Chapter 9

The moon that shone outside the darkened hospital room window was on the wane, which was a fairly good description of the way Mark McCormick felt right now. He lay on his side in the hospital bed, the only interior light coming from a small grilled lamp low on the wall near the door, and although his eyes were closed, the tension in his body betrayed his wakefulness. There was no use in trying to go back to sleep at this point, as he knew it was only a matter of minutes before his nurse returned once more, shaking his shoulder to wake him, just as someone had done every two hours since he had first awakened in this stark little room such a long time ago, or so it seemed anyway.

McCormick had been panic-stricken then, with no idea of where he was or how he had arrived there, and he honestly thought his heart might stop beating when he recalled those final moments on the riverbank. Afterwards, he had turned sullen, sarcastic, and increasingly hard to deal with – Hardcastle would have easily recognized the man he had become.

He knew he should contact Jack about the Edsel, but he couldn't even think about the car without feeling physically ill. He knew he should call people at home and let them know where he was, he knew he should call the judge's family and let them know what had happened, he knew he should make an effort to find out where they'd taken Hardcastle so he could make whatever final arrangements were necessary. But his head still ached with an unbearable pain, as did the heart that seemed to lie so heavily in his chest, and he didn't care if he ever again talked to anyone at anytime for any reason. He just didn't seem to care about anything anymore.

The nursing staff tending him had become increasingly weary of his bitter cynicism, though they suspected there might actually be a nice guy under all that attitude, if only one could get close enough to dig that deeply. Nevertheless, the situation had grown so tense that the head nurse had called his admitting physician to complain, who in turn had called the emergency room physician. The ER doctor in his turn had consulted with a fellow professional who he felt sure could prescribe the correct method of treatment for this unhappy and uncooperative young man, and then had devised his own strategy in accordance with that expert's suggestions.

So it was that about two o'clock that afternoon, McCormick received a visit from a middle-aged man in a white lab coat, his face long and thin, with a prominent and patrician nose upon which were perched some rather incongruous granny-type glasses. McCormick watched his entrance with a certain amount of speculative resentment, practically daring this stranger to make a single gesture of sympathy or good will.

The visitor was impervious to McCormick's obvious hostility, saying with a cold smile, "Mr. McCormick? You won't remember me, but I'm Dr. Hoffman, the emergency room physician here. I'm the one who saw you upon your arrival this morning."

"Yeah, well, hi," McCormick answered, containing his sulkiness with an effort; this man just might be able to answer some of the questions he had not yet had the heart to ask. "I'm sorry, you're right, I don't remember you. But then, I was pretty out of it when I got here, wasn't I?"

"That's an understatement," Hoffman replied, his smile becoming slightly more genuine. "I'm afraid you'd been having rather a bad time of it, and your body – especially your brain – just shut down under the stress. It happens."

There was a lengthy silence, as patient and doctor solemnly scrutinized each other.

"So, Doc," McCormick began nervously, "what can I do for you?"

"Well, Mr. McCormick, your attending physician and your nurses are a little concerned that you are not responding to treatment the way you should be, and Dr. Shore contacted me to see if I had noticed anything particularly out of the way in the emergency room, which as it happens, I did not. As he is holding clinic right now, he asked me to delve a little deeper into the mystery." He glanced at the metal chart in his hand, clucking faintly, before looking back up at McCormick's glowering face. "It seems that ever since you woke up, you've been somewhat recalcitrant about having your vitals checked and taking your meds – in general being a little, shall we say, difficult?"

"I have my reasons," muttered McCormick, staring at the scratched and bruised hands that lay loosely clasped before him on the blanket. He flashed the doctor a look that seemed partly miserable, partly ashamed, as he said unwillingly, "Look, I don't want to be a problem. I'll try to do better, okay? That's the best I can promise."

"Yes, well, that's nice, Mr. McCormick, but I really think it's your mental attitude that concerns them more than your behavior does. For one thing, you seem far more antagonistic than the situation warrants, despite your head injury." Hoffman watched McCormick, who showed no visible reaction beyond a self-conscious grimace. The doctor continued with a thoughtful frown, "For another thing, you have not once mentioned your friend, the man with whom you were found at the time of your rescue, which strikes us all as a bit odd."

At Hoffman's last statement, McCormick flinched, then looked toward the window, as he answered shortly, "No. I haven't."

The doctor assumed a meditative manner as he remarked, "I see. He was correct, then. I suspected something of the sort, but he was quite specific about it."

McCormick turned back to look at the doctor in confusion. "Specific about what?"

"Your conviction that your friend is dead."

McCormick stared at Hoffman, his face blanching to the whiteness of the sheet against which he lay.

"What do you mean, my conviction that he's dead?" His mouth felt dry as parchment, and for some reason his heart began to gallop, turning the very effort of breathing into a challenge. Despite himself, he asked the question to which he wasn't sure he could bear to hear the answer. "Who was it said that?"

"My, um, bedside consultant," Hoffman answered with a faint smile. "We felt that under the circumstances, we needed an expert on what makes a man like Mark McCormick tick, and he was only too happy to oblige."

McCormick wondered if the sound of the blood pounding in his ears was as audible to the doctor as it was to him. He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, preparing himself for certain disappointment, but he could not keep the entreaty from his face as he asked, in a voice almost wooden with self-control, "And just who is this expert on what makes a man like Mark McCormick tick?"

"Why, your friend, of course," the doctor replied, as though the answer were obvious. "Judge Hardcastle."

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Ten minutes later, McCormick lay back against his pillow again, carefully sipping a glass of water, while Dr. Hoffman watched him, his gaze half-amused, half-concerned. "Are you feeling better now?"

"Yeah," McCormick answered with a shaky smile. "I'm sorry, Doctor. But you just would not believe the stuff Hardcastle and I have been through the last twenty-four hours or so. You really threw me a curve-ball there."

"I can imagine," Hoffman answered. He studied this rather engaging young man, so different now that the grimness was gone from his mouth and the bruised look from his eyes. "You know, I wish you'd said something earlier, Mr. McCormick. Both Dr. Shore and I made it very clear to the nursing staff that you were to be reassured when you asked about Mr. Hardcastle. But you never asked."

"No," McCormick answered, tiredly leaning his head back against the pillow and closing his eyes. "Why should I? He was dead." He could still see the limp body as it lay on the riverbank, the marble face with its serene expression of painless peace, and he looked up at the doctor with distressed eyes. "I swear to God, Doctor, I thought he was dead. I could have sworn he was dead."

"Well, he's not," said Hoffman briskly. "He's awake, alert, and is even now undergoing tests to determine the extent of his illness and injuries. Then he's heading to the Intensive Care Unit so that he can be monitored. We don't consider his condition to be extremely critical at this juncture, but I won't lie to you, Mr. McCormick, he's still a very sick man, and at his age, we prefer to take no chances. He was given a hefty dose of morphine upon admission, which relieved a good deal of the pain he was experiencing, and we will certainly continue his pain management until we determine just what course of action to take. All in all, I believe he's doing quite well considering the circumstances, although I fear even another few hours' delay might have decreed an entirely different outcome. Oh, dear!" he added, as he glanced at his watch and began trotting to the door. "It's later than I thought." Just as he reached the door, he stopped abruptly and turned back to McCormick. "Wait a minute, I forgot something."

As McCormick watched in curiosity, the doctor began searching through one pocket of his lab coat and fished up a crumpled piece of paper, torn from what appeared to be a prescription pad. "I have a few messages for you." He peered through his tiny glasses at the paper. "Let's see ... your wallet and Judge Hardcastle's are in the hospital safe, and he made my ER nurse put an extra couple of C-notes in yours, so you'll have something to fall back on when you are discharged. And, mmm, yes, he talked to someone named Jack ..."

McCormick just sat there, staring in amazement, as Hoffman looked up with a smile. "I'm afraid Radiology lost its receptionist for a while there, Judge Hardcastle can be very ... persuasive." He brought his attention back to the slip of paper. "Yes, well, he's told Jack about the car, and he had Jenny call someone named Professor Lyons at the law school, they're not expecting you until next week –"

"Next week!" interjected McCormick incredulously, but before he could continue, he was in turn interrupted rather brusquely.

"Yes, that's what he said, 'next week'. I have places to be, young man, so if you want to hear the rest of this, you'd better pipe down," Hoffman said, his severity offset by the twinkle in his eye. "Hmmm, where was I? Ah, yes, he said to tell you that he talked to a man named Frank, so that someone in Los Angeles would have some idea where you both were. And," he continued with a sharp look at McCormick, "Judge Hardcastle said that you were to behave yourself and not cause any trouble. So please, Mr. McCormick," the doctor requested with a return to his austere manner, "do behave yourself and stop causing trouble."

McCormick's answering smile was a little unsteady, as memories of a white-haired head resting lifelessly against his chest mercifully receded; clearly Hardcastle, even ill as he was, could still manage an operation on the scale of the D-Day invasion, provided he was given enough morphine first. Hoffman watched him from the door with compassionate eyes. "Mr. McCormick, I can't tell you that everything is going to be all right. Even if I knew for sure, which I don't, my malpractice insurer insists that I not make any such rash statements. However, I do think I can assure you that, unless there's an unusually drastic deterioration in his condition, Judge Hardcastle will still be very much with us at this time tomorrow." Then he was gone, the door drifting silently closed behind him.

After that much-needed and much-appreciated visit, McCormick found that he was actually able to relax a little, and once he had finally allowed the nurses to give him some pain medication, the headache that had made his existence almost intolerable for the last eighteen hours had at long last begun to diminish. As a result, he slept heavily the rest of the afternoon and on into the night, though his slumber had been somewhat intermittent, thanks to the nurses who insisted on waking him regularly to take his vitals, to give him meds, or simply to rouse him. His head injury had turned out to be a concussion, rather than the skull fracture both he and Hardcastle had feared it to be, but it seemed there was still medical protocol to be observed, which appeared to dictate that his rest be doled out only in two-hour allotments.

Although his physical state might have shown some improvement, his mental state was once again on the decline by the time the sun had set, as he had heard nothing of Hardcastle since the doctor's visit. The lack of information was beginning to worry him; as a result, all his communications had again begun to take on a distinctly querulous note, and his inevitable question to whichever nurse was attending him at the time was a snappish, "How's Hardcastle?"

And so here he was, waiting for the inescapable wakeup call, almost exactly twenty-four hours since he and the judge had driven headlong into a nightmare. Sure enough, there was a soft swishing sound as the door to his room opened quietly, and a glare of light as the wall switch was flipped on. This was followed by the squeaky sound of rubber-lined wheels traveling across the tile floor; it must be time for his blood-pressure check as well. He shut his eyes against the light, then turned over and lay on his back, mumbling irritably, "Yeah, I know, time to wake up. How's Hardcastle?"

"Well, sport, if you'd open your eyes and use 'em for a change, you just might find out."

At the sound of that voice, McCormick's eyes flew open in shocked surprise, and he shot upright as if he were yanked by an invisible rope – only to find himself the next moment crying out in pain and collapsing back onto the bed, muttering to himself, "Stupid, McCormick. That was so stupid."

"Can't argue with you there, kiddo."

Turning his head slowly on the pillow, McCormick could see the judge sitting in a wheelchair by the bed, his face pale and drawn, but nonetheless showing definite signs of improvement when compared to that still form on the riverbank. "Judge, what the hell are you doing here? You're supposed to be in ICU!"

"Yeah, I know," Hardcastle agreed, looking McCormick over with an appraising eye. "How do you feel?"

"A whole lot better for seeing you," McCormick said with such complete and heartfelt candor that Hardcastle blinked in surprise. "This has been a really lousy day, Hardcastle." He couldn't resist a small grin. "And I hear you've been a pretty busy beaver."

"Yeah, the ER doc told me he gave you my messages. Look, the insurance papers are in the safe too, I had 'em folded up in my back pants pocket all the time, and believe it or not, you can still read 'em, even if they are sorta on the damp side. Anyway, the girls down in the office know you might need 'em. I think Jack's gonna be a little hard to deal with about that car."

"Can't blame him for that, I guess. Is the insurance gonna cover it?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm fairly sure it will. Jack's insurance company might think otherwise, but we'll see." There was a gleam in Hardcastle's eyes, as though the chance of taking on Jack and his insurance company in a court of law was a development devoutly to be hoped for.

McCormick lay quietly against his pillows, content to watch the judge sitting there in the wheelchair, managing the world – their world – in that inimitable way only Hardcastle could pull off. Then he was struck by a sudden thought. "What's this about me getting off the rest of the week? Judge, that wasn't part of my deal with my professors!"

"Well, maybe not, but I talked to Lyons, and I told him that I never heard of anyone having to do as much work as you did just to miss five days of classes, and you should be covered at least until the end of the week. Lyons wasn't much inclined to argue; it's only two extra days, after all, and I was pretty, ah, firm about the whole thing."

At the mention of the extra credit work, McCormick's face clouded, although he said nothing, and after a short silence, he said, "How're you feeling?"

Hardcastle leaned back in his wheelchair. "A little numb, is the best way to call it. I thought that morphine would knock me right out, but it seems to be having just the opposite effect. Doesn't matter to me, so long as it takes the pain away." He eyed McCormick in thoughtful speculation. "Wrote me off kinda quick there, didn't you, McCormick?"

"Yeah ..." McCormick replied, his face a study in unhappiness. "But you weren't there, you didn't see ..." He flushed under Hardcastle's disbelieving stare. "Well, you weren't there, not really." He leaned back, eyes closed, lost in a memory he thought he would probably never forget as long as he lived. "God, Judge, I'm so sorry. But you had been hurting so bad anyway, and you were out cold when I got tossed back in the river, and then when I saw you lying face down like that, and I remembered what you'd said back in the car ..." He glanced over at Hardcastle with the beginnings of a sheepish smile. "Let's be real, Kemosabe, even the Lone Ranger can't be expected to keep all his promises."

Hardcastle waved a dismissive hand. "Ah, it's alright, kid. It's not like you were sharp as a tack right then, and maybe I did cross the line with that Superman routine. The last thing I remember is making sure you were still alive and breathing – wasn't much doubt about that, you were dragging in enough air to deplete the ozone – but I s'pose I'd gone as far as I was going at that point. Anyway, after that I didn't know anything about anything until I heard those guys hollering from across the other side of the river."

McCormick stared at him blankly. "What guys? You mean the guys who found us?" A sudden, rather unwelcome recollection struck McCormick, and he remarked, with an unconvincingly casual air, "So you actually saw the guys who found us?"

"Yeah, sure," Hardcastle replied, a slight twitching of his lips his only visible reaction to this less-than-artless inquiry. "There were three of 'em in a Jeep, some of those earthquake research people doin' a little reconnaissance work after the quakes. They spotted the car headed down the river, so they drove upstream and saw us on the other bank. Lucky for us they were pulling a boat."

"Yeah, lucky for us," McCormick echoed. "So, um, you were actually awake when they came to get us?"

McCormick could have sworn there was nothing more in Hardcastle's expression than bemusement as he glanced at him curiously. "Well, it was more a case of fading in and out most of the time. I was a lot more awake than you were, though."

"Oh."

By now McCormick's flush had returned full force, but Hardcastle remained serenely oblivious to this odd phenomenon. "Yep, you were out like a light. I was sorta glad, really, it seemed to me you'd already been through enough." He studied McCormick soberly. "You're still lookin' pretty peaked, kiddo. How's the head?"

"It hurts," McCormick replied with a sigh, his color fading as his thoughts turned inward once more. "I'm beginning to think it's gonna hurt me for the rest of my life. But it's a little better." He fidgeted with the sheet, before looking up with a troubled expression. "Look, Judge, about what I said this morning, back in the car – I know I was being a real bastard. But you gotta understand, it's just that ..." His voice faded into silence.

"... you thought I was runnin' out on you," finished Hardcastle.

McCormick looked at him in surprise. "Well ... yeah."

"Well, you might've been right, although that's not the way I was looking at it. I honestly meant it for the best, but ... I think maybe now I can see where my kid might've been coming from, and even your dad, too, 'cause I just never realized how different things look from that side of the fence." Hardcastle hitched himself up a little in the wheelchair and rested his head on his hand, a faint grimace revealing that his latest dose of morphine was beginning to wear off. "You know, I've been thinking about it some since we got here to the hospital; the ER doc had already told me you'd be okay, and it's not like I had much else to do while I was lying on all those tables, having all those tests done."

"Judge, you're not making any sense. What looks different from that side of the fence?"

Hardcastle plucked absently at a loose string on the sleeve on his hospital gown. "Well, now that I've been there myself, I can see that the thing with my kid might not have been exactly the way I thought it was. Like that thing this morning." He looked up to meet McCormick's eyes steadily. "See, I honestly thought that letting you go on by yourself woulda been the best thing for both of us, 'cause I was gonna be nothing but dead weight, and it wasn't right that you should get pulled down with me. But you didn't see it that way; you thought I was just taking the easy way out and leaving you to pick up the pieces, and that wasn't it at all. Stupid of me, I shoulda seen that one coming a mile away."

McCormick had a stricken look on his face. "Judge ..."

Hardcastle never noticed the softly spoken interruption as he shifted his gaze across to the window, darkly opaque now that the room light was on. "Anyway, it hit me later that that mighta been the way my kid was thinking too, figuring that taking himself off was the best thing he could do for both me and him, to give us a break from the fighting and all. I bet it never even occurred to him how much it would wind up hurting us both – until it was too late to do anything about it." He shook his head sadly. "It's amazing, the dumb things you can think, and the stupid things you can do, trying to figure out how to do the right thing, not only for yourself but for other people, too. And all the time you're just making things a whole lot worse." He returned his gaze to McCormick, rubbing his nose pensively. "I guess maybe I just wasn't thinking too straight this morning."

"I guess maybe you weren't, but looking back, I don't think I was exactly centered between the ditches either." McCormick smiled at him crookedly. "But you know, you still kept your promise, and considering the way I got it out of you, the least I can do is keep mine. It won't be easy, but I'll do it somehow."

Pulling up his knees under the sheet, McCormick leaned forward in the bed and propped his chin on his crossed arms. "You know, Sonny said something, way back when we first met, about how he had a side to the story, too. I suppose he ought to at least get a chance to tell his side, provided I can keep him pinned down long enough to get that far. And even if I don't much like what he's got to say, I ought to give him another chance or two, regardless of whether or not I think he deserves 'em." He shot a glance at Hardcastle. "Seems to me someone else thought I was worth taking a chance on; maybe it's about time I passed on the favor."

"Maybe so," Hardcastle responded equably. "You never know how things might turn out. I wouldn't hold my breath hoping for law school, though."

McCormick grinned. "Nah, I'll be happy if we can just keep him away from the bad guys for awhile. Anything beyond that would be so much gravy." He changed the subject, cocking an inquisitive eye at his visitor. "So, tell me, Hardcase, what on earth are you doing, roaming the hospital halls at ..." McCormick glanced at the clock on the wall, "... ten o'clock at night? And why aren't you on a stretcher?"

"Well, I'm in a wheelchair because I told 'em I was damn sick and tired of lying on things about as comfortable as cast iron; they weren't happy about it, but apparently they figured it was easier to humor me than fight with me, and after all, it was gonna be my funer—uh, well, let's just say they gave in. As for what I'm doing here, we were on our way back from Nuclear Medicine – ICU's right down the hall, you know – and I talked my nurse into leaving me here while she went to have a cup of coffee in the nurses' lounge. Some scan my doctor ordered at the last minute, but it's supposed to be the last one for a while. Hopefully I can get some sleep now," Hardcastle said, a scowl clouding his face for a second. "You know, that doctor's a weird duck, all gloom and doom; the nurses tell me he hates the idea of any kind of surgery, some sort of holistic quack who took a wrong turn, I reckon." He cocked an eye at McCormick. "How 'bout you? You getting any sleep?"

"Kinda," McCormick answered in a dejected tone, "in between being woken up every two hours, on the hour. That'll probably go on all night."

"Yeah, probably so." There was a soft tap at the door. "Ah, my chauffeur's back. Better be heading homeward."

McCormick cast a mock-disdainful glance at the wheelchair. "So those are your new wheels, huh?"

"Yep," Hardcastle answered with a grin. "You oughta see my driver. Heck of a lot prettier than my old one."

"You'd better be nice to your old one, Hardcase, or you just might find yourself being carted back to Malibu in something a lot less comfortable than that wheelchair. You know, we are gonna be needing a way to get back home, now I think about it." McCormick's face turned reflective. "I wonder if we'll be able to get anyone to rent us a car once they find out we totaled an Edsel?"

"I got news for you, kiddo." Hardcastle wheeled himself toward the door, where a nurse, every bit as attractive as the judge had boasted, waited with a patient smile. "We get out of this place, we're taking a cab home, I don't care how much it costs. We'll let someone else worry about doing the driving for a while." He glanced back at McCormick's exhausted, uneasy face. "Look, McCormick, try to get some rest. We're through the worst now, and it'll all look better tomorrow. I'll see you in the morning, okay?" He reached up to hit the light switch, and then the nurse was piloting his wheelchair out of the door and out of sight.

And as McCormick lay back down and turned onto his side, he only wished he could believe the judge's words. But all he could feel was an oppressive sense of foreboding, as though the worst was still yet to come.

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Hardcastle woke early on Wednesday morning to the sun streaming through the window of his room in Intensive Care. He thought they must have hung yet another IV during the night; he seemed to be surrounded by clear plastic bags, all with tubing that ran from various directions to intersect at the port taped tightly to his right arm. He hated hospitals, and he hated medications, but he had to admit, the IV's must be doing some good; the pain was all but gone under the influence of the morphine and whatever other painkillers were contained in those bags.

Even the monitoring equipment, with all its wires and cheeps and whirrs, didn't bother him as much as he had thought it would. All that plagued him now was an immense tiredness that seemed to saturate every inch of skin, every muscle, every tendon, even the marrow of every bone – that, and a sneaking suspicion that soon he would be occupying yet another room, with a huge bright light over a really hard table, surrounded by people wearing green scrubs and white masks, with one of them holding another type of mask over his face and telling him to count backwards from one hundred ... ninety-nine ... ninety-eight ... ninety-seven ...

He had almost counted himself back to sleep when he realized that, off to his left, the bed rail had been let down, and his hand was being turned this way and that, very gently, as though it were too fragile to be handled in the normal way. Turning his head slowly in that direction, he saw a pale, ill-looking McCormick seated beside him in a hard plastic institutional-type chair, the bruise on his temple painted in varying hues of red and blue and purple. He was dressed in a set of blue scrubs probably begged from some sympathetic nurse or housekeeper, although the plastic bracelet on his wrist was clear evidence of his continued inpatient status. He appeared to be making a careful examination of the back of Hardcastle's hand, his brow furrowed and his expression deeply troubled. Concerned, Hardcastle asked softly, "What's wrong, kiddo?"

McCormick looked up in consternation. "You have liver spots."

Hardcastle chuckled weakly. "Well, that's the sort of thing that comes with age, sport." His eyes softened at the distress in McCormick's face. "It's not like they hurt any, you know."

McCormick continued to study the hand that lay lax within his own, the spidery lines crisscrossing closely so that the skin looked as if it had been crumpled like tissue paper and smoothed out again. Finally he glanced up from beneath lowered brows and said, "It's not right, Judge. It's not right that you got liver spots, and I never noticed. It's not right that you got sick, and I never noticed. Dammit, Judge, you might have died, and I might never have noticed!"

Hardcastle couldn't restrain a slight grin at that last passionately uttered declaration. "I don't know, McCormick, I think that last one probably wouldn't have got past you for long. As for the getting-sick part, I sorta went to a little trouble to make sure you didn't notice."

McCormick's head came up at that, his eyes flashing with anger. "But I'm your friend, I'm supposed to notice stuff like that. I'm supposed to be around to notice stuff like that!" He grimaced in pain both physical and emotional, then resumed his intense study of Hardcastle's hand. His expression hardened as the judge's hand closed firmly around his own, but his eyes never wavered from their original focus.

"McCormick. Look at me." Hardcastle tightened his grip with a strength that belied his apparent weakness, so that McCormick flinched in surprised pain. "Look at me." Waiting until McCormick lifted his head once more, Hardcastle released his hand and said quietly, "Do you recall back in Arizona, when those rednecks stole your money and you got shot? Remember what you told me about what friends are for?"

"I said that when you fall down, friends pick you back up again."

"And you were right, that's what being a friend is all about. But kiddo, friends aren't responsible for keeping each other from falling down in the first place. Yeah, if they see you starting to fall, they can try to keep you from hitting the pavement, but it's just not their place to protect you from everything that might make you fall down to begin with. There's got to be some personal accountability somewhere." He smiled with an unaccustomed gentleness. "Kid, you're my best friend, you know that. But it's never been your job to make sure that I ate right, or slept well, or got my exercise. Sure, you tried to keep me on the straight and narrow when I slipped up, just like I did you, but in the end, it's up to each of us to make the right choices and do the right thing. This time, I made a couple of really bad choices, and one of 'em was not saying anything to you about what was going on. I'm just sorry you got yourself a nasty concussion because of it."

McCormick stood abruptly and walked to the window, refusing to be comforted. He stared out unseeingly for a few moments, before turning to lean back against the window frame. "Okay, let's say you're right. I still think that if I'd just been around more, I coulda done something, maybe mouthed off and got you angry enough to go get some help. I can't pick you up when you fall down if I'm not there to see it happen."

Hardcastle sighed. "McCormick, even if you'd been there twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, chances are it wouldn't have done any good. It's kind of a strange thing about human nature, we can notice things going wrong in other people's lives, but when it comes to our own little worlds, we're blind as bats." He paused, then continued slowly, "Let me tell you a little story about how ol' Hardcastle blew the big one, okay?"

He shifted his gaze past McCormick's shoulder to the window, at the hills rising purple in the distance. "A long time ago, back when Nancy first got sick, I noticed that there was something a little, well, not right, like her not being quite as energetic as she'd always been, or not as anxious to go out as she used to be. But she never complained or anything, just kept doing her housework and working in her flowerbeds like she'd always done. When I'd ask her about it, she'd just laugh it off, make excuses about the change of life and stuff like that. So I just took her at her word and shrugged it off myself. After all, I was busy, and surely she'd say something if there was anything serious going on, right? We went on like that for weeks, and then D.D. came down for a visit. She only had to take one look at her sister, and that's when the truth came out. And by then, it was too late."

Hardcastle paused deliberately, waiting until McCormick's eyes reluctantly came up to meet his. "Don't you see, McCormick? Sometimes you can be too close to someone, so that you can't see the big picture for all the little stuff that keeps getting your attention. Nancy was getting sicker and sicker all the time, and I couldn't see it the way D.D. did because I was too close, and because Nancy was too good at pulling the wool over my eyes. She did the same thing I was doing to you, see, stayin' out of my way and hiding all the bad stuff, so I wouldn't catch on. Did I blame myself? Hell, yes, I blamed myself, I still blame myself sometimes, but you know something, McCormick? Even if I'd seen it from the very first second, I still couldn't have done anything about it unless Nancy was willing to do something about it first. I coulda ranted and raved, and made all sorts of a fuss, and it still wouldn't have made any difference unless she was willing to take that first step.

"That's the way it is with you and me, kiddo." Hardcastle paused for a quick breath; he felt completely drained, and his breathing had begun to develop that irritating hitch again. But it was terribly important to him that the kid get this, and get it now, before anything else happened to knock 'em both back down to where they couldn't crawl their way back up – and he was afraid that McCormick was already standing way too close to the edge as it was. "I mean, look what happened when you did find out what was going on. Did it mean you got me to the doctor right off? Nope, because I was being stupid and stubborn – in other words, my usual donkey self. And there wasn't one blessed thing you could do about it. Even if you'd tied me up, dumped me in the bed of the pickup, and hauled me to the emergency room, you couldn't have made 'em treat me if I refused to sign the paperwork." He smiled faintly at the motionless figure by the window. "So cut yourself a little slack, okay, McCormick? There's nothing about this that's your fault, nothing at all."

McCormick looked at him from across the room for a moment, before pulling away from the window frame and padding softly to the side of the bed. Then, staring down impassively at Hardcastle's suddenly wary face, he reached out and carefully pulled the neck of Hardcastle's hospital gown to one side, revealing a colorful bruising on the judge's shoulder rivaling that on his own forehead. He cocked a cynical eye at Hardcastle's dismayed expression. "So nothing about this is my fault, huh, Hardcase? It's funny about those bruises, they're exactly where they would be if I'd actually done what I dreamed about doing, instead of just dreaming about it." He eased the gown back into place and stepped back silently, his expression haunted. "I thought you said I didn't hit you."

"You didn't hit me," Hardcastle replied stubbornly, as though this particular hair wasn't even worth splitting. "You just kinda leaned on me – in every sense of the word."

The judge watched worriedly as McCormick closed his eyes, clinging to the back of the chair with a white-knuckle grip. He seemed to sway as he stood there; plainly the kid needed to be back in bed, but Hardcastle hated to see him go without somehow getting him to see the light. "McCormick, would you just listen to me for once? You had a really bad concussion, I thought you had a skull fracture, and for about five minutes, you didn't really know where you were or what you were doing. But it never woulda happened if I'd just used some sense about this whole thing from the beginning, about seeing the doctor, about telling you what was going on, about going to George's funeral. This is not your fault, it's all my doing, and you know, kiddo," Hardcastle said with a reluctant glance toward the cubicle door, "I expect it's about time I paid the piper."

As though deliberately timed, a shadow fell across Hardcastle's bed, and they both looked up to see Hardcastle's doctor standing there in the doorway, a small, pale man with a very somber countenance. McCormick instinctively moved closer to the bed, gripping the bed sheets with frightened fingers.

Hardcastle eyed the doctor as he would a tardy visitor. "Hiya, Doc. We were just waiting for you."

"Mr. Hardcastle," the doctor began, glancing uncertainly at McCormick.

"Doc, this is a friend of mine, Mark McCormick. You could say that he watches out for me – when I let him, that is." Hardcastle cast a half-humorous glance at the tense figure standing beside him, but McCormick was watching the doctor with an expression more often associated with that of a deer caught in the glare of headlights. Hardcastle sighed and added with finality, "He stays, Doc. He's gotta know the score sometime, and it may as well be now. He'll be okay, won't you, kiddo?"

McCormick cleared his throat and glanced back down at the sheet in his hands, looking as though his headache had suddenly returned with a vengeance. Hardcastle saw his eyes come up to meet those of the doctor, who looked directly at the kid with such a serious, such an incredibly sad expression, that McCormick's face instantly lost what little color it possessed. And then the doctor spoke, his words deep and solemn, for all the world like the verbal equivalent of a death knell. "I'm so very, very, very, very, very sorry. I know this is the very worst news I can deliver, but it must be very soon, I'm afraid ..."

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Those were the last words that McCormick heard with any clarity. Although the sound of the doctor's voice still registered faintly, the actual comments were lost in the deafening roar that raged in McCormick's head, like the crashing of waves against a rocky shoreline. His mind tried to grapple with the doctor's statement – dear God, no, not this, not after everything they had been through, that long, cold night in that overturned car, the way they had fought so hard together just to survive the nightmare that was the river, the way the judge had rallied there at the end, if only for McCormick's sake, and how they had somehow still managed to get past it all – until now.

McCormick stood there, staring at all the IV's, the monitor wires that snaked beneath Hardcastle's hospital gown, and abruptly he realized that Hardcastle had been right all along: it would have been more merciful to let him drown in the car as he wanted, quickly and painlessly, rather than force him back to a debilitating, agonizing death like this. And with that final thought, the dogged self-control that had kept McCormick functioning for the last sixty hours finally began to give way, the pain and the stress and the sorrow combining to increase the burden that lay so heavily on his soul, so that his fortitude could no longer sustain him. He could feel his face going slack, his legs beginning to fold under him as though his bones had turned to water, or sand: just like the sand in that river, he thought muzzily.

Out of the mistiness invading his mind came the sound of Hardcastle's voice, sharp in anger, and the doctor's oddly indignant reply; the voices were clear, but the words were still strangely indistinguishable. Then he heard Hardcastle speaking to him, calling his name repeatedly, softly at first, louder, louder still, and then there was an alarmed yell that reverberated around both the small ICU cubicle and the hollow chambers of his pounding head, "We need a nurse in here!"

After that, there were more noises, a curiously hostile hissing between Hardcastle and the doctor, the soft shush of rubber-soled shoes quickly crossing the tiled flooring. Just as he began sliding inexorably downward to the floor, something hard was shoved against his knees, and he sat down abruptly on the plastic chair, his bruised forehead coming down to bounce painfully against the edge of the mattress.

As the sound of urgent, concerned voices flowed about him, McCormick just sat there motionless, the top of his head barely making contact with the mattress as he stared down at the tiles that seemed to revolve drunkenly beneath his bare feet. Suddenly, for no reason, a memory came bobbing to the surface of his rapidly-receding consciousness, a memory buried so deeply that he hadn't even been aware of its existence. He could see a shattered toy of some sort lying in pieces on a bare wood floor, and sitting there sobbing beside it was a small child – and he himself was that child, crying as though his heart would break. Then came the memory of two strong arms picking him up and holding him close, a hand gently stroking his hair, a voice – Sonny Daye's voice – murmuring in a soft, comforting croon, "It's all right, Mark, don't cry, we're gonna fix it, it's gonna be okay, kid ..."

The memory faded as his eyes began to fill, and lifting his head, he laid his cheek tiredly against the cool, crumpled sheets of Hardcastle's bed, his fingers still somehow tangled in their folds. His conscious thoughts gradually lost substance, collapsing against one another like dominoes. But deep down, within the innermost part of his being, he could feel an intense desire for the same warmth to enfold him now as had been contained in that single memory, a desperate craving for someone to gather him up and hold him close, the way his father had once held him, protecting him against the bleak realities that now seemed to stretch ahead into infinity. And in his heart, he knew that from this day on, he would never find such comfort, such a sense of security, ever again in his lifetime – and at that thought, his mind at last began to shut down in involuntary retreat from a certainty he could not bear to face. His final coherent thought came in the form of a desperate plea. Oh, God, please, we've both come so far. Don't let it all end like this.

Slowly McCormick's hands began to slide off the bed as his fingers loosened their grasp on the sheets, and then there were other hands, nurse's hands, resting firmly against his shoulders, holding him securely in place. He was remotely aware of other things as well: the sound of material rustling nearby, a low-voiced conversation over his head, the mattress shifting precariously beneath his cheek.

And then, in his last few seconds of awareness, there came the weight of a hand laid gently across his aching head, carefully smoothing the unruly curls away from the still tender lump that lay exposed on his bruised forehead, and a gruff, familiar voice brought a longed-for reassurance as he finally drifted into a merciful unconsciousness. "It's okay, McCormick, we're gonna fix it. Don't you worry, kiddo, it's all gonna be okay."