An Evening at Joe's (22 page)

He had tried to save her, had tried
so hard
to save her, and instead he'd lost what little time they'd had left, He'd promised her he'd be there, told her so many times he'd see her through it, and when it finally came, she was alone, abandoned in a foreign city.

Oh, God, what had he done?

"NOOOOOO!" he bellowed in a voice he hoped would crack Heaven as he slammed his head back against the doorframe.

"Monsieur Pierson?"

A nurse was beside him. He grabbed her shoulders forcefully, a dark, evil look in his eyes. "When?" he demanded, shaking her. "When?"

The nurse explained, terrified, "Non, they've taken her to intensive care." A faint light of hope came back into his eyes and he released his grasp on the nurse, his hands shaking. "She's been asking for you."

He ran down the corridor to the elevator with all his strength and pushed the call button repeatedly. There was still time. There was still hope. The elevator doors opened and an orderly stepped out. Adam grabbed him by the arm. "Intensive care? Where?"

"Sixth floor, Monsieur."
There was still time. He caught his breath as he watched her through the observation window, her sleep apparently peaceful and serene despite the banks of monitors and machines and wires and tubing and blinking lights monitoring her every function. Still time, but not much time. He had kept up with medicine enough to know that the news projected on the read—outs and the dials wasn't good. Her doctor only confirmed it.

"I'm terribly sorry, but we've done all we can. It's just a matter of time, now."

"How much? "

"A couple of hours. Maybe a day. No more."

It wasn't enough. It could never be enough. "Is she in any pain?"

"Some. She's refused narcotics. Said she wanted to be alert... in case you came back." The doctor's words cut him to the very core. Adam pushed past him and into Alexa's room.

She'd grown so thin, so fragile. He remembered carrying her across the threshold in Mary Crow's inn, how feather-light she felt even then. Now he'd be almost afraid to pick her up, afraid he'd lose her in a breeze. He remembered how, despite her size, she had haggled with the 200-pound gondolier in Venice and had him cowed. And what a little tigress she'd been in Athens, when he'd returned from Paris. He rubbed her cheek tenderly, a tear welling in his eye.

Moving aside some monitors, he crouched beside her bed, frustrated by the metal bed rails that kept him from her. He whispered close to her ear. "Alexa... sweetheart... I'm here. Can you hear me, baby?" He held his breath as, slowly, her eyes came open. She turned her head to focus on him and smiled.

"Adam."

"Miss me?" he asked brightly.

"Maybe. A little," she said with effort. After a moment, drawing more oxygen into her lungs through the tube in her nose, she continued. "It didn't work, did it?" It wasn't a recrimination, or an I told you so, merely a statement of resignation and fact.

He could feel his heart break as he had to tell her, "No." His voice caught, then broke, and the tears he could never let her see welled up, uncontrollable.

She tried to reach out to him, to console him, but found herself restrained by the IVs, the wires, the monitors. Her weak whimper of frustration turned Adam's heartbreak into fury.

"Damn them, damn these THINGS!" he lashed out and CRASH went the EKG monitor. As the EKG, suddenly disconnected from its sensors, wailed its flatline tone, he tore the bed rail from the side of the bed and dropped to his knees, burying his face in Alexa's tummy. He let loose a roar of animal rage as she stroked his head as best she could.

After a moment, the cardiac crash cart broke through the door, followed by the doctor and a team of nurses. The doctor sized up the situation. "Monsieur Pierson, get out immediately! " he commanded.

Adam stood slowly, with a seething, burning intensity Alexa had seen only once before, that awful, brutal night in Cairo.

"Adam, no," she begged, but he couldn't hear her.

"No, Doctor, you leave. And take this
thing
"—he pushed the crash cart back toward the door, scattering the nurses—"and
this,
" kicking the fallen EKG monitor toward them. The incessant flatline silenced. "All of it. Out of here. Now."

"But—" the doctor started, but Adam cut him off.

"Useless. All of it." He pulled an IV bag from a stand and threw it on the floor. One of the nurses scurried after it. "You said it yourself. Useless. If you can't help her, I want it all away from her." He reached down and pulled the plug from the blood pressure monitor.

"You have no right!"

"I am her
husband,
damn you!"

"Not by the
law,
Monsieur," the doctor countered. They were at a standoff. Alexa, though frightened, was never more proud of Adam than she was at that moment. They had never discussed their "marriage" since leaving the canyon, she'd assumed it forgotten. But he remembered. Even now, he was still willing to commit his soul to hers. She tried to speak, but the men shouted over her.

"THEN CALL THE POLICE!" Adam challenged the doctor.

Alexa pulled an IV from her arm. The scream of the IV monitor silenced everyone in their tracks.

"May I say something?" she asked quietly. They waited while she caught her breath again. She asked the doctor pointedly, "Is he right? Will any of this... keep me alive any longer?... Or just tell you when I'm dead?"

The doctor hemmed and hawed and finally admitted, "The oxygen, perhaps."

"Then everything but the oxygen... goes," she pronounced.

"But, Alexa, you cannot—" the doctor tried to reason with her.

"It's my life, it's my right... .No heroic measures. No resuscitation." Her arm finally freed from the IV and the blood pressure monitor, she reached out for Adam, who moved to her side protectively.

"You heard the lady, doctor." They both looked at him defiantly.

At the doctor's signal, the nurses removed Alexa's remaining IVs, disconnected the electrodes and monitors attached to her body, shut down the machinery and rolled it away. Only the oxygen remained, quietly hissing in the background.

"I hope you know what you're doing," the doctor said, following the equipment out.

Adam sat on the bed next to Alexa, still holding her hand. "Now, that's much nicer, isn't it." He stroked her forehead, wiping the hair from her eyes, and asked, "How are you feeling?"

"Like someone's pulling me inside... out with a pair of visegrips."

"Ah, about the same, then," he said with feigned brightness. She rolled her eyes at him and stuck her tongue out. "What's this they've got you dressed in?" he went on. "It doesn't even have a back. Who's your designer?"

"All the rage in the morgue."

"Well, it just won't do." He opened a closet and found her suitcase. "I've always found this much more attractive." He brought her the cream-colored negligee Mike and Lou had given her when she left Joe's all those months ago. She reached out and fingered the material.

"You'll... call Joe, won't you?... Let them know...."

He slipped off her utilitarian hospital gown, refusing to acknowledge her emaciated belly, her sensuous legs now gaunt and spindly, her once full and vibrant breasts shrunken and hollow. "Of course I will, baby." He calculated the logistics of putting the negligee on Alexa without dislodging the oxygen, and decided from the feet up was his best plan of attack. "I may need your help here."

"'Fraid moral support's... about all I got left." But like a trouper, she allowed herself to be manipulated this way and that until the feat was accomplished.

"There, much more dignified," he admired his handiwork.

She smiled. "Death with dignity."

"Wouldn't have it any other way."

She coughed violently a couple of times. Adam started forward, concerned, but she waved him off. When her breath had caught up with her, she said, "I'm... exhausted."

Adam sat beside her again, stroking her forehead, then her cheek. "Do you want to sleep?"

"No!" she said vehemently, and coughed again. "I'm afraid..." She started again. "I'm afraid if I close my eyes again... they'll never open."

"And what would be so wrong with that?" he asked tenderly.

"I don't want to leave you," she whispered so low he could barely hear her. "I don't want to lose you."

He wished there was something he could say, some platitude, some bit of religious dogma to assure her that some day they'd be together again, that something wondrous waited for her on the other side, but the other side of what he didn't know, and he'd tried on and discarded more religious beliefs than modern man knew existed. And he still had no answers. All he knew to do was hold her and tell her he loved her over and over again.

And he did.

After a while, as he noticed her skin become cooler and her breathing more labored, he reached for his duffel and pulled out the gold and crystal necklace he had once given her. "Remember this?" he asked.

"Bed of roses," she answered, with a faint smile. He placed it around her neck.

"You're still beautiful, Alexa."

"Prettier than Venus?"

"Still prettier than Venus."

"Guess you'd know." She tried to laugh at her own joke, but the laugh became a cough, then a series of wracking coughs as she gasped for more air. All he could do was watch, helplessly, until finally the coughing subsided and she could get her breath.

He reached into his duffel and pulled out a jar of purest white alabaster. He opened the lid and inhaled and, although the aroma was pleasing to him, it sent an involuntary shiver down his spine. He tried hard to close his mind to the memories the scent invoked in him, memories better repressed. Dipping his fingers into the oils, he began anointing Alexa's head and face.

"Frankincense?" she asked, then took a tentative, labored breath. The scent was smoky, bitter, with a taste of cinnamon. "Not frankincense."

"No, Alexa," he said, blinking back a tear, "not frankincense." He rubbed the oils into her throat and neck, then began with her fingers and worked his way up each arm.

"Myrrh?" she asked.

He nodded sadly. "How did you know?"

"In Jerusalem. Shrine of the Holy. . ." She coughed once, but the ointment seemed to free her breathing a little. "... Holy Sepulcher. Mary Magdalene came to an... anoint Christ's body with myrrh... and spices." She looked him in the eyes. "Myrrh is for the dead."

He looked back at her with eyes tearful but honest. "Yes, it is." They held each other's gaze for what seemed forever before she nodded for him to continue and turned her head away, closing her eyes to stop the tears.

When he had finished his ritual, he sat beside her once more on the bed, watching her with sad eyes. Even with the warming effect of the ointment, her skin had grown even colder and she'd begun to drift in and out of awareness.

Suddenly she began to shiver uncontrollably. She called out to him, "Adam! Adam!"

He stroked her hair. "I'm here, baby, I'm here."

"I'm so cold.... Could we... light a fire?" Without a second thought, he climbed into the bed with her, embracing and enveloping her with his body, willing the heat of his body into hers. In time, her tremors subsided and she seemed to rest more easily. Time passed as he lay there, caressing her face, stroking her hair, trying to give comfort to Alexa, and to himself, but he was unaware of the passage of time.

Somewhere in that timeless void, her eyes opened again, and she gazed at him with such love and longing he thought his heart would break. "Adam," she said. "I'm sorry...."

"For what, baby?"

"...I'm so tired..." Her voice was barely a whisper. "...have to sleep now."

"Then let it go, Alexa. It's time."

He kissed her, one last goodbye.

"Methos..." He looked at her in surprise—she'd never called him that, could never bear to think of him as a creature who might live on forever—but he could barely see her through his tears. "Remember me," she commanded.

As she closed her eyes, he whispered, "For eternity, my love."

He needed no monitor, no warning light to tell him she was gone. Not long after she closed her eyes, he could tell that all he embraced was an empty shell. The soul he'd loved as Alexa was free, off to join the other stars in the endless sky. God, did he hope so. It was two hours more before the nurses could persuade Adam Pierson to finally leave Alexa's side.

He Scores!

by Ken Gord

PRODUCER: Ken Gord

Taking over the Producer’s reins of the series at the beginning of season 2, Ken Gord oversaw production on 97 out of 119 episodes of
Highlander
. Both in Vancouver and in Paris, Ken was responsible for hiring and supervising set designers, wardrobe and props personnel, location managers, stunt drivers, and actors.

Ken tells us about "He Scores": "When Gillian asked me to write a story, my first reaction was, are you crazy? In over one hundred episodes David A., David T., Gillian, and Donna covered every angle imaginable... and then some. What other story could there possibly be to tell? But then I got to thinking. We did flashbacks in Mongolia, India, China, Japan, France, England, Mexico, Germany.... But we never did a flashback in Canada. Now, I’m not a big nationalist but I am Canadian. The show’s Canadian; the actors and crew and writers and directors were, for the most part, Canadian. So was this some kind of nefarious American plot to keep Duncan MacLeod south of the forty-ninth parallel? I decided it was. ‘He Scores.' is my homage to all the polite, loyal, Canadian Highlander fans who never saw Duncan MacLeod playing the ultimate Canuck. Happy reading, eh?"