by Rebecca Ryan
His, "You think Allison would want to wreck a family business? This isn’t about you. This is about the vet and her family," comes in thin over a bad connection, and I begin to rethink my decision to call him. But he remains the strongest connection I have to the past, to her, and I know he’s right.
It’s the right thing to do. I just have to live with the idea of Allison's park not becoming a reality.
When he asks, "What about that vet?" with a note that tells me he's seen her, I start to tell him about the kiss on the stairwell.
"Back it up, man. She kissed you? Holy shit. I love her already."
"It was in the moment. I'm sure a bottle of wine served as a cooking companion all afternoon."
"In the fucking moment? That's what you're going with? You're pathetic. Get some balls, man," he says.
"I'm not interested."
"Was it weird?" His voice drops. "I mean, did it feel weird to you?"
I think back to the pressure of her lips, the smell of her hair, how sweet her mouth was. "No. It wasn't."
"It wasn't what?"
Oh, Nic is making me work.
"It wasn't weird," I tell him.
"That's enough for me." There’s a thin treble of victory in his voice.
"Your bar is really low," I say.
"You don’t even have a bar. There is no bar."
It's because Allison set it, I want to tell him. She's gone, the bar is gone.
The mystery of us is gone.
***
Two days later, I wake to my weather radio cackling about a pressure system and an ice storm bearing down on the shore, south of Bar Harbor all the way to Portsmouth and north to Orono. I grab a pair of jeans, cross the hall, and look out one of the guest rooms to the ocean. Dark gray clouds lay heavy across the sky, pulling the sea into thousands of whitecaps. Mist, not fog, has left everything wet. A wind kicks up and I can tell it's beyond blustery. The railing out my window is coated with a thin sheen of ice. A line of thirty or so seagulls sits huddled on the spine on the roof of the back deck. When another lands, I slip on my pants and am just turning from the window when a small, bright red dinghy chugs by.
It’s Claire, her hand on the rudder. I pull back from the window and stand just far enough to watch her.
Cutting the engine, she floats the dinghy to the public landing. She’s layered with a black turtleneck, dark tan oilskin, heavy gloves, and I can see green rubber boots with fleece liners poking from the top. Her hair, bundled under a thick black wool hat with a pom-pom on top, is barely visible.
Bringing the small red boat alongside the floating dock, she threads a heavy rope through a cleat. Balancing carefully, she climbs out with a brown satchel with her. I can't see her stroll up the access, so I step away but then there she is again, walking on a little trail across the edge of the backyard, head down, arm gripping the medical bag.
I pull the thin drape across the window, ashamed to be watching her. She stands on that ledge of granite and pulls off her hat, and that mane of gold hair tumbles down, catching the wind. Taking off her gloves, she runs a hand through her hair and stares at the sea for a minute or two.
Later, while driving to the hardware emporium ten miles inland, I realize I’m picturing her again—her back mostly to me, her coat flapping, hair streaming, the curve of her face making me notice just how beautiful she is.
***
Getting the boards up proves to be a struggle. The metal ladder keeps shifting in the wind, but the blue tarp breaks loose and starts flapping around. It’s really gusting now, and I have to get up there and close the six-inch hole in the roof. The clouds are so thick the day has turned dark.
I decide not to try to lift any plywood—it's just too dicey. I cut a small piece; anything larger could act like a sail and blow me off the ladder. Once I get up there, I’m all by myself. No seagulls. Just me and the clouds.
And then the ice starts.
First, it tap-taps against the roof, then I feel it on my shoulders and hair. Ice slides down the back of my windbreaker.
After hauling up a small bag of tools and the sixteen-inch square piece of plywood, I grab a small a crowbar and start prying off more shingles, just to get a better sense of what I'm dealing with.
It's worse than I thought. Unzipping the windbreaker, I bend down in the poor light, realizing I should have worn something heavier. Ice is everywhere and sticking. The hole is also bigger than I thought, and I have to go back down and cut another piece.
The wind shifts just as I stand. Turning around, I bend over again, my back to the wind, hair in my eyes, trying to match the teeth of the zipper. Just as I get it to catch, and straighten, another gust hits hard, billowing the jacket, throwing me off balance. Instinctively, I look at the edge of the roof and what I could grab.
The gutter?
Slipping, I try to catch myself by stepping back away from the edge.
But there’s nothing there.
Chapter Nine
Claire
By now, I can dock a boat in my sleep, but the bay is rough this morning and it’s all I can do not to be sick. I don’t know how Laurel did it. Being the captain of her own lobster boat at eighteen, she was smart not to be out on a day like today. I only went as far out as the last boat moored in the bay, a mid-sized Sedan Bridge. I loop the rope over and under a cleat and climb out.
Putting down an animal is never easy, and Petunia, the little yippy, orangey, Pekinese-Chow mix was a fixture in her owner's life. Folks come up from Boston or New York, bring their animals and then their little friends get sick. Sometimes half my work in the summer is putting animals down on boats. This girl was sixteen years old and I'd been treating her off and on for years for a bad heart, with a misshapen leaky valve. Her partner in crime, Bobby Millan, was a crusty guy in his late sixties, a retired police officer who liked to be called a retired policeman. He came from a long line of them.
But he wiped his eyes.
So did I.
Now, I walk along the edge of land, the wind wrapping around me and pulling in all directions, and I stand on that flat platform of granite. Slipping off my dad's wool hat, I feel the cold, brisk air scrub me. All that sadness. It was necessary but hard, and I’ve never gotten over the odd mystery of having a living being looking into my eyes one minute and then, in the next, they're gone.
The white caps are building to a froth. Shivering, I step off the rock and make my way to the stable.
Inside the stall, I make sure the little window on the other side is latched tight. It's then that I feel Salty nuzzle me and I turn around. Instead of standing off to the side, his back to me, one hind leg cocked, he's facing me, closely, and then he steps closer, rubbing his head and neck on my leg.
"Hey, Salty. You're not salty now."
He nickers softly and thrusts his head right next to mine and I can see the little tree pattern in the liquid of his eye.
When I reach to pet him, he stomps a foot, swings his head around, and then stops so I can fondle his fetlock. Ever so slowly, I climb in the manger and let him smell me, the oats, the hay, and I try to show him the linkages between all three, delivering a message: you are safe. The wind is really kicking up and rain pings so hard against the thin metal roof, it’s hard to hear anything else.
Sniffing, his hot, green breath blows my hair and I breathe into his nostrils. My heart opens a little. He might actually make it, and I am so glad Cory gave him a name.
Back inside, I brush the hay from my hair and put on the glass kettle to make another cup of coffee. I love mornings like this—dark, damp, a storm breaching, and the house warm and snug. After throwing another log in the woodstove, I peer out the window at The Inn.
Finn's truck is loaded with crap. Wood. Cement bags, which he better get out of there before they turn to giant, gray rocks. And then I see an extension ladder up against the side and a rope dangling from the roof. The ubiquitous blue tarp snaps and buckles like a torn sail.
What the hell
?
I peer closer. He's busy prying shingles off. My metal roof starts pinging loudly with ice as it hits and then begins a cacophony. Between the wind howling and ice coming down in splintered sheets, the best thing to do is read.
Curling up on the sofa, I sip coffee and open my current exercise, an article by Jane Goodall about her first years in Gombe. But I can’t concentrate. I go to make a second cup and am relieved to see Finn is off the roof. Finally.
He's gone, but something makes me linger at the window. It's grown so dark that the light plays tricks. The tarp flaps back, revealing what looks like a large hole in his roof.
I don’t breathe. I wait a minute and then move quickly to the next window off the front room for a better view. And I can see it: the edges of a large, ugly hole in the roof.
Jesus.
Bile comes up in the back of my throat and I stop myself from panicking. He must have uncovered the hole and went inside to put up a temporary patch because it’s so freaking bad out there. I wait maybe three minutes, the longest minutes ever, to see if he appears.
But there's nothing filling the black hole. And now I can see the pieces of wood, ragged and splintered, pointing down.
Shit.
My brain kicks into gear. Flying down the stairs, I hit the bottom, pulling on my boots as I cross the floor and fling myself out into the wind, pieces of ice bouncing off my arms and back.
It’s fucking freezing. Running down my embankment and up The Inn's, I cover that space in seconds. I pound on the door, but no one comes. This can't be good, it can’t be good. Pushing the door open I stand there, in the hallway, in the dark, dripping, ice melting.
"Finn!" I yell.
Nothing.
I move to the foot of the front stairs. "Finn!"
Nothing.
I calculate quickly which room he might be in. There is no real attic. It was converted years ago to accommodate more quarrymen and turned into living quarters.
Attic floor.
Tearing open the door to the third floor, I fly up the stairs not stopping to yell, my heart pounding so hard it hurts in the back of my throat. It's already colder. There's no heat up here.
Running down the hall, I crash into one room—it's dark and drippy. Immediately I recalculate, skip the next door, and then a rush of freezing air hits me before the scene and time slows down.
It’s the storage room, where Geo crammed everything we didn’t want, from old dressers to clothes to plumbing supplies and skis.
And there, his back against an old trunk, is Finn—holding his right side, blood trickling down the side of his neck, and a dark ugly stain soaking his windbreaker.
Immediately, I try to channel Devon. This is her area, emergency treatment. I try to get my head around it.
Calm.
Stay the fuck calm.
"Okay, easy," I say, as if to a caged animal.
He looks up and there is so much pain in his gray-green-whatever-the-hell-color eyes he has, I have to look away so I don’t get lost in them. Or in his agony.
Focus.
He closes those eyes and leans back, his shoulders releasing. I'm sure he’s been picturing freezing or bleeding to death up here. There's a smeary trail of blood from where he's fallen.
"Hey," he says. "I fell through."
I kneel down, and tip his head forward to see where he's hurt. He doesn't flinch. "I should get you in a neck brace."
"I'm fine," he says, his voice completely in control.
I try to match it. "I'd say you're far from fine, my friend."
He opens his eyes again but looks down at his side. Blood seeps through his fingers. "I don’t have a broken neck." He tries to scoot up a little and his breath hisses between his teeth.
"Let's see what's going on there," I suggest.
"No," he says. And then his gaze reaches mine, and for a second I see the total, complete control as if he's adjusted now. "Your family had a lot of rebar."
He shifts his hand away from his side and he involuntarily shudders. There, in the gloomy light, is the darkened stem of rebar covered in blood.
"It's through me," he clarifies.
"Oh my God." I reach for my phone, but there's no connection, no text, no talk. There hardly ever is and, with the storm, we're cut off. I shiver, an adrenaline rush, but he mistakes it for cold.
"Go get a coat," he says calmly.
I ignore this, but his comment makes me see other things. He's soaking wet, his skin ashen, gray at the temples, and his lips—those beautiful lips—are turning blue. He's either going into shock or hypothermia or both. It's got to be in the mid-twenties in here. And he's soaked to the skin.
"We need to move you," I say. "We can't stay here."
Devon would kill me, but I don’t see any other choice. The roads would be impassable by now and walking five miles for help is not an option. I could take the dinghy out once I make sure he’s safe and have Bobby Millan radio the coast guard who could then contact the hospital, but even an ambulance wouldn’t make it down the curving mountain road into town. It’s a forty-five-minute drive in good weather.
I slip an arm around him and feel him against me. He plants his feet and I stand, leveraging my right leg against the trunk to get him to a semi-standing position.
And then I swallow bile.
The other end of the rebar sticks four inches out the other side, and blood—thick and dark—has pooled underneath him.
A lot of blood.
He's breathing hard, but steady on his legs. A little too self-sufficient. "Lean on me more. We've got to get to the second floor," I tell him.
"Okay, Claire-girl, whatever you say."
I kick the door wider, and we move slowly, step by step, and I feel him tense every time his right foot lands. I'm on his right, my hand over his, trying to stop the bleeding, trying not to look at his back.
"I'm such a bad neighbor," he says, and I realize he's trying to make a joke. And then, more seriously, "Shit. I'm getting blood all over you."
I grip his soaking windbreaker as we stand at the top of the stairs. "I'm going to take a step first, and then you go," I say.
"No dead man lift?" This is a joke, but his face grows even grayer.
Slowly we hit a pattern. Step, lean hard, release. Step, lean hard, release.
By the time we reach the bottom, my arms are shaking, from cold, from bearing weight, from panic, I don't know. But as we descend down the dark, narrow staircase, the temperature begins to rise.
His breath comes jagged, uneven, and he leans against the bottom newel. "Okay, you rest for a minute," he says.
I want to protest, but he's right. I shake out my arms and see that my fingernails are blue. My teeth chatter, but I slip an arm around him again and slam the old attic door shut. We both focus on the third door down on the left—his bedroom. Finally, we're inside.
He sits voluntarily on a stool while I go to the bathroom and rip the plastic shower curtain off and lay it on the bed.
I try to get him to move, but he shakes his head. "This has to come out first."
"That's a bad idea. It'll make the bleeding worse," I say.
"Yeah." It's as if he's talking about the weather. He smiles at me. "But you're a vet. You’ve got this."
No, I don't! I want to scream, but no. Must. Stay. Calm.
"You okay here? I've got to get some stuff from the clinic," I say.
He nods. "Believe me, I've been in worse shape.” And then, seeing my undoubtedly startled face, he adds, "I'm not going anywhere."
The trip back to the clinic seems to take forever, skidding over ice and snow, grabbing what I need out of drawers. I grab my bag, toss stuff on the exam table, and grab three containers of QuikClot gauze, modular compression bandages, iodine, needle, dissolving thread, morphine, gloves, bacterial soap, syringes, antibiotics. A lot of antibiotics. And surgical drapes. I should have asked if he’s allergic to anything.
I stand, shaking, and get a glimpse of myself in t
he mirror. There's blood smeared all over my left side and my hands are stained as well. I grab the antibacterial surgical soap. Slipping on my oilskin coat, I make it back over to The Inn, the ground now so slippery I have to stomp to break the ice with every step. The green surgical drape droops under my one arm, my bag in the other. Never have I made a house call for a human.
When I come into the room, Finn is standing, unsteady on his feet, slightly bent over, his shirt and windbreaker on the floor, one hand on the wrought iron headboard the other holding his side. There's a footlong piece of rebar on the ground at my feet.
Jesus.
He's bleeding everywhere.
Seeing my face, he smiles again. "At least it was the skinny stuff. No half-inch rebar."
"Why did you pull it out?" I want to cry. I can't believe he did this. He's bleeding out in front of me.
"To spare you. You're not trained for this. Help me into bed."
Dropping the bag, I pile up three pillows, pull up the shower curtain to cover as much of the bed as possible and smooth one surgical drape, my biggest one, over the whole thing, suddenly oddly embarrassed by the stains from previous patients.
As soon as he's sitting, all his strength seems to go and I have to lift his legs up. Instinctively, he rolls away from me onto his left side, the bleeding from his back just along the edge of the serratus anterior—those muscles that dive into the rib cage. Even now I see how tucked each is, in a cascade of perfect muscle.
I dump soap all over my hands and hope it’s enough. Blood is flowing freely from his back. "This is going to sting," I say, "Here, turn toward me more.”
He obliges, and his torso twists slightly, engaging his obliques and creating two small dark, symmetrical hollows.
Damn.
I begin flushing the wound, alarmed when the saline oozes out the other side.
"It didn’t hit anything important," he says, his voice steady, low, and authoritative.
"Nice. But you can’t know that. Here, roll a little. Yes." I tear open the bag of QuikClot gauze with my teeth. The stuff works in a minute.
"That stuff'll be a bitch to dig out later," he says, but he doesn’t fight me.