Trapped within his nonfunctioning body, Saif felt the onset of pain. It started distantly, but it increased steadily ... and quickly. His heart was being wrenched from his chest, as though a man had reached inside with his hand and was pulling it out, ripping the blood vessels as he did so, tearing it loose like wet paper from a destroyed book. But it wasn’t paper. It was his heart, the very center of his body, the organ that provided life to the rest of him. It seemed to be on fire now, burning like kindling wood on open ground surrounded by rocks, burning, burning, burning ... inside his chest, burning. His heart was burning alive, burning as he felt it. Not beating, not sending blood to his body, but burning like dry wood, like gasoline, like paper, burning, burning, burning ... burning while he lived. If this was death, then death was a terrible thing, his mind thought ... the worst thing. He’d inflicted this on others. He’d shot Russian soldiers—infidels, all of them, but still he’d ended their lives, put them through this ... and thought it amusing? Entertaining. Part of Allah’s will? Did Allah find this amusing, too? The pain continued to grow, to become unendurable. But he had to endure it. It would not go away. Nor could he. He could not run from it, not pray aloud to Allah to stop it, not deny it. It was there. It became all of reality. It overwhelmed all of his consciousness. It became everything. It was a fire in the middle of his body, and it was burning him up from the inside out, and it was more terrible than he’d ever imagined it to be. Was not death quick in coming? Was not Allah merciful in all things? Why, then, was Allah permitting this to happen to him? He wanted to grit his teeth to fight against the pain—he wanted, he needed, to scream aloud to protect himself from the agony that lived inside his body.
But he couldn’t command his body to do anything at all. All of reality was pain. Everything he could see and hear and feel was pain. Even the Lord Allah was pain....
Allah was doing this to him. If everything in the world was God’s will, then had God willed this on him? How was that possible? Was not God a god of infinite mercy? Where the hell was His mercy now? Had Allah deserted him? Why?
Why?
WHY?
Then his mind faded into unconsciousness, with a final epilogue of searing pain to see him on his way.
On the EKG readout, the first irregularities showed up. That got Pasternak’s attention. Ordinarily in the OR, as anesthesiologist, it was his job to keep watch on the patient’s vital signs. That included the EKG machine, and he was, in fact, rather a skillful diagnostic cardiologist himself. He had to pay very close attention now. They didn’t want to kill this worthless fuck, and more was the pity. He could have just given him a death such as few men had ever experienced, a fitting punishment for his crimes, but he was a physician, not an executioner, Pasternak told himself, pulling himself back from the edge of a tall and deadly cliff. No, they had to bring this one back. So he reached for the ventilator mask. The “patient,” as he thought of him, was unconscious by now. He pressed the mask onto his face and pressed the button, and the machine shot air into the flaccid, deflated lungs. Pasternak looked up.
“Okay, mark the time. We’re breathing him now. Patient is doubtless unconscious now, and we’re infusing air into his lungs. This ought to take three or four minutes, I think. Could one of you come over here?”
Chavez was closest, and came at once.
“Put those paddles on his chest and hold them there.”
Ding did that, turning to look at the EKG readout. The electronic tracings had settled down and were repeating themselves regularly but not in sinus rhythm, something his wife might have recognized but to him were just like things he’d seen on TV. To his left, Dr. Pasternak was hitting the ventilator button at regular intervals of maybe eight or nine seconds. “What’s the score, Doc?” Chavez asked.
“His heart is settled down now that it’s getting oxygen. The succinylcholine will wear off in another couple of minutes. When you see his body moving, then it’ll be mostly over. I’ll breathe