by Donna Milner
Time can’t possibly go any slower than it does for a healthy person waiting in a hospital, she thinks. In the hushed environment, every sound seems amplified, the moans or whispers from the other cubicles, the hum of machines, the squeak of nurses’ rubber-soled shoes on linoleum, the minutes ticking by on the huge overhead clock, which she can see through the opening in the curtain.
And then just as she is contemplating the relative peacefulness of this ‘live’ Emergency Room compared to that of the constant bedlam of television dramas, a sudden eruption of pandemonium bursts through the sliding glass door. Julie stiffens at the frantic sounds of running feet, and the panicked voices of people rushing into the cubical on the other side of the curtain behind her. Something bumps up against Julie’s chair and she quickly slides it away. She doesn’t want to eavesdrop, yet there is no way to avoid hearing the heart-wrenching emergency—a child not breathing, French fries blocking her airway—playing out a few feet from where she sits.
How old is she?
Two years, two years... please...
How long has it been since she stopped breathing.
I don’t know, I don’t know. I just looked down and she was blue.
Julie can feel the panic of the unseen mother as the story unfolds, the practised calm in the voices of the doctors and nurses firing questions as they work to clear the child’s airway. How many did she eat? How long ago?
Then the father’s accusing words, She’s just a baby. How could you have fed her fries?
I didn’t! I didn’t. They were mine, I just turned around, I just... the bag, she had the bag!
It seems an eternity of confusion before Julie hears a weak cry. Oh god, oh thank god, her thoughts echo the mother’s weeping words.
Only as the air escapes from her own lungs, does Julie realize that she has been holding her breath. Beside her Ian stirs, and she turns to find the same relief reflected in his eyes. Some things don’t have to be said out loud. A broken leg is nothing.
Exhausted, Julie drops the motel key and the Subway sandwich onto the night table, and then sinks down onto the edge of the bed. This morning seems so long ago.
After Ian’s surgery this afternoon, she’d dealt with the police, the auto wreckers, and started the insurance claim, before it occurred to her that she hadn’t eaten today. She doesn’t even feel like it now, but knows she has to get something into her stomach. All she really wants to do is crawl into the motel bed and sleep. But there are still things to be taken care of.
Unwrapping the sandwich, she forces herself to take a bite then sets it back on the nightstand. While she chews she takes out her wallet and searches until she finds the piece of paper she is looking for.
Picking up the bedside phone she keys in the number. She is about to give up on the seventh ring. “Yeah?” a muffled voice demands.
“Terri? It’s Julie O’Dale.”
“Julie!” Terri swallows something, and then continues.” Sorry to sound so short, but so many of the phone calls I get these days at supper time are telemarketers.”
“Oh, are you eating? I can call back.”
“No! No, of course not. I heard about your accident. How are you, Gal?”
“My God! You’ve heard already?”
“The ‘Bush Telegraph,’” Terri chuckles. “Used to take a few days for gossip to make the rounds out here, but now with the Internet, it’s hours. Heard Ian broke his leg. How’s he doing?”
“Good, he’s good. Thanks. He’ll be staying in the hospital overnight, but he’s okay. The Jeep’s a write-off, though. It looks like it could take a day or two to straighten things out here with the insurance, buy another vehicle.”
“I can just imagine.”
Julie hesitates. “That’s why I’m calling,” she continues. “Pup is out there alone. And well, I hate to admit it, but I have no idea how to get a hold of Virgil. I don’t even know if he has a telephone.”
“Oh that man,” Terri sighs with exasperation. “Yeah, he’s got a satellite phone all right, but he never turns the damn thing on. Anyway Girl, don’t worry. You’re covered. Soon’s I heard the news, I went over to your place to tell Virgil. He already knew though. Seems his cousin, Marilyn Johnny, was one of the gals from NaNeetza Valley who helped you out.”
Virgil’s cousin? Julie searches her fragmented memory for the faces of the women. But all she recalls of the silent drive into town is the back of three heads in the front of the van, each with a thick braid of raven hair hanging between squared shoulders. She hadn’t been oblivious to the fact that they were First Nations, but one of them was Levi’s mother? How could she have missed that?
The next day, when Julie arrives at the hospital to pick Ian up in the ‘loaner’ Jeep, which they will use until their new one arrives, the afternoon sky is a clear, crisp winter blue. Her breath forms white vapour puffs as she walks the short distance from the ‘patient pick up’ area to the front doors.
Up in his room on the second floor, Ian is waiting slumped and round-shouldered in a wheelchair, his leg encased in a cast from below his knee, down to his ankle. As she pushes him to the elevator, he is silent and morose, and, in Julie’s eyes, looking as if this broken leg has turned him into an old man. Perhaps it’s because, before they left, the doctor had advised them that Ian will be in a cast for at least two months, and that for the next while, he’ll need to come in once a week to check on how the bone is healing.
It will be five days before their new vehicle arrives, so there’s no reason for them not to return home today.
Downstairs in the hospital lobby, Julie pushes Ian’s wheelchair toward the entry doors. Without warning he locks the brakes, causing the chair and Julie to come to a sudden stop. “I can walk from here,” he says, pushing himself up.
Julie has learned that arguing with Ian when he is in such a determined state is useless, so she hands him his crutches. Once he is up and balanced between them he swings his lanky body with surprising agility, out the door and across the sidewalk, reaching the curb before Julie can catch up to him. When she does, she directs him to their waiting vehicle, unlocks the door and slides back the passenger seat as far as it will go. Ian shrugs her away as she tries to help him climb inside. But after he backs himself onto the seat, he allows her to lift his cast and gently guide it onto the foam squares she has placed on the floor.
“How’s that?” she asks.
“Fine,” Ian sighs. “Don’t fuss, Julie...”
The highway is bare, not a sign of ice or snow on the road, as they head west. Still, Julie drives cautiously, taking each corner with extra care, trying to smooth out the ride in order not to jar Ian’s leg. Half an hour from town, patches of snow appear in the fields and forests flanking the highway. As the road drops away on her left, she slows down even more, keeping an eye out for the spot where they went over the bank yesterday morning.
For miles it seems hopeless, everything looking so unfamiliar. Just when she believes she will never know exactly where their accident occurred, in the distance, a disturbance on the side of the highway appears. As they approach the churned-up shoulder—evidence of the struggle the tow truck had winching the Jeep up to the road—she slows to a crawl. She leans forward to look past Ian, who is also peering over the edge of the bank. Down below there is no sign of the debris, the boxes, tools, papers—no sign of Darla’s clothes—which had littered the slope yesterday. “I wonder who cleaned up all the stuff?” she muses, pulling back onto the highway.
There is no response from Ian. After fifteen minutes of taciturn silence, as though no time has passed since she spoke, he asks, “Why?”
“Why what?” She glances at Ian. How vulnerable he looks without his glasses, she thinks, returning her attention to the road.
“Was it intentional, Julie? Going over that bank...?”
“What?” she demands, her foot reaching for the brake. “What are you saying?” As the car slows down she turns to him.
Staring out the winds
hield Ian murmurs, “Why did we go off the highway?”
“There was something on the road,” she says, her voice rising at the implication of his words. “For God’s sake. I swerved to avoid an animal.”
“There was no animal.”
Pulling over to the side of the road she brings the car to a jerking stop, snaps it into park and turns to him. “Ian,” she says to his jaw-clenched profile. “Ian, look at me.”
When he doesn’t respond she reaches over and takes his chin in her hand, forcing him, like an errant child, to face her. “Listen to me,” she says. “I hit the brakes when I shouldn’t have. That’s all. I had absolutely no control; there was nothing I could do. We skidded on a patch of black ice.” She stops, her hand dropping away from his chin, as the full impact of her words hits her. Out on the highway an empty logging truck passes by, the Jeep rocking in its passing airstream.
Looking down at her hands resting in her lap, Julie says, “I’m sad that you believe I’m capable of that.”
“What am I to supposed to think? You never, never, go into town with me. All of a sudden you want to? You insist on driving?” He waits for a moment, and then in a low voice adds, “I heard you, Julie. I heard what you whispered as we went over the bank.”
Her head snaps back up. “What? You heard what?”
Ian shakes his head, but holds her gaze, the pain of the words he won’t repeat, obvious in his naked eyes. Had she really spoken them out loud? Had she truly given voice to the thought, to the strange relief she felt in that moment of inevitability? Resigned she starts the motor, leaving the unuttered words lying heavy between them.
49
At home, Ian’s sullenness becomes a third presence. Julie tiptoes around it during the days, shutting her bedroom door on it with relief each night. Nothing she does seems to please him. Her suggestion to make up the cot in his office, so he wouldn’t have to hobble up and down the stairs, is rejected. His favourite baked treats remain untouched. Whenever she brings him coffee in his office, he barely acknowledges her presence, and more often than not, she finds him slumped in his leather swivel chair staring outside.
This morning is no different. Setting down the steaming mug on his desk and picking up the cold one, she wonders how his eyes can take the relentless glare of sunlight reflecting from the frozen landscape. She has to squint just to look out at the lake, a solid sheet of ice now, shimmering beneath a brittle blue sky. A winter wind has swept the snow away from its surface, leaving behind an opaque tapestry of cracks and swirls.
“I’m going out to check the generator,” she says to the back of Ian’s head. When there is no response she leaves his office, shutting the door behind her.
Since returning from town the communication between them has been almost non-existent, their conversation in the car left unresolved. Yet it has never left Julie’s mind. Was there any truth in his implied accusation—does she have an unconscious death wish? Placing his mug in the sink, she shakes her head against the thought.
Outside, the crusted snow crunches with her every step as she walks over to the shop. The last few night’s temperatures have dropped to well below minus twenty Celsius, struggling to climb to ten below during daylight hours.
Against Ian’s objections she has taken over his chores. She feels a certain satisfaction in bringing in the wood and keeping the fires going, and looks forward to the physical activity. “There’s no need for a fire,” Ian grumbles every time she bundles up to face the bone-numbing cold, “just let the propane kick in.” But Julie enjoys the comforting warmth of the ever-burning central fireplace. Not to mention the excuse to get outside. Hiking is out of the question these days, with Ian wanting to know her every movement if she leaves the house.
After checking the solar energy levels and finding no need to turn on the generator, she goes back inside and retrieves her camera from the mudroom. Trudging across the front yard down to the lake she feels Ian’s eyes on her back. Resisting the temptation to turn around and look up at his office, she stops at the shoreline and stands in the hushed silence listening for the ice to ‘sing,’ a phenomenon new to her.
She’d heard the strange, otherworldly sounds, for the first time the day after she brought Ian home from town, when she’d gone down to check the thickness of the ice. Stepping out onto the dark surface and finding it cement hard, she had taken a few cautious steps when she heard an eerie moaning beneath her boots. Retreating quickly to solid ground she had listened in wonder to the music-like tones reverberating from somewhere under the frozen surface.
Whenever she is outside now—or at night through the crack in her window—she finds herself listening for the random percussion-like sounds emanating like music from beneath the ice.
She does so now as she removes her mittens and shoves them into her jacket pocket, but all she hears is the screeching whine of a motor trying to turn over. The stubborn engine catches and the hum of an idling vehicle comes from the direction of Virgil’s place.
Julie raises her camera and focuses on the horizon at the end of the lake where trees cut into a sky so blue it looks painted on. She adjusts against the light of the whitened landscape, wondering if it is too bright, but when she lowers the camera and checks the digital image, she is pleased with the results. Her fingertips burning, she takes a few more shots then hurriedly pulls her mittens back on. As she heads back to the house the distant engine hum turns into the sound of a vehicle in motion. She looks over her shoulder to see a strange pickup truck emerge from the north road. It turns into the ranch yard and pulls up a few feet from her.
The driver’s window rolls down, and Terri Champion hollers above the engine noise, “Hello, on this glorious Chilcotin day!”
“Hello to you, too,” Julie says walking over to the truck. “What? No snowmobile?”
“Heck, you need a lot more snow than this piddley few inches for that. But don’t worry, it’ll come.” She turns the motor off and rests her elbow on the window. “Just thought I’d pop by to check up on you two, see how you’re making out.”
“We’re good,” Julie assures her. “Come on in for coffee.”
“I just had some at Virgil’s. One cup of his is enough to do a soul for a week.” Her barking laugh is punctuated by a low moaning sound coming from the lake.
“Did you hear that?” Julie asks.
“Just another voice of old Mother Nature.” Terri takes off her sunglasses and grins. “Like your ‘talking trees.’”
“I wish I’d never told you that,” Julie laughs. “Really though, what causes those sounds?”
“It’s just the ice expanding and contracting. The stress cracks can cause quite a chatter. The bigger the lake, the louder the chatter.”
“Sometimes it sounds almost like music.”
“Yeah, but music ya gotta learn to listen to. It changes with the thickness of the ice. Right now it’s safe walking anywhere down at this end of the lake, or ice skating, if you’ve a mind to. Another week of this sub-zero weather, and you’ll be able to drive a Mack truck across her. Heck, I could land my ski-plane here, I’ve done it before. Just gotta steer clear of the north end. Too many underwater springs down there.”
“Springs?”
“This lake isn’t called Spring Bottom for nothing, Gal. Even in the coldest part of winter you can’t trust the ice at the other end of the lake.” She studies Julie’s face for a moment, then adds, “But I’m sure Virgil’s told you that.”
Sensing something more behind Terri’s words, Julie tells her that Virgil is leaving.
Terri nods slowly. “Yeah. I kinda figured that.”
“Did he say something?”
“No. You know Virgil. He doesn’t waste any words, either with that contraption of his, or on paper. No. It’s all the boxes stacked in a corner. Either he’s giving a whole lot of stuff away, or he’s moving. So what’s up?”
Julie raises her hands to her mouth and blows warm air into her mittens, then says, “Why don’t you
come up to the house, and I’ll make you tea.” She smiles, and adds, “In a china teacup.”
Sitting at the kitchen table, keeping one eye on Ian in his office and her voice low, Julie tells Terri the story, starting with the first time she met Virgil in the garden, and ending with the last time she saw him at his cabin.
“I had no idea until then,” she concludes, “that his cousin is Levi Johnny’s mother.” Then taking in Terri’s unsurprised expression, she asks, “You knew?”
“I doubt if anyone in the Chilcotin doesn’t know that,” Terri says gently. “I just assumed you did, too.”
“No, I didn’t. Don’t you think it’s something he should have told us?”
Terri lowers the delicate teacup. “All I know is that Virgil Blue is not a deceptive man. He’s about nothing if he ain’t about truth. I’m guessing that he believed you knew.”
After Terri leaves, Julie marches across the living room to Ian’s office. He remains hunched over his desk, his back to her when she throws the door open.
“Were you aware that Virgil and Levi Johnny are related?” she demands.
The office chair slowly rolls away from the desk. Ian lifts his casted leg off the stool it’s resting on, and swinging it to the side, he swivels the chair around to face her. He leans back against the headrest, pushing his new eyeglasses onto his forehead. Squeezing his eyes shut, he pinches his nose, and then replaces his glasses. Meeting Julie’s gaze, he says quietly, “Yes.”
“How long have you known?”
Ian shifts uncomfortably in his chair.
“How long?” Julie repeats.
“Since August, since the day you met him in the garden. He thought we knew.”
“He thought we knew?” Confused, a flood of questions rushing through her mind, Julie shakes her head in an attempt to clear it. Struggling to keep her voice from rising she asks, “It didn’t bother you?”
“Yes, of course it bothered me, at first. I only found out when I went over to his cabin that day, after you two met—after he realized we didn’t know. He offered to leave, if you remember. But by then, well by then, I knew him, I relied on him. I was relieved when you said he could stay—I decided that it shouldn’t make any difference. Being related to someone isn’t a crime, Julie. He isn’t responsible for...” he swallows, and looks away, speaking into the distance. “He isn’t responsible for our ‘troubles.’”