José put his arm out in the dark, and grabbed hold of a low branch on one of the trees that sat outside the church. The little girl clutched his jacket so tight he felt as if he would choke when she grabbed his collar. One arm around her frail body and another around the branch, José shut his eyes and did his best not to panic. Somewhere a father would be grieving for his daughter swept away, and José’s own daughter’s safety was in question. José heard an explosion and opened his eyes; over the bridge, the electric wires for the trams had been short-circuited by the water. They burst in a last flicker of life before they joined the debris swept down the river. In the flash of light, José saw a car float past; the worst was already happening around him.
The little girl sobbed in fear and cold. José had no idea the water would be as icy as it felt on him. “Estoy contigo,” he said in her ear. “I’m with you.” What else would he say to calm her? José had no idea if they would live or die. “Estoy contigo. Estoy contigo.”
José didn’t see Fermín until he had almost reached him. In the dark and the noise of the flood, everything seemed impossible to understand. In a combination of luck and bravery, Fermín had been tossed into the flood with a rope around his waist. He grabbed the tree branch and José feared it would break under their weight. The whole tree could rip from the ground; José’s feet hadn’t touched the ground in a while, and the water was now waist deep.
“The things we do for love,” Fermín yelled, ever the joker. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I couldn’t leave her to drown,” José yelled back. “You should have stayed in the church!”
“The ground floor is already flooded, but everyone is upstairs above the water in the bell tower. Once Teniente Roig and Padre Aparicio tied the rope to the metal hand rail in the tower, I came after you!”
“You could have been swept right past me! In the dark, no one would know where you went!”
“Who cares? God has landed me here, so you need to hold the rope!”
“There’s no way I can hold it,” José cried, and paused to take a deep breath. The pressure of the water against his chest felt like a ton of bricks against him. “There’s no way I can hold the rope in one hand. The current will wash us away!”
“You have to hold the rope! You can’t live on the tree forever!”
“We have to tie the girl to the rope!” José said.
“She’ll be dragged under if she goes on her own!” Fermín cried. “And then we can’t get back!”
“Then you take the girl and go on your own!”
José paused and looked at the face of the girl. She cried at the top of her lungs, yet the noise was whipped away with the water that overpowered everything. He saw Aná’s face in the girl, her look of terror as she faced death. He saw Carmelita’s face, scared as he strangled her. Rosalía, the doctor’s wife, lifeless as they bundled her in the back of Fermín’s car in the pouring rain. José half-smiled.
“Untie the rope from your waist!” he yelled to Fermín. “Tie the girl to the rope and then we will just have to hold on tight!”
“Good idea!” Fermín yelled and fumbled with the rope. With one hand around the tree branch, it took minutes for Fermín to untie the knot without losing the thin rope to the current. It took even longer to tie the rope around the girl with water pouring against them. The water seemed even higher; how much higher could it go?
“I think that’s it!” Fermín yelled and tugged at the line. If God was watching, He would make sure the priest felt his pull for help. They felt the line begin to pull, and José glanced through the branches, to see the rope attached to a second floor window at the church. With the lights still on inside the house of God, he could see the girl would be safe.
José grabbed Fermín with both hands. The sudden pull caused Fermín to let go of the rope, and in seconds the torrent had them in its grasp. With his head above water, José watched Teniente Roig and another man, the priest perhaps, pulling the rope. The girl would be saved. But that was only the start of José’s plan.
Fermín struggled as José used his friend for buoyancy. In the darkness, no landmarks were visible. They had been sucked into the river itself, the water pouring at a speed José had never experienced. It felt like the road to hell. Maybe it would be. Fermín kept grabbing his friend, trying to get his face above the water, but José held him down; down where he belonged. Fermín was a cruel and vile man, who needed to die. With Carmelita, Aná and the kind doctor all dead, only Fermín could expose what José had been doing for months.
José let his friend gasp for air for a moment, their faces close together as the water pulled them along at speed. Fermín looked afraid, afraid like José had never seen in him. José put his large hand on Fermín’s face and pushed him under the water. The pair tumbled along in a mix of water, mud, logs, all kinds of items swept away. Fermín’s body would save José, and he knew it.
Debris became lodged under Puente de la Trinidad, just a few hundred meters from Puente de Serranos where they had started. The force of the river threw the pair hard against the strong 500-year-old stone bridge in the dark and José cried out in agony. He couldn’t die tonight; he had a whole family, a whole life to live, and Fermín was as much of a menace as the water. José clutched at the bridge; something stuck out, but in the darkness and confusion José couldn’t see what saved him. Maybe it was the statue of San Luis Beltrán, which sat high on the bridge. Fermín wasn’t struggling against his friend; José squinted at his face and saw it; the gash on his forehead. The stone bridge had taken Fermín’s life. He let go of his compatriot’s jacket in a split-second, and Fermín’s body swept away.
With the river 150 metres wide and growing by the second, José knew no one would come to his rescue. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t breathe. The freezing water pushed at his bones, trying to smash them up with every passing second. All he could do was hold on and hope Consuela and Inés were above the rising waters.
35
Valencia, España ~ Mayo de 2010
Strawberries. The boys had asked Luna if they could plant strawberries at Escondrijo. They also asked if they could keep chickens there. Cayetano didn’t know how to care for either of those things.
“Señor Beltrán?”
Cayetano jolted awake in his seat. The fresh air of Escondrijo in his mind disappeared, replaced by the oppressive smell of the sterile intensive care unit at El Hospital Nisa 9 de Octubre. When he flinched, he pulled the IV needle in his hand, which shot a searing pain up his arm. He was back.
“Señor Beltrán,” the man said again and sat down in the chair next to him. “I am Doctor Roig, the neurosurgeon…”
“Where’s Luna?” Cayetano asked. Her bed had gone. The deep pain in his forehead made it hard to concentrate. They had put Luna on a ventilator and put her into a coma. Cayetano had to stand outside the room while they did it. He watched through the doors, and saw them strip her naked and reduce her to a specimen on a table while they decided what to do. It devastated him. Luna wasn’t even herself anymore. Just a project to be fixed. Cayetano had showered and changed himself into a set of the doctor’s scrubs. He needed to be clean enough to be allowed into the intensive care unit with Luna. As he sat by Luna’s bed, they had inserted a drip into his hand for dehydration and shock. They had spoken to him about so many things, and he remembered none of it. He remembered them taking her away for a brain scan, before sleep took him to a better place. He held Luna’s engagement ring in his hand; the Beltrán-Ortega diamond needed to be kept safe.
“Luna is in recovery after her scan,” the middle-aged doctor said. “It all went well. She will be back here with you in a moment.”
“She is all right?”
“Luna is critical, but stable for now. The results have been emailed to each of the specialists needed for her care. We are going to have a meeting on what we think needs to be done with her. But I find it easier if we talk to the family one at a time, to make it less stressful.”
“Nothing will make this less stressful,” Cayetano said, his voice still hoarse. “Luna is about to be my wife. She has twin sons. You have to save her.”
“That is what I intend to do. I had to come and see you because we don’t have a lot of time to make decisions about her care.”
Neurosurgeon, he said. “Is she brain damaged?”
“There is so much swelling that any white matter damage is hard to find. When a skull takes blunt force trauma, the brain suffers two injuries. One is the impact location, and on the other opposite side of the brain when it rebounds off the skull. Luna’s fall meant that every time her head hit the ground, it suffered two injuries. I understand no one saw the fall, so it’s impossible to say what she has sustained. But I can report that there is no bleeding on the brain.”
“Will she wake up?”
“She has suffered linear fractures to the skull bone. There seems to be no depressed skull fractures, which is when the cracked skull is pressed into the brain, so that is terrific news. But the swelling needs to be relieved.”
“Like brain surgery?” Cayetano’s eyes were like saucers at the prospect.
“No. At this stage, we need to drill in the top of Luna’s skull and place a ventriculostomy drain into her, which will remove all the cerebrospinal fluid. If that doesn’t help, then we need to remove a piece of skull. But to be honest, the drain is the best option. I realise it sounds scary, but it’s straightforward. Some patients have the procedure as day surgery.”
Cayetano swallowed hard as he thought of them drilling a hole into Luna’s head. Lying there helpless on a table, her soul being hacked at with equipment. What would she be like afterwards? Would she want this? What would she say? She was the person he would ask for an opinion, and she was gone. It was as simple as that. Even if Luna woke up, they would be carer and patient, not husband and wife.
“I’m sorry, but we need to perform this procedure now.”
“Now?” Cayetano cried.
“She won’t be here tomorrow. The swelling is putting immense pressure on her brain.”
“She will die tonight?”
“She will if I don’t relieve the pressure on her brain.”
“And what will happen to her after that?”
“It’s too early to say. She could have a 25 percent chance of making a complete recovery.”
“That’s it?”
“We won’t learn anything until morning when the drain has started to work. Your girlfriend was not in strong health before the fall, which makes it harder for her body to fight. The simple fact is that there will be tissue damage that will continue to grow if we don’t try to help her. The longer we wait, the higher the chance that her brain will just shut down for good.”
“We have to do this,” Cayetano mumbled.
“We do. I will be the surgeon for the routine procedure. I have performed this many times, and on patients far more injured than Luna. We have an excellent team who are still reviewing this case and all her injuries. They will be in to see you. They are confident about her minimal limb and rib damage. But with a neurological injury, possible damage to her spine is unclear. The respiratory team is confident her lungs can handle the procedure, despite the deflation she suffered at the accident site. I think the next doctor to see you will be our obstetrics specialist.”
“Obstetrics?”
“About the baby.”
“What baby?”
Doctor Roig frowned. “Your girlfriend is pregnant, Señor Beltrán. If I don’t relieve the pressure in her brain, her oxygen levels will affect her potential quality of life, and the development of the baby.”
“I didn’t realise she was pregnant,” Cayetano whispered. Luna mustn’t have either. “I want to talk to someone about the baby.”
“Okay, I will call the specialist to come and see you right now.”
“One baby?”
“We don’t know. You mentioned she has twins?”
“She does.”
“The thing is, Señor Beltrán, you’re not married to Luna. Who is her next of kin?”
“I am!”
“But legally? Are you authorised to make decisions for her? Do you have the details of her health insurance for the hospital?”
Cayetano blinked a few times and tried to calm his mind. He had no rights over Luna, or the boys if the worst happened. Who did? Darren?
The doors to the room opened, and Cayetano turned to see Luna. Three nurses brought the bed back into the room. Luna looked just the same as when she had left. Her frail body looked tiny on the bed. A huge ventilator obscured most of her face, and tape kept her eyes shut. The awful beeping of the respirator and blood pressure monitor was back, too.
The conversation paused until the nurses left again. “Can I touch her?” Cayetano asked the doctor.
“Of course you can.” The doctor sat silent for a moment, and Cayetano took Luna’s hand. “Studies show that some coma patients can hear what is going on around them.”
Cayetano just sat and stared at her. Her chest went up and down in time with the ventilator that heaved air into her lungs.
“Señor Beltrán? We need to do this procedure. In the event there is no one we can ask for permission, we need to use our own judgment.”
Cayetano nodded but didn’t glance at the doctor. “I think Luna would do anything if it was me, or one of the children. She would stand and fight.”
“All right,” Doctor Roig replied and checked his watch. “I will be back in about fifteen minutes, and we will take her away. It takes about half an hour to get her ready for surgery, and we can commence at around 3am.”
“Will you need to cut her hair?”
“Yes, I’m afraid we will need to shave her head.”
Cayetano nodded again but said nothing. He swallowed hard, to try to hold himself together. The doctor placed a hand on his shoulder and then left the room. The moment he left, Cayetano burst in heavy tears. He didn’t care if the whole floor heard him cry. He held Luna’s hand tight in his, and prayed she felt it. Cayetano rested his head against her arm, it all scraped and cut up against his face as he bawled and bawled. Luna wasn’t going to come back to him. His whole life with her had gone. The children would not have their mother home. It wasn’t a movie where he would skip to the end, and a miracle recovery occurred. He had no idea how long he let himself cry, but nobody came to interrupt. It had to come out. Cayetano just wanted her to put her arms around him make it better. There was not another soul on earth who could do that. He was alone and would be forever if she didn’t wake up.
Cayetano’s throat burned by the time he managed to calm himself down. A baby. Luna didn’t want a baby. Luna wanted her life at Escondrijo, and all Cayetano did was argue until they barely even spoke like lovers should to each other. She had been tired and stressed, and he hadn’t helped in any way. This was his fault. He did this to Luna. He killed his soul-mate. Even if she did wake up, she would hate him forever.
Cayetano lifted his head to look at Luna lying there. He felt sick; it wasn’t Luna, just a body now. “I’m with you, preciosa. I’m not going anywhere. I know what you will say – what about the children? The children are fine. Darren took them home, and my family are all coming from Madrid to help. The boys are close by, I promise. I will bring them in to see you in the morning. You will be better in the morning, la chispa. I promise.”
Oh how he wished she would respond! Just the tiniest movement from the very tip of a finger, or the slightest flicker of a long eyelash, just anything. “You have to hold on, Luna. We’re having a baby.” He squinted and wondered when she may have become pregnant. She would have gotten pregnant on… “Preciosa, do you remember that night at Escondrijo at Easter? We made love outside in the dark. You are pregnant, preciosa, because of that beautiful, silent night we had together. We can do this, I promise you. I will take excellent care of you. And the boys. And a new baby. I will never, ever leave you again. You just have to hold on… please, preci
osa, just hold on, I’m with you.”
“Señor Beltrán?”
Cayetano looked up to see Doctor Roig with another doctor. “My name is Cayetano.”
“Cayetano, this is Doctor Aziza, our obstetrics specialist. Can we talk to you for a moment?”
Cayetano nodded, almost unable to make the movement; crying had made his face puffy. “Did the orthopaedic surgeon come in and tell you his theory on her accident?” Doctor Roig asked.
“No one came.”
“Okay. What we have seen on Luna’s scans, we have more or less worked out what happened to her when she fell.”
“How?”
“The whole team now has a chart of her injuries and their severity level. That determines the impact on different parts of her body. From what we can see, she has fallen quite a distance…”
“Yes, the top of the track is steep and rocky.”
“Luna seems to have fallen forward, and when she has landed, she must have put her arm up over her head, and that is how it broke. The main impact to her head is on her right side near the top. Her arms took a lot of the blows rather than her head. She has rather unwittingly saved herself, even if it did break her arm. All the other injuries are superficial, I am pleased to say. She must have skidded rather than rolled down the hill. The marks on her skin indicate that.”
“I thought that, too,” Cayetano replied.
“While the bone damage sustained in the heavy fall is serious, no internal organ damage was done, so she is one lucky woman,” Doctor Aziza said. “That is why your baby will be well. We would like to perform an ultrasound if that’s okay with you. But there is another issue I must raise with you.”
“Okay.”
Secrets of Spain Trilogy Page 75