Wanting Sheila Dead(103)

Gregor wondered how many dead people there were who had actually been just like this comatose woman, who lived. The woman had had one granddaughter who was adamantly opposed to taking out the feeding tubes. This granddaughter had fought hard and long and managed to delay the day, and then the woman had woken up. How many dead people hadn’t had granddaughters like that, or anybody else who would keep them from being—

Killed off, Gregor thought. He understood the reasoning behind taking people off machines that did things like make their hearts beat and make their lungs work when those organs would no longer operate on their own. The coma patient, however, hadn’t needed machines like that. Her heart and lungs had been working on their own. All she’d needed was food and water, delivered through a feeding tube.

Why was he thinking about these things now? Sophie was not on machines, either. Her heart and lungs were working. She only had a feeding tube. Nobody had suggested that they take it out. Could this woman—the woman calling herself Karen Mgrdchian—could she have the authority to demand it be taken out? If she was who she said she was, she would be one of only two existing relatives. The other one would be the daughter, who would be Sophie’s niece. That assumed that the daughter wasn’t in the basement, with her real mother.

This was getting worse than surreal. He had liked it better when there had been gumdrop houses and cotton candy mountains. He kept seeing things floating through the void, like the things in the tornado in The Wizard of Oz—it was like everything had a theme. He saw syringes and IV tubes and plastic pill organizers and latex gloves that changed mysteriously into beige-colored lace ones, stretchy beige-colored lace ones that—

Oh, Gregor thought.

He tried to force himself awake, but it didn’t work.





3


It was Bennis who woke him finally, sitting down at the edge of the bed and shaking him by the shoulder. Gregor started to surface very slowly, and all the way up he was convinced that he had thought of something very important, and that he’d better remember it. He couldn’t remember anything. His head hurt.

“Gregor?” Bennis said.

“Is it six o’clock already?”

Bennis cleared her throat. Gregor wondered if he’d ever actually said anything about waking him at six o’clock. He might not have. He turned in bed—he usually didn’t turn at all in bed—he always slept on his left side, and forced his eyes awake.

“Sorry,” he said.

“It’s five, if you want to know the truth,” Bennis said. “I’ve got a dinner appointment for you at seven with your Billie Ormonds person. I should be waking you up anyway. But that isn’t why I’m here.”

“You’re waking me up,” Gregor said reasonably. “So that is why you’re here.”

“The Very Old Ladies are in the kitchen,” Bennis said. “I tried to get them to sit in the living room, but they weren’t having any. They’re making that kind of coffee . . . you know, Lida serves it sometimes, it’s like mud and it can double as rocket fuel.”

“Turkish coffee,” Gregor said. “Except you never say Turkish in an Armenian neighborhood. Call it Armenian coffee. I need to take a shower.”

“I agree, you do, but they’re here. They climbed all those steps. On purpose.”

“I don’t suppose I could take a quick shower and then come out in my bathrobe.”

“Somehow,” Bennis said, “I’d guess the answer is no.”

Gregor knew the answer was no, too. He waited for Bennis to stand up. Then he sat all the way up himself and swung his legs onto the floor. He was wearing nothing but boxer shorts, and he was willing to bet that if he looked in the mirror, he’d be a mess. He saw his clothes piled on the floor. They looked wrinkled and dirty. He didn’t want to put them on.

“I am going to take a shower,” he said. “I’m not going to put on fresh clothes when I’m like this. Give them something to eat and I’ll be out in a minute.”

“If I give them something to eat, they’ll complain about how I can’t cook,” Bennis said. “And they’re right, so I can’t even tell them off about it.”

“They’d only swear at you in Armenian if you did,” Gregor said. “Fifteen minutes tops. Less than that. I’ll be right out.”

He was right out, too. He made sure by turning the water on full blast and cold. It woke him up, and it got even his hair washed in record time. He kept going over and over the dreams he remembered. They were jumbled up, and Terri Schiavo was in one of them. He did know what that one was about, though. He’d known that before he’d fallen asleep. It was the other things that were making him nervous. He remembered a tornado with things floating in it. He remembered the syringe, and the gloves, but the gloves were wrong.