Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter

old Payne here till the sun goes down.”
    Then he watched them scamper.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Myra died on Tuesday at 11:43 A.M . The hospital called him, right there in his office. It was Dr. Hilton. Nick just said, “Yeah, oh, okay. I should have been there.”
    “Nick, she wasn’t conscious. Okay? Don’t hold that against yourself.”
    “Yeah, but I should have been there.”
    They’d said it would probably come at the end of the week. The vital signs were very low and she hadn’t come out of the coma for nearly ten days. So it was not unexpected, but when these things happen, they carry a sort of devastation with them that is impossible to imagine. Nick was stupefied at how hard it hit him, sitting there in his office, listening to the chatter and hum of life going on about him.He remembered that on one of her last clear days she herself had told him to be strong, to get himself ready, that her time was near.
    And, of course, she told him not to feel bad. He’d done as much as any man could do, he’d paid all his debts, oh, lord, he’d paid them. It was worth it, she said. There’d never have been a Nick for her any way except the way it happened, and she was glad that it had happened the way it had happened. Now he was to go have some fun.
    That was Myra. Never asked for much, and certainly didn’t get much, but somehow made her way through it, never picking up the bitterness some people who have far more seem to acquire. He wished she were with him now, because over the years he’d come to rely on her in special ways, almost as much as she’d had to rely on him. But that was stupid; he wished his wife were here to help him get through the death of his wife!
    Instead, Nick got up and found Hap Fencl, and told him he had to go out for a little while. And that maybe he was going to take some time off now.
    “Myra?”
    “Yeah, finally. Boy, she fought.”
    “You want a Valium or anything, Nick, old son?”
    “Nah, I’m okay.”
    “What you got ticking? Anything hot I can look over for you while you’re gone? Got a bust or two coming up? I love the hairy stuff, you know me. A commando type.”
    This was a joke; Hap stood five feet eight and weighed about 150 pounds, while Nick was a wide man, thick and strong and a judo champ, black belt, and still the best shot in the office. But Nick didn’t laugh, because he’d sort of phased out there for a second. He blinked, and pulled himself back.
    “Oh? Uh, nothing, no. The usual. Following Colombiansall over the town with Mickey Sontag, that’s all. Mickey’s out at the cop range today on that SWAT qualification. I was just going to push some paper, more or less, until he comes back.”
    Hap was the supervisory agent in charge here in the New Orleans office, and a very good guy, easy to work with. He specialized in organized crime, while Nick worked drugs, usually in liaison with the DEA, mainly because he had a diplomatic touch and got along well with what most of the other men called the DOA boys.
    So it was no problem for Nick to drive out to the hospital. He got there in fifteen minutes, on a drive so blank it could have lasted for fifteen hours and taken him from Omaha to Tallahassee.
    They hadn’t moved her.
    “Do you mind? Could I be alone with her for just a minute?” he said to the nurse.
    “Sure. But we’ll have to take her to the mortuary soon enough.”
    “Yeah. I know.”
    They scurried out. Nick looked around, hating the goddamned room. It was like all the rooms he’d spent his life in, anonymous, personalityless, some fake paintings on the wall, the smell of plastic and disinfectant heavy in the air. Yet, hating it, he knew Myra wouldn’t have minded it. It was never her way to mind such things.
    “I was meant to die that day,” she once told him, “like the other two girls, and that man. But your bullet saved me. It delivered me. It gave me you, Nick Memphis, it made me Mrs. Nick Memphis, and so what I’ve got is all gravy. It’s