had. At least, she thought she knew that he had. She was amazed she wasn't shaking outwardly because it seemed that every fiber within her was trembling. She had fought down a moment of sheer terror, and now wondered if what was happening meant she was losing her mind, of if she was the target of a truly evil entity. Either way, she was in serious trouble.