Red Widow by Alma Katsu (good books to read for beginners txt) 📗

him take one of the neighbors’ puppies. She can picture the two of them in the yard, Brian running and laughing and calling to the dog, the puppy nipping and jumping. Brian acting like a seven-year-old boy instead of like a ninety-year-old man, always so careful because he knows the earth can open up and swallow you whole at any time. It happened to his father, didn’t it?

But: no puppies. It wouldn’t be fair to the dog. Where they’re going, they’d only have to leave it behind.

SEVENTEEN

SIX MONTHS EARLIER

Theresa Warner always disliked hospitals. For one thing, there was the air, so sour. The antiseptic tang of it turned her stomach. And then there was all that uncertainty, long hours of waiting. She never was good at being patient. This hospital, Sibley Memorial, reminded her of past visits: days spent in the ICU when her father was dying, or that time Brian fell from a tree. Four hours in the emergency room for ten stitches to close a gash on his forehead. Fretting over whether it would leave a scar.

She came straight from work, feeling out of place in her navy suit and heels. Everyone else was dressed in comfortable clothes, ready for a long day in the waiting room or at a loved one’s bedside. Then there were the nurses and cleaning staff dressed in well-worn scrubs, but also latex disposable gloves and aprons. That settled it: she wouldn’t touch anything. She wasn’t going to bring some god-awful germ home to her son. Antibiotic-resistant germs were out of control, new ones found every day, ones that ate the flesh from your bones, could kill you before the week was out. And they all lived at the hospital.

Under ordinary circumstances, Theresa would not be visiting Jack Clemens. But Eric Newman had told her that Jack had asked especially for her. Jack was not someone she knew well; he belonged to her past, a former colleague of Richard’s. She was not about to deny a dying man (pancreatic cancer, no less, no coming back from that) but she wasn’t happy about it. Sibley was in the District, not an easy drive from McLean. It meant leaving work early to beat rush hour traffic but worse, it meant time away from Brian. It was bad enough that they were apart the entire day because of work and school, which couldn’t be helped but she resented anyway. She doubly resented any imposition on her time outside the office. Even for a dying man. Her throat closed as she imagined the terrible things that could happen to Brian if she wasn’t there to protect him. A home invasion. A tree falling on the house. She never had this crippling anxiety before Richard’s death, of course. She kept waiting for it to fade but it only got worse with time.

She scurried through the maze of hospital corridors, wondering what Brian was doing at that moment without her. Probably sitting on the love seat in the den with the cushions stacked around him like his own little bunker. The National Geographic channel, his favorite, would be on—it was always on, like white noise—but he would have one eye on the clock, watching for her return. He would be deaf to the sitter, listening only for the sound of his mother’s car pulling into the driveway.

Theresa hesitated outside Clemens’s room, gathering her resolve. You’re here, just get it over with. For Richard’s sake. The hospital bed was surrounded by high-tech equipment. Lit-up boxes, adorned with red LED numbers, beeped. A monitor displayed vitals in lines and numbers. Tubes and wires hung from the ceiling and twisted around the bed rails like vines in a jungle. A nurse stood to one side, squinting at the monitor as she typed at a portable stand.

And in the center of the bed, completely dwarfed by all the equipment, was the shrunken figure of Jack Clemens. He had once been a good-looking guy, secretly admired by more than one woman in Russia Division, but was now practically child-sized and bald from chemo. It made him seem like an old, old man but—Theresa did the math in her head—he should be in his early fifties. A breathing apparatus sat on his face like a creature from an Alien movie. There were dangling tubes everywhere; he looked like a frail white spider at the center of a very large web.

Theresa didn’t notice Jack’s wife at first. She was a chunky, sturdy midwestern sort with dyed blond hair, disproportionately large next to her withered husband. She rose from a chair, a balled-up tissue clenched in her hand. Theresa felt sorry for her. She was faced with a horrible reality: her husband would not be with her much longer. That was inarguably terrible, yes, but it was a blessing Theresa had never had. To see her husband’s death coming. To have time to make that emotional adjustment. To be with her husband at the end. You think this is the worst thing that could happen to you but it’s not. This is a luxury, she wanted to say to Clemens’s wife. At least you get to say goodbye.

She knew she was a bad person for thinking this, but she didn’t care.

On seeing Theresa, Jack Clemens’s dim eyes lit up. A desiccated hand clawed at the breathing mask.

Theresa felt a rush of alarm at the sight. She turned to the nurse. “Should he be doing that? Shouldn’t that stay on?”

But the nurse only pulled the mask off the man’s face matter-of-factly. “Oh no, he doesn’t need this, strictly speaking. It just makes breathing easier,” she explained.

“Theresa. Beautiful as ever.” Jack’s voice was barely audible. “Thank you. For coming.”

Theresa stood by Jack’s bed, determined not to touch anything. Germs. “I’m sorry that it has to be under these circumstances.”

He nodded toward the foot of the bed. “My wife. Helen. I don’t think. You’ve met,” he said, laboring for breath like an asthmatic.

“I don’t