Your Heart Belongs to Me

morally powerless to override the wishes of the deceased.”
    Ryan took a deep breath. “Not to be indelicate, Doctor, but with the jet fees and medical expenses, I’ve spent a million six hundred thousand, and I’ll need expensive follow-up care all my life.”
    “Ryan, this is awkward. And not like you.”
    “No, wait. Please understand. Every penny this cost me was well spent, no charge was excessive. I’m alive, after all. I’m just trying to put this in perspective. With all the costs, no insurance, I’d still like to offer five hundred thousand to her family if they’ll provide her photo and her name.”
    “My God,” Hobb said.
    “They may be offended,” Ryan said. “I think you are. They may tell me to go to hell. Or you will. But it’s not that I think I can buy anything I want. It’s just…I’m in a corner. I’ll be grateful to anyone who can help me, who has the decency and mercy to help me.”
    Dougal Hobb, the storm-tossed sailing ship, and Ryan shared a long silence, as if the surgeon were mentally cutting open the situation to explore it further.
    Then Hobb said, “I could try to help you, Ryan. But I can’t fly blind. If I knew at least something about your problem…”
    Ryan reached for an explanation with which the physician might not be able to sympathize but to which he might accord a higher value than the absolute privacy of the donor’s family.
    “Call it a spiritual crisis, Doctor. That she died and I lived, though she was certainly a better person than I am. I know myself well enough to be sure of that. And so it haunts me. I’m not able to sleep. I’m exhausted. I need to…to be able to properly honor her.”
    After another incisive silence, the surgeon said, “You don’t mean to honor her in a public way.”
    “No, sir. I don’t. The media never got wind of my illness, the transplant. I don’t want my health problems to be public knowledge.”
    “You mean honor her…say, as a Catholic might honor someone by having a Mass said for her.”
    “Yes. That’s what I mean.”
    “Are you a Catholic, Ryan?”
    “No, Doctor. But that’s the kind of thing I mean.”
    “There’s someone I could talk to,” Hobb acknowledged. “He has the full file on the donor. He could put the question before them. Before the family.”
    “I would be grateful. You can’t know how grateful.”
    “They might be willing to provide a photograph. Even a first name. But if the family doesn’t want you to have her last name or contact information for them, would you be satisfied?”
    “The photo would be enormously…comforting. Anything they can do for me. I’d be grateful for anything.”
    “This is highly unusual,” Hobb said. “But I must admit it’s happened before. And we resolved it that time. It all depends on the family.”
    The woman with the lilies wanted to torment Ryan, to carve his nerves to ribbons before she put a sharp blade through his heart. Before further violence, she would most likely give him at least a day to consider the shallow incision in his side, to anticipate his next wound.
    Night and rain were her allies. Twenty-four hours from now, she would have the collaboration of both.
    “One more thing, Doctor. The photo and whatever else the family will share—I need it as soon as possible. Twelve hours or sooner would be ideal.”
    If Dougal Hobb whetted his scalpel on those words, he decided not to cut with it. After a silence, he said only, “Spiritual crises often last years, even a lifetime. There’s usually not an urgency about them.”
    “This one is different,” Ryan said. “Thank you for your help and your thoughtfulness, Doctor.”
     

 
    FORTY-ONE

    T he filet mignon cut like butter.
    As he ate, Ryan wondered about the woman’s expertise with the switchblade. She maneuvered him with the lilies, inflicting precisely the wound she intended.
    Had she cut deeper, he would have needed medical assistance. She sliced shallow enough to leave him with the option of treating the wound himself—and evidently expected that he would.
    Although she might prove herself a killer when the time came, she remained for now a death tease. She wanted this game to last, inflicting the maximum psychological torture before gutting him—if gutting was the only thing she had in mind.
    The confidence and delicacy with which she wielded the knife might have been learned on the street, but Ryan suspected she was not anything as common as a gang girl. The bloody