Chapter 6 - The Return to Room 347
The St. Mary’s ICU was quiet when I returned at eight-thirty Wednesday morning. The gray light of the winter sun was trying to break through the reinforced glass of the corridor windows, casting long, pale bars of silver across the linoleum floor.
I didn't wear my overcoat this time. I left it in the car with Ryan. I walked down the hall in my shirtsleeves, my tie gone, the collar of my white linen shirt open at the throat, looking more like the boy who used to fish off the docks in South Boston than the head of a Tribeca logistics group.
When I pushed open the door to Room 347, the telemetry monitor was still ticking, but the sound was slow, regular, and peaceful—seventy-four beats per minute, a steady, unhurried march that felt like a calendar being turned.
Hannah was sitting up against the pillows.
The blue mask of wax was gone, replaced by a faint, translucent flush of red along her cheekbones that looked like the first frost on an apple tree. Her dark hair had been brushed back from her face, tied with a piece of green hospital gauze, and her pale-green eyes—the eyes that had haunted every empty mirror in my penthouse for three months—were wide, clear, and fixed on the window.
Her left hand was back over her stomach, her fingers moving in that slow, rhythmic circle that I had seen in the dark two nights ago.
She didn't look at me when I stepped into the room. She kept her eyes on the gray New York sky outside the glass.
"You're late, Jack," she said, her voice small, dry, but holding that old, stubborn line of steel that had made her the only woman in Manhattan who could tell me to leave a room and make me do it.
"I had to see Marcus," I said, walking over to the side of the bed and stopping an inch from the rail.
"Did you kill him?" she asked, her eyes finally turning to look at me, her gaze level, unblinking, studying the gray stubble on my jaw and the mud on my boots with the cold precision of an engineer.
"No," I said. "He’s talking to the district attorney. He’s out of the company, Hannah. He’s out of New York."
"I didn't care about the company, Jack," she whispered, her fingers tightening over the sheet covering her belly. "I left because you told me you didn't want the child. You told me that if I stayed in that penthouse, you’d spend the next ten years turning our lives into a security detail. You said you didn't love me anymore."
"It was a lie, Hannah," I said, dropping to my knees on the hard linoleum floor beside her bed, my hands reaching out to touch the cold steel of the safety rail because I didn't think I had the right to touch her skin. "It was the only lie I ever told you. I saw what they did to the union organizers in Queens last year. I saw the car bomb in Newark. I thought... God, Hannah, I thought if you were listed as an ex-wife on a legal decree, they’d leave you alone. I thought if you hated me, you’d be safe."
"I was never safe without you, Jack," she said, her voice finally breaking, a single, clear tear spilling over her lower lid to run down the sharp ridge of her cheekbone. "I spent ninety days listening to the wind on that river path, thinking that every car that pulled into the lane was someone you sent to tell me you’d changed your mind. I didn't want a security detail. I just wanted my husband."
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She reached out her right hand—the one that wasn't connected to the IV line—and placed it over the back of my hand where it rested on the steel rail. Her fingers were warm, dry, and holding the exact, small strength that had broken my perimeter four years ago.
"His name is Liam," she said softly, her eyes looking down at my hands. "And he’s got your chin, Jack. Dr. Reynolds saw it on the sonogram in Poughkeepsie. He’s got that stupid little cleft that you use when you're trying to win an argument with the board."
