Once he could stare across this slice of the world for hours and in the process stare deep within himself, but of late the dazzle is only momentary. He has asked the view to heal his heart when all it ever promised was to empty excess from his brain. With a final glance across the sequined water, Alec Hawthorne reaches for a button. At its command, his head and shoulders, inclined at forty-five degrees, sink toward the horizontal. When he is level, he looks at the appointment calendar now accessible on the table beside him, finds the day, and crosses off the one just past. The big black X is number sixty-four. He has spent nine weeks in his living room, for much of that time leaving it only to use the bathroom or to endure his designated therapy with the drill sergeant assigned to hound enough strength into his heart to carry it into the twenty-first century. But enough has finally been enough. Although he has been urged to continue his therapies for another month, on Monday last he dismissed his entire retinue—cardiologist, internist, physiotherapist, and nurses of all shapes, sizes, and demeanors—but for the minimal follow-up required by their malpractice-avoidance procedures.
