The Apprentice: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

attracted the attention of another nurse who quickly intervened, speaking in the soothing tones of one who has dealt often with upset relatives.
    “Mr. Korsak was extubated this morning, ma’am.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “The tube in his throat—the one to help him breathe—we took it out. He’s doing fine now, so we transferred him to the intermediate care unit, down the hall.” She added, in defense: “We
did
call Mr. Korsak’s wife, you know.”
    Rizzoli thought of Diane Korsak and her vacant eyes and wondered if the phone call had even registered, or if the information had simply dropped like a penny into a dark well.
    By the time she reached Korsak’s room, she was calmer and back in control. Quietly she poked her head inside.
    He was awake and staring at the ceiling. His belly bulged beneath the sheets. His arms lay perfectly still at his sides, as though he was afraid to move them lest he disturb the tangle of wires and tubes.
    “Hey,” she said softly.
    He looked at her. “Hey,” he croaked back.
    “You feel like having a visitor?”
    In answer, he patted the bed, an invitation for her to settle in. To stay.
    She pulled a chair over to his bedside and sat down. His gaze had lifted again, not to the ceiling, as she’d thought at first, but to a cardiac monitor that was mounted in the corner of the room. An EKG blipped across the screen.
    “That’s my heart,” he said. The tube had left him hoarse, and what came out was barely a whisper.
    “Looks like it’s ticking okay,” she said.
    “Yeah.” There was a silence, his gaze still fixed on the monitor.
    She saw the bouquet of flowers that she’d sent that morning resting on his bedside table. It was the only vase in the room. Had no one else thought to send flowers? Not even his wife?
    “I met Diane yesterday,” she said.
    He glanced at her, then quickly looked away, but not before she’d seen dismay in his eyes.
    “I guess she didn’t tell you.”
    He shrugged. “She hasn’t been in today.”
    “Oh. She’ll probably be in later, then.”
    “Hell if I know.”
    His reply caught her by surprise. Perhaps he’d surprised himself as well; his face suddenly flushed.
    “I shouldn’t’ve said that,” he said.
    “You can say whatever you want to me.”
    He looked up at the monitor again and sighed. “Okay, then. It sucks.”
    “What does?”
    “Everything. Guy like me goes through life, doing what he’s supposed to do. Brings in the paycheck. Gives the kid whatever she wants. Never takes a bribe, not once. Then suddenly I’m fifty-four and
wham,
my own ticker turns against me. And I’m lying flat on my back, thinking:
What the hell was it all for?
I follow the rules, and I end up with a loser daughter who still calls Daddy whenever she needs money. And a wife who’s zonked out of her head on whatever crap she can get from the pharmacy. I can’t compete with Prince Valium. I’m just the guy who puts a roof over her head and pays for all the friggin’ prescriptions.” He gave a laugh, resigned and bitter.
    “Why are you still married?”
    “What’s the alternative?”
    “Being single.”
    “Being alone, you mean.” He said the word
alone
as if that was the worst option of all. Some people make choices hoping for the best; Korsak had made a choice simply to avoid the worst. He gazed up at his cardiac tracing, the twitching green symbol of his mortality. Bad choices or good, it had all led to this moment, in this hospital room, where fear kept company with regret.
    And where will I be at his age? she wondered. Flat on my back in a hospital, regretting the choices I made, yearning for the road I never took? She thought of her silent apartment with its blank walls, its lonely bed. How was her life any better than Korsak’s?
    “I keep worrying it’s gonna stop,” he said. “You know, just go flat-line. That’d scare the shit out of me.”
    “Stop watching it.”
    “If I stop watching, who the hell’s gonna keep an eye on it?”
    “The nurses are watching out at the desk. They’ve got monitors out there, too, you know.”
    “But are they really
watching
it? Or are they just goofing off, talking about shopping and boyfriends and shit? I mean, that’s my frigging heart up there.”
    “They’ve got alarm systems, too. Anything the least bit irregular, their machine starts squealing.”
    He looked at her. “No shit?”
    “What, you don’t trust me?”
    “I dunno.”
    They regarded each other for a