I looked down at my hands, trying hard to avoid looking at Kit. If I did, I knew I would lose it, start crying again and lose focus on what I had to do to save her. I knew Erich couldn't do this alone after the scan told us how bad Kit was.
Davidek's green gloved hand covered mine, his copper eyes boring into the side of my head as he spoke, his voice trembling with fear even as he tried his best to stay calm and confident. "It's Kit, she will make it. Stubborn like a damn mule, remember?"
I nodded grimacing, clenching my hands to squeeze out the tremors. I swallowed down the bile, "Rebecca?" It came out as a hard whisper.
Davidek's hand fell from mine, "They got her out in time before the fourth explosion took out the west entrance." He paused, "Ivan is with her. Taking her to safety." He cleared his throat from the tears cresting around the edge of his voice. I bit my bottom lip as I wiped the tears from my cheeks. Both of us looking up as the scanner beeped, telling us the scan was complete.
Davidek and I rushed back to the table as Erich began speaking and removing the tattered remains of Kit's clothing, "She has burns over 85% of her body. Lower limbs to midline. Both legs are broken, right arm and internally." He glanced up at me, "Her aorta has tiny tears. She's bleeding out slowly with every pump. Her lungs are torn, collapsed. Spleen is split. Liver punctured." He paused when I shook my head that I didn't want to hear the rest.
I glanced at Davidek, "Wipe her down chest first." I gasped a sob back, "I'll start with the heart and move quickly down from there." I motioned to Erich, "You start at the spleen and work up, meet in the middle." I waved at the serum with a shaking hand, "That will keep her with us and be the third doctor."
Erich nodded, handing me a scalpel. I squeezed my fingers around it and went to work. Clenching my jaw on and off as I continued to fight from losing grip on the doctor Kit needed me to be.
____________________________
Ten minutes into the operation, Erich and I met at Kit's stomach. We had integrated her new heart, lungs, and spleen into the old ones laparoscopically, trying to avoid wasting time by opening Kit completely up. We watched them on the screens overhead us, begin to latch onto the old organs and start the regrowth process. I looked at her legs, noticing how the skin was slowly turning from the slick, angry red of fresh burns, to a softer drier red. The edges of normal healthy skin appearing. All that was left was to reset her broken bones to give the serum a better chance at reconnecting the bones. I lifted up the small sheet covering her lower half, to pull it further up when we heard a small cough followed by a soft moan.
Kit rolled her head, her eyes fluttering open as the serum was increasing her adrenaline production to jump start the rest of her body into healing. I smiled as Davidek whispered, "Look who finally decided to join us." He smiled at me, blinking back tears, stepping back to let me move to her.
I grabbed her hand, bending down to her as groggy hazel eyes met mine. Kit smiled as best as she could through the haze of the painkillers I had mixed into the serum to avoid another screaming fit of her bones and muscles repairing themselves like they had in Tennessee. I sniffled, "Hey you." I ran my hand over her face, pushing back her hair. Her skin was warm, pinking up with every beat of her new heart.
She leaned into my hand, "Hey back." She looked around the room, frowning slightly, "Don't tell me I did something stupid and jumped out another window."
I laughed lightly, wiping away my tears, "No, not a window, but something equally as stupid that I will forgive you for in the morning."
Kit smiled weakly, licking her dry lips, "Rebecca, I tried. She saved me."
She paused, swallowing down a dry throat, I shushed her softly. "It's not your fault, Kit." I pulled her hand up to my lips, kissing her fingers and holding them against my cheek, "You need to rest, Kit. We are going to move you in a little while and get you back to a warm, soft bed." I looked over at Erich, he was smiling at us as he let out a sigh of relief, looking up at me. "We should be clear in the next fifteen minutes to move her out."
I nodded with a half-smile, looking over at Davidek who was stitching up the small slits we made for the scopes, I could feel my heart ease up and my breaths come easier now that Kit was awake. "I want to move her out as soon as possible."
My words emphasized as the operating room suddenly trembled, a faint boom overhead. All of us looking up at the ceiling as dust swirled in the air.
"That's twelve." Davidek glanced at me, turning back to Kit, "I hate to stitch you up while you're awake."
Kit raised her eyebrows, "I can't feel anything from my lips down." Davey smirked, moving a little quicker with his last stitch to step away to help Erich clean up the discarded gauze and scalpels.
"Claire?"
I turned back to Kit, "Yes?"
She looked at me, her voice tinged with nerves as she spoke, holding my eyes with her own, "Marry me."
The words hit my ears immediately, but it took longer for my brain to register what Kit said. I bent closer to her, "What did you say?" I thought I had imagined it.
Kit sighed, squeezing my hand as best as she could in her weakened state, "You heard me." She breathed in slowly, speaking slower as she exhaled, "Marry me, Claire. Will you?" She looked up in my eyes.
I bit my lip, sniffling. "Did you just ask me to marry you, Kit?"
Kit rolled her head back to look at the ceiling, "Yes, I did." She then rolled her head back to me, her eyes glassy with tears, "I don't want to waste any more time, I know now is not the perfect time, but I will ask once more. Will you marry me Claire Avondale?" A single tear rolled down her face.
I blew out a nervous laugh, leaning over, kissing Kit as softly as could. Still earning a soft ow from her when I pressed too hard. I held my lips over hers, whispering, "Yes, I will. I will marry you Caitriona Neumann Witmer." I kissed her once more and stood up, looking over to see Erich and Davidek blushing and hiding.
Kit rolled her head back to look at the two men, "You owe me ten bucks, Agent Janes."
Davidek rolled his eyes, moving back over to the table, "Yeah, yeah, I’ll owe you. Plus you know I’m a confirmed lifetime bachelor." He shook his head, applying clean gauze over the small sets of stitches. I let go of Kit's hand, stepping back to give him more room. The waves of emotion washing over me, I motioned to the IV bags, "There's more in the cooler right?"
Erich nodded, "Yes, enough to carry Caitriona until we can get to another medical facility."
I pulled my gloves off, tossing them to the floor, "I will pack them up." I swallowed hard as I walked away. Thankful for the moment away from the emotions swallowing me whole.
Here I was in the middle of saving the woman I loved, explosions going on around me as I sat in a secured bunker like it was world war two. Kit proposed to me and suddenly in the midst of pure madness and hell, I felt the sensations everyone talks about when the love of their life asks for an eternity together. I was overwhelmed by it all and had to step away to compose myself. I couldn't let Kit see me crumble until we were all safe and could crumble together.
Inside the cooler I leaned my forehead against the cold glass. Sucking in ragged breaths to control the sobs wanting to breakthrough. Kit would be okay in a day. The new organs would be whole by the next afternoon and her burns and broken bones by the next day after that. I covered my mouth, letting some of the cries out. I couldn't hold back, hide behind the doctor any longer knowing Kit was going to make it. We would finally find our way to the life she promised me, the one I promised her.
"Claire!" Davidek's voice pushed through the thin glass, "Claire, She's crashing!"
I pushed off the glass, barreling back into the operating room to see Erich doing chest compressions on Kit while Davidek forced air in her mouth.
Erich yelled as he continued pumping, "Her heart, both of them stopped. The other organs are also failing. I think the old ones are dying before the new ones are stable."
I ran to the table, smashing buttons on the screen to bring up the small
cameras we set with the new organs to monitor them. Erich was right, the pink new heart was throbbing slowly with the old grey one. Dying together. "No, the serum." I turned to the IV bag, squeezing it to force more into Kit's body.
Another boom struck closer to us, rattling the whole room and table. Forcing all of us to grip on the operating table. I began to let panic take over as I looked at Erich, "Why is this happening?"
In between pants and compressions he forced out, "The symbiotic relationship you created. The new organs need at least six to twelve hours of feeding off the old one before they can survive on their own." He looked up at me over the edges of his glasses, "We were still working that out with Claire. It only worked because she was still alive." He paused, "Kit is dying too fast for us to stop it."
I shook my head, my brow furrowing in anger and disbelief. I looked down at Kit's pale lifeless face, moving with the force of Erich's compressions. "She can't die. She is too strong, too stubborn." I bent closer to Kit, yelling at her, "You will not die, you cannot die on me Caitriona!" Praying she would hear me as another boom, closer than the last rattled harder. Davidek mumbling, "Fourteen."
The fifteenth boom rocked the entire room, jostling Davidek to the point he almost dropped the ambulatory bag in his hands. "Claire we have to go." He looked up at Erich, looking at the clock.
I knew what they were silently communicating, "She's not dying, there has to be something else we can do." I scrambled to the surgical trays, tossing scalpels and needles to the floor, "I can go back in, repair the tears in her heart."
The sixteenth boom shook tiles off the wall and threw a handful of the lights from the ceiling, smashing into the floor with a sharp shattering sound. Erich's hand fell to my shoulder, "It's been five minutes. There's no way we can bring her back, her heart and her lungs are too tired, too broken." Erich's voice cracked, struggling to find the words to convince me to give up.
I spun on him, screaming in his face, "NO! I will not let her die!" I went to shove him out of my way when he grabbed my arms, Davidek rushing to my other side as the eighteenth boom shattered the cooler doors. He grabbed me before I lunged at Erich.
I glanced at Kit, her skin turning grey as the truth of what Erich said, settled in. Kit was dying and I was powerless to stop it. I had failed to find perfection in my own research. Enough perfection to save her. I shook my head, shoving Davidek back, running to the table. Climbing up on the edge, I began harder compressions on Kit's chest. Crying uncontrollably with every hard push down on her heart. Babbling through the tears and sobs, asking her heart to just give me one more beat, one more push of blood through her veins, one more breath through her lungs. "Please, god, please I can't lose her."
The nineteenth explosion threw me off of Kit and to the floor. The tiled walls of the crumbling room cascading in a strange wave of debris. I threw myself to my feet, only to be stopped by Davidek. He lifted me up, linking my arm and legs together in a fireman carry, he screamed at me, "We have to go, and go now!"
I looked up at Kit, laying on the table as Erich rushed to cover her with a sheet, pick her up, and follow after us. Her head bouncing limply against his chest as ran towards the exit tunnel. I pounded on Davidek's back, screaming to put me down and let me go back to saving Kit. I screamed at Erich to bring Kit closer to me.
Davidek ran through the back entrance next to the cooler, he held on me tightly even as I continued to smash my fists into his back, arms, and neck. Anything to get him to drop me. The entire time, my eyes locked on Erich carrying Kit. Her arms swinging limply with every step he took. I screamed and screamed until my voice cracked, my tears consumed my eyes to the point I couldn't see at all.
The twentieth explosion struck right as Erich stepped into the tunnel. My eyes slammed shut when the dust and heat rolled over Davidek and I. When I opened them, Erich was gone. Replaced by large pieces of concrete sealing off the tunnel from the edge of the operating room, flames licking at the open edges of the small gaps where the concrete pieces didn't quite fit.
Everything muted as I screamed and clawed at Davidek’s back, doing anything I could to free myself and run back.
Davidek ran as I screamed bloody murder and clawed his back till I drew blood. He ran until the cold, fresh air took my breath away. I looked up into the dusky sky, screaming at the heavens with raw, hoarse cries.
Davidek finally set me down as he fell to his knees. We were on the opposite side of the Centre, out in a grassy hillside that rolled down to a small stream and a series of empty cottages reserved for the Centre staff family. I went to run back to the tunnel, he grabbed my arm and pulled me down to the ground where he sat on his knees, gasping for air. As I met his copper eyes, the tears rolling uncontrollably down my oldest friends face, I broke.
The truth was in his eyes, a truth I wanted to deny but couldn't. I collapsed into his chest. Crying through dry eyes, punching him in the chest as I screamed incoherently. Giving in when my body fell into the adrenaline dump, curling fists in his shirt I pressed my face hard into Davidek. Crying, sobbing in sharp, painful gasps. The cold winter air, biting at my wet cheeks. I tore at his shirt, shaking him, digging my fingers in his arms. Anything I could to wake up from this nightmare.
This wasn't real, it couldn't be. I didn't watch Kit die in front of me then her body swallowed up in the broken remnants of the building I built to heal others. It was all a morbid irony, one I wouldn't accept along with the truth sitting in front of me. The smoke billowing out of the tunnel and dissipating into the wind as if nothing ever happened.
Davidek said nothing, only wrapping me up in his arms and holding me tightly as my heart shattered. Dying with every strangled beat. I lost Kit in the blink of an eye and the pain consumed me, and I allowed it. Holding onto Davidek as he silently cried with me.
My heart dying as it sunk in, with every painful breath, the only person it ever really truly beat for. Died in that tunnel with Erich.
Chapter 31
– One Week Later -
"Claire? The plane is ready."
I bent my head down, away from the window I had been staring out of for the last hour. The Swiss Alps being my only and silent companion while I stood in the front room of the Ivan's cottage. "I'll be down in a minute, Davidek. Thank you." My voice was still harsh, raw after a week of crying and breaking down into emotional outbursts.
I turned back to the window, my eyes falling to the far left of the view. The gentle rolling snow covered hills blocking the fragments of the Criterion Centre. The billowing tendrils of black smoke curling up from destroyed building had dissipated with yesterday’s new snow. I clenched my jaw, the still fresh memories flashing back and sticking a thousand little knives into my heart and stomach.
I moved away from the window, zipping up the soft grey sweatshirt with the fantastic four logo on the chest Ivan gave me. I moved slowly to the closet to pick up the small black duffel bag containing the few items that survived everything. A handful of Ivan's borrowed clothing, some research files and a few things that would carry me until we arrived at the new house.
Picking up a small notebook, I dropped it in the bag. My eyes falling to the tiny sliver of a purple sleeve sneaking its way out from under comic book and university t-shirts. A familiar, well-worn purple sleeve. The tears came fast, forcing me to shove the notebook into the bag and zip it up so hard, I almost tore the zipper off. I grabbed the bag, moving it to sit next to the door while I went to shove my boots on.
I sat on the edge of the bed, slowly pulling on the worn brown boots. Closing my eyes when the tear drops hit the faded fabric of the jeans.
I had been numb for days, letting shock sink its wicked teeth into me. I wanted to stop feeling everything. The physical pain of being thrown around, the emotional pain of what I had survived and others hadn't. I remembered very little after leaving the tunnel. Never hearing the rescue team come for Davidek and I, directing us to Ivan's cottage after I refused to go to the hospital to be checked out. Onl
y softly demanding that I be taken to Rebecca so I could make sure she was taken home properly. Then angrily demanding that the rescue team scour every inch of the burnt out shell that was the remains of the Centre until they found Kit and Erich.
Davidek had to hold me up as I said my goodbye to Rebecca in the small morgue of the local hospital. She looked peaceful, sitting on the cold steel table, a pale blue sheet covering her. I cried what little tears I had left in my body, running my hand over her hair and whispering, "I'm sorry." over and over, falling apart with every breath, until Davidek gently moved me away and back to the car to sit with Ivan while he made the arrangements for Rebecca to be sent home to be buried with her parents in New England.
I tied my boots before standing up to reach for the thick black leather jacket one of the local police officers gave me after spotting me standing outside for hours in the cold snow, the day after everything. Standing on the edge of the largest crime scene they had to date. Watching the rescue teams pick apart the rubble, looking for the five missing staff members of the Centre. I watched cadaver dogs sniff and dig, hoping that somewhere, anywhere, they would find her.
But they never found anything.
Davidek took on the task of informing me last night the cadaver dogs had only found trace DNA that ended up being Kit's and Erich's. I had overheard him talking to the bomb specialists and K9 officers standing in the doorway of Ivan's spare bedroom. The two telling Davidek that it was possible they were in the direct detonation zone of the last explosion, leaving only the trace amounts of DNA found.
I collapsed to my knees on the old wooden floors, the small pieces of my heart that were left. the pieces still holding onto hope, shattered to almost nothing. I cried through red, dry eyes. Curling up in a tight ball, squeezing my ribs until I swore I could feel them crack under the pressure. Davidek once again sat with me on the floor, holding me and fighting his own tears, saying nothing. I woke up the next morning in my bed with him still awake, staring out the window aimlessly. He was as lost as I was. Neither of us knowing how to mourn or grieve over the loss.
Redemptio Animae Page 85