Free Alone by Lisa Gardner Page A

on whirlwind shopping blitzes where he bought out half the city.
    Jimmy sleeping with the maid, the nanny, her friends. Jimmy heading to the bar the first time she had to rush Nathan to the emergency room. Jimmy putting his fist through the wall when she dared to say he should drink less. Jimmy slamming his fist into her ribs when she dared to say something might be wrong with Nathan.
    Then, six months ago, Jimmy coming upon the cache of letters written to her from her lover. He'd entered their bedroom at four a.m. He'd flipped her onto her stomach. He'd pinned her to the mattress, and then he'd sodomized her.
    “Maybe I should've tried that in the very beginning,” he'd said when he was done. “Maybe you would've felt something then.”
    Hours later, they'd sat across from one another at the breakfast table and made small talk about the weather.
    Catherine curled up on the bare mattress now. She put her hand on the empty spot where her husband used to lie. And she remembered the last look on his face, during that instant right when the bullet found the tender spot behind his ear and right before it came shattering out the hard bone at his temple—an expression that was not handsome, not dashing, not charming, but totally, utterly betrayed.
    And she wondered now, what had disappointed him most—his own imminent death, or the fact that he hadn't been able to kill her first?
    A crash sounded from Nathan's room. Prudence started calling her name and Catherine scrambled down the hall, as surprised as anyone by the tearstains on her face.
     
    A T THE HOSPITAL. Orders hastily shouted and promptly obeyed. One sharp needle and a nurse had drawn blood. Another sharp poke and the IV was in place. A third probing stab and Nathan had been catheterized.
    Nathan's twenty-six-pound frame writhed in the middle of the hospital bed, jerking continuously as he fought to sit. His cheeks were on fire, sweat rolling down his limbs. His abdomen protruded painfully while his chest appeared concave as he gasped and heaved for breath.
    A resident was reporting, “Severe epigastric pain—”
    A nurse was shouting: “Temp one-oh-two. Heart rate one fifty, BP one fifteen over forty—”
    Dr. Rocco was already barking out commands: “I need two milligrams morphine, cold compresses, TPN nutrition. Come on, people, move !”
    The first time Catherine had been through this drill, she had trembled uncontrollably. Now, she was grim-faced as a combat veteran as two people pinned Nathan's writhing body to the bed and two others sliced off Nathan's cowboy-print pajamas and slapped on wires for the heart monitor. Nathan screamed in pain; they held him harder.
    So it went, on and on and on, Nathan fighting for his life and the hospital staff fighting with him.
    Afterwards, when the worst had passed, when the nurses and residents had moved on to more pressing cases, when only Nathan remained, unconscious, breathing strained, a tiny form lost in the middle of the metal-framed hospital bed, Dr. Rocco took her aside.
    “Catherine . . . I know things must be difficult at home right now.”
    “You think?” The words came out too harshly. Catherine regretted her tone almost immediately. She turned her head away from Dr. Rocco and stared at the walls, which were really much too white. She could hear the beep of Nathan's monitor, faithfully counting out the rhythm of his heart. Sometimes, she heard that sound in her sleep.
    “Jimmy, we have to do something about Nathan.”
    “Jesus, Catherine, can't you leave the poor boy alone?”
    “Jimmy, look at him. He's sick. Really, really sick . . .”
    “Is he? None of these fancy tests you order ever prove anything. Maybe the problem isn't with Nathan, Cat. I'm beginning to wonder—maybe the problem's with you.”
    “Catherine, he has pancreatitis again. That's the third time this year. Given his heart and the rest of his health, he can't keep battling these kinds of infections. His liver is enlarged, he's still