A wall of white drifted across the street as they came to Riley’s neighborhood, or a few blocks from it, which appeared to be as close as anyone could get.
The streets they passed were cordoned off with metal barricades and soldiers standing guard to turn away all traffic. Riley saw flames a few blocks over, leaping higher than the rooftops. Then the fog flowed across his line of sight and he could only see a glowing hint of the destruction, as if a murderer had drawn a translucent cloak around himself even as he did his grisly work.
“Riley” came Hope’s voice from the back seat.
“Uh huh.”
“I smell smoke.” Her words were strangely slurred, as if she had been drinking.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re almost there.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Ayuh.”
“Don’t I smell smoke?”
“It’s comin’ from the houses.”
“How many?”
“Hard to say.”
“Well, would ya guess at least?”
“Maybe fifty.”
“Lord protect us.”
Riley glanced back to see Bree sitting stiffly with her hands on her mother, and Hope lying very still.
At least a dozen cars and pickup trucks sat unoccupied in the no parking zone outside the hospital emergency portico. Ahead of Riley, the chief rolled up as close as he could get and parked and ran through the fog toward the entrance. Riley parked behind his truck, got out and opened the rear car door. He knelt on the pavement, reaching in to lay a hand on Hope’s shoulder. The bleeding at her forehead had stopped, but although her eyes were open she did not seem to notice he was there. Bree stroked her mother’s hair. She did not speak. They were a long way from the emergency room doors, and a lot of people stood outside those doors. Riley wondered if there was room inside for Hope. After a few minutes, the chief emerged from the mist. Close behind him was a woman in hospital scrubs pushing a gurney. As gently as they could, Riley, Bree, the chief, and the nurse lifted Hope out of the back seat and laid her on the gurney. She only cried out once.
Riley would have followed as the nurse pushed Hope’s gurney back across the pavement, but the chief laid a hand on his arm, gripping him tightly. He said, “Bree, honey, go on with your mom, will ya? Your dad and I gotta talk a minute.” Bree’s attention was so focused on her mother, she barely seemed to notice the Steve Novak’s hand on her father.
When they were alone the chief said, “I know who ya are, Riley. Gettin’ rid of the beard and hair and cleanin’ up like ya did, that sure fooled me, but I know now.”
Riley watched his daughter enter the hospital behind Hope’s gurney. He said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The chief shook his head. “My town’s burnin’, so I got no time for ya right now. But don’t leave Dublin. If ya do, I’ll come for ya. Wherever you go, I’ll come, an’ I won’t be too awful worried ‘bout the fine points of the law.” The chief released Riley’s arm. “Gimme the keys to this car.”
“What for?”
“I’m impoundin’ it. It’s a crime scene.”
Riley dropped the key into his hand.
An ambulance rolled into the parking lot, its siren screaming. The chief glanced at the battered Mercedes, then back at Riley. He had to shout above the siren. “The car will have your fingerprints all over it. We’ll match ‘em to the ones we took before. We’ll prove you’re the fella had her necklace.”
“I never did a thing to Willa.”
“Well, that’s a queer thing, Riley. If ya don’t know what I’m talkin’ about, how come ya went and mentioned Willa?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
EVERY SEAT WAS TAKEN IN the emergency waiting room. Except for the main path from the entrance to the receiving desk, the aisles of the waiting areas were crammed with victims sitting up and lying on the floor. Some were blackened by smoke, others were pressing bloody cloths to wounds. A nurse held an elderly man’s liver-spotted wrist between the thumb and first two fingers of her right hand, taking his pulse. Able-bodied friends and relatives crowded around the desk, vying for attention from the administrative staff. Everybody’s eyes contained the same strange mix of detached shock and panic.
Near a pair of scratched, brown metal doors, Riley saw Hope lying motionless on her gurney, with Bree standing alongside, pressing a large piece of gauze to her mother’s forehead. He went to them.
“Where’s the nurse who brought you in?”
“She was just an aide or somethin’,” said Bree. “We have to wait here for a real nurse.”
He touched Hope’s hand. “How you feeling?” Her eyes did not even flicker underneath the lids. Her face was ashen. He bent closer. “Hope? Can you hear me?” Still she offered no response.
Riley went for help, as Bree remained behind him saying, “Mom? Mom?”
Across the room the nurse in green hospital scrubs had moved on from the old man and now stood speaking to a younger woman, who replied while cradling one arm with the other. As Riley hurried toward her, stepping over other victims on the floor, he called, “My wife’s in trouble over here!”
The nurse did not bother looking away from the young lady’s arm. “I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”
“But I think she might be dying!”
The nurse turned. Riley saw deep weariness in her eyes. “What makes you think that?”
“She got shot in the head.”
“Where is she?”
Riley pointed to the gurney.
After saying “I’ll be back” to the woman with the injured arm, the nurse hurried straight to Hope. She spoke to her and got no response. She touched her cheek. She lifted an eyelid and stared at her pupil. She asked Riley a few questions. When he mentioned Hope’s slurred speech on the ride to the hospital, she pushed Hope’s gurney through the brown metal doors without another word.
As Riley watched the doors swing to and fro behind Hope and the nurse, Bree covered her face with both hands, put her back against the stark white concrete blocks of the emergency room wall and slid down to the floor. Pulling her knees up to her chin, she curled in on herself at Riley’s feet. He wondered if he should sit down beside her, maybe put his arm around her shoulders. But why would Bree want his company when this too was a misery he had caused? He remained standing up above her.
“Hope Keep? Hope Keep?”
Relieved at the excuse to take some action, Riley went to the woman at the receiving desk who was calling Hope’s name. Bree remained behind him, alone down on the floor.
Someone moaned very loudly on the far side of the waiting room as he reached the desk. He said, “You called for Hope Keep?”
Behind the desk a woman said, “You her next of kin?”
Riley turned to point toward Bree and said, “No, she—” But then he stopped, and thought, and said, “Ayuh. I guess I am.”
“Fill out this form.” A long strand of hair had escaped the woman’s ponytail. She did not seem to notice.
Riley asked, “Is she going to be okay?”
The woman did not look at him. “Doctor’ll see you soon.”
“I just wanted to know how she’s doing.”
Still the woman did not look up. Instead, she wrote something on another piece of paper and shouted, “Samuel Eisen? Samuel Eisen?”
Riley took the clipboard and walked back through a sea of moans to stand beside his daughter. He filled in the blanks, surprised that he remembered Hope’s birthday and social security number and the fact that she was allergic to penicillin. The questions on the form engrossed him. The answers that he knew promised something to him. The ones he did not know became a measurement of the distance he had fallen. He was disappointed to have to ask Bree about Hope’s health insurance. At his feet she mumbled, “I don’t know.”
Riley felt his broken heart constrict. How strange, that Bree’s answer rose up with the sound of mourning. Given all the misery in that room, why was “I don’
t know” the thing that drove most deeply into him? He thought of Hope signing insurance papers, and wondered what other important choices she had made alone. He wrote contact Dublin Township on the form and moved on, filling in the blanks of the solitary life he had so selfishly imposed on his wife.
“What’re you doin’ here?”
Riley looked up to find a man standing directly in front of him. The man’s freckled forearms lay folded across his chest like a pair of two pound hams. A conical head rose from his shoulders without much intervention by a neck. He was shorter, but looked to outweigh Riley by at least fifty pounds of muscle. His tiny bloodshot eyes stared with an utter lack of empathy, as if examining an insect. Riley said, “I’m sorry?”
“I asked what you’re doin’ here.” He had the kind of deep voice that carried. Riley saw other people turning their way.
“I came with my . . . with someone who got shot.”
“Shoulda shot you.”
“What?”
“I said they shoulda shot you.” The man moved half a step closer to Riley, bringing him within arm’s length. Riley became acutely conscious of the solid wall at his back, which offered no escape.
“Why would you say that?” asked Riley, trying to smile. “I don’t even know you.”
“I know you. You’re that medicine fella on the news.”
From a seat nearby, a fat little woman with a swollen nose stood and said, “Hey, he’s right. It’s that guy!” Her red hair was very thin and stuck straight out as if she had been struck by lightning. Riley saw reflections of the fluorescent lights shining on her scalp.
Bree rose up at Riley’s elbow. “Maybe we should go.”
Transfixed by the muscle man in front of him, Riley did not move. He was guilty, and he wanted to be judged. The man said, “I gotta little brother, been on the sauce for twenty years. He ain’t got no money. I ain’t got no money. How’s my little brother supposed to get sober, what with you guys plannin’ to charge five thousand dollars for that stuff?”
“I’m not going to charge that. It’s the company’s decision. I just—”
“You gonna stand there and tell me this ain’t your fault? I heard how much they paid you.” The man inched forward as he spoke. Now only about a foot away, he thrust his pugnacious chin toward Riley, daring him to make a move. “You got stinkin’ rich ‘cause of charging all that money.” Riley realized he was holding the clipboard with Hope’s information between them like a shield. He lowered it.
The fat little woman waddled closer. With her came a disheveled old man and a haggard young woman not much older than Bree, who said, “My grandpa says he’d take that stuff if he had the money.”
“’Course he would, sweetheart,” said the fat little woman. “He’d take it in a heartbeat.” Riley smelled the booze on her. “But we ain’t seen that much money since he got his severance from the power company.” The small old man beside her belched quietly, spots of blood on his filthy shirt, woolen trousers hitched high up over his potbelly and cinched tight by a worn leather belt. Though he swayed where he stood, his rheumy eyes remained on Riley.
The young woman said, “How come ya got to charge so much for that medicine, mister?”
“How come?” said the muscular man in Riley’s face. “I’ll tell ya how come. He don’t care ‘bout nothin’ but the almighty buck is how come.”
The girl ignored the man. “Hey, mister? I got nearly a thousand in my savings already, and I bet my grandpa could raise another five or six hundred. Could we give ya that and pay the rest later?”
“I don’t . . . I’m not the one you pay,” replied Riley. “And they’re not actually selling it yet. There’s still some government stuff they have to work through, and—”
The girl interrupted Riley as if she had heard nothing. “’Cause the thing is, Grandpa used to make a lotta money.” She had a broad streak of soot across her forehead, and the whites of her bulging eyes showed all around her irises. “He’s an electrician, you know. But he can’t work ‘cause of his drinkin’ problem. That’s why he can’t make enough ta pay ya now. But he could pay you easy if ya make him sober, mister. He could get some work then, and pay the rest.”
“I wish I could help.”
“Ya can!” She pushed at the muscle man to get closer. “It’s all twisted up is what it is, mister. See, he’s still got his drinkin’ problem ‘cause he can’t afford to pay ya for the medicine. And he can’t afford to pay ya ‘cause he’s got the drinkin’ problem. See? He’s gotta get sober before he can pay for gettin’ sober, but he can’t pay till he’s sober, is what I mean to say. See how twisted up it is?”
Several other people had approached them as the young woman spoke. Riley saw the outrage in their eyes. He shook his head. “I wish . . .” He wished to tell them of his plans, how he was going to fix everything for Hope and Bree and Dylan, and all of them too, how it was supposed to be a win-win situation, except he had forgotten to name the price, he had left that part up to Mr. Hanks, and now it was too late. He wanted to tell them how he knew nothing about business, how it was an honest mistake. Anyone could have made it. But it was not true. He was anything but honest. In his heart of hearts, he had always known the price would be beyond the reach of everyone. Was he not a minister, a missionary? Who better understood the unregenerated poverty of man?
He said again, “I wish . . .”
Bree touched his sleeve. “Come on,” she said, tugging on him.
This time Riley went with her, and as he did the people wandered after him like sheep behind a shepherd, all the way over to the emergency room doors, all of them completely silent except for the muscular little man who cursed Riley calmly and without ceasing in his deep voice that carried. As the electric doors slid shut behind him, Riley glanced back at the people on the inside of the glass. Inside they had mistaken him for one of them, presenting him with expectations. But though the air outside was thick with smoke and fog, Riley figured they could see him better now, see him for the ghost he was.
Beside him underneath the portico Bree lit a cigarette. Riley watched the embers on the tip of the cigarette glow brighter as she sucked the poison in. He visualized someone taking the cigarette out of her mouth and grinding it beneath their heel. Someone else. Someone who had earned the right to do such things.
She seemed to read his mind. “Maybe I oughta stop doin’ this.”
“Ayuh.”
She glanced at him. “You know what I’m talkin’ about?”
“It’s a bad habit.” His personal area of expertise.
“I’m hooked all right.” She took another drag and dropped the cigarette. “Maybe I should take your medicine.”
Her words scared him for some reason. Why? He did not understand himself. He only knew he had to say, “No. Don’t do that.”
Every kind of alarm and siren wailed in the background of their conversation. The fog might have cleared a little, but the surreal column of smoke remained above Dublin as straight and thick as ever. Riley and Bree watched it side-by-side from the shade of the portico. She said, “They say smoke is bad for babies.”
Riley did not reply.
“I need to decide what to do. Ronny says I oughta get an abortion. Mom wants me to put it up for adoption.”
Riley was glad to have the clipboard to hold on to, the personal details of Hope’s life written down in tiny boxes on the form. The clipboard shook in his hand. Again he clutched it to his chest, just as he had when the muscular man confronted him inside the hospital.
“I been thinking about keepin’ it, but if I got the abortion I could keep smokin’.”
Dear God, thought Riley, do something.
She said, “I’m kiddin’ ya about the smoking.”
He said, “Good.”
“So . . . do ya think I oughta keep it?”
No, thought Riley.
Yes.
I don’t know.
She waited silently beside him, someone else with expectations.
He said, “You should do what you think is right, Vachee.”
“I’m askin’ you what’s right.”
“I don’t know.” He said it while looking away from her, looking at the inferno he had unleashed on the town. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I understand.”
He turned back toward her, the last of all The People, now pregnant at the age of sixteen by a boy with green and purple hair in a burning town in Maine. “You understand?”
“You’re afraid you’ll say the wrong thing.”
He drew a deep breath and slowly let it out. Afraid. Yes.
She said, “You don’t have to worry. I’ll do what I want anyway.”
He tried to form the words, but in the end what came was, “Be careful.”
She laughed, and took his hand, prying it away from Hope’s information. Her skin felt completely correct against his. He wanted to close his fingers around hers, to hold on tight. Yet he did not dare. Yet he feared she would withdraw her hand if he did not react somehow, so he compromised, giving her hand a squeeze and then releasing the pressure, allowing her to hold on until she decided to let go.
The Cure Page 24