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twitch or a turn of his head – it was for Nancy that he moved most often.
    She rearranged the sheet low across his stomach, checking the monitor patches were still firmly attached, and the gastric tube that disappeared into the wall of his abdomen. Initially, they had fed Sean using a nasogastric tube down his nose and through his oesophagus, but that, I was told, could lead to complications. As soon as it became obvious this wasn’t going to be over quickly, they’d inserted something more permanent, through which puréed food could be squirted directly into his stomach.
    The thought of it did little for my own appetite. When Sean finally awoke, I thought, refusing to consider another outcome, he would be about ready to kill for a taste of the daily coffee I brought to tempt him.
    Nancy smiled serenely and departed. I tucked my fingers into Sean’s open hand and began to tell him about my visit to the Willners, about the recent kidnappings and Dina’s apparent glee at my employ. I sought his opinion, unvoiced, on the wisdom of Dina going to the party she was so keen to attend, and reported Caroline Willner’s own hesitation over the same event. And all the time I wondered if doing this was for his benefit, or my own. Sean always had been a good listener.
    ‘These three kids who’ve been taken so far all live on Long Island, at least part of the time,’ I said. ‘I say “kids”, but they’re late teens, early twenties, but so far that’s all we know. I suppose this party is a good opportunity to look for patterns, but at the same time, there’s the risk that if someone is watching them – working security for one of the families, maybe – am I exposing Dina to danger by agreeing that she go? We don’t know how the victims were selected, or even how they were taken. They can’t remember much after the initial abduction, apparently, which probably means some kind of pre-med relaxant, like we used in California for that cult extraction – remember?’
    I paused. Sean’s head seemed to rock a little in my direction. Involuntary, no doubt, as most of his movements were, but it still felt like he’d reacted with discomfort, as if trying to warn me of something. I’d read about coma victims who were actually locked into their paralysed bodies but totally aware of everything going on around them, screaming silently into the void, sometimes for years. Like being buried alive.
    Bearing that in mind, I looked for meaning in every gesture, however pointless they told me that might be.
    Sighing, I let my thumb stroke the back of his right hand. Without animation from within, his skin felt different, alien to the touch. And I remembered, with splintered clarity, every moment we’d spent together. Sean was everything I’d ever wanted, even before I’d known what that was. He understood me better than I understood myself, and he would have understood, better than anyone, how this slow limbo was crushing me from the inside out.
    ‘I need you,’ I said out loud. It sounded stark and craven in the quiet room.
    Gently, I let go of his hand and stood up. I shrugged into my jacket, picked up the cooling coffee from the cabinet.
    ‘Last chance,’ I murmured, waggling the cup slightly. Sean didn’t stir. ‘Maybe tomorrow, hey?’
    I walked out of the room and along the corridor, resisting the urge to look back.
    We’d talked about death, in a roundabout kind of way. We couldn’t do the job we did without the subject coming up and being faced in advance. Sean had always said, calm and casual, that when his time was up he wanted to go clean, fast, and know nothing about it.
    Well, two out of three ain’t bad .
    A sudden dazzling image exploded behind my eyes, the way his head had snapped sideways from the bullet’s impact, the slash of blood, the instant drop.
    It didn’t give any comfort that he’d gone down in the line of duty, as he would have seen it. Doing his job. Hesitation had never been a possibility with