“I'll let you know.”

“Fine.” He looked at his watch then, and stood up.

“I'd like you to go downstairs and rest now. I really mean that.”

“I know.” She favored him with a wintry smile. “But I'm not going to. You know that too. I have to be with Michael.”

“Even if you kill yourself doing it?”

“I won't. I'm too mean to die, Wicky. Besides, I still have a lot of work to do.”

“Is it worth it?” He looked at her curiously for a moment. If he had had one tenth of her ambition, he would have been a great surgeon, but he didn't and he wasn't. And he wasn't even sure that he envied her. “Is it worth it?” He said it more softly the second time, and she nodded.

“Absolutely. Don't ever doubt it for a second. It's given me everything I want out of life.” Unless I lose Michael. She closed her eyes and pushed away the thought.

“Well, I'll give you another hour with him, and then I'm coming back up here. And I don't care if I have to shoot you with Nembutal and drag you away myself, you're going. Is that dear?”

“Very.” She stood up, dropped another cigarette to the floor where she crushed it, and patted his cheek. “And Wicky—” She looked up at him from under long chestnut lashes, and for a moment she was all softness and elegant beauty. “—thank you.” He gently kissed her cheek, squeezed her arm, and stood back for a moment.

“He'll be all right, Marion, you'll see.” He didn't dare mention the girl again. They could talk about that later. He only smiled and walked away, as she stood there looking vulnerable and alone. He was glad he had called George Calloway a few hours before. Marion needed someone with her. He thought about her all the way down the corridor, as she stood watching him go. She hadn't moved from the spot where he had left her, and then slowly, she began the lonely walk up the hall, back towards Michael's room, past open doors and closed ones, heartbreaks to come and hopes never to be known again. And a few who would make it. This was a floor set aside for the critically ill, and there was no sound from any of the rooms as she walked slowly by, until she was halfway down the hall, where she heard little jerking sobs come from an open door. The sounds were so soft that at first she wasn't sure what she was hearing. And then she saw the room number, and she knew. She stopped as though she had come to a wall, staring at the door, and the darkness beyond.

She could see the bed dimly outlined in the comer, but the room was dark; all blinds and curtains had been drawn, as though the patient could not be touched by light. Marion stood there for a long moment, afraid to go in, but knowing that she had to; and then slowly, one foot after the other, softly, gliding, she walked a few feet into the room and stopped again. The sobs were a little louder now, and coming at quicker intervals, with little panicky gasps.

“Is someone there?” The girl's entire head was covered with bandages, and the voice was muffled and strange. “Is someone …” She cried harder now. “I can't see.”

“Your eyes are Just covered with bandages. There's nothing wrong with your eyes.” But the words were met by fresh sobs. “Why are you awake?” Marion spoke to her in a monotone. They were not words of reassurance, they were devoid of all feeling, and Marion herself felt as though she were standing in a dream. But she knew that she had to be there. Had to. For Michael's sake. “Didn't they give you something to make you sleep?”

“It doesn't work. I keep waking up.”

“Is the pain very bad?”

“No, everything is numb. Who … who are you?”

She was afraid to tell her. Instead, she moved toward the bed and sat down in the narrow blue vinyl chair the nurse must have pulled up next to it. The girl's hands were wrapped in bandages, too, and lay useless at her sides. Marion remembered Wicky telling her that the girl had naturally used her hands to try to shield her face. The damage to them was almost as great as to her face, which would be devastating to her as an artist. In essence, her whole life was over. Her youth, her beauty, her work. And her romance. But now Marion knew what she had to say.

“Nancy—” It was the first time she had said the name, but now it didn't matter. She had no choice. “Did they …” Her voice was smooth and silky as she sat next to the broken girl. “Did they tell you about your face?” There was total silence in the room for an endless amount of time, and then a small broken sob freed itself from the bandages. “Did they tell you how bad it was?” Her stomach turned over as she said the words, but she could not stop now. She had to free Michael. If she freed him, he would live. She felt that in her guts. “Did they tell you how impossible it would be to put you back together?”

The sobs were angry now. “They lied to me. They said …”

“There's only one man who can do it, Nancy, and it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. You can't afford it. And neither can Michael.'”

“I'd never let him do that.” She was angry at the voice now, as well as at fate. “I'd never let him … ”

“Then what will you do?”

“I don't know.” And the sobs began again.

“Could you face him like that?” It took minutes for the stifled “no” to emerge. “Do you think he would love you like that? Even if he tried, because he felt some bond of loyalty, some obligation, how long could it last? How long could you bear knowing what you looked like and what you were doing to him?” The sounds Nancy made now were frightening. She sounded as though she were going to be sick, and Marion wondered if she herself would be as well. “Nancy, there's nothing left of you. Nothing. There's nothing left of the life you had before today.” They sat in interminable silence, and Marion thought she would hear those sobs forever. But it had to be painful or it would never work. “You've already lost him. You couldn't do this to him. And he … he deserves better than that. If you love him, you know that. And … and so do you. But you could have a new life, Nancy.” The girl didn't even bother to answer as her sobs went on. “You could have a new life. A whole new world.” She waited until the sobs grew angrier again and then stopped. “A whole new face.”

“How?”

“There's a man in San Francisco who could make you beautiful again. Who could make you able to paint again. It would take a long time, and a lot of money, but it would be worth it, Nancy … wouldn't it?” There was the tiniest of smiles at the corners of Marion's mouth. Now she was on familiar ground. It was just like making a multimillion-dollar deal. A hundred-million-dollar deal. They were all the same.

A small jagged sigh emerged from the faceless bandages. “We can't afford it.” Marion almost shuddered at the “we.” They were not a “we” anymore. They never had been. She and Michael were the “we.” Not this… this … She took a deep breath and composed herself. She had work to do. That was the only way she could think of it. She couldn't think of the girl. Only of Michael.

“You can't, Nancy. But I can. You do know who I am, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“You do understand that you've already lost Michael? That he could never survive the pressure and tragedy of what has happened to you, if he survives at all. You understand that, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“And you know that it would be a vicious thing to do, to try to put him through it, to make him prove his loyalty to you?” She wouldn't say the word “love.” The girl wasn't worthy of it. Marion had to believe that “Do you understand that, Nancy?” There was a silent pause. “Do you?”

This time it was a very tired little word. She was sounding spent. “Yes.”

“Then you've already lost everything you can lose, haven't you?”

“Yes.” The word had no tone, no life to it. It was as though life itself were seeping away from the girl.

“Nancy, I'd like to propose a little deal to you.” It was Marion Hillyard at her best. If her son had heard her, he would have wanted to kill her. “I'd like you to think about that new face. About a new life, a new Nancy. Think about it. About what it would mean. You'd be beautiful again, you could have friends again, you could go places—to restaurants, to movies, to stores—you could wear pretty clothes and go out with men. The other way … people would shriek when you walked near them. You couldn't go anywhere, do anything, be anyone. Children would cry if they saw you. Can you imagine what that would be like? But you have a choice.” She let the words sink in.

“No, I don't.”

“Yes, you do. I want to give you that choice. I will give you that new life. A new face, a new world. An apartment in another city while the work is being done—anything you need, anything you want to do. There'll be no struggle, Nancy, and in a year or so, the nightmare will be over.”

“And then?”

“You're free. The new life is yours.” There was an endless pause as Marion prepared to lower the boom Nancy was waiting for. “As long as you never contact Michael again. The new face is yours only if you give up Michael. But if you don't accept my … my gift, you know that you've already lost him, anyway. So why live the rest of your life as a freak if you don't have to?”

“What if Michael doesn't honor the agreement? What if I stay away from him, but he doesn't stay away from me?”

“All I want from you is the promise that you'll stay away from him. What Michael does is up to him.”

“And you'll honor that? If he wants me … anyway … if he comes after me, then it's up to him?”

“I'll honor that.”

Nancy felt victorious as she lay there. She knew Michael infinitely better than his mother did. Michael would never give up on her. He'd find her, and want to help her through the ordeal, but by then she'd already be on her way to becoming herself again. His mother couldn't win this one, no matter how hard she tried. Accepting the deal would make Nancy a cheat, because she knew what the outcome would be. But she had to do it She to. There was no other way.

“Will you do it?” Marion almost held her breath as she waited for the one word she prayed for, the word that would free Michael, and at last it came.

But it would be a word of victory, not of defeat. It would be filled with all Nancy's faith in Michael. She remembered the words he had said to her at the rode where they'd hidden the beads the morning before. “I promise never to say good-bye to you.” She knew he never would.

“Your answer, Nancy?” Marion couldn't wait any longer. Her heart wouldn't bear it.

“Yes.”





Chapter 5




Marion Hillyard stood in the doorway of the hospital in a black wool dress and black Cardin coat watching them load the girl into an ambulance. It was six o'clock in the morning, and she had never spoken to her again. They had made their agreement the night before, and Marion had immediately asked Wicky to call the man he knew in San Francisco. Wickfield had been overjoyed. He had kissed Marion on the cheek and gotten hold of Peter Gregson at his home. Gregson would do it. He wanted Nancy out west immediately, and Marion had arranged for a special compartment and two nurses in first class on a jet heading for San Francisco at eight o'clock that morning. She was sparing no expense. “She's a lucky girl, Marion.” Wickfield looked at her in admiration as she crushed out another cigarette.

“I think so. And I don't want Michael to know, Wicky. Is that clear?” It was, and so was the “or else” in her voice. “If someone does tell him, I cancel her treatment.”

“But why? He has a right to know what you've done for the girl.”

“It's between the two of us. The four of us, including you and Gregson. Michael doesn't need to know anything. When he comes out of the coma, you're not to mention the girl to him at all. It will only agitate him.”

If he ever came out of the coma. Marion had dozed in the chair at his side all night long despite Wicky's protests. But she had felt strangely revived after her talk with the girl. She had freed Michael at last. Now he could live. In a way, she had given them both life. She knew she had been right to do what she'd done. “You won't say anything then, will you, Robert?” She never called him that, except to remind him what the Hillyard money had done for his hospital.

“Of course not, if that's what you want.”

“It is.”

There was the dull clank of the ambulance door closing, and the last of the blue blankets swathing the girl disappeared with the two nurses' backs. The nurses would be with her for the first six or eight months in San Francisco. After that, Gregson had said, she wouldn't need them. But for those six or eight months, she would spend much of her time with her eyes bandaged, as he worked on her lids and her nose, her brow and her cheekbones. He had a whole face to reconstruct. There would be other expenses involved, too. Nancy would need almost constant care by a psychiatrist as she underwent the emotional shock of becoming a new person. There was no way Gregson could give her back the self she had been. He had to create a whole new woman. And Marion liked that idea just fine: the girl would be that much more removed from Michael. It took away the possibility of an accident, a chance meeting in an airport five years later. Marion didn't want that to happen. Her mind ran over the list of arrangements she had made with Gregson on the phone at four o'clock that morning, one o'clock San Francisco time. He had sounded bright and alive and dynamic, a man in his forties with an extraordinary international reputation in his field. She was a damn lucky girl. He said he'd have his secretary work it all out. The apartment, the clothes. They had quickly run over the cost of eighteen months of surgery, and the additional expense of psychiatric help, constant nurses for a while, and even general support. They had settled on four hundred thousand dollars as a reasonable figure. Marion would call the bank at nine and have it transferred to Gregson's account on the coast. It would be there when his own bank opened at nine. Not that he was worried. He knew who Marion Hillyard was. Who didn't?