The waiting is maddening.
In the US, Clarice could've had this list in a few minutes. They could've been out and searching hours ago. With luck, Dr. Lecter would've already been in a cell and Susana could have already been reunited with her mother. But not here. Probably not tonight, so they said at five o'clock. Goddam.
Clarice Starling sits in her hotel room, watching TV and trying to dampen down her rage. It is like rubbing her skin with sandpaper. The Paraguayans are trying, sure enough. They have people going through the list, trying to cross off suspects. 'We don't want to have too many false positives' was what they said. False positives be damned, Clarice thinks. So what if we inconvenience a few goddam people. I want my daughter.
But this is a wealthy area, and heaven forbid wealthy people be inconvenienced by the police. Clarice finds herself thinking of the long-ago mayor in his Navy surplus shoes, taking back her father's star. Her resentment towards the Paraguayan authorities is colored the same. Don't they want the US to be happy with them? All they need to do is see if Dr. Lecter is there. If it's not Dr. Lecter, Clarice doesn't care who it is.
But no, she is not in command here, damn it all. Bowman is coordinating, but the FBI and all its skilled people are guests, and guests may not demand things. Clarice is toying with searching for her daughter herself. Go up and down that avenue – Mariscal Lopez, she thinks it was – and pretend to be collecting for a charity. Odds are that Dr. Lecter will have a butler. He did in Buenos Aires. In the place where the man of the house refuses to come to the door....
Even so, she is nervous to take that route. Dr. Lecter is wily and cunning; she knows that very well. If the butler has been given her picture, or even if Dr. Lecter sees her coming, she wants the police behind her. He had escape plans in place in Argentina. He will here, too. She wants a trained SWAT team behind her to cut off his exits. At this point, Susana is probably so brainwashed she'll run with him.
Waiting is the best option, but it's only because the others are worse. She'll do it because she is afraid of tipping him off. But she doesn't have to like it and she doesn't have to take it with grace.
Trying to get her mind off the maddening wait, Clarice tries to think about what will happen next. What will she do when Susana is safe? Getting her back to the United States will be easy. Susana has American citizenship and a quick trip to the embassy will get her a passport. After that? Well, she'll have to see. If she has to take some time off to put her daughter's mind back together, she can do that. If she has to put Susana in a hospital somewhere, with trained psychiatrists to undo what Dr. Lecter has undoubtedly done, she can do that, too. She is strong enough to be her daughter's rock.
Watching TV does not serve to alleviate her aggravation. Neither does the radio. All she can do is glare at the clock for not being morning. The authorities have promised they will have a name no later than 9 AM tomorrow. The FBI has been exceptionally quiet in entering Paraguay. There have been no news articles or press releases. She wants it that way.
What about Dr. Lecter? Does she have anything to say to the man who stole eleven years of her life? She is not sure. You're under arrest, you have the right to remain silent, is all she knows she can tell him. Will she say any more? It depends on what he has done to her daughter.
Tick, tick, tick. The clock is maddeningly slow. The phone refuses to ring. She stares at it as if she can make the telephone ring and have it be the Paraguayan boys with a list through sheer force of will. Waiting like this is maddening.
Tomorrow. It will be tomorrow. She will have her daughter back in her arms tomorrow.
...
Susana is exhausted.
She has been here for hours. The beeping of the machines, the murmurs of passing people in the hallway that she can only imperfectly understand, and the smell of disinfectant all merge together in her mind. She has been afraid to leave, staying through the night. Early morning will be soon, but it is still dark outside. It suits her mood.
She has been sitting here in this chair for hours, by her father's bedside. He looks smaller and frailer, weakened by his ordeal. The new drugs and surgical procedures that they performed here saved his life but appear to have taken something from him.
He does not like the situation. Not one bit. She can tell. He resents the helplessness and dependence. Only back in the asylum was Hannibal Lecter dependent on anyone, and then only unwillingly. She suspects that he wants his own pajamas rather than the hospital johnny they had given him. Normally she would be happy to get them for him, but she is frankly afraid to leave him. Such a chilling reminder of his mortality has not gone ignored.
She is tired and hungry, but she does not want to sleep or eat. There is an obligation to see him through this. He would tell her to go back home. In fact, he did do just that a few hours ago before he finally fell asleep.
But she is loath to. What if it happens again? She knows that they will help him here. She knows there is nothing further she can do for him that the doctors cannot. The sensible thing to do is to go home and get some sleep.
She sits and watches the snake of green light hump up and down in sync with her father's heartbeat. It looks regular to her layman's eyes. Her father's face is calm as he sleeps. She watches him carefully, keeping her vigil, too tired to know why she is keeping it.
One thing has changed, irrevocably and completely. She cannot consider going back to her mother. Not now. Not now that he needs her, now that death has brushed so close against him with its cold black wings. For now she must swallow her doubts. The thought of her mother suffering still does not please her, but her mother is alive and strong. Her father is alive for now, and that is all that can be said for him. She has made her decision for now. She is not completely comfortable with it and doubts she ever will be. There will be time to mend ties with her mother later, if her mother is so inclined. For now she must stand behind her father.
Her father stirs in the bed and stares at her curiously. He sits up and reaches for the oxygen prongs stuck into his nostrils. With a careful dignity he tweezes them free. Dr. Lecter may have been weakened, but his dignity remains strong as ever.
"Susana, it is two o'clock in the morning. You should go home. Get some sleep." His voice is calm.
Susana blinks for a moment and tries to focus on him. Everything seems to be floating on a sea of shock and it is hard to concentrate. She feels empty and tired and lost.
"I....I, um...," she begins, and trails off. What is she supposed to say? What if you die before I get back? That thought keeps dancing in the back of her mind, but she doesn't think he wants to hear it.
"I assure you I'll be all right. Go home and go to sleep. The cook can provide much better fare than the hospital cafeteria will." He speaks quite gently and calmly, as if nothing untoward has happened. The fact that he is here in a cardiac care unit belies that.
She is tired, and the thought of her own bed is quite welcome. All the same, she cannot help but feel a duty to stay by him. He needs her. He might want her to go home and sleep, but he needs her. She cannot turn away from him any more than her mother could have turned away from her lambs.
"Okay," she says, still thinking confusedly that she ought to stay. Or do something for him. She blinks at him and reaches for her purse. She drove him to the hospital earlier. Can she remember the way back home? Oh well, she also has his cell phone, and she can call and ask the butler for directions.
"Do you want anything?" she asks, and rubs at her eyes. "Pajamas or anything?"
Dr. Lecter appears to consider that. "My own pajamas would be preferable to this," he says, and indicates the hospital johnny with some distaste. "But in the morning, Susana. Go home. Sleep. The chef will make you breakfast, and you can come by and see me then." He smiles coolly.
"What if something happens?" she asks half-crabbily, and he nods once at her consideration.
"The hospital will call you, I'm sure," he says. "I left our number. The odds are unlikely. I am in the best medical hands I can be in." He seems displeased, and for a moment Susana remembers her search on the Internet for information about her father. Somewhere it had said that he did not like the medical establishment. Odd that he himself was a fully qualified medical doctor.
She rises and crosses to his bedside to give him a dutiful daughter's kiss on the cheek. It is harder than she thinks to leave him. Even though he himself has told her to, she feels as if she is betraying him somehow. Feeling dirty in her clothes, tired in her body, she proceeds through the hospital's corridors to the parking garage. Soft announcements overhead in Spanish barely penetrate her exhaustion. The parking garage is not far away. This hospital is private and quite well appointed; her father would demand it. She wonders idly if he has medical insurance like they do in the States. Then again, he has enough money to pay for his own care.
The overhead lights buzz unpleasantly in the garage, and Susana shivers a bit. She is alone in the garage and the echo of her footsteps on concrete ring in her ears. The Jaguar sits on the third floor of the garage. Opening the door, Susana sits down behind the wheel and blinks. Her eyes feel greasy and tired. The Jag is a more comfortable environment than the garage it is in. The engine starts up and she stares at the glow of the dash lights for a moment before putting it in gear.
A quick cell-phone call to home gets her adequate directions. She is unfamiliar with the city, but she makes it back home without too much issue. The headlights splash on Dr. Lecter's home soon enough.
Susana staggers inside to find the butler there with a crystal glass of chilled fruit juice for her. He offers it to her and takes her purse and keys without being asked. She pads back to her room and sits down on her bed, peeling off her clothes and putting on a T-shirt and flannel pants to sleep in.
She supposes that her worry over her father will be enough to keep her awake. Surprisingly the opposite is true. The bed is soft and comfortable and she is exhausted. After making sure she will be awake in time to visit her father and writing herself a note to get him his pajamas and other things he will want, she falls asleep easily.
In the morning she will see her father, but she will never sleep in this bed again.