The Headmaster's Wife(67)
The second thing Gregor noticed was that Mark was not vomiting any longer. He was convulsing. His eyes were bugging out of his head. His body was arched and snapping as if he were being electrocuted, over and over again.
“Call nine-one-one,” he told Cherie. “Do it now.”
He got to his knees and grabbed Mark in the middle of a snap. It was hard as hell to hold onto him. He was whipping around like a rag doll and stiff and dangerous at the sametime. Gregor grabbed his head and got it wedged between his arm and his side. He forced Mark’s mouth open and grabbed the tongue, then held it down with his thumb.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, “what’s wrong with you people?”
“I can’t call nine-one-one,” Cherie said, “I have to clear it with President’s House first. Those are the rules, and we can’t—”
“Call nine-one-one or I’ll do it for you, with one hand if I have to,” Gregor said. “Can’t you see he’s not sick to his stomach? He’s having convulsions. He could die from them. He could be permanently brain damaged. How long has he been like this?”
“He was fine ten minutes ago,” Cherie said frantically. “He came in and he wanted a cup of coffee, but he didn’t want to ask Sheldon because Sheldon, Sheldon—”
“Because Sheldon is a selfish prick who didn’t want him to think that just because he was bunking in Sheldon’s apartment he could have free rein with Sheldon’s stuff,” Sheldon said, “and Sheldon was right as rain because this kid is a selfish asshole slacker who thinks the world owes him a living.”
“He was fine,” Cherie said, in tears. “He wanted some coffee, so I made him some, and he took it back here because he’s been staying here since Michael died, and then the next thing I knew Sheldon was screaming and Mark was throwing up and everything was a mess and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.”
“Call nine-one-one,” Gregor said again.
Mark’s body had stopped snapping. This wave of convulsions was over. That didn’t mean another wave couldn’t start in thirty seconds or less. Cherie stared down at Mark’s inert body. Mark’s chest was rising and falling, rhythmically and deeply. Gregor thought that was the best sign he’d had since he’d walked into this room. Cherie bit her lip.
“I’ve got to call President’s House,” she said. “I have to. And I will. But I’ll call nine-one-one first.”
The man named Sheldon said nothing. He had the kind of look on his face that people have when they think they’re the victim of a con. Gregor realized that if Mark DeAvecca had shown every sign of collapsing with a heart attack, this man Sheldon would have thought it was just another ruse.
Part Two
The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.
—Fernando Pessoa
Human beings know neither how to rejoice properly, nor how to grieve properly, for they do not understand the distance between good and evil
—Saint John of the Cross
We’re on a mission from God.
—Elwood Blues
Chapter One
1
By the time Liz Toliver showed up to find out what was happening to her son, it was nearly midnight, Mark was “resting comfortably,” and Gregor Demarkian thought he was going to fall over from exhaustion. He should have gone back to the inn an hour ago. He could have taken a comfortable seat in the lobby and waited for Liz to arrive. It would have been at least as compassionate as what he had done and far more sensible. This way Liz had had to arrive at the inn’s front desk to be given a note about Mark and how to find him, and the note would of necessity have been brief and uninformative. Gregor didn’t know how uninformative, since he had had to phone it in from the hospital once Mark was out of danger and he could think about something besides what he would say if Mark died and he had to tell Liz about it. He had been careful to give the desk clerk at the inn a complete and exhaustive text to pass on, but he didn’t trust it. The desk clerk was one of those people—he was running into more and more of them in Windsor—who seemed to run fueled by a barely concealed resentment of the school and all it stood for. There was no way to disguise the fact that he was “connected” to the school, even though it was only to the extent of being the friend of a family of a student. When he wasn’t worrying about Mark, Gregor couldn’t help noticing that itwas a nasty situation. The police and the firefighters would do their jobs because, by and large, they would be the kind of men for whom the job mattered more than the worthiness of the people receiving its benefits. There were other people to be considered though. The school couldn’t survive without support services, and support services were delivered by dozens of men and women, the vast majority of whom seemed to be of the opinion that they’d be better off if the school and all its people vanished from the face of the earth. Gregor had seen it every place he went, on his two brief walks up and down Main Street. He had seen it here, in the hospital, in the way the nurses’ faces got blank and the emergency room doctor’s spine got stiff as soon as they all understood that Mark was a Windsor Academy student. The emergency room doctor was a solemn, intelligent, and very young man who had obviously come to America from India or Pakistan. His distaste for Windsor and all its works was palpable. There was something about him that made Gregor trust his professionalism, but that was all that made Gregor confident that Mark would be well served in this place. No, he thought now, that’s not fair. Nurses and doctors, like policemen and firemen, usually valued the job more than the worthiness of the people receiving its benefits.