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A beige box appeared in the aide's hands. It had switches and dials on the top and sprouted a wire ending in a flat disk, which he placed over Rhyme's chest and taped down.
"Phrenic nerve stimulator. It'll keep him breathing." He clicked on the machine.
Thom slipped a blood-pressure cuff onto Rhyme's alabaster-white arm. Sachs realized with a start that his body was virtually wrinkle-free. He was in his forties but his body was that of a twenty-five-year-old.
"Why's his face so red? It looks like he's going to explode."
"He is," Thom said matter-of-factly, yanking a doctor's kit from underneath the bedside table. He opened it then he continued to take the pressure. "Dysreflexia . . . All the stress today. Mental and physical. He's not used to it."
"He kept saying he was tired."
"I know. And I wasn't paying careful enough attention. Shhhh. I have to listen." He plugged the stethoscope into his ears, inflated the cuff and let the air out slowly. Staring at his watch. His hands were rock-steady. "Shit. Diastolic's one twenty-five. Shit."
Father in heaven, Sachs thought. He's going to stroke out.
Thom nodded at the black bag. "Find the bottle of nifedipine. And open up one of those syringes." As she searched, Thom yanked down Rhyme's pajamas and grabbed a catheter from beside the bed, tore open its plastic wrapper too. He smeared the end with K-Y jelly and lifted Rhyme's pale penis, inserting the catheter gently but quickly into the tip.
"This's part of the problem. Bowel and urinary pressure can trigger an attack. He's been drinking way more than he should today."
She opened the hypodermic but said, "I don't know how to do the needle."
"I'll do it." He looked up at her. "Could I ask . . . would you mind doing this? I don't want the tube to get a kink in it."
"Okay. Sure."
"You want gloves?"
She pulled on a pair and carefully took Rhyme's penis in her left hand. She held the tube in her right. It had been a long, long time since she'd held a man here. The skin was soft and she thought how strange it was that this center of a man's being is, most of the time, as delicate as silk.
Thom expertly injected the drug.
"Come on, Lincoln . . ."
A siren sounded in the distance.
"They're almost here," she said glancing out the window.
"If we don't bring him back now there's nothing they can do."
"How long does it take the drug to work?"
Thom stared at the unresponsive Rhyme, said, "It should've by now. But too high a dose and he goes into shock." The aide bent down and lifted an eyelid. The blue pupil was glazed, unfocused.
"This isn't good." He took the pressure again. "One fifty. Christ."
"It'll kill him," she said.
"Oh. That's not the problem."
"What?" a shocked Amelia Sachs whispered.
"He doesn't mind dying." He looked at her briefly as if surprised she hadn't figured this out. "He just doesn't want to be any more paralyzed than he already is." He prepared another injection. "He may already've had one. A stroke, I mean. That's what terrifies him."
Thom leaned forward and injected more of the drug.
The siren was closer now. Honking too. Cars would be blocking the ambulance's way, in no hurry to pull aside--one of the things that infuriated Sachs about the city.
"You can take the catheter out now."
