The Walk by Richard Paul Evans Read Free Book Online Page B

hesitated. “I’m getting the doctor.” She walked out of the room.
    A minute later, McKale opened her eyes, but she didn’t look at me, and she didn’t speak.
    “You can’t leave me, Mick. I can’t live without you.” She silently looked into my eyes. “If only I had stayed home like you wanted, we wouldn’t be here.”
    She gripped my hand the best she could.
    A tear fell down my cheek, and I furtively wiped it away. I looked into her face. “Mickey. What was the other thing?”
    She didn’t respond.
    “You said you wanted me to promise you two things. What’s the other thing?”
    She looked down for a moment, swallowed, then pursed her lips together, slowly moving them. I put my ear next to her mouth. “What, honey?”
    The word seemed like an expulsion. “Live.”
    I pulled back and looked into her eyes, then she closed hers. The nurse walked back in with the doctor. “You’ll need to step back, please,” the doctor said.
    The doctor gave McKale an injection through her I.V., then took the ventilator tube and carefully inserted it through McKale’s mouth and down her throat. My mind was swimming. Things were happening that shouldn’t be happening. Her body was shutting down. I don’t remember the exact sequence of events. It came at me like a dream where time moved one frame at a time, and disjointed, disembodied phrases hung in
the air.
    “She’s in shock.”
    “Still dropping.”
    “Heart rate is dropping.”
    The motion in the room continued in a growing climax, a swirling, frenzied dance of activity. Then McKale started to breathe differently. She was taking long, strained gasps of air with long pauses between breaths.
    “Respiratory failure.”
    Then came the most frightening sound of all. A single, loud beeping noise joined the cacophony.
    “She’s going into cardiac arrest.”
    The doctor frantically began performing CPR. After a minute, he shouted, “Shut off that thing.” The beeping stopped. He kept pressing on her chest.

    Seven minutes later the dance stopped. My best friend passed away at 12:48 A.M . The last thing I said to her was, “I love you, Mickey. I always will.”

CHAPTER
Sixteen
    All is lost.
    Alan Christoffersen’s diary
    A social worker came in and stood next to me. I don’t know how long she was there. I didn’t see her enter. She didn’t speak at first. She just stood there. Without looking up, I said, “She’s gone.”

CHAPTER
Seventeen
    I would give anything to have her back. Anything. But I have nothing to barter with. Not even my life. Especially my life. What could a life as wretched as mine be worth?
    Alan Christoffersen’s diary
    The next two days passed in a foggy parade of events. The people at the mortuary pretty much dragged me through it all—an unwilling participant in an unwanted production. I remembered the mechanical nature in which my father had acted in the aftermath of my mother’s passing. My condemnation was gone. Now it was me mechanically attending to the minutiae of death: I picked out a casket, a headstone, wrote McKale’s obituary, signed papers, and selected the dress she was to be buried in—a beaded, black chiffon overlay gown that gathered in front. She had worn the dress at last January’s WAF award ceremonies. I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the room.
    It became very clear to me just how completely I had shut everyone else out of my life. Outside of each other, McKale and I had no real friends, and the only people we socialized with were on our payroll. I never thought I needed anyone else. I was wrong.
    Sam arrived Thursday afternoon with McKale’s stepmother, Gloria. I met them at the mortuary. Sam broke down when he saw her. “My little girl,” he sobbed. “My little girl.”
    My father arrived two days later, the day before the funeral. In his typical manner, he said very little, which,frankly, I was glad for. I could see that he hurt for me, and that was enough. He stayed with me and slept in