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Xinnis

The Confessions of a Clinic Bomber

Part One: The Change

Wednesday, April 7th

Her hair drifts in weightless, snake-like slow motion around her neck and shoulders, as if she were under water. She holds the candle close to her face, the flames fluttering around the flow of her whisper. Her smile is familiar, inviting, seductive. The swaying movements of her hair, her hands and the flames are synchronized, driven by a delicate music he strains for, but can not quite hear. The rhythmic connection mesmerizes him. Strands of her dark blond hair travel through the writhing flames unharmed. He feels the desire, the deep need, to unravel the mystery of this, but, sharpening his focus, he sees another light behind her.

The source is bright chemical yellow, its tentacles spilling out of a dark alley into the street. It traces a twenty foot radius of sidewalk, a street lamp, a street sign, and finds its way into the gutter, running full of rain toward them along the curb. He wants to look at her but she is moving away, and he cannot pull his gaze away from the yellow light. Unexpectedly, a man's silhouette emerges from the alley; his features obscured by a long overcoat and hat. The man's foot steps down into the gutter and the light disappears, as if suddenly crushed.

"Did you see that?" he thinks, but cannot say the words. Her eyes are fixed, staring past him in shock. Her hair falls motionless; the energy departed.

Darkness.

And the sound of crows screaming.

The screeching of the large birds fighting for seeds brings Maxwell Xinnis to consciousness. Immediately and mechanically he slowly sits up and massages the back of his neck -- the shrieking birds just outside. Max opens his eyes and scans the floor. Automatically, his left hand reaches for the handle of the sliding glass door as his right dips to the floor to grip the tennis ball. He pulls the terrace door open and launches the ball at them, but the birds know the routine and are airborne.

What will I do, Max wondered, when I finally knock one out?

He stands, straightening his back, I really should stop feeding them, he concludes, watching the diminishing yellow arcs of the ball as it bounced twice down the driveway and plunked into the gutter. Then he remembered the dream. He closed his eyes and tried to recall it. Even now he could only barely see its faded outline, but he knew it had been about Janet. What does it mean? How many times has he dreamt of her since she left him? What had she been trying to say?

His eyes opened in time to see the ball disappear down the storm drain. He glanced at the army-issue chronograph perpetually strapped to his left wrist. Time to move out. He would try to remember the dream later.

Twenty minutes of stretching and he was on the pavement. Thinking of her would only slow him down, and he had promised himself that he would concentrate, just for these few minutes, only on the terrain before him.

This had been their little part of the world, and unconsciously he lost time by expecting to see her in the places they had been together. He ran past Nino's Cafe where they had spent nearly every Saturday morning since their honeymoon, then the Vanilla Tree Clothier, where she had spent hours, perhaps days, deciding which skirt and which blouse. He even expected he might see Janet through the jungle-obscured display window of Plantasm, where she had been working six years ago when they met. He had to talk with her, especially after yesterday's conversation with Ramsey and Kitt.

Rounding the final corner of the two mile jaunt he dropped his pace to a quick walk and checked his time. Twenty minutes, forty seconds. Slow again. Refusing to believe he had lost time for any other reason, he again blamed the head wind -- yet barely a breeze moved along the quiet morning streets of suburban Lewisburg. A light mist fell, and hung in the cool air over the well- trimmed lawns and modest middle-class homes. They had been living and playing here for over five years. He could not imagine the neighborhood without her.

Several trees near the curb were sporting carefully tied yellow paper ribbons, signaling a return home -- perhaps of a soldier. He had not seen one of these for a soldier missing-in-action for a long time. He looked at the home he was passing and the children's toys scattered on the lawn and the bicycles on the porch. It must be great to come home to your kids, he thought. Max had heard talk of more coming home now that the new administration was working so hard to close down the defense bases. There had even been talk that his job would be obsolete in a few years.

Sitting on the corner, as always, the two retarded boys stood waiting for their special school bus. John Robin was blowing bubbles from a little wand while Jeff Charles jumped in the air and tried to bite them.

"Good morning, boys!" said Max.

"Retard!" yelled John, as usual.

"Retard!" echoed Jeff.

They were only repeating what they heard the other kids saying, but Max knew it was their way of being friendly. Max had never heard them say anything else.

The cool down exercises, the hot shower and razor, the coffee and hard-boiled eggs, dry wheat toast and orange juice -- it was all minutiae of a daily pattern that was now meaningless without her. Janet had shared these things with him and somehow made it seem as if it had purpose. Now, her absence settled upon everything with an emptiness he could taste. Janet was gone and the day felt futile and wrong -- not because he expected her here, but because they had always been meant for each other. This separation was not just an incongruity he might later rectify with a quiet divorce and selective dating; it was wrong because some universal clockwork was out of sync when they were apart. It was the chaos of splitting atoms. This was not how their history was meant to be written.

That was yesterday. Today he knew they would be together soon, and the purpose had returned in his actions. He stirred a teaspoon of milk into his coffee and stared into the swirling whirlpool in the cup, allowing his mind to drift to a place that let him understand. This is wrong because I was wrong. Only I can fix it.

The vortex slowed and the chunks of curdled milk fat surfaced. Max smiled as he remembered; running into Ramsey and Kitt at the market had caused him to forget the fresh quart.

He lifted his jacket off the chair and walked to the door, dumping the coffee into the sink as he passed. Somehow I'll make things right.

The compact disc player in the Taurus SHO pounded out a Miles Davis recording as Max drove into the sun on his way to the office. He had wanted to take her to the Newport Jazz Festival last year, but something came up again. Now he wondered how important the distraction was that prevented it. He continued to accuse himself. How could I have allowed this to happen?

He forced himself to dredge up the past that he might forget it forever. He remembered a forgivable incident last September when the leaves were turning; a rough exchange in October as the cold rain fell; several harsh words over the holidays, and the lingering bad feelings into February. Neither of them had apologized. They were a lot alike.

During their last month together Janet had stopped running with him at the indoor track, and his birthday had come and gone without mention, but his pride ignored the significance of those events. Now he knew that when she said she needed some time alone, she had meant away from his form of manipulation. His small cutting comment, the condescending glance, and excuses to justify the time he spent away from her; withdrawals from an ill- maintained emotional account that was now bankrupt. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the wheel, painfully realizing that he had even treated this machine with more respect at times. How wrong it all was! He had known it just moments after talking with Ramsey and Kitt.

He had been reaching for the half-and-half when they appeared out of nowhere, all smiles.

"Congratulations, Max!" Kitt burst out, a knowing smile filling her face.

"Yes, serious congratulations, old man!" Ramsey said. "Finally joining the daddy club, eh? And just a few months behind Kitt! They'll probably be in school together!"

Kitt had her hands on both sides of her rounded belly. As the realization sank into Max, the couple looked at each other, their smiles fallen.

"Uh-oh," said Kitt.

"Guess I ruined the surprise. Sorry, Max," said Ramsey.

"Are you sure, Kitt?" asked Max. "When was this?"

"Max, I'm sorry -- I thought Jan would have told you by now. I didn't mean to spoil the surprise." Seeing Max wanted his question answered, Kitt continued:

"Well, we were going to lunch last week to that new restaurant by the mall, and I noticed she wasn't feeling well. I had a one o'clock appointment -- just a check-up and a weigh-in, and she came along. I mentioned to the doctor that Jan wasn't well and he took her in right there, just for a quick look, you know. Wasn't that lucky, Max? Well, ten minutes later we knew."

"Is she okay, Kitt?" he asked, searching her eyes.

"What do you mean, Max? She's your wife." Kitt exchanged a worried glance with her husband.

Max felt a combination of embarrassment and overwhelming excitement flush through him. His mundane expression had been supplanted by the smile that now stretched across his face. He wondered how he might ease his friend's concern now that he had given himself away.

"Thanks for the congratulations, guys. I didn't know, but it's good news! You see, Jan and I have been taking something like separate vacations for a little while -- but the vacation is over," he said, shaking their hands. "We'll give you a call and plan something. What do you say?"

"Sure, Max, sure," Ramsey said, a question mark behind every word. Kitt was trying hard to look composed.

Max shook their hands and disappeared, leaving Ramsey holding the quart of cream as he half ran, half floated from the market; his heart full of forgiveness, his head full of possibilities.

Wedged between the cut stone of the Masonic Lodge and the bright blue awnings of Gusseppi's Pizzeria stood Lewisburg's Armed Forces Recruiting Office. The corners of the display window featured posters of vertical F-16's, gun-laden battleships, and smiling, camouflaged faces protruding from a tank's top hatch. The slogans were familiar, but between the lines they shouted the message, Success and Excitement Await! Max still wished it were true.

Lately Max had been feeling that the promises were just bitter icing, designed to entice the emotions of the young men and women into a career that was anything but a piece of cake. The numerous battles on foreign soil these past years had begun to raise deep questions in him. Do any of the recruits really know what they would be fighting for?

Max wondered if a poster that simply said, "ESCAPE AT ANY COST" would be as effective as all the hype. It was all he needed twenty years ago to get away from the state institutions and seek his own path in the world. It was exactly a year ago when it all started going sour -- just after he had seen the declassified reports on the cost-effectiveness of the Vietnam and Middle-East conflicts.

Janet accused him of being a part of the "big lie" that had everyone deceived about the role of government. She had suggested drilling holes in a steel cup, leaving it on his desk as an illustration -- a disclaimer. "The Army keeps promises like this cup holds water." At least then he could say he warned them.

He had admitted to Janet that those promises were subject to change at any time at the whim of ten thousand variables, and that the risk was an acceptable one for every recruit. Janet argued that those variables were not just pins in a map, or numbers in a computer combat program, but flesh and blood Americans being pushed around a worldwide chessboard to the advantage of the elite few who owned the weapons factories and charged rent for the battlefields. Her arguments were just beginning to make sense to him when she moved out.

His pen tapped a steady rhythm on the desk pad. From behind his desk he had a clear view of Lincolnway Boulevard as it passed in front of the courthouse adjacent to them. Seven vigilant protesters were marching there, braving a sudden gust of wind that buffeted their signs against them in an attempt to kite them away. Curious, but unable to read the signs at this distance, he reached for his glasses. He did not notice Swanson standing in the doorway.

"Practicing your poker-face?" he asked, entering the room. Their uniforms were identical. "Oh, you've noticed them, eh? Did you see the memo? We can expect a picket line outside our door soon?"

"Negative, what's going on?" asked Max.

Sergeant Swanson dropped the paper onto Max's desk. "Seems that petition we all signed back in January -- the one asking the President to keep the fags in the closet -- the one the Commander faxed us, remember? Seems someone made it public. We're all on some faggot hit-list now. The Commander said we could go fishing when they show up."

"I'm not interested in interviewing anyone who wouldn't pass a pansy picket line -- and I would like to be here when a potential recruit does," said Max. "Leaving might be a diplomatic thing to do, but it would set a bad example to those we want." He had said it automatically, as if rehearsed. Max squinted at the marchers, one of them chasing his sign along the sidewalk. "Is that them over there?"

"Nah. Save the Whales, maybe, but not Homo-State, or whatever their name is. I've got a feeling we'd recognize that group, even from here." Swanson turned to leave. "Besides, they wouldn't want to muss their hair unless the television cameras were rolling -- and I didn't see any."

Nine forty-five. Fifteen minutes until the first scheduled interview with the Ramos boy and his friend. God, I wish I had a buck for every matched set of school buddies the Army promised not to separate. Then he realized that the bonuses they received were exactly that -- compensation for a lie well told.

Max had only promised them he would do everything he could to prevent their separation. But that was nothing, wasn't it? What was it Janet had said? "You're just a pimp for the government, Max. You're preying on the innocent, filling them with the same empty promises their dysfunctional society gave them, then buying their lives cheap."

He shook his head to clear the memory. If he was going to forgive her, he would have to do it unconditionally, without recalling the pain they inflicted on each other. He was willing to admit she was half right on that one, which was safer than telling her she was half wrong. Besides, he knew it was Blaine's influence talking that day.

Nearly ten o'clock. His hand flew to the phone and dialed. She should be at the shop by now. Five rings and the friendly voice of Janet's brother answered.

"Clausen's Antiques."

"Hi, Jerry, it's Max. Is your sister there?"

"I haven't seen her. She is coming in today, I hope."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean she called me Monday and said she was sick, and needed a day or two. So, fine, but now it's Wednesday, and I'd like to get out of here this afternoon."

"Probably the flu?"

"I couldn't tell you. When are you two getting back together, anyway?"

"Real soon. We're getting back together real soon, Jerry. Maybe today if I can find her."

"Well, that's good to hear. Have her call me when you find her, okay?"

"Will do it. So long." Jerry continued to be the only family member that had their confidence, and he had faithfully tried to reunite them from the moment he first heard of their problems one night around the poker table. One of the guys mentioned that Max and Janet's house was beginning to look like a bachelor's apartment. Max could remember Jerry's response when he told them what had happened. "Separate vacations?! That's for old people who can't stand each other!" Still -- it sounded so much better than the truth.

A large, lightly mustached youth and a long-haired tagalong approached the building, both sporting fashionable rhinestone earrings. Her words came back to him again -- First Sergeant Maxwell Xinnis, government pimp.

Throughout the interview, Max was nervously distracted. Whether Ramos and company sensed it he could not tell, but when they signed the papers he concluded that the tension must be in his mind. The moment they had left the office he snatched up the phone. The numbers he punched would ring up Sasha Blaine's apartment, but he hoped Janet would answer. Conversation with Blaine was like putting his spine through a cheese grater.

Her real name was Betty Lane, but she hated the blandness of it so much that she had signed herself B. Lane in high school, and had it legally changed when she turned twenty-one. Max had always assumed she had chosen her first name replacement from a required reading assignment during her short stint of liberal arts studies at Lewisburg College. Sasha. The name change epitomized the pretentiousness of this spoiled dilettante.

Blaine was a self-proclaimed collector and seller of avant- garde neo-fashion; the definition of which changed monthly with the arrival of her fashion magazine subscriptions. Though still insubstantial, she kept herself off the welfare dole by recycling ancient clothing from the secondhand shops. It was only last summer when one of Blaine's scavenger hunts for raw material brought her to the antique shop owned by Janet's family. Kindred spirits of a sort, Blaine and Janet became fast friends, though he could never understand why.

Blaine had been with Max and Janet at a nightclub when an uptown sophisticate offered a compliment on her black beaded hat that must have been seventy years old. Five minutes later she had it sold and was buying a round of drinks with the profit. The beautiful thing about the transaction was Blaine's natural manner. Anyone else would have appeared awkward, even boorish, selling their clothes at the club. Somehow, Blaine made it look as if she was doing them a favor.

Max would agree, as most anyone would, that Blaine was cute, and had a quiet elegance to her way of living. Nevertheless, his attempts at enjoying her company had failed. He placed her half-baked feminist politics somewhere to the left of Gertrude Stein, but her philosophy seemed to have no reference point, causing his head to spin whenever she spoke her mind on anything political. Like so many of her friends, she considered philosophy to be fashion. She could always cast off the ideals of the morning for the more popular rumors of the afternoon. He had listened to her theories, custom-woven to entertain her Hillary Clinton- worshipping sycophants, until he felt he had to say something in the defense of reason. It wounded him when Janet defended her.

Twenty rings and no answer.

He hung up and dialed Janet's mother.

"Good morning!" sang Mrs. Clausen.

"Hi, Mom, how are you today?"

"Maxwell! I'm glad you called, Honey. Can you and Janet stop by for dinner Sunday night? Jan's cousins are stopping in from Pennsylvania on their way to Chicago."

"Mom, there's nothing I'd like more, really. But did you talk with Janet about it at all?"

"Well, I've only been back since last night, Max. We had such a delightful time on the tour!"

"Mom, I'll try to arrange it, and you can tell us all about the trip then -- but I need to get hold of Janet. Is she there?"

"No... She should be at the shop by now. Did you call?"

"Yeah. Well, she's been sick, you know? Late again today," he said, giving the illness rumor some roots.

"No, I didn't know. Nobody tells me anything! How is she?" Her concern flowed through the wire.

Again the subterfuge: "Oh, probably just the flu, Mom. I'll have her give you a call when I catch up with her. She might be out shopping," and that's probably another lie.

"Well, she can't be too sick if she's out," she said, relieved.

"Course not. If she stops in have her call me."

"I will, but I'm assuming you'll both be here Sunday."

The situation was intolerable. Janet's sick but not at Blaine's apartment, at work, or at her mother's house. There was nothing left to do but call her doctor, just to be sure. Jan, let's never lose track of one another again. He knew things would be better now. He thumbed through the phone directory. I'm going to be a daddy. Jan and Max. Mom and Dad. Max was punching the numbers on the phone when the front door to the office was thrown open.

The door hit the wall hard, shooting a violent tremor through it, but leaving the glass intact. Sergeant Swanson was at his desk only a few feet away, and he jumped to his feet at once. The girl who had burst in stepped backwards, closing the door as she leaned against it for support. Swan stepped forward, expecting to have to catch her fall, but she motioned him to stay back. Her chest heaved as she fought for breath. Max stepped through the doorway of his office, one hand deliberately behind his back. The girl hunched forward, gasping. The short bearskin coat with the trendy red dye streaks identified her immediately.

"Blaine! What the --!"

As she lifted her head, her eyes gave her away. She had been crying as well as running. This could only be about Janet.

"Are you okay, Miss?" Swanson looked confused.

"Where is Janet, Blaine?" There was force in Max's voice. It was clear that he did not care to know the answer to Swanson's question.

Her composure was returning, she bit her lower lip hard and looked out the window, perhaps thinking she should not have come. With his free hand, Max gripped her right arm.

"Blaine!"

She closed her eyes and forced herself to control her breathing.

"M-Max, I was with her all night. We didn't think it was s- so serious! Jan -- she needs you!"

Max thought she must be hysterical, and her rambling scared him and gave him cause to draw his hand back to slap her. Her red eyes widened in anticipation of the strike.

Swanson quickly stepped between them, took her shoulders and gently set her on one of the old oak chairs lining the wall in front of his desk.

"Calm down, Miss," he said in assuring tones. "Take a deep breath. Talk slowly." He looked to Max with an accusation. "You calm down too, Max. I'll get her some water." He squeezed past Max and into the narrow corridor.

Blaine's breathing sounded less desperate now. When she forced herself to look at him, her words were direct, charged with expression and urgency. Strands of her short brown hair were pasted against her face by her tears.

"Max, she needs you. Mercy Hospital, fourth floor." Then suddenly fearful of reprisals, she looked away.

Max saw Swanson returning and yelled at him as he turned back into his office. "I'm taking off, Swan. You'll need the two files on my desk." He pulled a top drawer open, returning the nine millimeter Browning handgun he had instinctively grabbed at the sound of the door crashing. He pulled the key from the desk lock, snatched his jacket off the rack, and began sprinting the seven blocks to the hospital.

God, let them be okay. Let Jan and our baby be okay.

Max made a khaki blur through the early lunch crowd. As he dodged the people, his imagination fabricated images of an automobile accident, Blaine's cardboard Yugo in pieces. He held back the images of what the consequences of that would mean.

The automatic sliding doors of the emergency room brushed his shoulders as he rushed through them. He followed the five color-coded stripes painted on the floor until he almost collided with two nurses standing in his path. Max, slightly winded, asked for directions to the elevators. He followed their instructions until he saw the stairway.

Emerging from the stairway at the fourth floor, he noticed that there was only a red line on the floor now. There was a sign attached to the corner indicating the direction of the intensive care ward, and he followed it. The hall seemed unusually dark and quiet in contrast to his raging desperation. Max could see the nurse's station ahead of him, and quickened his pace. The head nurse was speaking gently into the phone. "He's here now. Thank you."

"Mr. Xinnis?" She surprised him by pronouncing his name correctly -- with the silent X.

"Yes, I'm Max Xinnis, Janet is my wife."

"You certainly didn't waste any time getting here!" She stepped from behind the blue-gray Formica counter. "I only just heard you were coming, and there you are! Your wife is this way," she motioned for him to follow her along a better illuminated hallway.

"Are you aware of her status?" she asked.

"I only just discovered she was here -- not ten minutes ago!"

She stopped at the door to room 411. "Mr. Xinnis, before you go in you need to know that her condition has stabilized, but she is unconscious and will not be able to respond to you."

"What?! What happened to her?"

"Her doctor will be returning for his next shift this evening. I think you'd better talk with him. All I know for sure is that she was hemorrhaging badly when she was brought in. She had lost a lot of blood, and was in shock and in and out of consciousness. She's been asleep since I came on duty this morning. Everything that we could do for her has been done. She needs to rest now."

"And why wasn't I called last night?"

"Sir, we hadn't heard your name until this morning when we asked Miss Blaine to sign the admittance papers. Usually we insist on that being done immediately, but I wasn't here last night, so I don't know what happened. I offered to call you as soon as she confided in me, but she said you were nearby, and ran out."

Max looked at her, searching, "And our baby?"

The nurse put on a cold mask. "I am sorry, Mr. Xinnis. Your wife was no longer pregnant when she arrived."

"I want to speak to the doctor on duty." Before she could respond, Max pushed into the room.

There was a tranquil hum in the room, and a monotonous low register of several monitors echoing quietly along the institutional green walls. The fluorescent light over her bed lit her pale face, still beautiful and unscratched. There were tubes transferring clear liquids into her arms.

"Janet," he whispered, putting her hand into his.

"Janet." Her delicate hand felt damp and her face seemed drained of life. Max had expected to find her covered with bandages from the accident he had imagined, but the only bruise he could see was where the needle fed her arm. The outline of her long frame was clearly unencumbered by casts or splints. Her anemic complexion had his heart moaning, and he felt an angry tremor in his chest at the sight of Janet's shortened blond hair, oriental and Blainesque.

Then began the long hour of waiting for answers. It was an expanse of desert he crawled through, blaming himself, spotted with an oasis in which he forgave her. Tasting what eternity must mean, he prayed to the God of the universe his mother had spoken of -- the One he had all but forgotten.

He listened to her shallow breathing and prepared himself for the worst possible news: spontaneous miscarriage, followed by heavy blood loss, shock, and coma. He gripped her hand, hoping he might penetrate her dreamless sleep, praying for a response -- praying to gaze into those dark eyes again.

When he felt he could keep his voice steady, he lifted the phone and asked for an outside line. He tried hard to keep his voice even to avoid raising any panic in Janet's mother. Max insisted that she have Jerry drive her. Mrs. Clausen was an emotional woman, and unsafe on the highway even under ideal conditions.

Max massaged Janet's hand steadily, kissed her cheek, and touched a wet cloth to her dry lips. He took a comb from his pocket and gently worked on the tangles in her hair. Her pulse seemed impossibly fast. When he put his ear to her chest he could feel her heartbeat, but could hear only the beep of the monitors, and the blood and saline solutions as they dripped, clicking away the long seconds.

The doctor came in looking at a clipboard, addressing Max without seeing him. A nurse was one step behind.

"You're her husband?"

"Yes, Max Xinnis."

"Uh-huh." The doctor moved to Janet and felt her pulse, looking concerned. "I'm Dr. Armstrong." He watched the monitors for a moment, then lifted Janet's right eyelid, shining a penlight into her pupil. He whispered to the nurse something about baro-receptor compensation. The nurse nodded, lowered Janet's head, adjusted the bed, and left the room.

"Your wife may regain consciousness soon, Mr. Xinnis, if we can keep her stable. The alarms on the monitors will alert us if we're needed, but sleep is the best thing right now." He looked at Max and immediately saw that this was an unsatisfactory conclusion. "We really won't know anything positive for a while."

"Is the bleeding under control, Doc?"

"Her blood pressure is low, but steady. Maintaining volume is critical now. I suspect she may be suffering some slight internal bleeding that the surgery didn't find. I wasn't present, but Dr. Carlstadt will be --"

"Wait. What surgery? What's happened to her? I've been waiting over an hour for someone to tell me and I want to know now!"

Armstrong disregarded any implied threat in Max's expression, and flipped through several pages on the clipboard he held. He read to himself, then paraphrased the information:

"The ambulance was called at four fifty-five yesterday afternoon -- arrived at the Sanger Clinic at five twelve. Paramedics found the patient semi-conscious, and hysterical. They noted that Mrs. Xinnis claimed she had been left in the operating room unattended for several hours after Dr. Kadill failed to stop the bleeding following the abortive procedure."

Max flinched visibly. Armstrong noted this reaction, and kept his eyes on his paper. His voice was hushed.

"The clinic refused to provide any information on the patient other than current vital stats. Then," Armstrong flipped a page, taking the moment to glance into Max's incredulous stare, "during our attempts to stop the bleeding it was discovered that a recent suction abortion had left the patient with numerous perforations along her uterine wall. Coagulants were administered after surgery." He looked up from the paper.

"Short of extensive surgery that could be dangerous in the extreme, we've done all we should at this point. The coma is self- induced by the body -- a defense mechanism to assist in the healing. We're also giving her sedatives to keep her quiet."

Max sat in the chair next to Janet, obviously stunned. "I can't believe Jan would do that. Why?"

"I'm sorry," said Armstrong. "I understand the girl accompanying your wife has verified this information. We've a counselor on staff you may wish to speak with. I'll ask her to stop in. And, as I said, Dr. Carlstadt will be here soon."

Max took her hand again, searching her face. What were you thinking?

Armstrong felt the professional imperative to leave the room, but sensed an opportunity. Perhaps he could afford a small risk here. This event could be a catalyst to end the greatest disgrace in Lewisburg's medical community. Kadill had been a hack as an intern at the hospital, and was constantly producing evidence that he had not changed. With the proper legal representation they might never see another botched abortion from the Sanger Clinic.

"It's a matter of public record that the clinic has sent other women here in similar condition, though few as serious." He had Max's attention. "Off the record, Sergeant, someone should investigate. That's off the record." Armstrong turned to leave.

"There is something you can do," said Max, quickly.

"What's that?"

"Don't tell her family about the abortion. I -- I don't know how they would handle it."

"That is your privilege. Actually, I didn't even want to tell you," He made a notation on the chart as he walked from the room.

The room was quiet, yet full of minute mechanical sounds that worried him. His head was hot, and a sharp knife pierced his temples. Without her I would be lost, he thought, and then he cursed his selfishness.

Hours seemed to pass as robot-like attendants shuffled in and out. The head nurse came and told him he was needed in the admitting office to complete the paperwork, but he insisted they bring the papers to him. When she did he only signed them, clipped his driver's license, military identification, and American Express card to the board and handed them back to her. She got the message and left them alone again.

The sun was retreating. He rotated the shaft on the venetian blind and the diffused light flooded into the room. Below, the green sculptured lawn stretched away to the northwest and patches of snow lingered stubbornly along the edges of the adjacent forest. Children chased each other, and two young lovers walked hand-in- hand along a path on its edge. All were oblivious to the pain. He slid back into the seat and closed his eyes. He repeated the question in his head a dozen times before it came to his lips. "What ever happened to us, Janet?"

When Janet's mother arrived with Jerry, the nurses indicated they would either expel or sedate her if she could not control herself. After a brief visit to room 411, they retired to a cubbyhole of a room set off for private conversations. Max decided to delay telling them the truth for as long as he could, and was already considering the possibility of never telling them. He had originally thought it had been a spontaneous miscarriage, and that is what he told them when they arrived. Then they took turns holding Janet's hands, and waiting.

At one o'clock in the morning, Mrs. Clausen was asleep in the waiting room with a hospital blanket draped over her, using her purse for a pillow. Jerry watched the credits of the Letterman show disappear, then switched off the overhead television. He stared at the blank screen until he fell asleep.

In room 411, Max gripped Janet's hand fearfully. He was living from moment to moment now, waiting for a change, for another evaluation, or even a nurse to check her vital signs. When a nurse did appear, she saw his ragged look, and, with empathy, looked worried herself.

"Would you like something to relax you?"

"No, I'm fine."

"They're very mild," she assured him.

He had not answered her, but she returned minutes later with a doctor Max had not met. He dropped a square of sealed foil into his Max's hand and they left the room. It was two fifteen when Max opened the package and swallowed the two yellow capsules without water. It was two twenty-six when he fell asleep.

5:15 a.m. Thursday, April 8th

Quick-marching past the army barracks, Max was surrounded by the harsh, insistent roar of his old drill sergeant. Janet's eyes were following him, peering into his dream through the windows of the barracks. The giant irises, framed by the windows, were rotating slowly. He felt the ground moving beneath him as she turned the box he was running in, trying to improve her view. Max's footing became difficult, his feet slipping on the glassy surface. The strange music he had heard drifting backwards in the air was now slowing and speeding as if his steps drove the turntable.

Max stands three feet from the barracks, facing the window -- her iris filling his field of vision. Moving closer and raising his hands, he sees himself reflected in the jet black center -- the image of a man sinking, his hands held up in distress, the black waves lapping around him.

The sound of a slamming door makes him spin around, but he sees nothing but shades of purple defining the inside corners of the box -- everything else was gone.

Looking back, he sees the convex lens hovering out of reach above him, her iris rotating steadily around the fully eclipsed moon of the dilated pupil. Great lightning discharges passed through its blackness, but the sound was not of thunder, but tearing.

The cords of the iris were spreading away from the center, the throbbing tentacles reaching downwards. They touched the earth and began traveling toward him. He stood frozen as they crawled to meet him -- white, rubbery ropes gripping his legs. One of the cords hung in the air several feet from him. Reaching to inspect it, he felt his wrist restrained. He tried harder to free his hand.

The grip tightened.

Max woke to the sound of the high pitched beeping from the monitor. Janet's hand clamped his wrist. The abrupt tension of the room brought him suddenly wide awake. Three nurses surrounded her bed sending intense signals to one another. One nurse manually verified the monitor's warning. Janet's heart was racing now, trying to compensate for the drop in blood pressure. Another nurse fully opened the I.V.'s.

The younger of the three pulled the blue sheet down to inspect the connection of the sensor on Janet's left leg. The nurse's hand went to her mouth to stifle the gasp as she saw her patient lying in a pool of blood, her abdomen a bluish black.

Janet's hand was limp, and Max stood in panic. The nurse closest to Max saw this and took Max's arm just as the doctor burst into the room. "You must leave now!" she said.

"I won't be leaving! Help her!" His command was unmistakably final. Max flattened his back against the wall and the nurse turned away and yelled, "Crash Cart!"

Harmonic pandemonium ensued to revive Janet Xinnis. The electrocardiograph was beeping steadily now. Carlstadt announced that his patient was in cardiac tamponade and the nurse next to him immediately handed him a large, empty syringe to extract the pooled blood within her. Max looked away as he positioned the long needle above her heart. The weak reading on the machine went flat-line a half minute before a technician pushed a defibrillator into the room.

But Max knew Janet died the moment he woke.

The team of nurses began chest compressions, counting together to keep time. Another nurse assisted the doctor in the bag- valve-mask ventilations until the anesthesiologist arrived to intubate the patient. A blood gas determination was delivered to the doctor and he ordered an amount of epinephrine to be injected into one IV bag, bicarbonate in the other.

"We have V-fib, prepare her for cardiac shock!" Several seconds elapsed before Carlstadt said, "Counter-shock at two- hundred -- stand clear!"

Her muscles contracted abruptly at the shock, bouncing her on the bed. The doctor and the nurses, absorbed in the moment, did not notice Max's set jaw, his clenched fists, or the look of terror in his eyes.

After two more attempts to revive her heart, Max heard Carlstadt give a final order to counter-shock at three-sixty; the desperation in his voice giving way to resignation. The regimented structure of their effort slowly broke down into a quiet randomness. The youngest nurse was crying.

Twenty minutes later only Max and Carlstadt remained. The nurses had covered Janet and removed the tubes from her arms and throat. The room stood in stark contrast to the events of the previous half hour. Completely silent now, Max could hear the footsteps and voices in the hallways around him. He could hear the sparrows calling to their cousins through the pre-dawn darkness.

"I really am sorry, Sergeant Xinnis. If we had received her earlier our chances would have been greatly improved. There was just too much undetectable blood loss."

Max was looking past him to the ring on Janet's hand, and had not heard anything Carlstadt had said. The doctor made a note to alert the counselor, and prepare the staff for a shock patient.

"I'll leave you alone for a few minutes."

Max took her slender hand for the last time and felt the chill sweep up his spine. He leaned over her and brushed his cheek against hers. The lips he had kissed so many times were bruised, dry, lifeless. He knew she was gone, yet he whispered to her. "I love you, Jan. Can you ever forgive me?" Though I could never forgive whoever did this to you?

The chill had gripped the base of his neck, and he felt the perspiration forming. Did he feel her living presence in the room, or only the strong memories? It didn't matter to him which it was. If she were here, she would tell him she freely forgave him. He was sure of that.

Jerry suddenly fell into the room, then froze, analyzing the scene before him, the realization spreading on his face. His mother cautiously appeared behind him, stunned and confused. Max went to them, took their hands, and tried to say something. He felt flushed and cold with sweat. I'm in no condition to comfort you -- I have to get out of here! He began to say this, but choked on the words. They had not noticed.

There were several nurses speaking quietly at the desk when the door of 411 flew open. Max moved like a man with a mission; his eyes glazed, his shoes beating a line to the stairwell.

"Mr. Xinnis," a nurse called after him, but he refused to acknowledge her presence.

Her hope for a formal introduction destroyed, the resident psychologist broke away from the group and attempted to pick up the slack between herself and the soldier moving quickly along the hallway.

"Mr. Xinnis -- Mr. Xinnis, I'm Dr. Twyst. Could I speak with you?" Her short legs were working hard to catch up. "You're in no condition to drive, Mr. Xinnis! I must insist!"

Twyst failed to reach him before he disappeared into the stairwell. She exhaled and stamped her foot. "Damn it!"

Carlstadt was behind her. "I wouldn't worry too much about him, Mindy, he seems tough enough. You're going to have your hands full with the other two anyway."

She joined him and they walked the hall together. "I'm more concerned with the people he'll come into contact with in the next few days." She was checking boxes on a form with Max's name at the top; CONSULTATION REFUSED.

"As a waiver of liability it's worthless without his signature," said Carlstadt. "Perhaps the sheriff would be willing to see that Mr. Xinnis arrives home safely. At least we can say we tried to do something if he goes up the wrong ramp on the freeway."

She ripped the yellow copy out of the form and handed it to him as the sound of Mrs. Clausen's screams echoed through the hall.

"Maybe you'd better do it," she said.

Max fought the noise overwhelming him. Jerry, Janet's mother, Ramsey and Kitt, and Blaine formed the inner circle. Behind them were the faceless others, urging them forward. They gathered in his head and shouted. He forced a primal scream from deep inside him, squinting hard. To his surprise, he could hear his scream above the voices.

Again, he screamed, and for a moment he saw himself as a child, running through the streets crying for his parents, the fire in his head out of control. His crying had not brought them back to life.

The flash of brake lights from the car only four feet in front of him sparked a reaction that forced the Taurus off the road; its tires digging deeply into the soft gravel shoulder. I must have been doing sixty. The noise in his head had stopped -- their echoes floating away slowly. He did not want them returning.

He randomly pulled a compact disk from the case, hoping to block them. Roxy Music's Avalon. Jan loved this. He turned off the engine and lights and let the cool love songs pour over him. He could see Bryan Ferry on the edge of that stage in Toronto, his hair in his eyes, the neon flooding the room.

I was blind, can't you see?
Through the long, lonely night.
Heaven knows, I believe,
Won't you take a chance with me?

Max had caught their concert the summer before he enlisted, back when Brian Eno was still weaving his strange electronic treatments through the music. A decade later Janet came across a notice in Rolling Stone magazine promising a concert in Toronto. Max took a three-day vacation and stuffed a quarter of his life's savings into his pocket for the trip. Janet permed her hair and bought a new dress, looking like a different person when he picked her up, and they flew north for a long weekend.

They spent that Saturday exploring the shops around the Shaw Theater, and were surprised to find two seats at a matinee performance of an Oscar Wilde play. It took little effort for them to find a romantic cafe to pass the time before the concert that evening.

Sunday morning they slept in until the maids knocked on the door. Their rented car broke down only a few miles from Niagara Falls, and they hiked the difference. They crested the last hill and the roar of the water, only several hundred yards away, engulfed them. They quickly ran down the hill where for hours they did nothing but watch the water crash below them. They saw the tourists come and go; the boys shooting Ping-Pong balls into the water with a slingshot, the busload of ecstatic, awestruck children, and their school teachers nervously guarding the rail. Janet never let go of his hand as they watched the endless waves of mist rise from the thunderous cataract. That evening as they flew out of Buffalo, Jan had told him it had been the best time of her life.

Max's composure was returning. With his eyes closed he could see Janet in the seat next to him. She looked at him with a smile. At the concert, Ferry had sung this song in French and the crowd roared. Except for the first time he had met her, Max thought she had never looked more beautiful than on that trip to Canada.

The liquid crystal display on the dashboard smoothly slid from 4:59 to 5:00. Too soon, he knew, he must gather with relatives and hear the voices screaming for real.

Max had heard Armstrong say the name of the doctor. Kadill. He could wait until he arrives at the clinic and kill him with his bare hands. Kadill would have used a knife. The clinic would be closed for hours. I could find where he lives and kill him while he eats his corn flakes.

The voices began growing in him again. He reached for the volume control to block them out. I must be insane! He would rest before he did anything. Someone should investigate, he heard Armstrong say. Someone...

He fired the engine and sped toward the house he would never again call home.

Blaine had been sitting on the porch for ten minutes, bundled tightly in her long coat. The sun would be rising soon, yet she had not slept. Her heavy eyelids closed now, reluctantly.

Max pulled into the circular drive, parking behind the car he did not immediately recognize. He left the headlights burning and stepped out of the Taurus and read the bumper stickers. The driver's side sticker mocked the second amendment supporters with "Guns Don't Kill People -- People With Guns Kill People." The opposite side cryptically and nostalgically demanded "ERA -- YES." The third one, stuck directly to the rear window, arrogantly proclaimed "Every Child A Wanted Child." It was the most politically correct Yugoslavian-made rust bucket in Lewisburg. He did know this car.

Max opened the trunk of the Taurus and felt around for the nylon bag containing his twelve gauge shotgun. His hand found his softball bat first, and he pulled it out with a motion suggesting he might be warming up for practice.

Blaine snapped from her brief sleep at the sound of the exploding glass. She stood up quickly, using the railing along the wooden steps for support. Several dogs began barking at the noise, and a light came on across the street.

She could see Max standing over the rear of the car, his face expressionless. "Will you kill me, Max?" It was just a question, void of caring. He looked at her and realized how childish he must look.

"Is that a request, Blaine?" He moved back to his car and switched off the headlights, threw the bat into the trunk and slammed it shut. The strides he took in her direction were too long, his path too straight not to frighten her. She was sure he was going for her jugular.

"Leave me alone, Blaine. There's no hope of forgiveness here -- not for you or me. And the next time I see a bumper sticker on a car promoting abortion you'd better not be in it!"

She was biting her lower lip. "Oh, That's why. I -- I thought you broke it because you thought I was in the car."

That would have been pleasant, he thought, pushing past her and through the front door. For some reason was unlocked.

"I let myself in with Jan's keys. She left her purse in my car."

"She won't be needing it," he said, taking the black and yellow silk clutch purse from her and tossing it to the table. In the light of the entryway he could see she had spent some time crying.

"Did you tell her mother or Jerry about the abortion?" Max asked.

"I was afraid to."

"Stay afraid."

"Max, I can understand you being angry, and if it makes you feel better to scare me, go ahead -- but she was the best friend I ever had -- ever. I was in the waiting room when she died. Can you imagine how I felt, seeing them running in and out of that room like that, and not knowing what was happening? Max, we both thought it was the right thing to do. I was helping her." She sounded desperate and pleading now. "It was that doctor, Max. He must be crazy!"

Max turned on her, his face inches from hers. The heat from his skin and breath triggered an adrenaline release to her blood. The tiny hairs rose on the back of her neck.

"Save it, Betty. To me, you're an accomplice in the murder of my wife and child."

"M-murder? No, I --"

"You don't get it, do you Betty? You won't take responsibility for your actions any more than that butcher will! He left her in a room alone to bleed to death, but who drove her there?"

"Yes, who drove her there?" she retaliated. "It was you as much as me!"

Max hated her for saying that. "I'm willing to admit that I should have known she could be in danger hanging around with you, but it was her decision at that point. But I never would have taken her there, and I would have done anything I could to prevent it if I knew."

"Well, you said it yourself, Max -- it was her choice."

"And what choice did you offer my baby when you `helped' Janet? I don't believe she could kill the child on her own. I think you forced her somehow -- manipulated her to try to make her more like you and your screwed up friends."

"Listen to yourself. You're not rational."

"Of course. You couldn't be wrong, could you? Why don't you look at yourself? Your entire life is a series of contradictions. You spray fake blood on that bearskin coat to express some hatred for killing animals, but your up to your neck in my family's blood!"

She was looking past him. Her knees were buckling and she balanced herself against the door. The tears ran into her mouth as she talked. "Max. I was her friend."

"You're such a comfort, Blaine. Such a miserable comfort." He could see that arguing with her was pointless. She was close to drawing blood from her lip as she bit into it. She looked tired and beaten.

Max exhaled, and said, "Go home, Betty Lane."

She backed out and Max locked the door. After a few minutes her little sewing machine engine revved, and she was gone. Max could still imagine his hands around her neck, and was surprised he had not touched her.

He took a glass from the shelf and filled it with ice. He opened several drawers before he found Robert Clausen's gift he had presented last summer on Max's thirty-seventh birthday; a half- liter of fine Napoleon brandy.

Max had wanted to share it with him, but Clausen's doctor had him on drugs that would have reacted violently with the alcohol. Clausen died just two weeks after contracting pneumonia while playing golf in the rain.

Poor Mom, thought Max; losing two so close to her in less than a year.

Max was not considered even a casual drinker. Alcohol conflicted with his running and simply never appealed to his senses. The bottle had rested untouched, waiting for the opportunity to be poured into a snifter, an ounce at a time, and relished over a cold night and crackling fireplace.

Romantic use of the brandy was no longer possible, so he splashed it into the glass. Maybe it would kill his dreams for a few hours and let him sleep. He popped the lid from the aspirin bottle and took too many, washing them down with the alcohol. Dream- killer, he reasoned.

He wanted Janet back with him now, more than he had ever wanted her. He wanted to feel her next to him again on the floor while they watched that silly show she liked that made her laugh. He wanted to see her across the table from him at Nino's, or to hold her hand again in those Canadian restaurants. He gritted his teeth as he realized he would never again bait her hook and drift those long cool weekends away in one of Joey's boats. How many miles had they walked together? How few miles!

He loaded one of Janet's discs into the CD player, and threw himself onto the couch. The light was in his eyes, so he tossed a pillow at the lamp across the room. It smacked the shade, knocking it to the floor -- the impact breaking the filament in the bulb. Good.

Sade began singing quiet love songs in the dark room. Max's face flushed as his memories mocked him with the words he had spoken to Janet only a million years ago. I'll always be with you.

Max heard the ice melting and falling and ruining the brandy. The glass became cool to his touch, reminding him of its presence. Max drank the liquid and closed his eyes. The sharp heat soon found its course in his circulation and the artificial warmth enveloped him. Before he fell asleep he saw the purple color that he had never seen in nature. At times, as a child, he had squinted his eyes tight and had seen it rushing and changing shape, beautiful and deep beyond understanding.

It came to Max again as he fell into the dream; an image of his hands held up in distress as a blackness enveloped him. He could see Janet standing on the hill above him, looking through him. The harder he tried to reach her, the deeper he sank into the darkness.

Until the riptide pulled him under.

12:O5 p.m. Thursday, April 8th

The phone was ringing. Max sat up immediately, reaching for it instinctively. He managed a dry greeting.

"Sorry to wake you Max, but Mom wants to know if you're coming over today, or what?"

Max moved his jaw side-to-side and heard several cracks as yesterday's events came flooding back. The last thing he wanted was to talk with anyone.

"Max? I can't handle Mom by myself."

"Okay, Jerry. Should I bring anything?"

"Just you."

Max was not sure he had slept at all. He felt exhausted, yet the sun was pushing noon. He was beginning to doubt the therapeutic value of the brandy. It had affected his dreams like a wet blanket on a fire. The embers of his subconscious demons had burned and snapped and fought through the night -- their actions being only dimly perceived through the dark smoke.

Sergeant Swanson had called the hospital that morning and managed to persuade them to release the status of Janet Xinnis. When Max called the office Swan was ready with condolences and assurances that he would assist as well as he could. They briefly spoke of bereavement leave and insurance. Swanson would check with the Commanding Officer and get the paper moving. Max thanked him warmly; but after he had hung up, he realized he never wanted to see him again, or return to the paperwork and lies of that miserable little office.

His plan to make himself presentable failed as he stepped from the shower and saw his face in the mirror. He could not recognize the image staring back at him. It had the same general features; the high brow, the thin blue eyes, the squarish jaw and the straight, thin nose, but his pale expression looked to be a charcoal caricature. This man looked as if he would be as thin as a sheet of paper if he were to look at himself sideways. Max, not ready for such a shock, declined the urge to check. With as little accuracy as he could afford, he quickly shaved.

He dialed directory information and asked for the number of the Sanger Clinic. He memorized and then dialed the number, but it was busy. He would call on the way.

The Super High Output engine in the emerald Taurus was calm, barely touching fifty as Max drove to the Clausen home. Max put a hand in the glove compartment, feeling for a bottle of pain killers. The pain behind his eyes had returned. He knew he would soon feel his grief dwarfed by the pain of others. It was the law of entropy applied to human grieving; the more intense seeking the less intense, equalizing the pressure.

Why was the world made this way? The question fought for a solution, but was lost behind others that were solvable. Do they need to know everything? Need I tell them? Will they find out anyway? His temples were throbbing now with a deeply rooted pain that promised permanence. To admit to the family that they had been apart for a month would be enough for them to blame him -- even to hate him. He had been working when she needed him, and she had taken a witch's counsel against that of her family. These things would hurt them, especially her mother, as much as it had hurt Max.

And what would they think of her decision to abort the child? Would they eternally condemn her for it? Would they love her less? Even though most of them were politically fashionable democrats, Max was sure there had never been a single instance in which any family member defended the pro-choice position.

The least he could do now was to protect her memory against the ill feelings and gossip generators. Janet was his wife, and he would decide which information to disseminate about her. After all, she may not have been in a proper state of mind when she went there. If only he had been able to talk with her. If only he had called a day sooner -- or if she had waited another day.

If only...

Max decided then that he was protecting them all, and himself as well, by telling the half-truth. He doubted they would investigate, and unless they demanded more from Carlstadt how would they know? Blaine had better keep her mouth shut.

The junction ahead was desolate except for an ancient Sinclair gas station and an old red and white phone booth. Tires cut into the gravel and slid, stopping the machine at the collapsed door of the booth. Again he dialed the clinic's number, and again it rang busy. He would wait this time.

The old gas station mascot lay dead, but only half buried, in the deep grass and weeds. The dinosaur tail had faded from the dark forest green to the same color on those hospital walls. The brontosaur's long tail and neck were shattered beyond repair. "Stick around," said the smile on the creature's face to the passing motorists, "I'll be converted to fuel soon, myself."

"You and everyone else," said Max to the creature.

He dialed again and noticed that there had once been a grocery in the abandoned building across the street. There were small structures scattered about in ruins, all abandoned. What happened to this neighborhood?

"Sanger Women's Health Clinic."

Max fought the urge to argue that statement. "Hello. I need to speak with Dr. Kadill. Is he in?"

"I can check. Who is calling?"

I'm the husband of the woman he murdered. The father of the child...

"Sergeant Max Xinnis," he said.

"And the nature of the call?"

"It's a personal matter."

"Thank you. I'll see if he's in."

More than once he had gotten through a good secretarial screen by using his title of Sergeant. It was often mistaken for a police title.

"He'll be with you in a moment. Please hold."

The implication of what Kadill might be doing that moment unsettled his stomach. Max could see him, telling her to hold his calls, a scalpel in his hand, the carnage at his feet.

A wave of sickness rolled over him. He swallowed hard and took a deep breath, focusing on the dinosaur.

"Dr. Kadill." His voice came on abruptly, as if hurried.

"Doctor, I'm the husband of Janet Xinnis, the woman that was ambulanced to Mercy Hospital Tuesday. I was hoping you would take a few minutes to --"

"Sergeant Xinnis, I am afraid I must refer you to my lawyer, Charles Throckmorton. He'll handle any inquiry you may have."

"But legal action may not be necessary -- I just want to talk with you --"

"You are considering legal action, Mr. Xinnis?"

"I don't know. Perhaps we could avoid it." If you stop practicing, that is.

"Perhaps isn't good enough. Any conversation between us without a signed waiver on your part can only compromise this office. Please call Charles Throckmorton -- I'm sure he can help you. Good-bye, Mr. Xinnis." And immediately the line was dead.

Max dropped the receiver at the sound of the dial tone and stepped away from the booth in disbelief, his hands in fists. Max let the waves of anger rush over him without reacting to them, dismissing the urge to destroy the property of the telephone company.

"You will talk with me!" he promised himself.

He could call the military legal counsel, and let them fight it out, but he had a feeling that Kadill's lawyers would dominate any proceedings. How many times has this been played out before? How many plaintiffs have seen Throckmorton do his legal juggling act for Kadill? That would be something to check.

Max examined another possibility. Perhaps the only reason he still practices is that everyone is afraid or unable to fight him in court. Max had seen statutory law protect criminals in other arenas, and undoubtedly Kadill had learned how to use the law to his advantage. Max opened the degraded phone book attached to the wall, and thumbed the pages to the massive list of attorneys. He found his answer in one of only three full-page advertisements in the section. The page read, in part:

Throckmorton and Associates

Experienced Professionals with practice including:

Corporation, Partnership and Business Law

Federal Practice

Criminal Law

Environmental Law

With offices in Lewisburg, Chicago, and Indianapolis

The advertisement was intimidating.

Of course, he would be forced to let the family in on the details if he began proceeding at law. It would mean disgrace for them, and certain social embarrassment. Max wondered if this might be a factor Kadill depended on. He could hear Dr. Armstrong again, his voice echoing quietly in room 411. "Someone..."

He punched in the numbers to the office. Swanson answered.

"Swan, do me a favor and find me someone to call in our legal department. I need some advice."

"Military advice?"

"No, Civilian."

"Yeah. Anything else?"

"You could make an appointment for me. Monday, or as soon as you can. I'll call you in an hour."

Max spun the wheels off the gravel drive and onto the road heading east. At least he had found a reason to live until next week. Revenge is motivation enough, he thought.

His aggression poured itself into the accelerator. The specially designed Yamaha engine reacted warmly, seeming to enjoy the opportunity to open up again. The humming of the wheels vibrated his hands. He had always been happiest traveling at twice the speed limit.

The clusters of trees became more frequent, the scene progressively rural. He would be there soon.

Then he heard her laugh. A perfect memory, so vivid he turned to the empty seat beside him expecting her there, and he winced at the pain of the dagger turning deep within his heart.

How was he going to talk with them when he felt so guilty? Was it his own foolishness that put her under Kadill's knife? Would he ever be free of this question?

Max relaxed and eased the pressure off the accelerator, the car barely touching seventy now. He put the window down to let the cool air circulate, holding the vehicle's course with one hand and rubbing the muscles in his neck with the other. He could imagine the pearl handle of the dagger protruding from his chest as he drove, twisting as he turned the wheel.

Jerry met him in the drive and explained what had happened after Max left the hospital. Mrs. Clausen's emotional reaction had been frantic and violent. She had struck out at the doctors and nurses, crying relentlessly and begging heaven to return her little girl.

They sedated her. She slept fitfully on a hospital bed until almost nine o'clock. She could barely make it to the car, but she said she could not bear to stay in the hospital another moment. Jerry had to nearly carry her into the house.

She was sitting at the kitchen table when Jerry and Max came in, dressed in baggy cotton clothes and nursing a cup of tea. They sat together for a long time with the conversation unnatural and strained. The doctor had told them little enough; she had bled to death from the hemorrhage. Max had not found it necessary to elaborate. They still believed it was a spontaneous miscarriage.

When Mrs. Clausen decided they should discuss the funeral, Max suggested they wait until tomorrow to talk about the details, and volunteered to make the preliminary arrangements. Jerry's face had gone white, his fear of a funeral for his sister clearly showing. He excused himself to go to the market in town. "We'll need some things for tonight," he said, playing the part of the realist.

Mrs. Clausen had made a few calls before Max had arrived. Now the close family members would be dropping in around dinner time, and she wanted to have a plate of sandwiches for them, maybe some salad. They would need to bring the ice from the freezer in the basement.

She paused, lost in thought for a moment. Then she asked Max if he had ever seen Jan's icicle and frost drawings. With the exception of the doodles near the phone, Max could not remember seeing any artwork by her.

Mrs. Clausen explained that, at sixteen, Janet had become entranced by the crystalline formations as they grew on the windows. She purchased a superfine point for her father's Rapidograph pen and set to work that winter to study them in ink, spending hundreds of hours on the designs. Minutes later, they were on a mission to find them.

After a short time, the hunt became desperate as closets were emptied without effect. Half an hour later Max was ready to call the search a lost cause. Still, he was thankful for the relief the hunt had brought them. Every distraction seemed to give them this momentary salvation.

When Jerry returned, he found them upstairs in Janet's old room; her red patent leather portfolio in mother's lap, and Janet's drawings heaped around them on the floor. She and Max passed the papers to each other respectfully.

Max was surprised at this evidence of a talent Janet had never revealed to him, and wondered how many other secrets she had kept. He imagined her young hand holding the pen and etching those intricate lines. The drawings were a series of alternating grays -- high and low contrasts that shifted seamlessly. They displayed a perceptive sense of light for such a young artist. The dates under her signature allowed Max to arrange them chronologically, and he could see the subtle changes as she progressed.

A silver cigarette case slid from a pocket in the portfolio. Mrs. Clausen picked it up, rubbing her thumb on the engraving.

"Her father gave her this," she said, marveling at the discovery. She pushed the latch on the case and it fell open, the disassembled pen and extra points falling to the carpet. Her hand trembled and Jerry came to put his hand on her shoulder. She laid the case at her side, studying the photograph Janet had wedged in its lid.

There was Robert Clausen, alive and strong at Janet's right hand, wearing his Sunday golf gear -- yellow pants and a white cotton shirt. He wore a crumpled white hat, matching deck shoes, and a smile that his face could barely contain.

Holding Janet's left hand, her mother stood wearing a flowered sunsuit and sandals, waving to the camera that Jerry was undoubtedly holding. There was no trace of gray in her hair then.

Janet's smile was bright and natural. She was thin and tall, not yet flowered into the woman he loved. Max might not have recognized her except for her eyes. Even in this faded photograph he could see the sparkle in them.

Jerry took his mother's hand, steadying her, and helped her to stand. Max also started to stand, but she insisted he finish looking at the drawings. Her voice sounded tired.

Max picked up the last drawing in the stack. It was another window, this one drawn from a view outside looking into the house. Snow hung in the corners of the frosted panes, but the top of the glass was clear where it had been scraped with a fingernail. It was from there that an eye peered out at him from inside. It was Janet.

Jerry reentered the room.

"How's she doing now?" Max asked.

"She's in the kitchen, crying. I think it was a good idea to keep your `separate vacations' a secret. I don't think she would have understood."

"I figured if you thought she needed to know, you could tell her." Max had never known to what degree he could confide in Jerry. He wanted to know. "You know I'd been trying to reach her, Jerry. I -- I wanted to --"

Max broke eye contact and took a deep breath. Jerry was silent, wanting to hear this.

"I wanted to apologize. We had become selfish, and we were arguing a lot about nothing. But we were inseparable, you know... I woke up and couldn't believe how long we had been apart."

Jerry was quiet, letting the words soak in. He needed to hear them -- anything to keep him from blaming Max. Jerry saw no advantage in blaming anyone.

Max started pushing papers into the portfolio, but Jerry took over the task. "Seems to me, if you're feeling guilty, you'd better find a way to forgive yourself. You don't strike me as someone who could live with it forever."

Max pocketed the silver cigarette case and left the room to call Swanson from the phone in the hallway. He had managed an appointment for Max with the Army legal counsel on Monday, sixteen hundred hours.

Max found Mrs. Clausen at the dining table, holding an ice cube wrapped in a dish towel to the back of her neck.

"My nose started bleeding," she explained, lifting the towel from the base of her neck and moving it to her closed eyes. "It hasn't done that in years."

"Are you going to make it?"

"Are you?" she asked rhetorically, all singing gone from her voice. He had never heard her like this. Even when her husband had died she had been such an example of strength.

"I'll need to see L'Aust before too late."

"He never leaves the funeral home. He lives there. Please stay until a few people arrive. Will you, Max?"

"Of course I will," he said. He called the funeral director and set an appointment for later in the evening, then set about brewing a fresh pot of tea. They sat listlessly, quiet and tired, listening to the swaying of the pendulum in the grandfather clock.

The guests arrived before six-thirty. After a short time, their mourning became less personal, and everyone did their best to comfort one another. This handful of people had known Janet since she was born, and had been near during the eventful moments in her life. Sharing their memories dulled the sharp edge of their pain. It had slid into their hearts and was resting there, only waiting for another memory of her to twist it. They accepted each other's assurances that she was in a better place now, and that there was a reason for all this suffering. Max wanted to believe them, but resisted this consolation and their attempts to disperse his sorrow. His pain was his own.

Max threw a handful of sunflower seeds onto the balcony. The cool wind rattled the open screen door. His exhaustion was complete.

There was no moral dilemma to quell tonight as he simply poured the brandy into the glass until it went over the rim. No ice. He drank half the glass before he realized how evil it tasted. His eyes burned, the steady sharp pain punching its way through from behind with every heartbeat.

He switched on the television for an excuse to escape his own thoughts, but his eyes would not focus. Sitting back in the armchair, he heard the voice of Peter O'Toole. The tension was draining, but along with it went his life force.

His brief stop at L'Aust's funeral home had strained him even further. The man had seemed pretentiously solemn through the affair, though Max knew he could hardly be expected to grieve over everyone -- or anyone, for that matter. How many bodies does a mortician drain before losing that human attribute?

In a manner that seemed rehearsed, Max had been led through a decision making process that held few options. Max made a few quick choices as the energy dripped from his forehead. L'Aust offered him a nondescript pain reliever and Max swallowed them dry and signed the papers.

As L'Aust tore copies from the forms, Max caught sight of the yellow nameplate on his cluttered desk, and wondered if it was real gold. With Janet's funeral costing as much as the down payment for their house, Mortimer Taiuus L'Aust could afford a gold nameplate.

When L'Aust assured him his purchase had been a wise one, and that he was certain Janet would have approved, Max exhaled demonstrably, and walked out. He knew she would not have approved at all.

His weakened vision blurred the images from the television, but sharpened when he squinted. When he surrendered and closed his eyes, he noticed the pictures were still there -- sharper, still, in his imagination. Max could see himself on an old horse, his rusty armor glowing red with the reflection of the sun behind the windmill. Somewhere, someone said, "He lays down the melancholy burden of sanity and conceives the strangest project ever imagined! To become a knight errant!"

Max let his consciousness slip away to a battlefield he had known before. On the hills around him he saw the angels and demons battling for conquest. He stood in the valley alone, his armor at his feet, his horse standing patiently.

Waiting.

9:45 a.m. Friday, April 9th

The crows fought, ate their fill of seeds, and flew away after a while. Max had heard them, declined their invitation to play, and now sat in the humming silence of the house. He felt its superfluous weight and wondered if he would always wake up alone in this room, hating these eternal moments.

The trace of brown liquid in the glass at his fingertips explained why he had awakened in the armchair, fully dressed except for his shoes that seemed to have disappeared. But what day is it? He felt heavy and hung over; his blood over-oxygenated.

He made his way to the kitchen where the brandy bottle stood. He gripped it in vengeance and poured it into the sink, turning on the cold water to eliminate any evidence of the ether stench. He splashed the cold water on his face and rinsed his mouth before drinking any.

The television had burned all night. The pictures on the screen now flashed another ATF assault on a group of so-called cultists. There was a comparison being made by the news anchor, and they inserted pictures from the earlier escapade in Waco, Texas, driving home the intended point to the viewer; this is just another religious cult barricaded in their church in Anytown, USA. They deserve what they get for believing differently than the government believes. Don't they have anything better to do?

Max dragged his body around the house trying to find a track of routine to fall into, but the disorientation made everything he touched seem unfamiliar. The phone rang at ten thirty but he ignored it, and when it stopped ringing he unplugged it. On his way to the bathroom he threw the clothes that littered the floor into the washing machine.

Instead of a customary shower, he soaked in the steaming bath for over half an hour, adding hot water whenever he detected the temperature drop a degree. The size of the tub had been more suited to Janet's frame, and Max found himself wishing they had installed a whirlpool.

It was difficult for Max to leave the tub. The straight razor Janet had bought him had always been a decoration in the bathroom until now. Max swirled a few drops of hot water in the mug of soap and lathered his face with the horsehair brush. He surprised himself by cutting the soap and whiskers from his face without a scratch, but while dressing into his civilian clothes he closed the blade into the pearl handle and superficially cut into his left hand.

The razor felt as if it should have always been in his hand, despite the cut. He wiped the blade dry and slipped it into his pocket. He would keep it with him.

He would prefer to stay inside today, keeping the ineffable anguish to himself. Fighting the inertion, he began pulling the wet clothes from the washer and found several clumps of wet and faded Federal Reserve Notes stuck to them. When he opened the refrigerator, an egg hit the floor. It was then that Max knew he should get outside before he accidentally burnt down the house.

He had little appetite, but decided to let Nino fix something for him. He left the house unlocked and walked toward the restaurant, unconsciously clutching the razor in his jacket pocket.

Max sat among the oak-paneled walls, the brass rails, and the hanging plants in a corner of the restaurant that the morning sun was still warming. He ordered his eggs hard-boiled, with dry wheat toast, grapefruit, and a glass of the fresh-squeezed carrot juice. Unless you stopped him, Nino would add a pinch of cayenne pepper to the juice, and would always mix it into the soy burgers. He claimed it was "good for everything bad."

It was unusual that he did not recognize the waitresses, and he tried to calculate how long it had been since he and Janet had been there together. November? No, it was early December. She wore the green dress and brown suede boots. She ordered the smoked salmon in crushed almonds. And she was asking me to resign.

Max was both sorry and relieved that Nino had not been in the restaurant. Nino would want to know about Janet, and Max had wanted to ask him to cater the gathering, but he lacked the energy to explain it all. Max scribbled a note and asked the cashier to pass it on to Nino. He left the restaurant and turned south, following a flow of skateboarding youths.

Impulsively, Max jumped aboard a bus that was loading for downtown. He imagined that he would stay on the bus until it turned around at the end of the line and returned. He had time to kill, though he knew he would end up at the Clausen's today to check on them. But he was unable to drive now. He did not even want to think.

Max fell into a dream, watching the faces of the passengers change as the machine slugged through the traffic, past the great lawns of the college campus and the Victorian renovations of the northern neighborhoods.

The bus rolled over the National Road Parkway Bridge, allowing the bored passengers a spectacular view of the downtown skyline. Below them the abandoned stockyards lined the Lewis River that stretched away from them southward on both sides of the bridge, wrapping around downtown Lewisburg like a moat.

From the elevated viewpoint he could see the neighborhood from which he sprang. Two blocks down that road was where he had lived with his parents for nine perfect years. Six blocks farther south was the street where they were murdered.

The memory triggered something in him, and he looked over his shoulder to the scene behind him. He could see the spires of the college several miles beyond the tree line. He searched the north bank of the river and found the shell of a building overlooking the stockyards. It was the orphanage he had once known so well, now in ruins.

The bus came to a stop at the first street off the bridge. Through the window he saw the sign of the Sanger Woman's Health Clinic on the side street. He grabbed the vertical rail at the rear door and swung himself out, the closing door nearly catching his right hand.

Was this the same place where Janet's life, and that of their child, had been ripped from her? Suddenly a simple question occurred to him, the answer to which seemed so important that his life hinged on it. He thought he might even be able to snap out of this nightmare if he could only ask the question; or was the answer part of the nightmare?

Max followed the sign west around the corner and immediately noticed the matching pair of blue police vehicles parked on the street. He looked around for a clue to explain their presence.

The clinic sat recessed almost a hundred feet from the street. A semi-circular drive cut a path in front of the entrance. In the wide median strip between the sidewalk and the drive were crowded perhaps twenty anti-abortion demonstrators.

Their signs were posterboard stapled to one inch wooden slats with stenciled black on white slogans, giving them the appearance of generic labels. Their signs said "Stop Abortion Now!" and "Everyone Deserves A Birthday!" and "Abortion Stops A Beating Heart." They filed along the walk chanting a monotonous and half-hearted "We Shall Overcome," never getting past the chorus.

Max thought it strange that they chose that tune. He had heard the leftists, including the pro-choice people, sing that song as well. He remembered someone (was it Blaine?) having mentioned that the song had been written for the early days of America's labor movement. Maybe the two sides have more in common than they know, thought Max.

Max had slowed his steps, unsure what to say if confronted by them. He was sympathetic to their cause, especially now, but would spurn any attempts to discuss the issue. They would probably be pleased if they knew Max intended on suing with the purpose of ruining Kadill's reputation and bankrupting the clinic. Perhaps this actually made him a confederate to these people. Nevertheless, Max was not interested in talking with them, fellow- travelers or not. He took the walkway along the east side of the building. He would go in the back.

Max turned the corner of the building and saw a lone protester standing near the rear door. Max looked to the cement in front of him. At least there's only one. Unavoidable, I guess. Why do I feel apprehensive? I don't have to talk. Am I ashamed?

He was a comfortably dressed gentleman, perhaps fifteen years older than Max, leaning on a short length of board to which he had stapled a colorful poster, the image of which was undecipherable to Max. The man seemed thin, his clothes hanging on him like a broom scarecrow. He was looking right into Max's eyes.

Max forcing a smile in the man's direction. "Hello," Max said in a friendly enough tone. The man smiled and nodded as Max brushed past. Max grabbed the handle on the door, dropping the latch with his thumb.

"Do you know what they're doing in there?" the man asked from behind him.

Max froze for a second, then jerked the handle. It was locked. He exhaled and slowly turned to face the man, showing himself to be both annoyed and resigned.

"What?"

"I asked you, do you know what is happening in that building?"

"I think so," Max lied. "I believe they're maintaining sterile conditions to perform legal medical procedures." Max squeezed the words through his teeth, words that Kadill himself might use against Max when confronted. Does this man know their antidote?

"A legal procedure, yes, but not a lawful one. God's law is unchanging -- but governments can make it legal to kill!" The man looked deep into Max, gauging his reaction. "And the workers at this abortuary perform several thousand a year; but have you ever seen the result of one of those performances?"

The man gestured to his poster. It was a painting of something organic -- that much was clear -- but the surreal blend of colors kept it from making sense. Max was deliberately uncooperative, something inside of him refusing to understand what was to be seen in it.

"Why aren't you out front singing `We Shall Overcome' with the others?" Max taunted.

Not happy with the change of subject, the man looked thoughtful for a moment, perhaps sorry he had ever smiled at Max.

"My God has already overcome. He won the battle when He died on the cross at Calvary. Those people sing a song for losers, and I'm glad to be ostracized from them."

"Ostracized?"

"My sign embarrasses them." Max forced himself to look at the poster again. "It frightens some of that crowd outside as much as the butchers inside."

A realization hit Max as the picture shot into focus in his mind. It's a photograph!

Max looked away, stunned. "I've got to go." He inhaled deeply and looked up the walk that led to the front of the building. He felt dizzy.

The man saw the terror on his face and took his arm, steadying him and holding him fast.

"Son, why are you here?"

Max clinched his fist tight, not wanting to break in front of this stranger. The man sounded sincere, but why share this with him? I can deal with it, he lied to himself.

"My wife," he said, choking, "she came here. It had to be a mistake."

"God help her!" his hands tightening on Max's arm.

"She's dead." Max said faintly, looking past him.

The man nodded in empathy. "Tell me about it." His grip was urgent.

"Not now. I've got to go inside first. Talk with Dr. Kadill."

"I'll be here. You do what you have to do. I'll be here," he said, releasing his arm. "My name is Reynolds. Pastor Reynolds."

"Max," he said, shaking Reynolds' hand politely.

"Good to meet you, Max. Whatever you're going in there for, may the Lord be with you."

Max took another deep breath and walked away.

"The Lord is good!" the man called after him. "A stronghold in the day of trouble!"

Max ignored the group out front and walked directly to the front entrance. A uniformed policeman was escorting several women toward the crowd. One woman carried a bullhorn. The cop noticed Max, and their eyes met momentarily before Max opened the door.

The receptionist eyed him coolly. "May I help you?"

"My name is Max Xinnis," he said quietly. "I'd like to speak with Dr. Kadill for a minute."

"Did you have an appointment?" she asked, but then, remembering, "Oh, you called yesterday, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did, but --"

"The doctor has instructed me to refer you to his lawyer, Mr. Throck --"

"Yeah, I know, but I just want to get one question answered -- off the record -- if he could spare a minute." He could feel his face flushing, his mouth drying.

"That is impossible. I'm sure Mr. Throckmorton can answer your questions." Her receptionist voice was gone now, replaced by a tense inflection.

"Could you just tell him I'm here? After all, it isn't much to ask." He was commanding rather than requesting.

"My wife couldn't answer this for me! I just want to know..."

She picked up the phone, turning away from him as she dialed.

"... was the baby a boy or a girl?"

"This is the Sanger Woman's Health Clinic. We have a disturbance inside the building. Could you radio one of the officers?"

Max studied her, nodding his head. Typical. She hung up the phone.

"Thanks for your help."

She stood as if to express her authority, and to fill her lungs to scream for him to get out, but Max stepped past her desk and down the hallway, causing her to lose her breath in surprise.

He could hear her stuttering as he opened the first door. Lights off. He took a few steps farther and opened another door, her protests beginning to gain volume. Washroom. He walked to the last door on the left side of the hall. He would do this until they stopped him. He looked back. The receptionist had stopped yelling, but was now holding the entrance door open, waving to someone.

The door swung open with his weight.

A woman in a nurse's uniform stood at a table. Her left hand held the lid to a stainless steel container. Her right hand --

"What are you doing in here?" Her right hand --

"Looking for..." his voice trailed off in disbelief. Her right hand held a miniature female child, perfectly formed, perhaps ten inches long. She was suspended above the opening of the container, held tight in the grip of the locked forceps.

"What are you doing?" he heard himself say, dreamlike.

"Get out of here at once!" she screamed.

The child's leg gave a jerk, as if reacting to her voice, and Max jumped back, hitting the wall behind him. The sickness filled him.

He turned and quickly covered the distance to the end of the hall, hitting the exit door hard. He took some deep breaths and looked at the sky, expecting to vomit at any moment. It was just a muscle spasm, he said to himself. I have to keep my head screwed on! He stood silent for a moment, trying to breathe steady again.

The man he had met was gone. What was his name? Reynolds? His posterboard lay in the mud beside a hedge. One side will be ruined, he thought, as he picked up the sign. Again, the image hit him like a sledgehammer, but now it was manageable. There was a place in his head to file this now. He could feel his blood pressure ease as he stared into the photograph.

The eyes of the child had never opened. The pieces of skin tissue, blood and bone were randomly scattered on the table below. Among those pieces he could recognize a tiny hand with fingernails, a dismembered leg, and a perfect foot.

The horror multiplied in the image of its jawless head, being held above the table with forceps clamped tightly against the upper palate and cheek. It was a child's face, beautiful, innocent as if asleep, but without a lower jaw. It was not in the picture. The torn flesh inferred that it had been the application of violent force behind the abortionist's stainless steel tools that murdered the child.

It's a photograph, he heard his mind scream. It really happened.

Max wiped the poster on the grass, and held it high over his head, following the path to the front of the building again. The mud ran and dripped onto his hands and arms.

He stood on the corner, the picture overhead, taking in the scene as his right hand turned over the razor in his pocket. Several protesters looked at him with disapproval, as if he had broken a rule, and continued their walking and chanting.

The police cars were still there, but no sign of their drivers. Then Max saw Reynolds locked in the back seat of the nearest car. Max lifted his hand in a subtle wave. The man was smiling and nodding in approval, but the police had cuffed his hands behind his back and he was unable to gesture to him.

A smaller group of counter-demonstrators were now sharing the patch of grass with the pro-lifers. The pro-choice feminists were attempting to make up in decibels what they lacked in numbers. A woman in her forties, her heavy cosmetics hiding her identity more than her age, spoke abrasively into the bullhorn. Her face twisted into ugly shapes as she spat foul poetry at her audience. He walked toward her.

She saw him approaching and ignored him at first. Then she looked directly at him, her face twisted hatefully, her venomous words spewing. She knew she could get the best of him -- drive him and his pornographic picture away. She howled a dramatic plea into the bullhorn; "We're tired of men who have control over their own bodies telling us what to do!"

A bearded youth from the sidewalk screamed back at her, "Then only murderers should sit in judgment of accused murderers! What happened to the moral law of God?!" But his voice was drowned out.

Max stood in front of her, leaning on the emotionless wall of reason embodied in the photograph. The nameless child in the picture was his own lost child, now. He pushed the slat of wood into the ground so that it stood facing them.

Max wondered what it was about the picture that elicited such response in them. Did it scare them because it was real? Because it indicts everyone who never seriously did enough to stop it? Because it forces the feminists to confront the product of their philosophy? Does it scare these lukewarm pro-lifers because they know they should be burning this house of horrors to the ground?

The policeman cautiously approached Max from behind, unsnapping the holster on his belt.

"Mr. Xinnis!"

Handcuffed to the chair in the police station, Max felt his blood boiling. He had done nothing to deserve being arrested, and believed the police could at least offer some degree of respect to Pastor Reynolds, who was refusing to be fingerprinted.

"I have a religious conviction concerning this," said Reynolds. "Ask Captain Miller. He'll tell you! He's processed me before, many times, without them!"

The policewoman was applying pressure to the small bones in his hand with the kubotan attached to her keychain. "I don't care about your convictions, mister! We're doing our job here!"

"They're my personal property given to me by my Creator. I don't give you permission to take them, and I won't surrender them voluntarily!"

"You're going to be cited for resisting arrest in a minute!" The veins were showing in the woman's heavy neck muscles. She was pushing her foot into his shin and pulling him forward to put him off balance, the small wooden cylinder bit into his hand.

"You've already arrested me! How could I be resisting something that's already happened? I'm trying to keep you from stealing my property!"

"We have the right to take them --"

"You have the force to take them, you don't have any right! I haven't been convicted yet!"

Max was calculating the best possible angle of attack, and decided to smash her across the back with the chair he was handcuffed to.

"He's right, Lindsey," said the policeman typing the report. "Miller never prints him."

She released her grip suddenly, causing Reynolds to fall backwards against the counter. "I'm writing you up for refusal to be processed," she said.

Max relaxed his grip on the arms of the chair, though he still wanted to hit her with it. Reynold's argument had made sense to Max, and when she made a move toward him he addressed her with authority.

"Officer Lindsey, I'm a military sergeant. And after hearing what Mr. Reynolds has said, I'm going to have to verify your jurisdiction with my Commanding Officer before releasing that information."

She grabbed his wrist, unlocked the cuffs, and he stood. He opened his hand in apparent submission, but countered her weight that now pulled on his arm. He was not moving -- he was only showing her his hands.

"These fingerprints are the property of the United States Army, an independent branch of the federal government. Until convicted in your courts, or until I am advised by my superiors, I am sworn to protect that property."

She leveled a mocking stare at him. "We can take them from you, you know."

"That's the only way you'll get them." It was an offer for her to try. She waited for him to drop his stare. When he did she would put him in a wrist lock and print him against his will. Max looked into her steel-gray eyes with an expression that told her he was looking forward to her attempt.

"Forget it, Lindsey!" said the cop at the desk. "If we need them that bad we'll get them later. I'll ask Miller about it when he gets back."

She released him, but he did not recoil as Reynolds had. She shoved the print kit into the top drawer of the counter and walked out without another word.

Reynolds turned to face him.

"I know a girl who had her wrist broken when they tried forcing her hand open. By the way, you shouldn't call them `officers' unless they're at least sergeants. Gives them a big head."

"Shut up," said the man typing.

"I'd like to use the telephone now," said Reynolds.

Reynolds dialed the phone they pushed in front of him. Max could not help but wonder if he would be capable of freeing himself in time to attend Janet's funeral. His choices seemed bleak. If he called Jerry, he would certainly discover the reason Max was arrested at the clinic. Calling Swanson would mean risking rumors at the command, though they would probably be notified soon enough.

As a last resort he could call Blaine. Though he would rather die in prison than ask her for a favor, he knew he could trust her to come. Max disqualified Ramsey simply because he could keep secrets from everyone except his wife, who kept them from no one.

Reynolds spoke into the phone loudly enough for Max to hear. "Lena, I'm at the county jail. I'll need you to bail me out." Then he turned to look out the window, and lowered his voice.

The man typing with two fingers asked, "Why were you carrying a razor, Mr. Xinnis?"

A nickel-plated Smith & Wesson .38 Special with walnut grips lay on the desk beside the policeman. Max eyed the weapon thoughtfully. One bullet for each letter in Kadill's name -- or one for each of his own.

The concrete ledge on which they sat looked recently painted, but smelled musty. The other three walls to their cage consisted of vertical bars less than five inches apart. Their cell was in the basement, connected on both sides to the other five cells. Only one other prisoner shared the room, two cells away, and he stopped talking to them once they had convinced him they had no cigarettes.

Max had no way of knowing how long he would be in the concrete and steel room, and was unconcerned -- if not apathetic -- about it. Leaving here would mean the funeral. It would mean dealing with Kadill, and the dead end of his future.

The police had taken the contents of Max's pockets, and so it surprised him when Reynolds pulled a Bible, a mere quarter of an inch thin, from his breast pocket.

"You should be a smuggler."

Reynolds smiled. "Have you ever read this, Max?"

"Some of it -- a long time ago. When I was a kid."

"But you should be reading it now! Every warrior should. It will answer the questions you carry with you. This is how God gives us direction -- through His Word."

"Yeah? What does it say about our situation?"

"Which situation? Your duty to the Lord Jesus Christ as a husband whose wife was murdered? Or our duty to Him as prisoners in this jail? Or my duty as His disciple to witness to you?"

"All those things, I guess."

"It's all the same, Max. Duty to Christ. Our lives are either service or disservice to our Creator. We either embrace the Savior, or turn our back on Him. Either way, His Word promises we will all bow down before Him one day."

"Yeah. I remember that from somewhere."

"Max. Have you ever accepted Christ as your personal Savior?"

The question sank in and Max shifted his weight. Haven't I? he wondered. How many hours had he spent at the vacation Bible schools, and the church outings at the orphanage? Surely he must have done that, but he could not remember if he had, or even why it was relevant.

He could remember a colorful book of pictures held in his mother's hands. In it was a picture of a brook moving through a valley of purple clover. A flock of sheep grazed on a hill, and their shepherd stood on the hill watching them. His mother had always spoken of Jesus when she held that book.

"I might have," he said finally, shrugging his shoulders. "I can't remember. Janet used to talk about those things when we first met. She would talk about Jesus once in a while. But not recently."

"So she was saved?"

"Saved?"

"Saved by the merciful grace of God Almighty. Do you know?"

"I guess I don't know. I'm not sure I even know what you're talking about."

"Would you like me to show you the promises of God?"

Reynolds flipped pages in the diminutive Bible, showing Max what he had found. "`Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.' There's a promise here, Max, and God never broke one."

"And children? What about a child who dies?" Max's voice was dry.

"It's a debatable point, but I believe that unless they've reached the age of reason, and deliberately rejected Christ, they inherit that promise. It's my personal opinion. Some theologians would disagree with that presumption, but only the heretic would disagree with what the Bible says about salvation once we're capable of making those decisions."

Max closed his burning eyes, not convinced he should talk of these things while in this frame of mind. It was all too new to him. He felt vulnerable; as if his future could easily be swayed by the words of this man. Yet, there was no pacifism in this preacher. Reynolds was different from others he had met, or heard briefly on television. He was speaking of the Bible as a book for warriors -- and it was Reynolds who insisted on carrying the picture no one else would.

Max doubted if any force on earth could prevent him from taking revenge. He wondered if it might be a sign of madness to deliberately avoid an influence that could dissuade him from violence. He believed he must move slowly, calmly, or risk losing his objectivity to that question.

Max also knew it was skillful avoidance that prevented these discussions of God in the past. He might have remained blissfully ignorant of Christianity his entire life if left alone -- though he had always accepted the existence of God. He could see too much order in the universe, despite his college professor's arguments to the contrary.

Max remembered an atheist literature professor at Ohio State University that had made his opinion clear to the class: the books of the Bible were a collection of fairy tales and myths, and dissent will ruin your grades, just as it will ruin your life. Max thought how ridiculous it was that he had carried that man's warning with him all these years, yet could recall nothing else the man had said.

Reynolds could sense the subject was especially sensitive to Max, and that he was hurting. Yet, he believed God had put them together for His purpose, and was determined to pursue the discussion for the sake of duty to his Lord.

"How long do you think we'll be in here?" asked Max.

"A few hours, maybe. We're fortunate that it's a weekday -- we don't have to wait until Monday for the judge."

"We're going to court today?"

"Just an arraignment. The judge will set bail. Probably a couple hundred bucks. That's what it was last time. Then we're out of here."

"Don't they let anyone out on their own recognizance?"

"You've been watching too much television. Besides, it was you they picked up carrying a straight razor at the clinic where your wife was killed. We need to pray they don't hang you out to dry."

Max picked up the Bible and thumbed through it randomly as Reynolds spoke.

"Money is the only thing they're interested in. It's how they justify their existence. I've never heard of anyone arrested for violating an injunction and being released on their signature."

"Doesn't matter," said Max. He walked to the cell door and pulled. The metal clanked, but there was less than a tenth of an inch slack.

The door at the end of the hall opened loudly, and the man who had typed their arrest reports shouted into the room.

"Everyone want lunch?"

"Yeah," said the man in the other cell. "And bring me some extra salt this time. I need extra salt."

Max was uninterested, but Reynolds spoke up. "Yeah, two lunches here, too!"

"Why do I bother asking?" said the cop.

"Bring them extra salt, too!" said Number Three.

The cop slammed the door.

"Even if you don't want it, you can leave it for someone else," said Reynolds. "Or give it to that guy. There are always hungry folks in here."

"You look like you've missed a few meals yourself," said Max. He had noticed the gaunt look of the man when they first met.

"Oh, I stopped eating for pleasure when I was a missionary. A long time ago."

"Yeah? When was that?"

"It was the last season of my `initiation' into the ministry, you might say. Something happened that brought me close to feeling my own mortality. I just started thinking differently."

Max sat quietly waiting for him to continue, but he was reading the book.

"Well?"

"What? Oh, well -- promise to interrupt me if you've heard it," said Reynolds. Max nodded.

"There was this provisional village on the Zimbabwe and Mozambique borders. I met a tribe that had been forced from their home village and were living in these few huts they'd thrown together. They were in constant fear of the communists that had starved and relocated them. It was just like in Ethiopia.

"My concern for the children alternated from their spiritual to their physical needs, and I couldn't concentrate. I wasn't even sure they could understand my dialect. On top of that, I was hungry myself, even though I'd eaten some dried fish the night before.

"But when I saw their sad spirits so desperate for any kind of comfort, I knew that was my last chance to reach them for Christ. I was sure most of them would be dead if I ever returned.

"Max, the Holy Spirit descended on us all that day. He gave me the words to speak that they could understand. In His infinite mercy and grace, God allowed this poor sinner you're looking at to be used for His glory. Every child accepted Christ that day, I believe. It was the most beautiful day in my life. I think about it a lot.

"Well, a few days earlier my supplies had been stolen by a renegade border patrol -- rather like the traffic cops in Lewisburg. I'd been left with enough diesel fuel to return to Pietersburg, where I started from, but had no food except a pound or so of millet, and maybe an ounce of tea and a few ounces of sugar. It would have provided the energy for the long ride back the next day; but I had to give it to them.

"Most of the children followed me back to my tent, which was just a tarp thrown over a lean-to they had provided. I sat there, cooking the millet and watching them -- amazed how skeleton-like they were. I tried to explain how they would receive new, perfect bodies in heaven that would never feel the hunger. This I don't know if they understood. I was being convicted to set an example for them. Denying myself food might illustrate my faith that God would provide for my needs later.

"I gave them each a bit of millet. An amount that was small even for their little hands. But they wouldn't eat it without me. You had to see it to believe it. I must have been breaking some tribal taboo and they weren't going to have it. I mean, even the smallest one, maybe four years old, wouldn't eat. When I took the pan that had a few grains stuck to it and made motions that I was eating from it, they all dug in.

"Then one of the children farthest away from me screamed. I jumped to my feet to look at her. I promise you I have never seen a snake as large as the one that was coming directly at me. I don't know how I had the state of mind to do it, but I crushed its head with the heel of my boot.

"My foot was on its head, and the body of the snake was twisting around me, and in that moment I knew the fear those children live in. Every waking hour they live with that same feeling I had a second before my foot came down. That feeling that this minute could be my last one on earth -- that the only thing that separates me from here and eternity is my accuracy in hitting this target. Like the only thing separating these children from eternity is a handful of millet. We were all bound together that day in a way I've never experienced before or since.

"Those kids took that snake, peeled its skin, and roasted it whole over the fire. They were ecstatic, and praised God for the food. There was a lot of meat on that reptile!"

"Ever go back?"

"No. I'd already spent two years there, and I still had a lot of problems with the various dialects. I never went back. They treated me like family, but I don't know if even one of them is living. Twenty years ago and I remember it like yesterday."

So others are haunted by the past as well.

"Why do you keep going to the clinic if they just keep arresting you? I mean, what's the point? Isn't there a more effective way to fight this?"

"We each have to do what we can do, Max. For me, this is the level I fight on. Others fight on lower levels, others higher. You know that as well as I do. It was you who picked up my poster."

"What drove you to it, though? There can't be more than a few churches actively involved in this, or we'd hear about it on the news."

Reynolds smiled at Max's naiveté.

"I never needed a personal reason to get involved. All I had to learn was that they scream."

"What?"

"The babies. They scream when the abortionist rips into them. The same way the bush child screamed when the snake brushed against her ankle. The same way anyone in their right mind would scream if they knew what was going on." Reynolds' hands clenched tight on the bars. He was beginning to look weary.

"What is going on?" asked Max.

Reynolds looked into the vacant cells. "I don't think you'd want to know just now."

The policeman walked in with three sacks from the restaurant on the corner. He slid a plastic tray under the bars, and then reached through the bars to put the sacks on the trays.

"Get me my salt?" asked Number Three.

"I knew there was something I forgot," said the cop. The sound of the door latching was followed by a muffled obscenity.

Reynolds picked up a bag and dug through it. "Nothing worth eating," he said. "But don't let that stop you."

Max lifted a cup from the bag and pulled the lid from it. He drank deeply, and then fished out an ice cube and chewed on it.

"What's going on, Pastor?" he asked again.

Reynolds removed the drink and dropped the bag to the floor. "I'll tell you, Max. But you won't like it."

"Nothing can surprise me now."

"The abortuaries get their money from the victims, and are supplemented by the government. The business is so profitable, so stable, so well protected, that organized crime started buying into limited partnerships as investment opportunities. In addition to the billions they make killing the babies, they now sell the aborted babies to the highest bidder. They're grinding them into cosmetics and using their collagen and organs to make the big bucks for those who can pay for them. This creates a sick Soylent Green cycle, where aborticide becomes more affordable as the demand for the byproduct increases.

"But by far the worst example of what happens to these babies is the bizarre fetal experimentation that goes on with live `fetuses.'"

"Live?"

"Yeah. Like that chemist at the college who wanted to see how long he could keep decapitated heads alive. He received a government grant and bought aborted late-term babies from the medical school. The doctors actually sold them alive without the mother's knowledge. They delivered them the same hour to the laboratory."

"How could the mothers not know that?"

"Sedation. In the fine print of the contract they signed, they had agreed that the products of the procedure would be donated to the labs. It's likely that few of them read past the part that said the procedure would be free of charge."

Max did not know what to say. Reynolds had been right. He wished he had never heard this.

Reynolds sat back on the ledge and opened his Bible to a verse in Isaiah, showing him the book as he read aloud.

"`Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow.' Would you like to know how to be sure where you'll be when you die, Max?"

Max felt more comfortable with Reynolds now; as if he could take a chance and deal with this long-neglected business. He simply said, "Why not?"

"Before we begin, let's pray to Him." Reynolds went to his knees, facing the smooth concrete wall. Max sighed. The thought of putting himself in such a compromising position numbed him. He could see Number Three chewing French fries with his mouth open, watching them from two cells away.

"Don't let your pride be an obstacle to your relationship with Christ. Anything we study will be useless if you allow your pride to interfere."

"Didn't God give me these feelings of pride?"

"Yeah. And pain, and humiliation, and sorrow, and grief. Like anything, they have their place. Pride in your relationship with God, or pride in your steadfast desire to seek His truth might be a good thing."

"Pride in being humble?" Max realized he was being childishly stubborn and knelt beside Reynolds. "Sorry, pastor."

"We all need a kick in the pants once in a while." He closed his eyes and bowed his head low.

"Great Lord of heaven, faithful Creator; we are faced with adversity and lie in the jaws of the enemy, and we beg your pardon for our trespasses against you. Lord, we need your strength and guidance now. Please share your wisdom with us as we study your sacred Word, and seek your will in our lives.

"Lord, please intervene i