I, Alex Cross (Alex Cross 16)

She was on the ventilator again, this time with a tracheostomy right into her throat. There was a feeding tube in her nose now, and the dialysis too. But the worst by far was Nana’s face—all pinched and drawn down, like she was in pain. I had thought she would just look asleep, but it was much worse than that.

I squeezed in to sit by her. “It’s Alex. I’m here now. It’s Alex, old woman.”

I felt as if I were on the opposite side of a thick piece of glass from Nana. I could talk to her and touch her and see her, but I couldn’t actually reach her, and it was the most helpless sensation I’d ever known. I had this terrible sick feeling that I knew what was coming next.

I’m usually good in a crisis—it’s what I do for a living—but I was barely holding it together. When Jannie came over to stand beside me, I didn’t bother to try and hide the tears coming down my cheeks.

This wasn’t just happening to Nana. It was happening to all of us.

And as we sat there watching Nana, a tear ran down her cheek.

“Nana,” we all said at once. But she didn’t speak back to us or even try to open her eyes.

There was just that single tear.

Chapter 61

WHEN I WASN’T sleeping that night, or getting out of the nurses’ way every few hours while they checked their patient, I was talking to Nana. At first, I stuck to the soft stuff—how much we loved her, how much we were pulling for her, and even just what was going on in the room.

But eventually it sank in for me that all Nana ever wanted was the truth, whatever that happened to be. So I started to tell her about my day. Just like we had always talked, never thinking about the reality that our talks would have to end eventually.

“I had to kill someone today,” I said.

It seemed like there should have been more to say about that, once I’d said it out loud, but I just sat there quietly. I guess this was where Nana was supposed to come in.

And then she kind of did—a memory, anyway, from an earlier time when we had a similar conversation.

Did he have a family, Alex?

Nana had asked me that before anything else. I was twenty-eight at the time. It was an armed robbery, at a little grocery store in Southeast. I wasn’t even on duty when it happened, just on my way home. The man’s name, I’ll never forget, was Eddie Clemmons. It was the first time anyone had ever shot at me, and the first time I’d ever fired in self-defense.

And yes, I told Nana, he had a wife, though he didn’t live with her. And two children.

I remember standing there in the front hall on Fifth Street with my coat still on. Nana had been carrying a basket of wash when I came in, and we ended up sitting down on the stairs, folding clothes and talking about the shooting. I thought it was strange at first, how she kept handing me things to fold. Then, after a while, I realized that at some point, my life would start to feel normal again.

You’re going to be fine, she had said to me. Maybe not quite the same, but still, just fine. You’re a police officer.

She was right, of course. Maybe that was why I needed so badly to have the same conversation again now. It was strange, but all I really wanted was for her to tell me it was going to be okay.

I picked up her hand and kissed it and pressed it against my cheek—anything to connect with her, I guess.

“Everything’s going to be all right, Nana,” I said.

But I couldn’t tell if that was the truth or not, or exactly whom I might be lying to.

Chapter 62

I WOKE UP with a hand pressing on my shoulder and someone whispering close to my ear. “Time to go to work, sweetheart. Tia’s here.”

My aunt Tia set her big canvas knitting bag down at my feet. I’d been awake and then asleep again half a dozen times through the night; it was strange being here, with no windows and no real sense of time, and Nana so sick.

She looked about the same to me this a.m. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. A little of both, maybe. “I’m going to wait for morning rounds,” I told Tia.

“No, sweetheart, you’re going to go.” She nudged my arm to get me out of the chair. “There’s not enough room in here, and Tia’s calves are killing her. So go on. Go to work. Then you can come back and tell Nana all about it, just like you always do.”

The knitting came out automatically, with the big colorful wooden needles she always used, and I saw a thermos and a USA Today in the bag too. The way she settled right in made me remember she’d been through this before, with my uncle, then with her younger sister, Anna. My aunt was almost a professional at caring for the very sick and dying.

“I was going to bring you some of that David Whyte you like,” Tia said. At first I thought she was talking to me. “But then I thought no, let’s keep you riled up, so I brought the newspaper instead. You know they’re outsourcing the statue for Dr. King’s memorial to China? China? Do you believe that, Regina?”