The Occurrence

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be all right, daddy,” he heard her say.

  He awoke and he looked to the bed. She wasn’t there.

  He rushed to the door and flung it open.

  Nurse Arama Chavez was about to enter.

  “Where’s my daughter?”

  “It’s all right, Mister Salva. They took her for tests.”

  “More tests? Why didn’t someone wake me?”

  “You’d fallen asleep. You’ve been here all night. I thought it best you rested.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Downstairs with the doctors.”

  “She’s out of the coma?”

  “No,” Arama said.

  “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

  “Please, Mister Salva. Be calm.”

  “Show me to my daughter.”

  She led him out of the room, down colorless halls.

  This wasn’t the first time his daughter spoke to him when she wasn’t there. His wife had been seven months pregnant with Jhana-Merise when he’d first heard his daughter’s voice. It had been a warm September morning, his wife asleep in his arms. He’d thought it was his wife talking to him. Her voice was muffled and he couldn’t understand the words. Was she speaking some other language in her sleep? It wasn’t the first time she’d mumbled while dreaming. But he realized this was different, for the voice kept repeating the same phrase. “Nos es Unus. Nos es Unus.” He realized it wasn’t his wife’s voice. It wasn’t like any voice he’d known. Maybe he was the one dreaming. But the voice spoke to him again and said, “Don’t be afraid, Father. I come with love for all.” And while there was no way he could yet know what his unborn daughter’s voice would sound like, after the voice came to him again, he knew it was her. He’d never forgotten that sound or those words. And after Jhana-Merise was born, and spoke her first words, there was no doubt it was the same voice. The voice that had called to him from the womb. She was calling to him now.

  Vincente paced in the corridor outside the room where they’d taken Jhana-Merise. He stared at Arama who was waiting there. Something about her was familiar.

  Yes. She was the nurse when his wife first came in for cancer treatment. Jhana-Merise was with them a few of those times. She was five years old then. He remembered how Arama had developed a friendship with his daughter. It was a connection cut short by his wife’s death a few months later. He was struck at how much came back to him of their connection years ago.

  He remembered Arama telling him that her mother had died when she was young, too, and how she’d taken on the sole care of her father when her sister left for America.

  Strange how much intimacy occurs in tragedy.

  “It’s good to see you again,” he said to Arama.

  “It’s good to see you, too, Mister Salva. I know Jhana-Merise will be fine.”

  And as much as he resisted hopefulness, he had hope in the presence of Arama’s gentle spirit.

  9

  The night air was cold. Twilight surrounded Julian and Dominique as they made their way across the Mosul desert. Black smoke rose from the warehouse behind them into the darkening sky.

  “We should be dead,” Dominique said.

  “But we’re not,” Julian snapped.

  He winced in pain from the beating and stumbled.

  Dominique reached to support him.

  He pushed her away, regaining his balance.

  “What the fuck were you trying to prove in there, talking about love? Did you think it would save you?”

  “I thought it might save us all.”

  “That’s madness.”

  “It stopped him, though, didn’t it? I know you saw it, too.”

  “That we didn’t die in there doesn’t mean we won’t out here.”

  He moved away, unsteady.

  “Let me help you.”

  “I don’t need it.”

  They stood, motionless, in the quiet desert gloaming.

  “What happened in there, Julian?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you saw something.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Something happened in there. To all of us.”

  “We survived. We were lucky.”

  “It wasn’t luck.”

  “Believe in miracles, if that’s what you need.”

  He continued forward.

  She followed him.

  Her bare feet gripped into the cold grains of sand making every step a contest of endurance.

  To warm her hands she dug them deep into the pockets of her tattered pants. She squeezed the stone anchored there like a talisman. Its pulse, constant in her hand. She believed it had something to do with saving them.

  Lights crested over the horizon.

  Three vehicles hurtled toward them like beacons from another world. She gripped the stone tighter and prayed.

  Julian stood in front of her. Protecting her.

  They were vulnerable against a new unknown.

  The vehicles grew larger as they got closer. The headlights blinded them.

  Gusts of sand, like dervishes, spun upward as the vehicles stopped at close range.

  When the haze cleared Dominique saw that they were American Jeeps.

  10

  Vincente Salva sat with friends in a bar not far from Hospital Regionale. Their daily routine was ten hours harvesting coffee beans, a beer with the boys, and home. He’d not seen his friends in a while. It was good to be with them again. He glanced at his watch. It was later than usual, but he had no one to go home to so he stayed longer, and one beer turned to two and three, because Jhana-Merise was still in a coma, and he was worried and helpless, and the beer calmed him. In that gentle fog his world dimmed away. But the loneliness remained.

  The doctors had said her brain activity maintained normal function, which was surprising and wonderful, as they’d also told him it could be dangerous if a comatose patient passed more than a few days in that state. Vincente clung to the good news. He hadn’t had much of it in his life.

  His buddies were empathetic yet distant. They gave encouragement, but avoided direct mention of his daughter. He wasn’t surprised since that had been their reaction when his wife died. These guys weren’t schooled in grace or vulnerability. Their lives demanded a hard shell, which was another way he was an outsider in his culture, forced to maintain a macho facade when his soul wanted to give and receive love.

  The men turned in unison when Arama walked in the door and trained her focus on Vincente.

  “What’s happened? Is she out of the coma?” he said, rushing to her.

  “No. No. There’s been no change. But she’s fine.”

  Vincente’s face creased in a thought. If Jhana-Merise was fine, he couldn’t figure out what else Arama wanted. Why had she come? He asked if she wanted to join him with his friends. She said that she hoped they might be able to talk alone.

  They sat in a corner of a nearby café. A small black and white TV behind the counter played the local news.

  Arama spoke of how she believed God had something special in mind for Jhana-Merise.

  Her voice soothed Vincente. It cut through the haze of beer.

  “Your daughter is a special child of God. I knew that the first time I saw her.”

  “We’re all supposed to be, aren’t we? None more special than another?”

  “There are some who are more special. It’s those we must protect.”

  “Jhana-Merise is special, but God has nothing to do with it,” Vincente said.

  Arama told him she wouldn’t make an excuse for having a relationship with God. She’d done that enough when she was young. She confessed to her jealousy of having been in the shadow of her older sister, who was deemed the success. But she’d learned to transcend feeling superfluous through the grace of God.

  “I used to believe He was merciful and good, too,” Vincente said.

  “What happened?”

  “Life exhausts faith.”

&nbs
p; He folded his strong, dark hands on his lap. They looked like they were in prayer. He looked down and realized they were. And in spite of his having buried his belief in miracles when he buried his wife, Arama was reaching that pain.

  A news story came on the TV.

  A report on a shamanic legend from the ruins of Machu Picchu, in the mountains near by.

  A local guide spoke of when a sensitive person touched their forehead to the Intihuatana stone at the sacred site, it opened their vision to the spirit world.

  Vincente couldn’t look at Arama as the report continued. Memories were being stirred.

  “We are more than we know,” she said.

  “I need to get back to the hospital.”

  He wanted to avoid the emerging intimacy and awareness that he, too, was capable of more than he knew.

  11

  In the burn unit of the hospital, on a different floor from where she was being treated, Jhana-Merise approached the bedside of a young boy, his burned body swathed in white gauze. His sweet eyes and dark lips showed through the bandages.

  “I told you I’d come,” she said.

  “I believed you,” the boy replied.

  “You still want to get well?”

  The boy nodded.

  Jhana-Merise held his shrouded hand.

  A subtle light filtered into the room.

  The clouds parted to let in a slender stream of moonlight.

  “Is the pain gone?” she asked.

  The boy nodded.

  She unwrapped the piece of bandage from his hand.

  He moved his fingers and stared at the healed flesh.

  12

  Vincente stood at the door to Jhana-Merise’s hospital room.

  He watched her breathe.

  She looked like an angel to him.

  But she was still in a coma.

  PART TWO

  Re-Entry

  13

  Thursday, September 10

  Camp Victory Army Base, Baghdad. The military wasted no time debriefing Dominique and Julian, believing they had vital information regarding Hashim.

  They were led into a squat, gray military compound in the Green Zone by more uniformed men than Dominique thought necessary, about to face an interrogation that would have questions Dominique knew would be driven by suspicion. The Defense Department’s new guideline was to treat journalists as “unprivileged belligerents.”

  She and Julian waited alone in the antechamber.

  “You’re not going to talk miracles in there, are you? That won’t be good for either of us,” he said.

  “I’m not a fool.”

  “They’re going to look for a way to compromise us. Maybe even be suspicious of us abetting Hashim and the kid’s escape. I wouldn’t hand it to them by saying we held hands.”

  She knew if she mentioned the stone, or holding the hand of the man who’d executed her brother and wanted her dead, or the sunlight etched with strange script, her credibility would evaporate, and she’d find herself arrested. But what about Julian?

  “What did you see that blinded you?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  She pushed it.

  “Did you see the words in the sunlight?”

  He disappeared into himself. She was unable to talk her way into his silence.

  The warehouse was a demarcation between the world she’d known and the one she’d crossed into. She knew Julian had crossed over into something, too.

  She knew of mystical experiences. She’d read about them in the aftermath of her near-death when she was young. She was searching for meaning. She’d believed, questioned, doubted, even at times dismissed, that there was something more. Something beyond human reach. But she never could completely deny its existence, even when her memory was desperate to push what had happened to her as a child deep into the recesses of her mind. However slender that thread of experience, it never disappeared. The two others who were saved she knew must be questioning, doubting, and maybe even like Julian, dismissing what had happened. But it did happen. And there was a bond among them she knew she wouldn’t be able to shake. It terrified her that once again she’d be alone with no one to believe or share what had happened. But something had.

  Julian was calm in his debriefing. He spoke of their luck surviving the blast. No mention of anything else. He said he was ready to rejoin his men in the field but was told by the General his tour of duty was over. The White House insisted.

  The CIA agent pressed the matter of Hashim. Julian asserted that Hashim and a young jihadi kid were the only others he saw alive after the blast, and they had escaped. He told the truth, but could see from their skeptical eyes that they sensed there was more to the story.

  Dominique couldn’t help but be antagonistic to her panel after the impassive General accused her of sympathetic leanings toward the enemy.

  “I’ve spent twenty-three months here trying to understand, to help you mend something that’s broken.”

  The General stared at her.

  “I almost lost my life, and you imply I’m unpatriotic because of what I write?”

  She pushed back in her chair, breathless. “Fuck you, General,” she muttered.

  She sat silent, furious about her situation, about what damage this inquisition could do to her career, enraged she even cared about her career in a bullshit moment like this. She wasn’t blind to her ambition, or that her fervor had been fueled by the experience in the desert. She knew there were many in the government who didn’t like being confronted by a female journalist, especially since their massive stupidity had made Hashim a jihadi rock star.

  The General leaned back in his chair, waiting for her to talk. Whatever she planned to say, if anything, wasn’t going to be an apology.

  14

  The miracle of the boy in the burn unit at Hospital Regionale put the town in a religious frenzy.

  Vincente listened to Arama speak of how she believed Jhana-Merise had healed the young boy.

  “How could she have done that? She’s in a coma. Look at her. She can’t move.”

  He begged Arama to say nothing of this nonsense to anyone.

  Vincente moved out of Jhana-Merise’s room. He didn’t want to believe something like that had happened. It frightened him that it might be true.

  Vincente understood his culture and its need to believe in saviors. He also knew he needed to protect his daughter from the beliefs of desperate people seeking miracles in place of saving themselves.

  Arama came into the hallway.

  She and Vincente stood there.

  The sounds of the hospital background to their affinity.

  “I know you think I’m misguided,” he said.

  “Your lack of faith is what’s misguided.”

  Those were words like his wife had said to him when she was dying. She believed in miracles. He did too, and prayed for her to get well. It’d consumed him—until she died. That’s when he erased all faith from his life. His daughter was the one thing he couldn’t deny was a gift from a world beyond the one he knew. And he was frightened that she might die.

  He remembered the story of Prometheus ascending to heaven to steal fire from the gods, and bring it down to man. He remembered the story of Jason setting sail to capture the Golden Fleece. He remembered the story of Gilgamesh, the Sumerian king, and his quest to gain immortality. Vincente knew those quests came to bad ends. Was this why he thought of those stories now? Because he feared a bad end?

  “I’m sorry,” he said to Arama. “My anger is not with you.”

  “Daddy,” a voice called from inside the room.

  Vincente turned. He saw his daughter, awake. He rushed to her. Arama followed.

  Vincente watched as two doctors finished examining his daughter. The IVs and wires that had been connected to her body had been removed.

  The head doctor brought Vincente aside and informed him that he thought she would be all right, but would need to be put through a series of MRIs, and have
an electroencephalograph to determine what subtle damage, if any, had been done to her brain during the coma.

  Arama escorted the doctors out and closed the door to the room, leaving father and daughter alone.

  Jhana-Merise sat up in bed and smiled. She was the picture of health and more beautiful than Vincente had ever seen her. He wanted to ask her about the boy. He wanted to tell her the relatives of the young burn victim were stoking the notion of divine intervention because the boy told them Jhana-Merise had healed him. He wanted to tell her that he and Arama were doing their best to protect her and dispel rumors of a miracle, because he feared the radicalism of belief that grew from such events. Vincente wanted to talk to her about all this, but was afraid. Instead, he reached into the worn denim jacket he wore and took out a pocket-sized, well-used diary.

  “You’ve wanted to talk about your mother with me since she died. What I feel about her, and you, is in there.”

  Jhana-Merise hugged her father and asked, “You’ve kept this with you all these years?”

  “And read it every night.”

  “May I have it for a while, father?”

  “It’s yours.”

  He handed it to her.

  Jhana-Merise held the diary to her heart.

  Later that night, Vincente became more frightened for his daughter’s safety, when he heard that the rumor of the “Miracle of Cuzco” had spread beyond the town.