Saving the World

by Ponzo, Gary

  “I see,” Father Joe said, looking down at Margo. “He doesn’t seem to like you very much, does he?”

  Margo shrugged. “I scare people.”

  “You don’t scare me,” Father Joe said. “And I’m frightened of everything.”

  They both frowned at the priest simultaneously.

  “Okay, so I don’t frighten easily,” he admitted. “But really what could he be frightened of?”

  Margo looked at Bryant. “You spoke with him last night. What did he say?”

  What could he possibly tell her without inflicting more psychological trauma into a mind which deserved some breathing room? He considered going into the details of the plane crash, but she didn’t have any recollection of the accident. It was the mercy of her extraordinary brain that allowed her the reprieve.

  “First of all he has a GPS device fastened to your car, so he knows exactly where you are,” Bryant said.

  Margo shrugged again. “It doesn’t take a GPS device to tell you I’m at church. I’m here every day.”

  “Nevertheless,” he said. “You’re right about one thing. He doesn’t trust you.”

  Father Joe rubbed the back of his neck. “I still don’t understand what the FBI could possibly want with her. She poses no threat to anyone.”

  “I think I know,” Margo said. She looked at both of them as if examining their disposition. “He’s not doing what they want.”

  “What do you mean?” Bryant asked.

  “I mean,” the teenager shuffled her feet. “His boss doesn’t want him following me. He’s doing all of this on his own.”

  “Is he just a . . . uh, creep?” Father Joe asked. The way he asked it, with embarrassment in his tone, everyone understood the implication.

  “No,” Margo said flatly. “It’s not like that.”

  A navy-blue pickup truck rolled around the corner of the building and slowly passed the group. The driver examined them carefully as he passed. He was a large-faced man with a beard and round cheeks.

  “What are you two talking about?” Bryant asked.

  Father Joe and Margo exchanged glances.

  The pickup truck stopped twenty feet away in the middle of the parking lot. The conversation faltered as they waited for the driver. Bryant suspected the man was searching for directions.

  The door to the vehicle opened and the driver lifted his heavy frame from the truck. He wore a flannel shirt and jeans. The way he hobbled from the cab, it seemed as if he’d been driving a long distance, his knees and legs stiff from immobility. Bryant noticed the Alaska license plate.

  Margo immediately gasped and began walking backward, away from everyone.

  “Can I help you?” Father Joe asked.

  The man reached behind his back. Before Bryant saw the gun he heard Margo scream. It happened too quickly for him to react, or maybe he just froze. One loud gunshot, then two. The man fired at Margo as she held out her hands in vain. Father Joe ran to her as she collapsed. Bryant rushed at the man full-out, body-slamming him to the ground, but it was too late. The man offered little resistance as Bryant grabbed the gun and sent it skidding along the asphalt.

  Bryant squeezed the man’s throat with fury. He turned to see Father Joe clutching Margo’s lifeless frame, her body wilting in his arms. The sound of the gunshots still rang in Bryant’s ears as he frantically reached for his cell phone with his free hand and dialed 911.

  The man lay there beneath Bryant, his wild eyes flittering and his breathing shallow. Bryant gave the essential information and threw down his phone. He glanced over and saw the blood spreading across Margo’s T-shirt, too fast. He had to get to her, but his rage wouldn’t allow him to let go of the shooter. His body pulsed with adrenalin as he looked down at the man who seemed to be saying something. Bryant realized he was still squeezing the man’s neck, his face turning purple from the lack of oxygen. When Bryant loosened his grip the man finally sputtered out a few words.

  “She’s . . .” he wheezed, as his hand pointed up to a dark cloud billowing overhead. “She’s one of them.”

  Chapter 15

  By the time the ambulance was halfway to the hospital, Bryant could see Margo was bleeding too much. The EMTs were working on her like she was a mannequin, furiously shoving handfuls of gauze sponges onto her chest and watching them fill with blood in seconds. She was unconscious, with a plastic oxygen mask over her nose and an IV bag dropping fluids into her system.

  Bryant sat beside Margo holding her frail hand, her fingers drooping around his palm.

  “Stay with me,” Bryant whispered. “Please.”

  One of the EMTs glanced up at Bryant nervously. They were losing the fight and his presence forced them to keep trying even though everyone in the speeding truck knew it was futile. Bryant’s vision blurred as he fought back tears. They were rushing down side streets at unsafe speeds because it was their job. That’s all. For some reason the entire scene felt strangely comfortable to him, as if this was how he should have seen his family go. A speeding vehicle jostling over potholes and swerving around stationary vehicles. This was how people prepared for the inevitable. Even if the trip took just ten minutes, it gave a person time to prepare. Not a sudden phone call announcing the end of your family in the time it took to sit down in your office chair and clutch your hand over your mouth.

  “Hey,” one of the EMTs called to him and gestured toward Margo. Her eyes flickered open. Bryant crouched over her, sensing she was searching for him.

  “Right here,” Bryant said. He felt her fingers gently squeeze his hand as her eyes tried to focus.

  He used every facial muscle to force a smile. “Hey,” he said as she finally met his gaze. “You’re okay,” he lied.

  Margo let go of his grip and reached for her shorts pocket. She feebly attempted to retrieve something, but struggled to make it into the tight fit.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She kept groping, but her strength was fading. Bryant reached into her pocket and felt a small, round pellet. He tugged on the pellet and realized it was a chain of pellets. As he pulled the chain from her pocket, he saw what they were. White rosary beads. The beads were smooth and linked together with a lightweight metal. A silver cross hung from the bottom of the chain.

  Bryant held the rosary beads up in front of her. “This?”

  Her eyes were weakening. She nodded.

  “Here,” he said, placing the beads in her hand.

  Margo shook her head and lifted them up for him to take back. Her lips quivered as she strained to form words beneath the plastic oxygen mask. Bryant tugged up on the mask while the EMTs worked around him.

  “Keep you safe,” she rasped.

  Bryant choked up. As Margo’s eyes closed, he stared at the rosary beads, then gripped them with an intense anger. She deserved better. She deserved more than just the blind faith her trauma had prompted.

  The ambulance jerked to a stop in front of the ER reception door and the EMTs whisked Margo away. Bryant followed as they rushed her into the lobby and down a hallway toward the Trauma Room. Two ER doctors were already scrubbed and masked. The techs slid Margo onto the OR table and hooked the IV bag to a waiting IV pole.

  The team of doctors and nurses swarmed around Margo and began a precisely choreographed game of Stop the Bleeding. Find the damaged artery. It’s the first thing an ER doctor looks for, because it’s the first thing that will kill a patient.

  Bryant couldn’t see anything but Margo’s bare feet. A nurse grabbed him by his arm and said, “This way.”

  Bryant shook her off. “I’m a doctor.”

  “We have plenty of those here,” she said.

  Bryant hesitated. The nurse took a step out into the hallway and waved to someone. A moment later a large security guard with a Marine crew cut stood in front of Bryant, obscuring his view.

  “Sir,” the man said.

  “Look,” Bryant said, controlling his temper, “I’m a medical doctor. I’m just going to stand here and w
atch.”

  “Sir,” the man said, “you must leave.”

  “But I’m all she has,” Bryant reasoned.

  “Now,” the man said, as if he hadn’t heard a word.

  Bryant was about to cause a scene and he could tell by the glances from the OR table that he was already a distraction. Margo needed their undivided attention if she had even a glimmer of a chance.

  “Sir,” the security guard stepped closer.

  “Okay,” Bryant held up his hands. “I’m leaving.”

  The steel doors closed behind him with a whoosh, and the beeping from the vital sign monitors were replaced by the hum of the row of vending machines in the stark hallway. Bryant clenched his right hand into a fist and stopped an inch from pounding it on the door. He wanted to scream to Margo, “Please, hold on.”

  Then something occurred to him. He stood tall, facing the trauma room, looked each way and saw no one. He shut his eyes and thought clear and hard, “Margo, if you can hear me. Please. Please. Fight this. You can make it. You have to make it.”

  Bryant felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see Father Joe.

  “How is she?” the priest asked.

  Bryant shook his head. “Not good.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”

  Father Joe led Bryant to the waiting room and they sat down. The room was uncommonly empty but for a receptionist and a stranded wheelchair.

  Bryant was thinking about the man who shot Margo. About his expression as he

  pointed to the clouds.

  “She’s one of them,” Bryant said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s what the man said after he shot her.”

  “That man was mentally disturbed,” Father Joe said.

  “It was more than that. He drove all the way from Alaska. There was a lot of

  premeditation.”

  “What are you suggesting?” the priest said.

  “I’m suggesting there’s a lot going on and nobody seems to know anything. The

  Police, the FBI, the Pope, nobody.”

  “Why do you always have to go dragging the Pope into things?” Father Joe said

  with a wave of his hand.

  Bryant kept looking over at the doors leading to the Trauma Room expecting to see a physician with a glum expression heading in their direction. The sooner those doors opened, the worse the news.

  The stress caused him to shut his eyes and rest his head. In his mind, he kept a constant transmission of thoughts heading toward Margo, begging her to stay alive.

  Father Joe nudged him and said, “Are those yours?”

  Bryant realized the priest was asking about the rosary beads he was gripping in his closed hand.

  “Margo gave them to me,” he said, looking at the gift with a pang of shame. The thought of Margo in there by herself, with no family by her side, slithered like a snake at the pit of his stomach.

  “I see,” Father Joe said.

  Bryant turned to the priest. “Listen, there’s something you need to know,” he said, looking around at the absence of an audience. “She’s suffering from PTSD. Her strong belief in God is a by-product of her condition. She believes she survived her accident because the Lord wanted her to survive. Her brain has manufactured a rationalization for her survival. It prevents her from feeling the full brunt of the guilt she’d otherwise endure. It’s the only way she can cope with the death of her family.”

  “Survivor Syndrome?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s your professional opinion?”

  “It’s Frank’s opinion also. He’s the one who counseled her.”

  “And that’s where the idea was born?”

  “Are you getting at something?”

  The door to the Trauma Room opened and a doctor peeked into the room wearing blue scrubs and a paper surgical mask hanging down around his neck. His face more anxious than somber. He spotted Bryant and nodded.

  Bryant got up and glanced at Father Joe. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Let me come with y—”

  “No,” Bryant said, holding out his palm. “I need to do this alone.”

  Father Joe moved to the edge of his seat, but stayed there. “Okay.”

  Chapter 16

  Bryant’s heart pounded as he sat across from the surgeon in the small consult room. The room was so tiny, their knees practically touched as they faced each other in the plastic chairs. Next to them was an end table with a large box of Kleenex tissues.

  The surgeon seemed more nervous than Bryant. He rubbed his hands together and swiveled his head back and forth as if searching for something on the carpeted floor between them.

  “It’s okay,” Bryant said. “You can tell me.”

  The surgeon was older, maybe mid-fifties, but he acted like a first-year resident. He glanced up at the narrow window on the door and Bryant followed his gaze. Two or three of the nurses and doctors from the Trauma Room were lingering outside. They scattered like roaches once Bryant took notice.

  “What’s going on, Doctor?” Bryant asked.

  The surgeon winced like he was about to remove a large splinter from a child.

  “Is she your daughter?” the surgeon said, finally making eye contact.

  “No,” Bryant said. “She’s a patient of mine. Her family was killed in a plane accident. She has no one.” Bryant took a breath. “She’s gone?”

  The surgeon’s eyes shifted, first to the empty window, then the floor. “No, she’s alive.”

  The way his words came out, it made Bryant feel more concerned than if she was declared dead.

  “What seems to be the problem?” Bryant said. “I’m a medical doctor. You can tell me.”

  The surgeon spotted the rosary beads in Bryant’s hand and said, “Are you a very religious person?”

  Bryant looked at the beads. “I used to be.”

  The surgeon nodded as if this was a fascinating concept.

  “Doctor—”

  “I cut her open,” the surgeon said quickly, as if to get rid of the words. “I had to, she was bleeding out.”

  “Of course, you had no choice. I rode with her in the ambulance.”

  “Yes, well, then you must have suspected that the bullet went through her heart.”

  Bryant bit his lower lip. “Yes, that’s what I thought from the location of the wound.”

  “And you’d be correct. The bullet went clear through her right ventricle and out her back.”

  A kill shot, thought Bryant. Not survivable. Yet.

  “So when I saw the wound, she still had vitals. It seemed improbable, but I decided to close the bullet hole in her heart. It was worth a try.”

  “Of course.”

  “I mean I didn’t think about the odds of her still having vitals fifteen minutes after a bullet had ruptured a hole in her heart.”

  “I’m with you,” Bryant said, growing leery of the conversation.

  “So when I asked for a suture, the scrub tech handed it to me, and I was about to make the first pass when the heart tissue began to . . . um . . .”

  “Doctor?” Bryant said. “What happened in there?”

  There were faces at the window again, only they didn’t move this time when Bryant made eye contact.

  “The tissues began to close,” the surgeon finally said, looking straight at Bryant now as if he might be an accomplice. “The wound began healing itself.”

  Bryant’s mouth went dry. “What?”

  “I can’t explain it any better than that,” the surgeon said. “There is no rational explanation for what happened in there. The laws of biology were broken in that Trauma Room today and I’m not going to begin to understand.”

  The surgeon leaned back in his chair and rubbed a hand over his face. He let out a big sigh. “I’m not going to bring this up,” the surgeon said. “I mean to anyone.”

  Bryant’s head swam with thoughts of the plane accident. How Margo was fou
nd without a scratch. How the FBI was following her.

  “I suggest you do the same,” the surgeon said.

  The rosary beads fell from Bryant’s hand. The surgeon bent over to pick them up. He looked at the glossy beads as they dangled from his thumb and index finger. “I need to get me some of these.”

  He handed them to Bryant.

  “Do you have any questions?” the surgeon asked.

  “Do you have any answers?”

  The surgeon stood up and held out his hand. Bryant shook it.

  “She’s in recovery,” the surgeon said as he opened the door to leave. “You can probably see her in an hour or so.”

  The door shut.

  * * *

  Detective Meltzer sat at a wooden table in the interview room and sipped his third cup of coffee. The large man who shot Margo Sutter sat on the floor in the corner of the room, his knees curled up, his eyes still wild with terror.

  Meltzer looked down at the empty yellow legal pad in front of him and wrote, “John Ames, rescue worker, Anchorage, Alaska.”

  So far the man hadn’t been responsive to anything he’d asked and Meltzer kept rolling his eyes at the two-way mirror, knowing the DA was watching and looking for a quick confession so he could go home and spend the rest of the weekend with his family.

  “Mr. Ames,” Meltzer tried again. “Isn’t there something you’d like to say about this morning’s shooting?”

  When the rescue worker violently shook his head, Meltzer wished he had Bryant there to help. What would he do, Meltzer thought? Bryant would try to develop a trust with the guy.

  Ames rubbed his hands along his pants legs as if wiping off some imaginary disease.

  “Mr. Ames,” Meltzer said. “Were you there when Margo Sutter’s plane crashed?”

  Ames scrunched up his already wrinkled face. The beard and sunspots blended together to form a written history of working outdoors. “Are you a psychologist?”Ames asked.

  “No, I’m a detective.”

  Ames blew out a long whistle. “Boy, I must look really messed up, huh?”

  “I’ve seen worse,” Meltzer said, happy to spark the flames of conversation. “Have you been a rescue worker for long?”