My head rests on his chest, his heart thuds loudly under my ear. Is this the last time I’ll hear his heart? What if I can’t save him? I scrunch my eyes tight and take a deep breath. I need to stop stressing myself out. My head needs to be clear to help him the best.
He says, “I remember when I walked into Clara’s office and saw you there. You were so young, so new to the world of powers. You didn’t even know what Shadow Demons were yet. And then I flipped you upside down with my unblocked mind. But you handled the situation so maturely, so impressively . . . and then you died on the stone altar.” I turn my head and look at him. He says, “I still have traumatic dreams of that moment.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“But not so much since I became Unaltered. Or maybe the dreams slowed down because of the diamond. I’m not sure.”
I say, “My dreams stopped once I got the diamond in the pouch. However, they’ve come back now.”
“Really? What do you relive in your dreams?”
“The Portland blast. I see it over and over again. Each time in a little more disturbing detail.”
“Calli, those are visions, not dreams.”
“I’m not so sure. I feel like my mind is creating possible outcomes, not necessarily the actual outcome.”
“Well, you’ve been through some pretty terrible things in the last four and a half years. You’ve seen things you can’t unsee. Do those things haunt your dreams?”
“The many times I’ve watched you die never seem to leave my mind. Even though Brand repeated you back, I still remember it.”
“Too bad Brand couldn’t be here today to see if I’ll make it through the insertion.”
“Healing takes longer than two minutes. Brand wouldn’t be any help in this situation. He wasn’t able to tell me for sure if I’d make it through my own insertion.”
Chris whispers, “I’m a little hesitant to do this.”
I lift my head and rest on my elbow. Looking him in the eye, I say, “You don’t have to, you know.”
“I need to. I can’t fully help you if I don’t have the diamond inside me.”
“Well, you’re able to hold the diamond on your bare skin and use the healing power, so you should be able to heal yourself. If for whatever reason you’re unable to heal after the insertion, I’ll do everything in my power to help you survive.” I playfully poke my finger against his chest. “You and I have a world to save, mister.” I lean forward and kiss him.
He kisses me back, then pulls me back into the embrace and caresses my hair. “I’m just trying to get up my courage to slam a magical rock into my chest.”
“You?” I prop up on my elbow. “No. I’ll do it.”
“No, actually, I’m going to. If my body doesn’t accept it, you can pull it out and heal my injury. We are, after all, two Bearers in love, right? The healing power is stronger between us. I remember watching Maetha pull the diamond out of your heart at Lake Patoka when you weren’t able to heal yourself.” He sits up and takes off his shirt.
I feel like reminding him of Maetha and Crimson’s instructions concerning his insertion, but decide against it. I sit up beside him and look to his future. Nothing has changed from what I’ve viewed in the past. The diamond will stop his heart like it did with mine. The future beyond that cannot be seen, other than the wishful thinking that someday he and I will meet up on this beach. When I carried the diamond the first time, my future couldn’t be seen beyond my heart stopping because technically that’s when I ceased being human Calli and became Bearer Calli. The same will happen with Chris. I hope. Deep down, I know help is a few steps away.
He picks up the diamond and lies back down. With his hand holding the diamond raised straight upward toward the sky above his chest, he takes a deep breath, looks me in the eye, winks, then slams the diamond down against his sternum.
The ensuing blast nearly blows me over. Panicked, I regain my balance just before the strumming sensation of a diamond without an owner rocks my world more than I thought possible. Chris is technically dead. I look at his chest. Through the blood and exposed bone, I see his heart and the diamond. It’s partially sticking out, not completely inside the muscle. His heart isn’t pumping. Is this normal? I look at his face. His eyes are open, his gaze paused and slightly askew, his mouth opened a crack.
“Come on, Chris! You can do this. Think healing.”
The fact the diamond isn’t all the way inside his heart concerns me, not to mention the amount of blood loss. How can his heart heal? I decide to push the diamond in further, and if healing doesn’t begin, I’m going to work on him.
I poke my finger into the hole in his chest and come in contact with his still-warm heart. I push the diamond in more and gently pull the muscle over the edges as much as I can. I straddle his waist and place my hands over his open wound. Closing my eyes, I reach deep within myself and access the healing power of my diamond. My hands begin to tremble and heat up, but I don’t stop what I’m doing. I don’t open my eyes. I connect with his body, his muscle tissue, fibers, fascia, and ribs, healing as I go.
Why isn’t he breathing yet? Why isn’t his heart beating?
I open my eyes to see the brilliant blue-green glow emanating from my hands. Most of his chest is healed. I decide to focus on his diamond instead of his body. I close my eyes and connect my diamond with his, willing his to exude healing power. My hands feel like they’re on fire from the intense heat, yet his chest isn’t moving, his heart isn’t beating.
This is my worst nightmare! My eyes sting with tears. I try to think of what else I can do, short of cursing Crimson and Maetha. They’re on the island, literally seconds away. Surely, they’ve sensed his diamond doesn’t have an owner anymore. Why aren’t they coming to help? I refocus on Chris. Maybe I need to dig the diamond out and go from there. His brain has been without oxygen for a few minutes now. But the skin on his chest is completely healed. To dig the diamond out would mean opening him up again.
I move to his side and begin chest compressions. Regular old CPR. This is what I’ve resorted to. I’m trying to bring Chris back from the dead with regular human methods. I tilt his head back and pull his chin down and give him life-saving breaths of air. I resume chest compressions, counting out loud and calling out his name, hoping I’m not damaging his heart even more with each compression. More breaths of air. I feel completely devastated that I can’t bring him back.
I whisper, because my throat is too constricted with emotion to speak, “Come back to me, Chris.”
I start more compressions, then I feel movement. I stop abruptly and connect my diamond with his. His heart is quivering. My medical knowledge tells me he needs a shock of electricity to regulate the heart. I close my eyes and imagine feeling all the energy I possess, and the static in the air around me, then send all the healing energy I can in one big jolt. His body contracts as if he’s been shocked with a defibulator. I feel for his diamond again and find his heart struggling to beat. I give him more breaths of air. My hands hurt and burn like I’ve dipped them in scalding water. My ring finger burns more intensely than the rest.
I plead, “Chris, you can do it. Heal yourself. Activate your healing power and heal yourself.”
I place my hands on his chest again and without any help from me, my hands produce bright blue-green light. My power is being drawn from me and into Chris. I’m filled with immeasurable hope as I realize he’s accessing our combined intense healing power.
“That’s it, Chris. Keep going. You’re doing it.”
But he’s still not breathing on his own. Keeping one hand over his heart, I give him more breaths of oxygen and caress his forehead. His heart is strengthening, each beat moving his blood further. I give him more breaths of air. Then I see his eyes blink.
Tears stream down my face. “You’re strong, you can do this.”
He takes his first breath in what feels like ten minutes. I lay my hand on his chest and feel his heart beating stronger than before. He bre
athes in and out at a regular pace. Finally!
I wipe my eyes with my forearms because the backs of my hands are hot to the touch. Then I run my hands over his chest, feeling for any broken ribs or anything else that still needs to mend. I can tell he’s still healing himself, so that’s good. But he’s not all the way conscious yet.
My emotional floodgates burst and I cry. I cry hard. I press my cheek against Chris’s shoulder and sob my guts out. I just watched my best friend kill himself. He chose to do this. In reality, Chris Harding is now dead. Chris the Bearer is born.
My strength seems to drain out of me with every tear that falls down my cheeks. I lay down on my right side next to Chris and lay my left hand over his heart. Deep blues and greens reflect in the diamond on my finger, bringing on a whole new wave of emotion.
He proposed to me.
We’re engaged.
I almost lost him.
My eyelids become heavy and my vision blurs. The last thing I see is Chris’s chest rising and falling with his breathing.
“Calli, you did it!”
I open my eyes and try to focus on the surroundings. I’m laying on a hard surface. Pushing myself up, I stand and look around. This isn’t the beach. Where’s Chris? It appears I’m up high on top of a building with radio antennas. As I walk to the edge I see mountains in the distance, other high rise buildings, lush green forests and a river down below crossed by several bridges. I’m in Portland, Oregon. I look down to the streets. Everything seems to be abandoned. Across the river, the I-5 freeway is completely empty.
My hand hurts like it’s burned. I look down and see my fist clutched, holding something. My engagement ring glows emerald green. Opening my hand, I find a Sanguine Diamond glowing in the center with the same deep intensity of green as my ring. My finger still burns so I take the diamond into my right hand and then try to wiggle the engagement ring off my finger. It’s stuck. Panic consumes me and my pulse races. I pull and yank. Nothing. I have to get this off.
“You captured the Elemental blast.” Crimson approaches from behind. “I’m sorry, Calli. But it had to be this way.”
“What do you mean?” I say, still yanking violently on the ring.
“I couldn’t stop it from happening, so I kept you from knowing it would.”
“Stop what? Know what?”
Chris’s voice calls to me.
I ask Crimson again, “Stop what? Know what?”
Chris calls my name. “Calli, wake up.”
I open my eyes and find Chris sitting shirtless next to me on the blanket in the sand. A soft breeze blows his hair around a little. Ocean waves gently lap against the shore nearby letting me know I’ve just had a dream and I’m not in Portland, Oregon.
I sit up and rub my eyes. My hands feel fine and don’t burn any longer. I grasp the ring and easily remove it, then slide it back on my finger. I examine my hands closely. There’s no blood on them. Was it all a dream? I reach out and touch Chris’s bare chest. No blood here either. I feel his heart beating and can tell he has a diamond inside. Then I remember when he and I accessed the deep healing power together on New Year’s Eve, all the blood on my skin disappeared that time as well.
“It worked?” I raise my eyes to his.
“Yeah.” He smiles. “You healed me.”
“No, you healed you.” I pull my hand back and rub my head, trying to recall the dream.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m drained of energy, that’s all. That was horrible, Chris. I felt so helpless.”
“I know exactly how you feel. I watched you slam a diamond into yourself from a helpless position, too. Not only that, I had to pretend I wasn’t bothered or upset so my father would continue to keep me in the compound. I was devastated, well, until you began to heal yourself. Then I had a whole new admiration for you.”
“No one came to help, Chris.”
“Did you think they would?”
“Well, yeah, kind of. You were dead for many minutes while I healed you. Your diamond didn’t have an owner and they would have known that. But no one came. I gave you CPR, Chris. CPR. Then I shocked your heart.”
He loosens his hold on me and moves back a little. He looks me in the eye. “With what?”
“My hands.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. It must be part of the greater healing ability.”
His tense lines around his eyes and mouth relax. “I’m really glad it worked, Calli.” He pulls me back into a hug.
I can’t help but be reminded of when he saved me on the river bank on the way to the Death Clan. He performed CPR on me and started my heart, too. Then I healed his water-soaked lungs. And then the whole misunderstanding about a “witch” came up when I told him I’d seen a vision. His reaction then was similar to his reaction now when I said I shocked his heart. Of course, we both know a whole lot more now than we did. And he’s hugging me instead of stalking off into the night.
Chris drops his hold, picks his shirt up, and shakes the sand off. He puts it on and says, “Let’s go tell the others.”
He helps me stand. I’m feeling much better now. My energy levels are back to normal. We walk together on the dimly lit path to the main house. Jonas, and Sarangerel are sitting at an outdoor table.
As soon as Jonas sees us coming, he jumps up and rushes to Chris. At first, he seems confused. “What happened? I sensed your death.”
My first thought is: why didn’t you come try to help? What happened to “if you need anything, I’m here for you”?
Chris states, “I’m a Bearer now.”
Jonas’s mouth falls open and he utters, “But . . . I thought . . . ”
Behind him, Maetha and Crimson come out of the house. Maetha cuts Jonas off, saying, “We sensed your insertion, Chris. It looks as though everything is healed properly.” Her eyes are directed to his chest. “I sensed you struggled with healing yourself.”
Chris says, “Um, yeah.”
I step forward, my angry thoughts becoming words. “If you sensed Chris was struggling, why didn’t you come help me heal him?”
Maetha says, “Help you? Chris is the one who would have needed help healing himself, and you were there to assist him.”
“Chris was dead! I had to finish inserting his diamond for him and then start his heart so he could heal himself.”
Jonas runs his fingers through his hair and asks with a tone of disbelief, “You had to start his heart? How’d you do that?”
“I shocked him,” I nearly shout, while motioning with my hands as if I’m holding paddles.
Maetha looks at Crimson, then back to Chris and says, “Did you put your own diamond in your heart?”
“Yes.”
Crimson lowers one eyebrow and raises the other, then looks at Maetha. “Didn’t we give instructions for Calli to insert his diamond?”
“Yes.” Maetha looks at Chris. “Why on earth would you do that?”
Crimson turns to me. “Why didn’t you follow my instructions?” Her stern tone sets my hair on end as goosebumps spring up all over my body.
Jonas hurries over to Sarangerel and ushers her inside the house to give the four of us privacy. Thank you, Jonas.
I’m about to respond but Chris answers, “I didn’t want Calli to—”
Crimson’s voice lowers, like my father’s when he’s serious. “The instructions were for Calli to insert the diamond and then for you to heal yourself. I’m surprised you are alive at all!”
Chris takes a defensive stance. “Well, Calli shoved her own diamond in herself. I figured it would work for me, too.”
“Yes, but she already had a shard to prevent her from dying.”
“What about my dad? He shoved the diamond in his own chest and didn’t die.”
“He had an unusual inclination for harnessing the healing ability,” Crimson says. “Pure luck on his part. I thought he’d die.”
Maetha says to me, “Why didn’t you follow Crimson’s instructi
ons? Didn’t you look to his future?”
“Yes! And he was going to die. Which is what I was told would happen. Why would I think I was seeing something dangerously wrong?”
“The instruction also included removing his diamond and healing his heart if he wasn’t strong enough to do it himself.”
“You’re treating me like I’ve done something wrong. If it was so important for this to go a certain way, why didn’t you come help?”
“We didn’t know he was going to insert his diamond today.”
“Really? That’s your answer?” I ask.
Maetha puts her hand in front of her and pats the air. “Calm down, Calli.”
Anger boils in my stomach. “No, I won’t. Not yet. I’ve never been so afraid or scared to death in my life, but I thought ‘hey, these thousands-years-old wise women wouldn’t let me do this by myself if there was anything to be worried about.’ Boy, was I wrong!”
“We didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know?” My voice cracks.
“We didn’t know Chris was receiving his diamond today.”
“Well you certainly knew the moment his diamond no longer had an owner. You could have come at that point. Why didn’t you?”
Chris puts his arm around me. “We’ve had a little too much order-giving, consequences-be-damned for the night. We’re going to go take a break from you two and have some privacy.” Chris guides my shoulders to the opposite direction and I gladly let him lead me away from Maetha and Crimson.
As more distance is put between us, I relax a bit and my emotions calm down.
Chris says, “I wouldn’t have ever thought Jo Jo would stand by and let me die.”
I look over at his stony profile. “You haven’t called her by that name for a really long time.”
“In my mind there’s the all-knowing, all-controlling Crimson and there’s the sweet woman down the block who fed me lemonade and cookies and taught me how to ride a motorcycle. Tonight, she seemed more human, more like Jo Jo, more like someone who makes mistakes. At least, I want to think she made a mistake.”
We arrive at the bungalow, go inside and drop down on the couch.
Chris says, with a hitch in his voice, “I’m tired of being a puppet.”
The Diamond Bearers' Rising Page 24