The Apprentice

“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 go

“Stop watching it.”

“If I stop watching, who the hell’s go

“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 du

They regarded each other for a moment, and she was pricked by shame. She had no right to expect his trust, not after what had happened in the cemetery. The vision still haunted her, of a stricken Korsak, lying alone and abandoned in the darkness. And she-so single-minded, so oblivious to everything but the chase. She could not look him in the eye, and her gaze dropped, settling instead on his beefy arm, crisscrossed with tape and I.V. tubing.

“I am so sorry,” she said. “God, I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Not looking out for you.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Don’t you remember?” He shook his head.

She paused, suddenly realizing that he truly did not remember. That she could stop talking right now and he would never know how she’d failed him. Silence might be the easy way out, but she knew she couldn’t live with the burden.

“What do you remember, about the night in the cemetery?” she asked. “The last thing?”

“The last thing? I was ru

“What else?”

“I remember feeling really pissed off.”

“Why?”

He snorted. “ ‘Cause I couldn’t keep up with a friggin’ girl.”

“And then?”

He shrugged. “That’s it. That’s the last I remember. Till those nurses here started shoving that goddamn tube up my…” He stopped. “I woke up all right. You better believe I let ‘em know it, too.”

A silence passed, Korsak with his jaw squared, his gaze fixed stubbornly on the EKG monitor. Then he said, with quiet disgust: “I guess I screwed up the chase.”

This took her by surprise. “Korsak-”

“Look at this.” He waved at his bulging belly. “Like I swallowed a goddamn basketball. That’s what it looks like. Or I’m fifteen months knocked up. Can’t even run a race with a girl. I used to be fast, you know. Used to be built like a racehorse. Not like I am now. You shoulda seen me back then, Rizzoli. Wouldn’t recognize me. Bet you don’t believe any of it, do you? ‘Cause you just see me like I am now. Broken-down piece of shit. Smoke too much, eat too much.” Drink too much, she added silently. “… just an ugly tub of lard.” He gave his belly an angry slap.

“Korsak, listen to me. I’m the one who screwed up, not you.”

He looked at her, clearly confused.

“In the cemetery. We were both ru

“Like you gotta rub it in.”

“Then you weren’t there. You just weren’t there. But I kept ru

He was silent, waiting for the rest of the story.

She forced herself to continue. “That’s when I should’ve gone looking for you. I should’ve realized you weren’t around. But things got crazy. And I just didn’t think. I didn’t stop to wonder where you were…” She sighed. “I don’t know how long it took me to remember. Maybe it was only a few minutes. But I think-I’m afraid-it was a lot longer. And all that time, you were lying there, behind one of the gravestones. It took me so long to start searching for you. To remember.”

A silence passed. She wondered if he’d even registered what she’d said, because he began to fuss with his I.V. line, rearranging the loops of tubing. It was as if he didn’t want to look at her and was trying to focus instead on anything else.

“Korsak?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t you have anything to say?”

“Yeah. Forget it. That’s what I have to say.”

“I feel like such a jerk.”

“Why? ‘Cause you were doing your job?”

“Because I should’ve been watching out for my partner.”

“Like I’m your partner?”

“That night you were.”

He laughed. “That night I was a friggin‘ liability. A two-ton ball and chain, holding you back. You been getting all worked up about not looking out for me. Me, I’ve been lying here getting pissed off for falling down on the job. I mean, literally. Kerplunk. I been thinking about all the dumb-ass lies I keep telling myself. You see this gut?” Again he slapped his belly. “It was go