Read Online Evidence of Blood by Thomas H. Cook - Free Book Online Page B

night?”
    “So hot,” Stark added. “A summer night.”
    Kinley shook his head.
    “It was the first time I saw you,” Stark said. “The attack, the one that was so bad. You were turning blue. You were holding your breath.”
    “Holding it?”
    “You wouldn’t try to breathe,” Stark explained. “You were too exhausted.”
    Again, Kinley shook his head. “I remember lots of attacks, but not that one.”
    “You must have been about three years old,” Stark told him. “And you were suffocating. Turning blue, like I said. It was terrible, the worst case I’d ever seen.” His eyes took on a grave sense of concentration, as if memory were a pressure in his head. “The old woman brought you in. I thought you were already dead. We tried an injection, but it didn’t work. You wouldn’t breathe, so I thought of something else, one last try. We put you in a car and drove as fast as we could. Your grandmother held your head out the window as we drove, so the air would be forced down into your lungs.”
    Kinley stared at him curiously. “I don’t remember that,” he said quietly, as if, for once, his mind had deserted him, an unexpected vacancy he found disturbing, as if he’d been betrayed. For a moment, he tried to recallthe incident Dr. Stark had described, but found that his mind would not retrieve it for him, but simply left it like one of those fearful voids ancient cartographers had indicated on their maps:
Terra Incognita
. “I don’t remember that particular attack,” he said again.
    Stark nodded contentedly. “Well, that’s the glory of childhood,” he said quietly. “You can forget such evil things.” He shrugged helplessly. “Old men, on the other hand, we are doomed to remember everything.” His head drifted slightly to the left, as if an invisible support had suddenly given way, and allowed the great white hill to shift. “Death was very close to you that night.”
    “Yes, I suppose it was.”
    Stark made a lunging motion with both hands, as if grasping for something invisible in the air. “Death was snatching at you,” he whispered, “just like that.”
    Kinley stepped back reflexively, as if away from the grasping hands. His mind raced backward, gathering in the days and nights of his long affliction, but always returning empty of this particular brush with death. He fought to return to the present. “Actually, I came by to talk to you about another death.”
    Stark nodded but said nothing.
    “The autopsy you did on Ray Tindall’s body.”
    Stark motioned toward the chair in front of his desk. “Please, have a seat.” He smiled delicately. “There’s no rush. I only have a little bit of my practice left. Most people prefer a young doctor.” Again, he shrugged. “The nature of things.” He lifted his slightly trembling hands. “They prefer a steady grasp.”
    Kinley sat down. “In the report, you’re pretty clear about the cause of Ray’s death,” he began. “That it was caused by a heart attack.”
    “Yes, I am,” Stark said. “There wasn’t much room for doubt. It was massive. As massive as I’ve ever seen.”
    “Were you Ray’s doctor?”
    Stark nodded. “Yes, I was. All his life, I don’t think heever went to anyone else.” Once again he lifted his hands. “They were still good enough for him.”
    Kinley kept his eyes on Stark’s face. “His heart, you knew it had problems?”
    “Oh, yes, certainly,” Stark said. “I’d known it for a long time.”
    “How long?”
    “In specifics, for several years,” Stark said. “In general, since he was born.”
    “Since he was born?” Kinley asked. “What do you mean?”
    “I knew his father, and Ray was like him,” Stark explained. “You inherit that sort of thing, you know, maladies of the heart.”
    “So his was a congenital condition?”
    “In a manner of speaking.”
    “And you’d been treating him?”
    “As much as I could.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Not all patients are the same,”