by Glenn Cooper
“This is my son. He’s got the disease.”
He was a handsome kid, tall and strong, with the same dark features as his mother.
“The girls have it too,” Jamie said.
“I know.”
Dylan stared at the girls. Kyra was too consumed by pain and confusion to take much notice of him but Emma would not take her eyes off him, until she saw the golden retriever.
“Dog!” she exclaimed, letting go of Kyra’s hand and throwing herself onto the rug.
“His name is Arthur. He is my dog,” Dylan said with the halting cadence of someone who was still new to language.
“I love Arthur,” Emma announced before Arthur began licking her face.
Connie caught Jamie’s look of concern and said, “You don’t have to worry excessively. I’ve been working on his self-control.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. He only unzips to take a piss.”
“Have you had any teenage girls around?”
She shook her head. “No, I have not. Like I said, you don’t have to worry—excessively.”
They heard Morningside loudly groan as the men lifted her onto the dining room table.
“You want a beer?” Connie asked.
“You’re kidding, right?” Jamie answered, pointing toward the next room.
“I’m not. Your part doesn’t require you to be a hundred percent.”
He took a water instead, but she had not been wrong. His part was to sit on a chair to take the weight off his ankle and squeeze the respirator bag after Connie knocked Morningside out with a shot of midazolam and slid a breathing tube down her throat. Connie possessed a large plastic chest with enough instruments and drugs to stock a small operating room. After she laid out an array of sterilized hardware and bathed Morningside’s distended abdomen with iodine, she made an incision and got down to work.
“You don’t need an extra pair of hands?” Jamie asked.
“When I was in the army, the OR nurses used to say that I had three of them. I can manage.”
She was right. Her hands were a blur as she got the oozing spleen exposed and clamped off, all the while operating a foot pump to suction the blood that seeped into the abdomen. When she removed the clamped spleen, she shouted for Pete to bring a pan from the kitchen and told him to give it to Arthur out on the porch.
“I don’t want blood on my rugs,” she said.
“She going to make it?” Dyk asked.
“She could use a transfusion, but absent that, she’s still got a shot.”
“Ever thought you’d be saving the president?” her neighbor asked.
“No, I did not.”
Dyk called for Arthur to come outside.
Connie asked, “How’re you holding up, Jamie?”
“I’m good.”
“You are not good. If you wince any harder your face is going to crack. I’ll close her belly up and we’ll get you some booze, a handful of Vicodins, then see to your ankle.”
“Do Kyra’s arm first.”
“Kyra’s a pretty name. You choose it or was that your wife’s handiwork?”
“Neither. She’s not mine. Well, I guess she is now. Her mother—”
“I get the picture. How about the other one?”
“Emma’s mine. Her mother’s been gone since she was young.”
“Same with me and Dylan. His father, I mean.”
She went quiet until she finished suturing the abdominal layers and the skin. She dressed the wound and said, “Stop bagging. Let’s see if she breathes on her own.”
He stopped squeezing and Morningside’s chest began to rise and fall.
“Another miracle of modern science,” Connie said, snapping off her gloves and removing her mask.
Jamie grunted in pain. “I’d say that was a hundred percent skill, zero percent miracle.”
She winked at him. “You know, I think you’re about right.”
50
Next morning, there was a thick layer of frost on the grass.
That was the second thing Jamie noticed from his bedroom window. The first was the lake. Somehow, in the darkness, he had missed it, but now, its tranquility helped with his black thoughts.
The girls were spooning on the other twin bed. Kyra’s arm was in a plaster cast. Connie had seen the healing wound on her other arm and had told Jamie that it seemed his surgical extraction of the glass fragment had been a success. His lower leg was casted too and he clomped across the bare floorboards as quietly as he could. The room was cold. He threw his blanket over the girls for extra warmth before venturing into the hall. The smell of breakfast drew him downstairs.
Connie was cooking over a propane stove. It was a bit warmer downstairs but she was still wearing a parka. The dog was staring at the frying pan.
“There’s a lake,” he said by way of greeting.
“Lake Junaluska,” she said. “Pretty, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Having much pain?”
“Yes, much pain,” he said.
He heard her laugh for the first time. It was throaty.
“How is she?” he asked, gesturing toward the living room where Morningside lay on the sofa.
“She made it through the night. No fever, wound looks good, blood pressure’s okay. I’ll keep her IV going till she can drink. She might just live.”
“That’s good. If you need a neuro consult, my rates are competitive.”
Another laugh. “I’ve got bacon and powdered eggs, coffee, and more Vicodin.”
“All four sound good.”
“Have a seat. Your gals sleeping?”
“They are.”
“My guy is too. I think he’s smitten by your Emma.”
“How do you know?”
She dished some food onto his plate. “When I tucked him in, he said, ‘I like her.’”
“That’s definitive.”
“Remember what I said about self-control? Forget it. We’re going to have to keep an eye on things or she’s going to wind up in the family way.”
It was his turn to laugh. “I haven’t heard that expression in a long time.”
“We’re in the mountains of North Carolina. Folks talk like that up here.”
“I don’t want her to get pregnant,” he said. “Things are complicated enough.”
“Well, we’re going to have to exercise a prevent defense as long as you’re here.”
“It shouldn’t be long,” Jamie said. “I need to get to Maryland. I don’t suppose there’s a spare car I could take?”
“We’ll sort something out,” she said, “but I don’t think you’re going to be driving with that big-old cast of mine.”
“How long till it comes off?”
“Six weeks ideally, but in two, I can fashion a smaller one that fits the gas pedal.”
He wolfed food in silence.
“So, I’ve been polite,” she finally said.
“Yes, you have,” he agreed.
“You need to tell me what the hell is going on. I’ve got a neurologist in my kitchen, his girls up in my spare room, a woman who you say is the brand-new President of the United States in my living room, and a chopper up on the ridge with two dead pilots, two dead Secret Service guys, and one dead former president. What were you doing on board? And why did it crash? Marine One doesn’t just drop out of the sky.”
She kept the coffee coming as he talked. There was no good way to tell the story except from the beginning, and there was something therapeutic about giving her a lot of the details. He confessed his involvement in the genesis of the disaster and told her about his ideas for a cure. He prefaced his road-trip survival story by saying that it was probably no more dramatic than that of countless others. As he talked, she mainly looked out the window.
But when he was done, she snorted and said, “If we hadn’t scooped you out of Marine Fucking One last night, and you had shown up on my doorstep with this story, I’d have said you were certifiably insane.�
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She rose in response to the thin call from the living room and kept avoiding eye contact as she told Jamie to stay put while she checked on Morningside.
She came back and, still avoiding his gaze, said mechanically, “She’s okay. I gave her some more morphine. I called her Madame President.”
“What’d she say?”
“She said, ‘Am I?’ To which I answered, afraid so.”
“Hey, is something wrong?” Jamie asked.
“I just told you she was doing all right.”
“I mean between us. You seem upset.”
A car crunched up the gravel drive. Connie looked out the window and went to the door without answering him. Pete Dyk got out along with Dennis Cole and Cole’s thirteen-year-old son, Kevin. Connie let them in and put up another pot of coffee.
“All right, then?” Dyk asked Jamie.
“Thanks to Connie, I am.”
“She’s the best damned surgeon in the western part of the state.”
“That all?” Connie said.
Dyk smiled. “Okay, the whole state.”
Connie pushed harder. “That all?”
“Okay, the whole country. What do I know, anyway?”
“Whole country will do fine,” she said.
“How’s the lady doing in there?” Cole asked.
“I’m cautiously optimistic,” Connie replied.
“Good to hear,” Cole said. “We were thinking about going up to the wreck and burying the people before the ground gets too hard.”
“Christian of you,” Connie said.
“We’re going to scavenge,” Cole’s son said. “There’s probably all sorts of cool shit in there. You know, pens and coasters with the president’s seal.”
“It’ll be tough to post stuff on eBay without the Internet,” Dyk said.
“I want to keep what I find!” the boy said.
“There’s at least two firearms inside,” Jamie said.
Connie added, “One of the Secret Service men shot the other, so I’m told.”
Jamie had no choice but to repeat parts of the story while the men had their coffee.
On their way out to the wreck, Jamie asked them to have a look for his bags of personal items.
When they were alone, Jamie said, “You never answered my question. Are you pissed about something?”
She finally looked him in the eyes. “You’re damned straight I am! You’re partway responsible for the shit we’re in, don’t you see that?”
“I told you. I had no idea the principal investigator violated safety protocols.”
“It’s more fundamental than that. You had no business monkeying around with viruses and genes the way you did. You fucked with Mother Nature and she fucked us all back.”
He thought about countering with all the good that “monkeying around” with biology and genetics had brought to the world, but he decided to keep quiet. Even if it was Steadman who should rightly shoulder the blame, every time he looked at Emma, he felt guilty as hell. With Connie’s dark eyes shooting lasers, he hobbled up the stairs.
*
He woke from a nap to the sounds of Emma and Kyra talking in bed. Kyra was saying that her arm hurt and Emma was hungry. He checked his watch in amazement. He had been asleep for another few hours. He gave Kyra one of the pain pills, helped her dress and brush her teeth, then made his walking-wounded descent with them.
Dylan was waiting in the hall. His mother had forbade him from going upstairs.
“Hello, Emma!” he practically screamed.
Emma beamed. “Hello, Dylan!”
“Do you want to eat food?” he asked.
“I want lots of food,” she said.
“I don’t want food.” Kyra frowned. “My arm hurts.”
Connie was in the kitchen with her neighbors making lunch, and Kevin was sitting on the braided rug, sorting through his presidential loot.
“Come on, kids,” she said. “Sit down.”
They did and even Kyra, who had sworn off food, ate heartily.
“How’d you manage?” Jamie asked the men.
“Dug three holes,” Dyk said. “Not as deep as we’d have liked, but deep enough. Put the pilots in one, the president and the good Secret Service man in another, and the asshole who caused the crash, alone in another.”
Cole said, “Left a pile of stones on the president’s in case someone wants to move him to Arlington one of these days. And we got the pistols. Pete took one; we gave Connie the other. Nice ones, as you’d expect, given the owners.”
“I got guns up the yin-yang,” Dyk said. “Don’t need more.” He went into the mudroom off the kitchen. “Found your bags. One with clothes was opened up. Might have lost some things. The backpack of books was fine. Want them?”
Jamie put the duffel on his lap and immediately spotted the rolled-up watercolor.
“What’s that?” Kevin asked.
“It’s a picture of someone I know.”
Kevin asked if he could see it.
“Leave him be,” Connie said.
Jamie said it was okay and unrolled it.
“She’s pretty,” Kevin said.
“Who is she?” Cole asked.
“A good friend. She didn’t make it.”
Connie turned away and said she had to check Morningside’s dressing.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Cole said. “Seems like we’ve all lost people, and this thing’s only getting started from what I can see.”
“How long have you guys known Connie?” he asked.
“Oh years,” Dyk said. “Ever since she moved to the lake. Dylan here was just little.”
Dylan sparked to his name. “I was little,” he said.
“Yes, you were,” Dyk said, raising his hand to table height. “About this high.”
Dylan giggled, “I was little,” and Emma and Kyra joined in.
“They’re like little kids,” Cole said. “Not a care in the world, which isn’t a bad thing, I guess.”
Dyk got up, took a pipe from his pocket, and said he was going outside for a smoke.
Cole whispered, “He’s had it rough. His wife drowned in the lake trying to save their daughter. The girl got the disease early on, wandered off their dock, and floated off.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Jamie said. “What about you?”
“Kevin and I have done better than most. Both of us healthy. His mom left me for another guy when he was eleven months old, if you can believe it. We’ve done fine. I had my own heating-cooling business. Now my idea of heating is chopping wood.”
“And Connie? Has she lost anyone?”
“She’d argue that she’s lost part of Dylan—you’d know better what she means by that—but her husband died about ten years ago during his second tour in Afghanistan. Roadside IED. They were planning on swapping. He’d come back to take care of Dylan and she’d do her second tour over there as a surgeon, but that never happened. She got a job at the Mission Hospital in Asheville—it’s only a half-hour from here—and the rest is history. Come on, Kevin, gather your things. Let’s get home.”
“I want to play with Kevin,” Dylan suddenly said.
“They’re best buds,” Cole said. “At least they were till your Emma arrived.”
“I can’t play,” Kevin said. “Gotta go.”
“I can play,” Emma said.
“Let’s go outside,” Dylan said, running for his jacket.
“I want to go too, Daddy,” she said.
He told her to put her coat on and stay away from the water.
“The water is bad,” Dylan said, parroting what his mother had taught him.
Kyra began to cry. “I can’t play. My arm hurts. My other arm hurt. Now this arm hurts.”
Jamie told her she could go outside and watch and that was good enough for her.
“Where’d everybody go?” Connie said to the almost empty kitchen.
“Places to go, people to see,” Jamie said.
She didn’t
find it funny and looked outside to get a bead on Dylan.
Jamie felt a need to clear the air. “Look, Connie. I can see how my presence is causing you grief, and I can accept that. If I can get a car, and if you can shave down my cast a little, I’ll be able to start the drive in a day or two—the earlier the better.”
She filled the kettle from a jug of lake water and lit the stove.
“You’re not driving all the way to Maryland on a freshly broken ankle. You’ll be a sitting duck for predators along the way, busted up the way you are. I’m sorry if I’m angry. I’m not an angry person usually, but if you could have seen who Dylan was before he got sick. He was the smartest kid—a real star. And now look at him. He’s regressed. He’s like a little kid.”
“A nice kid,” Jamie said.
“So’s your daughter. She’s sweet.”
“No one would have accused Emma of being sweet a couple of months ago,” he said. “She was kind of a horror show of insolence and bitchiness—at least to me.”
She sat down heavily. “If I’m being honest, Dylan’s confidence was skidding into arrogance. He was developing an edge to him. And he was starting to booze it up with his friends on the weekends. His father was a drinker, so that had me worried.”
Jamie hesitated. Connie was a stranger, but he decided to open up to her. “I’m going to say something, and I expect to be struck down by lightning for saying it, but since she got sick, I like Emma more than I’ve liked her in years.”
The kettle whistled and she let out a throaty laugh. “Better watch yourself,” she said. “There’s a storm coming. We get bad lightning around here.”
51
The broken bodies began to heal.
After nearly two weeks at Connie’s lake house, Jamie was mostly pain-free and he was getting ready for a smaller, lighter cast. Kyra had stopped moaning about her arm, and she now devoted her full attention to petulant demonstrations of jealousy over Emma and Dylan’s mutual infatuation. And Gloria Morningside was eating normally and taking brief walks on Connie’s arm in the chilly mountain air.
Well before the epidemic, Connie had been a prepper. Folks in this part of the state had a strong self-sufficiency streak, and egged on by her neighbors Cole and Dyk, she had stockpiled food and firewood in case any manner of disaster struck. Her cellar was chock-full of provisions, and she was able to treat her guests to generous meals. She had a small generator, but she used it sparingly to power a couple of lamps at night.