Chapter Twelve
October 16, 6:00 PM, Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center
"I'd like to see Clarice Starling, please ma'am," Dr. Lecter was drawling to the nurse behind the desk on the hospital's fourth floor.
He had an array of borrowed items to help him get past various obstacles and into the presence of Clarice. The borrowed "retired" cap and reading glasses he'd found at Margot's house hid his dark hair and eyes and made him look older than he was. Uncle Bob's grey suit and identification gave him an inoffensive identity. The toy he'd borrowed from Mikey's room, an enormous stuffed alligator that he'd augmented with a large shocking pink bow, drew attention away from his face quite effectively and lent him a vaguely silly air. The West Virginian twang he'd borrowed from Clarice enhanced his harmless demeanor, and would subliminally connect him to Clarice in the minds of any who'd had an opportunity to converse with her.
"I'm the poor gal's Uncle Bob," he said to the duty nurse. "And I brought her a few little things to cheer her up some. Can she see folks yet?"
He noted with some satisfaction the woman's amused half-smile at the stuffed alligator and the large bouquet of flowers. He could see that she was already inclined to be on his side.
She leaned a bit closer to him from behind the desk, a somewhat conspiratorial gesture, as though she meant to tell him a secret. He immediately reciprocated with a corresponding inclination of his head and a slightly goofy "Uncle Bob" smile.
"You're the first family that's come to see her," the nurse confided. "Been nothing but police and FBI people all day. They're all over the place."
"I know! I had to show my driver's license three different times just to get up here to this floor," Dr. Lecter promptly confided back. "But I guess they want to make sure that psycho killer feller . . . what's his name . . . Fletcher? Anyhow, they probably want to make sure he doesn't come around. Pretty darn creepy if you ask me!"
"Gives ME the creeps, anyway," the nurse agreed. "And it's also to keep the press out. Your poor niece! But that guy'll never show up here. No way he could, not with all these police. Besides, I saw on the news they think he killed some people out on I-10, stole a truck and hauled ass out of the city. Probably halfway to the MOON by now, what with all these Feds looking for him!"
"Do you really think so?" Dr. Lecter could not resist asking. "He wouldn't come here?"
"Yep. He's supposed to be a flat out loony-tune, but nobody's THAT crazy!"
"A "loony-tune"? Is that right?" he asked, with another "Uncle Bob" smile. "How's Clarice been today, do you know? Has she been awake? Eating or talking or anything?"
"She's been awake some, not talking that much, mostly watching television. Truth is she's not really hurt that bad, physically. But she's been through a lot, anyone can see that. She's hardly eaten anything . . . but you know why that is, don't you?"
The nurse paused to lean a little closer to him and whispered one of the world's most badly kept secrets with a broad smile. "It's the hospital food . . ."
Dr. Lecter laughed dutifully. Privately, he thought hospital cooking was one good argument for bypassing treatment altogether and going directly to the morgue.
He also noticed that the nurse had kindly refrained from mentioning that Clarice, due to the damage he'd done to her mouth and cheekbone, was probably on a liquid diet. Sparing "Uncle Bob's" feelings. When he'd been a resident at Misericordia in Baltimore, he'd formed the opinion that most physicians were monomaniacal, arrogant obsessive-compulsives, and that it was the nursing staff in any hospital that actually kept the patients alive and their families sane.
He was not best pleased to learn that Clarice had spent her day watching television. She would have seen news of his activities out on the highway, and it would not be particularly therapeutic for her to fret. She also was quite likely to be angry with him for risking the visit to the hospital, and the two dead Texans would undoubtedly add fuel to the fire. She was so absurdly indiscriminate in her regard for human life.
Although he quite enjoyed Clarice's temper, and would often deliberately provoke her, today, this once, he would really rather she not be cross with him. Today he would be making some difficult decisions, and did not want to be swayed in his thoughts by her entrancing fierceness.
And he had come to believe that he might never see her again after today. Given a choice, if it came to that, he'd rather see her smile a last time than see her frown.
"Would you like me to take you into her room?" the nurse asked, another kind and sensitive gesture. "It's that one at the end of the hall, where the police officer is sitting outside?"
Of course, he'd noticed the uniformed officer sitting on a sofa in a small waiting area at the end of the corridor as soon as he'd come off the elevator. Not a particularly prepossessing specimen, to be sure. Fidgeting, bored, quite a large man, over six feet, but clearly uncoordinated and slow. The FBI agents and the senior officers, the cream of the law enforcement crop, had been stationed at the street entrances, and were expected to prevent him from ever getting this close, close enough to confront this final inadequate barrier of a young policeman.
Not that he was truly anticipated, anyway, not anymore. As he'd steadily penetrated the hospital and made his way to the fourth floor, he'd seen that all the officers, agents and guards had been issued copies of his photograph, the one from the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. He'd also seen these photos stuffed in breast pockets and folded into belts and even discarded like yesterday's newspapers in various trash bins. Nobody seemed to be consulting them anymore.
Security had become shamefully lax, just as he'd intended it should. Yet he'd felt a contradictory stab of vexation at just how badly these people were protecting Clarice. He'd briefly considered choosing an FBI agent to gut and tossing said agent out a window before he left, as an object lesson in the dangers of slipshod security, and he had not yet entirely abandoned the idea. He was having a bad day, and he was irritable. Such a whimsical diversion would cheer him up.
But he was also aware that he tended to be impulsive in a foul mood, and that his taste for savagery, once activated, served its own greedy, unappeasable purpose, and could lead him into ill-considered actions. He'd decided to reserve judgment on whether or not to kill someone here today until after he'd seen Clarice.
After that, it might not matter anymore what he did, or what consequences he incurred
He shook his head for the nurse.
"Oh, that's nice of you, ma'am, but you don't have to walk all the way down there. I'm sure you got plenty of work of your own to do. I'll just slip on down and tap at the door, see if she's awake. Will the officer let me in?"
"I'll buzz him for you," the nurse said, and picked up a phone. Dr. Lecter watched as she dialed an extension, and saw the young cop at the end of the hall pick up the receiver of a telephone on an end table beside him.
The nurse said "Officer, this is Penny Jackson, down here at the nurse's station?" into the phone. The police officer glanced toward the desk, and Nurse Jackson waved at him. "Ms. Starling's Uncle Bob is here to see her."
She pointed to Dr. Lecter, who smiled and waved at the young cop too.
"He's been through all the checkpoints already and he's okay," Penny Jackson went on. Dr. Lecter reflected that he had always liked that name, "Penny". There was something amiable and pleasant about it.
"I'm gonna send him down, okay?" Penny said to the cop. "Could you let him in?"
The young officer nodded in the affirmative and waved his hand in a come-on gesture, then hung up the phone.
"Thank you, Nurse Jackson," Dr. Lecter said to the nurse as she too hung up. "You sure have been a help. And that's a pretty name - "Penny" - if you don't mind me saying. It's bright and cheerful, like you are."
He showed her a genuine smile for the first time, one of his own, not something borrowed from "Uncle Bob". Penny flushed slightly with pleasure at the compliment.
"Oh, no problem," Penny said, smiling back at him, charmed. "She's a sweet girl, and I know she'll be glad to see you. Go on down now. See if you can talk her into eating something."
"I'll try," he promised, and turned away from the nurse to begin his trip down the corridor. "Thanks again . . . Penny."
He saw that the policeman was watching him approach from one end of the hall, and felt Penny's eyes on him from behind. He modified his customary light, purposeful stride into something slower and less lithe for their benefit. The walk of a favorite uncle, an older man who spent much of his time fishing and perhaps smoked a pipe.
The young police officer rose from his seat on the couch and met him at the door of Clarice's room. Yes, six one or two, and weighed a good two hundred pounds, somewhat muscle bound, about twenty-five or so, open, relaxed expression, mild, slightly vague gaze. Armed only with a nightstick and firearm, no Mace, no taser, radio clipped to belt on the right side. Wouldn't be that hard to subdue, should the need arise. Wearing a name tag that read "Stephen Norris". Already smiling at the stuffed toy.
"Hi, Officer, I'll show you my ID - hang on a sec . . ." he said to the tall young man, and began a comical juggling act with his flowers and his alligator as he tried awkwardly to reach into his back pocket for Uncle Bob's wallet. He proffered the beribboned alligator to Officer Norris after a moment of shuffling. "Here, could you hold this for me a second?"
"Oh, don't worry about it, sir," Officer Norris said, grinning, amused by "Uncle Bob's" bemused antics. "I'm sure they checked your ID downstairs. Let's knock on the door, see if your niece is awake."
Dr. Lecter watched as Norris moved over to the door of room 401, ajar by an inch or two, and tapped discreetly. He followed and stood behind the young man and waited.
Norris tapped again. "Miss Starling?"
"Yes?"
Clarice's voice. Tired and weak. The "s" sound at the end of the word pronounced mushily, as though her mouth was not working properly.
Dr. Lecter was seized, at the sound of her voice, with an totally unfamiliar sense of embarrassment and profound regret. For a moment, standing behind Officer Steve Norris in the hall outside her room, he felt he could not face her, could never face her, and would have to simply leave rather than go in. He had never before felt so unutterably ashamed of himself, so completely humiliated, so craven and shaken. It was a highly unpleasant new experience, and the novelty factor did nothing to ameliorate it at all.
But there was no time for hesitating at the threshold. Officer Norris swung the door open by a foot or so and popped his head into her room.
"Your Uncle Bob is here, Miss," the young man said, and opened the door wide enough to reveal Dr. Lecter, standing behind him. Now he would have to play out the role he had chosen, whether he wanted to or not.
"Hi, sweetie," he said as cheerfully as he could, watching her eyes widen at the sight of him and watching how they began to glitter with suppressed fury before he'd taken more than two steps past Norris and into her room. "How are you feeling? Up to some company?"
She just stared at him for a moment.
"Uh . . . hi, Uncle Bob," she finally said, pushing the words out with difficulty through her mangled mouth and suddenly gritted teeth. "What a surprise."
"Well, I'll leave you two alone now to visit," Officer Norris said. "I'm right outside if you need anything, Miss." He moved out of the doorway and considerately shut the door behind him.
Clarice and Dr. Lecter stared at each other for an excruciatingly long, uncomfortable moment.
She looked horrible. The upper right half of her face was swollen and discolored, nearly black at the point of her cheekbone and around her half closed right eye. The lower left half, her chin and jawbone, was equally bad. Her lower lip was swollen and split, and there were several fine stitches around the lip line. And that was just the damage he could see. Her body looked so thin and frail, lying flat in the hospital bed.
"What the FUCK - " she began to hiss quietly, infuriated, but ever aware of Officer Norris, just outside.
"Well, hello, Clarice. I've brought you a friend." he interrupted. He came to her bedside swiftly and set the absurd stuffed alligator down at her side. "Michael Hannibal lent it to me. He sends his best wishes, but says he wants the alligator back as soon as you are feeling better."
"Is that all you have to say?" she asked, seething.
"Um. What more would you like me to say? How are you enjoying our vacation so far?"
He set the bouquet of flowers in the plastic water-pitcher on her bedside table as she snorted surprised, harsh laughter and winced at the pain this caused her. There was a letter folded in among the stems, a letter he had penned in advance of this visit, and could either remove or leave in place when he left.
Then he moved to the foot of her bed and took her medical charts out of the slot provided for them.
"Don't make me laugh," she growled testily. "It hurts."
He looked up from the charts he was reading, wincing at her comment himself. "Oh, Clarice, of course it does. I'm very sorry, I should have thought of that."
He saw from the notations in her record that her fainting spell earlier this morning had been the result of exhaustion, no more, and that, overall, she was in satisfactory condition, physically. There were quite a few notations regarding her emotional symptoms, however, and these were less sanguine. His Clarice could be an excellent actress, when she needed to be, and she'd become quite adept at deflecting psychiatric probing, during her time with him.
He also saw, with a renewed twinge of disgusted embarrassment, that she been given a rape kit, and a "clock test" to determine whether she'd been sexually assaulted. And that she had passed this particular test with no difficulty. Of course. He'd seen to that.
A sudden, vivid memory of coming to orgasm in her arms caught him then, a total sensory recollection from one of their many consensual encounters. How she'd held his shuddering body so firmly, how she'd smiled at his intense pleasure in her, how he'd felt as though his entire being was turning inside out and reversing polarity from the core outward, how he'd cried out, how he'd buried his face in the precious living warmth of her glorious breasts, how he'd come very close to losing consciousness, as he often did with her.
So beautiful. So complete. It would be so hard to give this incomparable pleasure up. He felt terribly saddened to discover that the exquisite memory, one of many, was now slightly tainted with a sense of his own culpability.
He did not often endure guilt. He found it an appalling experience and fervently hoped that not all of his memories of her would be corrupted by it. He was increasingly certain that soon memories would be all that he would have left of her.
"This is, without a doubt, the stupidest thing you have EVER done," she hissed fiercely, breaking into his unhappy thoughts. "What in the name of God were you thinking?"
"I caught your debut on television this morning, Clarice. I noticed that you fainted. I was concerned."
"Didn't you also notice the thousand and one cops and agents around here?! It's like a fucking law enforcement convention! Did THAT happen to escape your attention?"
"I had other matters on my mind," he answered mildly, and uninformatively.
She just glared at him, too furious, for the moment, to reply.
At length, she found the bare minimum of self-control she needed in order to speak coherently.
"Why the fuck did we put ourselves through all this hell? Tell me that! Just so you could get us BOTH arrested in the end? Do you have ANY idea - "
"Clarice, I must point out that I DID take some steps to clear the way, after all. As I'm sure you'll have noted."
He nodded at the television bolted overhead to the wall of her room, tuned to a local news station, volume muted.
Her visible anger deepened, if possible.
"Oh . . . oh, right, yeah, sure. Yeah, I saw that you've been fucking around out on the goddamned highway! Brilliant plan, dear, I'm TOTALLY impressed! Two dead, and for WHAT? Just so you could bring me fucking flowers in the hospital?"
"Well, not just the flowers. There's the alligator. And the two . . . gentlemen you're so concerned about were a pair of country-fried idiots."
She covered her bruised face with her hands, stifling a cry of pure, unadulterated wrath.
"Oh, well, that's good, then," she growled from behind her hands. "I was afraid they might have been real human beings with real lives or something! So glad they were just a couple of worthless 'rubes', like me. No great loss. Of course that makes it perfectly okay!"
"Clarice," he said, voice dangerously quiet. "It's always been "okay". Always. And you've always known that. You knew who I was long before you chose to cast your lot with me. Surely we need not return to this tiresome issue at this late date?"
She took her hands away from her face so that she could look at him. He was dismayed to see a wave of terrible weariness dim the fire in her eyes. He watched all the anger leak out of her, leaving her limp and essentially empty, just a small battered woman in an uncomfortable hospital bed, staring at the man who'd abused her. This listless hopelessness was so much worse than any rage she could have offered him. It hurt him so much more to see.
"Your insane arrogance," she commented, tones flat and final. "It'll be the death of us, in the end. You know that, don't you? Sometime, some way. If not today, then tomorrow, or the next day. It's how we got here, in this mess, in the first place. "
Ah, a sharp and telling verbal blow, a direct hit to the heart. Her aim was ever impeccable. He couldn't agree more.
"Clarice . . . ah, Clarice, " he murmured, head bowed. "All right. What do you wish? Tell me what you'd have me do. And I'll do it."
She shrugged, tired.
"Stay safe and do your part in this, like we agreed. And let me do mine," she answered, barely speaking above a whisper. "I've got a lot left to do. I'm thinking being a media whore might turn out to be a bit demanding. "
"So it might," he agreed. "For whatever it's worth, Clarice, I really am sorry for how this has all turned out. I would not have had you endure such hardships."
She sighed. "I know that," she said.
"And what else must I do for you?"
She looked at him intently, silently.
"Get out of here," she answered. "Since you're asking. Get out of here while you still can. Don't get killed on your way out. Don't come back. Will you do those things for me?"
"Well . . . since you're asking . . . " he replied with a wan smile.
"Good. Come here first, though, okay? Before you go?"
He left his place at the foot of her bed and came to her side obediently.
"Closer, please," she said, a mocking smile lending her swollen features a hint of animation that he was glad to see.
He bent to her. "Would you like to examine my credentials?" he teased.
"No. I don't need to."
"I really didn't need to either. It had been a dull day at the asylum. I was just being difficult," he confessed.
"I know that, too," she said.
She raised her head from her pillow and kissed him, disregarding her injured mouth. But he knew how it must have hurt her to do this. For him. A costly gesture of affection for his benefit, so that he would not have to leave believing she hated him.
Ah, brave Clarice, he thought. How I've failed you. How could I ever hope to protect you from your own valor? I can't even protect you from myself.
He allowed himself the time to take in her appearance, her scent, the complete essence of her presence. He'd completed the difficult decisions he'd been wrestling with as he'd first come to her door. He wanted to take as much of her away with him as he could.
He would do the right thing, the best thing. This fiasco of a trip, with all its dreadful circumstances, had, nevertheless, presented rare, unexpected opportunities for her. And he, in all decency, was obligated to seize those opportunities on her behalf.
So he drank her in, filling all his mind with her. The voracious, monstrously possessive aspect of his fragmented psyche sprang promptly out of its accustomed dark corner in his odd soul as he stared at Clarice, rebelling utterly against his better nature.
Mine! Mine! Mine, mine, mine, mine, this remorseless portion of himself chanted furiously against his more rational thoughts, cold and angry and implacable.
He was not often at war with himself. Another unusual and unpleasant experience, another unwanted novelty to round out this ghastly day.
He bent his head to Clarice again, and somehow found a small, unmarked portion of her face to kiss. One last time.
"Go on, now," she said, gently. "Get out of here. Please. I'm fine. I'll see you soon."
"Yes," he lied. The first time he'd ever lied to her. "Soon. Good-bye, Clarice."
She looked at him sharply. She'd picked up the faint whisper of some strangeness in his voice at once.
"Do remember about the alligator," he joked, deliberately redirecting her attention. "Mikey wants it back, don't forget. Its name is "Eeeeurg Ba-ba", incidentally. He told me so himself. That's his current favorite word, I believe, the only one fit for such a valued associate."
She smiled. He'd hoped she might. He'd wanted to see her smile.
"I won't forget," she said.
It was the proper time to go. There would never be a better. He committed her smile to memory and left the room without another word.
He'd left the letter behind, resting in its green prison of flower stems, ready for her to find and read later.
The world was a more interesting place with Clarice Starling in it. Over the past year, he had begun to believe that he would not particularly care to live in a world that did not have Clarice Starling in it. He wanted to insure that she would, indeed, continue to inhabit the world, and he had come to the conclusion, over the past long hours, that he himself was the most immediate threat to her continued existence.
He need not be at her side to know she was in the world. He need not see her or touch her or hear her voice to continue to love her. Want and need were worlds apart, after all. Only a self-indulgent fool would deny that.
Alone, coldly drifting and disconnected as he had been all day, he left the hospital without incident, as easily and smoothly as he'd entered it. He never expected to see Clarice Starling again.
************************************************************
October 16, 6:00 PM, Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center
"I'd like to see Clarice Starling, please ma'am," Dr. Lecter was drawling to the nurse behind the desk on the hospital's fourth floor.
He had an array of borrowed items to help him get past various obstacles and into the presence of Clarice. The borrowed "retired" cap and reading glasses he'd found at Margot's house hid his dark hair and eyes and made him look older than he was. Uncle Bob's grey suit and identification gave him an inoffensive identity. The toy he'd borrowed from Mikey's room, an enormous stuffed alligator that he'd augmented with a large shocking pink bow, drew attention away from his face quite effectively and lent him a vaguely silly air. The West Virginian twang he'd borrowed from Clarice enhanced his harmless demeanor, and would subliminally connect him to Clarice in the minds of any who'd had an opportunity to converse with her.
"I'm the poor gal's Uncle Bob," he said to the duty nurse. "And I brought her a few little things to cheer her up some. Can she see folks yet?"
He noted with some satisfaction the woman's amused half-smile at the stuffed alligator and the large bouquet of flowers. He could see that she was already inclined to be on his side.
She leaned a bit closer to him from behind the desk, a somewhat conspiratorial gesture, as though she meant to tell him a secret. He immediately reciprocated with a corresponding inclination of his head and a slightly goofy "Uncle Bob" smile.
"You're the first family that's come to see her," the nurse confided. "Been nothing but police and FBI people all day. They're all over the place."
"I know! I had to show my driver's license three different times just to get up here to this floor," Dr. Lecter promptly confided back. "But I guess they want to make sure that psycho killer feller . . . what's his name . . . Fletcher? Anyhow, they probably want to make sure he doesn't come around. Pretty darn creepy if you ask me!"
"Gives ME the creeps, anyway," the nurse agreed. "And it's also to keep the press out. Your poor niece! But that guy'll never show up here. No way he could, not with all these police. Besides, I saw on the news they think he killed some people out on I-10, stole a truck and hauled ass out of the city. Probably halfway to the MOON by now, what with all these Feds looking for him!"
"Do you really think so?" Dr. Lecter could not resist asking. "He wouldn't come here?"
"Yep. He's supposed to be a flat out loony-tune, but nobody's THAT crazy!"
"A "loony-tune"? Is that right?" he asked, with another "Uncle Bob" smile. "How's Clarice been today, do you know? Has she been awake? Eating or talking or anything?"
"She's been awake some, not talking that much, mostly watching television. Truth is she's not really hurt that bad, physically. But she's been through a lot, anyone can see that. She's hardly eaten anything . . . but you know why that is, don't you?"
The nurse paused to lean a little closer to him and whispered one of the world's most badly kept secrets with a broad smile. "It's the hospital food . . ."
Dr. Lecter laughed dutifully. Privately, he thought hospital cooking was one good argument for bypassing treatment altogether and going directly to the morgue.
He also noticed that the nurse had kindly refrained from mentioning that Clarice, due to the damage he'd done to her mouth and cheekbone, was probably on a liquid diet. Sparing "Uncle Bob's" feelings. When he'd been a resident at Misericordia in Baltimore, he'd formed the opinion that most physicians were monomaniacal, arrogant obsessive-compulsives, and that it was the nursing staff in any hospital that actually kept the patients alive and their families sane.
He was not best pleased to learn that Clarice had spent her day watching television. She would have seen news of his activities out on the highway, and it would not be particularly therapeutic for her to fret. She also was quite likely to be angry with him for risking the visit to the hospital, and the two dead Texans would undoubtedly add fuel to the fire. She was so absurdly indiscriminate in her regard for human life.
Although he quite enjoyed Clarice's temper, and would often deliberately provoke her, today, this once, he would really rather she not be cross with him. Today he would be making some difficult decisions, and did not want to be swayed in his thoughts by her entrancing fierceness.
And he had come to believe that he might never see her again after today. Given a choice, if it came to that, he'd rather see her smile a last time than see her frown.
"Would you like me to take you into her room?" the nurse asked, another kind and sensitive gesture. "It's that one at the end of the hall, where the police officer is sitting outside?"
Of course, he'd noticed the uniformed officer sitting on a sofa in a small waiting area at the end of the corridor as soon as he'd come off the elevator. Not a particularly prepossessing specimen, to be sure. Fidgeting, bored, quite a large man, over six feet, but clearly uncoordinated and slow. The FBI agents and the senior officers, the cream of the law enforcement crop, had been stationed at the street entrances, and were expected to prevent him from ever getting this close, close enough to confront this final inadequate barrier of a young policeman.
Not that he was truly anticipated, anyway, not anymore. As he'd steadily penetrated the hospital and made his way to the fourth floor, he'd seen that all the officers, agents and guards had been issued copies of his photograph, the one from the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. He'd also seen these photos stuffed in breast pockets and folded into belts and even discarded like yesterday's newspapers in various trash bins. Nobody seemed to be consulting them anymore.
Security had become shamefully lax, just as he'd intended it should. Yet he'd felt a contradictory stab of vexation at just how badly these people were protecting Clarice. He'd briefly considered choosing an FBI agent to gut and tossing said agent out a window before he left, as an object lesson in the dangers of slipshod security, and he had not yet entirely abandoned the idea. He was having a bad day, and he was irritable. Such a whimsical diversion would cheer him up.
But he was also aware that he tended to be impulsive in a foul mood, and that his taste for savagery, once activated, served its own greedy, unappeasable purpose, and could lead him into ill-considered actions. He'd decided to reserve judgment on whether or not to kill someone here today until after he'd seen Clarice.
After that, it might not matter anymore what he did, or what consequences he incurred
He shook his head for the nurse.
"Oh, that's nice of you, ma'am, but you don't have to walk all the way down there. I'm sure you got plenty of work of your own to do. I'll just slip on down and tap at the door, see if she's awake. Will the officer let me in?"
"I'll buzz him for you," the nurse said, and picked up a phone. Dr. Lecter watched as she dialed an extension, and saw the young cop at the end of the hall pick up the receiver of a telephone on an end table beside him.
The nurse said "Officer, this is Penny Jackson, down here at the nurse's station?" into the phone. The police officer glanced toward the desk, and Nurse Jackson waved at him. "Ms. Starling's Uncle Bob is here to see her."
She pointed to Dr. Lecter, who smiled and waved at the young cop too.
"He's been through all the checkpoints already and he's okay," Penny Jackson went on. Dr. Lecter reflected that he had always liked that name, "Penny". There was something amiable and pleasant about it.
"I'm gonna send him down, okay?" Penny said to the cop. "Could you let him in?"
The young officer nodded in the affirmative and waved his hand in a come-on gesture, then hung up the phone.
"Thank you, Nurse Jackson," Dr. Lecter said to the nurse as she too hung up. "You sure have been a help. And that's a pretty name - "Penny" - if you don't mind me saying. It's bright and cheerful, like you are."
He showed her a genuine smile for the first time, one of his own, not something borrowed from "Uncle Bob". Penny flushed slightly with pleasure at the compliment.
"Oh, no problem," Penny said, smiling back at him, charmed. "She's a sweet girl, and I know she'll be glad to see you. Go on down now. See if you can talk her into eating something."
"I'll try," he promised, and turned away from the nurse to begin his trip down the corridor. "Thanks again . . . Penny."
He saw that the policeman was watching him approach from one end of the hall, and felt Penny's eyes on him from behind. He modified his customary light, purposeful stride into something slower and less lithe for their benefit. The walk of a favorite uncle, an older man who spent much of his time fishing and perhaps smoked a pipe.
The young police officer rose from his seat on the couch and met him at the door of Clarice's room. Yes, six one or two, and weighed a good two hundred pounds, somewhat muscle bound, about twenty-five or so, open, relaxed expression, mild, slightly vague gaze. Armed only with a nightstick and firearm, no Mace, no taser, radio clipped to belt on the right side. Wouldn't be that hard to subdue, should the need arise. Wearing a name tag that read "Stephen Norris". Already smiling at the stuffed toy.
"Hi, Officer, I'll show you my ID - hang on a sec . . ." he said to the tall young man, and began a comical juggling act with his flowers and his alligator as he tried awkwardly to reach into his back pocket for Uncle Bob's wallet. He proffered the beribboned alligator to Officer Norris after a moment of shuffling. "Here, could you hold this for me a second?"
"Oh, don't worry about it, sir," Officer Norris said, grinning, amused by "Uncle Bob's" bemused antics. "I'm sure they checked your ID downstairs. Let's knock on the door, see if your niece is awake."
Dr. Lecter watched as Norris moved over to the door of room 401, ajar by an inch or two, and tapped discreetly. He followed and stood behind the young man and waited.
Norris tapped again. "Miss Starling?"
"Yes?"
Clarice's voice. Tired and weak. The "s" sound at the end of the word pronounced mushily, as though her mouth was not working properly.
Dr. Lecter was seized, at the sound of her voice, with an totally unfamiliar sense of embarrassment and profound regret. For a moment, standing behind Officer Steve Norris in the hall outside her room, he felt he could not face her, could never face her, and would have to simply leave rather than go in. He had never before felt so unutterably ashamed of himself, so completely humiliated, so craven and shaken. It was a highly unpleasant new experience, and the novelty factor did nothing to ameliorate it at all.
But there was no time for hesitating at the threshold. Officer Norris swung the door open by a foot or so and popped his head into her room.
"Your Uncle Bob is here, Miss," the young man said, and opened the door wide enough to reveal Dr. Lecter, standing behind him. Now he would have to play out the role he had chosen, whether he wanted to or not.
"Hi, sweetie," he said as cheerfully as he could, watching her eyes widen at the sight of him and watching how they began to glitter with suppressed fury before he'd taken more than two steps past Norris and into her room. "How are you feeling? Up to some company?"
She just stared at him for a moment.
"Uh . . . hi, Uncle Bob," she finally said, pushing the words out with difficulty through her mangled mouth and suddenly gritted teeth. "What a surprise."
"Well, I'll leave you two alone now to visit," Officer Norris said. "I'm right outside if you need anything, Miss." He moved out of the doorway and considerately shut the door behind him.
Clarice and Dr. Lecter stared at each other for an excruciatingly long, uncomfortable moment.
She looked horrible. The upper right half of her face was swollen and discolored, nearly black at the point of her cheekbone and around her half closed right eye. The lower left half, her chin and jawbone, was equally bad. Her lower lip was swollen and split, and there were several fine stitches around the lip line. And that was just the damage he could see. Her body looked so thin and frail, lying flat in the hospital bed.
"What the FUCK - " she began to hiss quietly, infuriated, but ever aware of Officer Norris, just outside.
"Well, hello, Clarice. I've brought you a friend." he interrupted. He came to her bedside swiftly and set the absurd stuffed alligator down at her side. "Michael Hannibal lent it to me. He sends his best wishes, but says he wants the alligator back as soon as you are feeling better."
"Is that all you have to say?" she asked, seething.
"Um. What more would you like me to say? How are you enjoying our vacation so far?"
He set the bouquet of flowers in the plastic water-pitcher on her bedside table as she snorted surprised, harsh laughter and winced at the pain this caused her. There was a letter folded in among the stems, a letter he had penned in advance of this visit, and could either remove or leave in place when he left.
Then he moved to the foot of her bed and took her medical charts out of the slot provided for them.
"Don't make me laugh," she growled testily. "It hurts."
He looked up from the charts he was reading, wincing at her comment himself. "Oh, Clarice, of course it does. I'm very sorry, I should have thought of that."
He saw from the notations in her record that her fainting spell earlier this morning had been the result of exhaustion, no more, and that, overall, she was in satisfactory condition, physically. There were quite a few notations regarding her emotional symptoms, however, and these were less sanguine. His Clarice could be an excellent actress, when she needed to be, and she'd become quite adept at deflecting psychiatric probing, during her time with him.
He also saw, with a renewed twinge of disgusted embarrassment, that she been given a rape kit, and a "clock test" to determine whether she'd been sexually assaulted. And that she had passed this particular test with no difficulty. Of course. He'd seen to that.
A sudden, vivid memory of coming to orgasm in her arms caught him then, a total sensory recollection from one of their many consensual encounters. How she'd held his shuddering body so firmly, how she'd smiled at his intense pleasure in her, how he'd felt as though his entire being was turning inside out and reversing polarity from the core outward, how he'd cried out, how he'd buried his face in the precious living warmth of her glorious breasts, how he'd come very close to losing consciousness, as he often did with her.
So beautiful. So complete. It would be so hard to give this incomparable pleasure up. He felt terribly saddened to discover that the exquisite memory, one of many, was now slightly tainted with a sense of his own culpability.
He did not often endure guilt. He found it an appalling experience and fervently hoped that not all of his memories of her would be corrupted by it. He was increasingly certain that soon memories would be all that he would have left of her.
"This is, without a doubt, the stupidest thing you have EVER done," she hissed fiercely, breaking into his unhappy thoughts. "What in the name of God were you thinking?"
"I caught your debut on television this morning, Clarice. I noticed that you fainted. I was concerned."
"Didn't you also notice the thousand and one cops and agents around here?! It's like a fucking law enforcement convention! Did THAT happen to escape your attention?"
"I had other matters on my mind," he answered mildly, and uninformatively.
She just glared at him, too furious, for the moment, to reply.
At length, she found the bare minimum of self-control she needed in order to speak coherently.
"Why the fuck did we put ourselves through all this hell? Tell me that! Just so you could get us BOTH arrested in the end? Do you have ANY idea - "
"Clarice, I must point out that I DID take some steps to clear the way, after all. As I'm sure you'll have noted."
He nodded at the television bolted overhead to the wall of her room, tuned to a local news station, volume muted.
Her visible anger deepened, if possible.
"Oh . . . oh, right, yeah, sure. Yeah, I saw that you've been fucking around out on the goddamned highway! Brilliant plan, dear, I'm TOTALLY impressed! Two dead, and for WHAT? Just so you could bring me fucking flowers in the hospital?"
"Well, not just the flowers. There's the alligator. And the two . . . gentlemen you're so concerned about were a pair of country-fried idiots."
She covered her bruised face with her hands, stifling a cry of pure, unadulterated wrath.
"Oh, well, that's good, then," she growled from behind her hands. "I was afraid they might have been real human beings with real lives or something! So glad they were just a couple of worthless 'rubes', like me. No great loss. Of course that makes it perfectly okay!"
"Clarice," he said, voice dangerously quiet. "It's always been "okay". Always. And you've always known that. You knew who I was long before you chose to cast your lot with me. Surely we need not return to this tiresome issue at this late date?"
She took her hands away from her face so that she could look at him. He was dismayed to see a wave of terrible weariness dim the fire in her eyes. He watched all the anger leak out of her, leaving her limp and essentially empty, just a small battered woman in an uncomfortable hospital bed, staring at the man who'd abused her. This listless hopelessness was so much worse than any rage she could have offered him. It hurt him so much more to see.
"Your insane arrogance," she commented, tones flat and final. "It'll be the death of us, in the end. You know that, don't you? Sometime, some way. If not today, then tomorrow, or the next day. It's how we got here, in this mess, in the first place. "
Ah, a sharp and telling verbal blow, a direct hit to the heart. Her aim was ever impeccable. He couldn't agree more.
"Clarice . . . ah, Clarice, " he murmured, head bowed. "All right. What do you wish? Tell me what you'd have me do. And I'll do it."
She shrugged, tired.
"Stay safe and do your part in this, like we agreed. And let me do mine," she answered, barely speaking above a whisper. "I've got a lot left to do. I'm thinking being a media whore might turn out to be a bit demanding. "
"So it might," he agreed. "For whatever it's worth, Clarice, I really am sorry for how this has all turned out. I would not have had you endure such hardships."
She sighed. "I know that," she said.
"And what else must I do for you?"
She looked at him intently, silently.
"Get out of here," she answered. "Since you're asking. Get out of here while you still can. Don't get killed on your way out. Don't come back. Will you do those things for me?"
"Well . . . since you're asking . . . " he replied with a wan smile.
"Good. Come here first, though, okay? Before you go?"
He left his place at the foot of her bed and came to her side obediently.
"Closer, please," she said, a mocking smile lending her swollen features a hint of animation that he was glad to see.
He bent to her. "Would you like to examine my credentials?" he teased.
"No. I don't need to."
"I really didn't need to either. It had been a dull day at the asylum. I was just being difficult," he confessed.
"I know that, too," she said.
She raised her head from her pillow and kissed him, disregarding her injured mouth. But he knew how it must have hurt her to do this. For him. A costly gesture of affection for his benefit, so that he would not have to leave believing she hated him.
Ah, brave Clarice, he thought. How I've failed you. How could I ever hope to protect you from your own valor? I can't even protect you from myself.
He allowed himself the time to take in her appearance, her scent, the complete essence of her presence. He'd completed the difficult decisions he'd been wrestling with as he'd first come to her door. He wanted to take as much of her away with him as he could.
He would do the right thing, the best thing. This fiasco of a trip, with all its dreadful circumstances, had, nevertheless, presented rare, unexpected opportunities for her. And he, in all decency, was obligated to seize those opportunities on her behalf.
So he drank her in, filling all his mind with her. The voracious, monstrously possessive aspect of his fragmented psyche sprang promptly out of its accustomed dark corner in his odd soul as he stared at Clarice, rebelling utterly against his better nature.
Mine! Mine! Mine, mine, mine, mine, this remorseless portion of himself chanted furiously against his more rational thoughts, cold and angry and implacable.
He was not often at war with himself. Another unusual and unpleasant experience, another unwanted novelty to round out this ghastly day.
He bent his head to Clarice again, and somehow found a small, unmarked portion of her face to kiss. One last time.
"Go on, now," she said, gently. "Get out of here. Please. I'm fine. I'll see you soon."
"Yes," he lied. The first time he'd ever lied to her. "Soon. Good-bye, Clarice."
She looked at him sharply. She'd picked up the faint whisper of some strangeness in his voice at once.
"Do remember about the alligator," he joked, deliberately redirecting her attention. "Mikey wants it back, don't forget. Its name is "Eeeeurg Ba-ba", incidentally. He told me so himself. That's his current favorite word, I believe, the only one fit for such a valued associate."
She smiled. He'd hoped she might. He'd wanted to see her smile.
"I won't forget," she said.
It was the proper time to go. There would never be a better. He committed her smile to memory and left the room without another word.
He'd left the letter behind, resting in its green prison of flower stems, ready for her to find and read later.
The world was a more interesting place with Clarice Starling in it. Over the past year, he had begun to believe that he would not particularly care to live in a world that did not have Clarice Starling in it. He wanted to insure that she would, indeed, continue to inhabit the world, and he had come to the conclusion, over the past long hours, that he himself was the most immediate threat to her continued existence.
He need not be at her side to know she was in the world. He need not see her or touch her or hear her voice to continue to love her. Want and need were worlds apart, after all. Only a self-indulgent fool would deny that.
Alone, coldly drifting and disconnected as he had been all day, he left the hospital without incident, as easily and smoothly as he'd entered it. He never expected to see Clarice Starling again.
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