“It’s good to see you, Mike.”
Confusion rested across Michael’s face as though Choch had taken back the ‘JJ’ plant from his mind.
“Yeah, you, too.” The three words were said deliberately.
Cole and Dr. Captain ended up in Dr. Captain’s makeshift “office,” which Cole quickly recognized as Alex’s bedroom. Pieces of furniture were missing, like Alex’s bed, her dresser. But posters of her favourite bands and favourite movies remained, along with an old record player with a collection of records, some matching the posters. Arctic Monkeys. Bob Dylan. Simon & Garfunkel. Temple of the Dog. Traveling Wilburys. Books that she’d read. Nine Stories. In Our Time. Tom’s Midnight Garden. Olive Kitteridge. These things were the stuff of Alex, the stuff that Dr. Captain wouldn’t, couldn’t, remove.
It was at once the coolest, and saddest, doctor’s office Cole had ever been in. A far cry from the office he had visited regularly in the city: his therapist’s. Her office had cream walls, a big corner desk unit, small circular table in the middle, two chairs on either side of the table, and an air conditioner that always drowned out her voice. Especially when he didn’t want to hear what she had to say. Dr. Captain had replaced the bed and dresser with a poker table and two chairs. She sat on one, Cole sat on the other.
“So, JJ,” she said, “what can I do for you?”
Cole had the files under his hoodie, but didn’t want to take them out yet. He’d left the clinic to see her, and had pictured himself handing them over to her, but hadn’t considered until now the whole telling-Dr.-Captain-you’re-not-dead thing. So he didn’t respond.
“I know my son never went to school with a Justin, and I don’t know why he’s convinced of it, unless…”
Cole waited for her to continue.
“If you’re nervous about coming here, if it’s something serious my son’s helping you out with, it’s confidential,” she said. “I know this isn’t an actual hospital, but I’m still a doctor. It’s private.”
“Doctor-patient confidentiality.” Cole was still lowering his voice to disguise it. Sounded like he had a cold. Appropriate.
“That’s right,” she said. “So if it’s, you know, sex-related, if it’s that you’re feeling depressed, if it’s that you hurt your thumb in shop class, it’s okay. You don’t have to hide your face here, alright?”
“Alright.” Cole wanted her to see Pam’s file, to tell him if she was going to be okay or how urgently Pam and the others needed to be out of there, not transferred to wherever Mihko planned to take her. It couldn’t be anywhere good. “Just, don’t scream.” He pulled down his neck warmer slowly, as though this might lessen the shock.
She gasped and almost fell off her chair when she saw his face. She cupped her mouth and shook her head back and forth repeatedly.
“Hi, Dr. Captain.”
“Cole.” She was barely audible. A whisper of a whisper. She was crying, too. She took her hand away from her mouth. “How…”
“Long story?” He grimaced. While he knew in coming here he’d have to show her that he was alive, he hadn’t gotten to the part where he told her how he was alive. He was drawing a blank.
After uttering those two very unconfident words to Dr. Captain, he didn’t follow up until Dr. Captain, staring at him like she was seeing a ghost, repeated, “How?”
“I guess, if you’re wondering how I came back to life,” this was Cole, winging it, “I would say to you, in response,” think Cole, think you stupid idiot, “that I was never actually really dead in the first place?” Perfect, end it like you’re asking a question. Slow clap.
“But you were dead,” Dr. Captain said. “You died in the fire. I saw the autopsy report Mihko did.”
“But did you see a body?” Please don’t say that you saw a body.
“Well, no, but…”
“Dr. Captain,” Cole started, newly confident because she’d not seen his body, which meant that anything could be true. He went over a million movie plots. “There’s a lot I can’t tell you, but I guess, if Mihko would go to that much trouble to make it look like I died, you know it’s bad.”
“But why fake your death?”
“There’s stuff that’s happening over there that they don’t want anybody to know about, and there are some things I found out, the night I…” Cole caught himself from saying the night I died. “They caught me in the facility, held me hostage. I’ve been locked up for a month. I broke out a few days ago. I’ve been laying low,” he pulled at his neck warmer to demonstrate how he’d managed to lay low, “until now.”
“Okay.” Dr. Captain was taking some deep breaths that Cole could totally relate to. “Okay, you weren’t dead. This isn’t crazy…so…what kind of stuff did you find out?”
“I was hoping you’d ask.” Cole took Pam’s chart out of his hoodie and handed it to Dr. Captain.
Cole watched her eyes as she glanced back and forth from the chart to him. Eventually, her eyes stayed on the chart. When she finished, she placed the chart on her lap and turned to Cole.
“And this is Pam’s?”
“Yeah, I just went to the clinic and took it.”
“You just…walked into the clinic and took it?”
“I didn’t exactly walk.”
Dr. Captain shook her head. “What can you tell me?”
Cole reached over, lifted Pam’s chart, and held it like it was fragile. “Just this. I just thought you’d know what this is.”
Dr. Captain gave him a good, long look, then took the chart back. Read it over one more time. “Is she alive?”
“She’s alive,” Cole said. “Barely. I mean, I’m not a doctor, but…”
“With these vitals, I’m surprised,” she said, “and relieved. Where are they taking her? It says here that she’s getting transferred.”
“I don’t know. The facility, if I had to bet.”
“These…” Dr. Captain’s whole face looked troubled, confused. “There’s some sort of a strain here. A virus or something.”
“A virus?” The entire first week after Cole returned to Wounded Sky flashed in his mind. Seeing Chief Crate collapse in the X, Elder Mariah looking like death in her clinic bed, the number of Wounded Sky residents that had died or had become gravely ill. “What kind of virus?” Cole was afraid to ask. “Anything like—”
“I can’t say,” Dr. Captain must’ve known what he was about to ask, “but I know what would help.”
“The files.”
“If I could just see them, it’d give me a better idea of what to do. I could see if there’s any relation between the sickness last month and now. A chance to do something.”
“And if I got you the files, you could help people get better?”
“People?”
“There are like, at least nine people in the clinic, sick just like Pam. Maybe more. I didn’t get to a couple of rooms, but…” Cole knew he’d not accounted for everybody who’d gone missing. There were more to find. “It’s not just Pam.”
Dr. Captain went over to a small desk—Alex’s—and put the chart into one of the drawers and closed it.
“The answer is yes.” She put her hand over her forehead for a moment, closed her eyes, like she had a migraine. “If I had the files, I think I could help them get better. Me and Elder Mariah.”
“I’ll get them.”
13
US
COLE STOPPED ON THE PATH THAT LED to Ashley’s trailer, at a fork in the road, where the other direction passed through metal gates to Wounded Sky Cemetery. Inside the cemetery were the graves of his classmates, his mom, his teachers, his dad, and his own. He thought about going there. His last visit seemed so long ago. He had very little memory of leaving the cemetery as a walking corpse. The last time he had visited he’d used a rock to erase the word Father from his dad’s headstone. That night Cole also found Vikki’s headstone, with whom his dad had had an affair. Vikki, who’d been murdered with his dad by Reynold McCabe. He stared down the pathway i
nto the cemetery, until a small hand took his.
“Hey Jayney.”
“Want me to come with ya?” Jayne squeezed Cole’s hand reassuringly.
“Actually yeah, I do.”
“Alright, let’s go then.”
She sparked brighter and escorted Cole down the path, through the gate, and into the cemetery.
“Where we goin’?”
Cole knew that she would see her friends, not just the headstones. She came here all the time and was just as excited each time. He wondered how that worked, which friends she saw, which ones were still here, and which ones were not.
“Oh, they come and go, if they want to,” she said. “I’m just stuck here that’s all.”
It was far more pleasant to have Jayne read his thoughts than Choch.
“I don’t tease you; that’s why, silly.”
“You never have.”
First, they visited the graves of their lost friends and teachers. The neat, quiet rows of white headstones belying the horror they’d experienced in their deaths. Cole prayed quietly at his mom’s grave while Jayne waited. Her fire was dim. Of course, Jayne’s grave was there, too. And even though she saw her friends, they’d died how they’d died, and the memory of that probably never went away, not even in the afterlife. After Cole had prayed, he put his hand on the cold stone and kissed it.
“Miss you, Mom.”
“I see her sometimes, you know that?” Jayne whispered.
“You really do?”
“Yeah, but she doesn’t come down too much.”
“Why not?”
“Last time I seen her down, she was dancing ‘round your grave.”
Cole pictured her dancing, a ribbon of light swirling around his final resting place, which wasn’t his final resting place. He knew that’s how it was because he’d been one of those ribbons. “Why would she dance around my grave?”
“I guess because there’s all that mean stuff, and she wanted there to be happy stuff. You were there, too.”
Cole felt a tear form and smiled. “I don’t remember that.”
“I remember cuz I was so happy to see ya!”
“I bet I was happy to see you, too, Jayney.”
He wished he could remember that one thing, out of anything. The time he’d danced with his mom.
They visited his dad’s grave next. The word Father hadn’t been repaired. Still chipped away thanks to Cole’s actions. He didn’t regret it, even now. He was still mad at his dad for what he’d done, but nobody deserved to die for their indiscretions. Cole tried to pray for his dad, as he’d prayed for the others. But he didn’t know what to pray. Words escaped him. He looked at the ground to gather something, some thoughts, some words. That’s when he noticed the one thing that was different.
“The dirt’s been disturbed.” Cole grabbed a handful of earth.
“Yeah, silly,” Jayne said. “He’s here now, you know.”
“He’s here…” Cole let the dirt fall back into place, leaned forward onto both palms, and dug his fingers into the ground. “Nótáwíy.” Then he prayed and didn’t stop until Jayne tapped his shoulder.
“Coley?”
Cole wiped tears away from his cheeks. “Yeah?” He pulled himself to his feet. “I’m good.”
“You’re sad a lot when you come here,” and Jayne was sad in response. She was dim enough that the night actually seemed like the night.
“Tears can be from different things. It’s okay.” Cole stared at where the word Father was supposed to be. He looked at the disturbed ground. The place his dad’s body, his actual body, now occupied.
Cole laughed.
“What’s so funny? You were just cryin’ for all those different reasons.”
“It’s just…” Cole shook it off. “…now he’s here, and my body’s gone. You know? How does that work?”
“I dunno.”
“You know, if somehow getting shot in the head helped get my dad back here, from there, I think it was worth it.”
“You’re so weird, Coley.”
“Come on.” Cole took Jayne’s hand and led her to the one spot he’d avoided so far. He wanted to just walk on by, head back to Ashley’s trailer, where undoubtedly Brady was anxiously waiting for him. Now, there he was, strolling through the whole place. But at the last place, Cole’s grave, somebody was there already.
Eva.
She couldn’t see him in the dark, and she couldn’t see Jayne’s light, but Cole saw her clear as day. Seeing her took his breath away, like his lungs were still decomposed, like he was leaving his grave for the first time.
Nobody would’ve guessed that he’d risen from the dead. Cole had expected Choch to have covered up his resurrection, like the spirit being had covered up Cole’s jailbreak. But seeing it was different. Though he didn’t remember, he must’ve left a big hole where he’d dug his way out from six feet under. Now, there was a neatly filled-in area the size of a coffin. Eva stood at the end of it.
Cole approached slowly, so as not to alarm her. And right in front of her, so she knew somebody was there, even if she couldn’t see who. When he was ten feet from his grave, Eva asked, “Who’s there?”
There was no sadness in her voice, though she was standing at his grave and presumably had been before he’d arrived, standing for who knew how long. Why didn’t she sound sad? Was she mad at him, for going to the facility without her, and had that anger overtaken the mourning?
“Nobody,” he said in a low voice. People, he is literally trying to sound like Christian Bale as Batman, I swear. He stood at her side, looking at his headstone as she looked at him, sizing up his dark figure.
Jayne tugged at his hand. “Want me to go?”
Sure, Cole thought. I’ll catch up with you later.
She lifted his hand up, gave it a quick, burning kiss, then skipped off, back to the part of the cemetery where their friends were buried.
“Nobody?” Eva asked. They were alone, and without Jayne’s light, she was just a silhouette. Two shadows, standing side by side, staring at an empty grave. By then, she’d looked away from him, back at his grave. Not knowing that the stranger a foot away from her was Cole. “You sure look like somebody, unless I’m going crazy.”
He wasn’t sure when, or how, to tell her. He’d thought about it a lot today, but had yet to come up with the best way. He’d stumbled upon her entirely unprepared. “I just knew him.”
“You’re not from Mihko, are you?” she asked. “Because I know it’s past curfew, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”
If she was worried about getting caught, she didn’t act it. Although this wasn’t entirely out of character for Eva. Cole had always known her to be defiant, a no-shit taker. “No, I’m not from Mihko.”
“Well, everybody knows everybody here, and what do you have, a cold or something?”
“No, it’s just…” Cole cleared his throat and tried to speak with a deep voice, but not gravelly. “…frog’s in there. Allergies.”
“You sound ridiculous.” She looked at him again, for a long time. He wondered if her eyes were adjusting to the dark, if she could see anything in him that looked familiar. His neck warmer was still over his face. “So you’re not from Mihko, you have allergies…I give up. Unless you wanted to play twenty-one questions or something. Are we doing that?”
“Justin?” Cole said hesitantly, wondering how far Choch’s influence went. Just to Michael and Franny and Bill?
“Nope,” Eva said almost playfully, like there was already a game taking place, just one that Cole wasn’t privy to. “There’s no Justin in Wounded Sky.”
“I’m just visiting for—”
“Nobody’s visiting Wounded Sky,” Eva said matter-of-factly. “Nobody in, nobody out,” she said as though quoting somebody else, somebody from Mihko. Maybe that Xavier person, the head Mihko guy that had spoken at the assembly the school put on for Cole before everything went to shit. Or during the shit. During seemed more accurate.
“I don’t know what to say.” He caught himself letting his voice go normal. Maybe it had to be that easy.
Just tell her.
“I have an idea.” She turned to face him head-on. Her arms were crossed impatiently. “Wanna hear it?”
“Uhhh, sure?”
“Okay, so repeat after me.”
“Okay.”
“Sorry it took so long…”
“Sorry…it…took so long?”
“…I know you’ve been waiting forever…”
“…ummmm…what are you talking about?”
“It’s getting late, allergy-throat-guy. Let’s go. No questions.”
“Okay, okay…I know you’ve been waiting forever.”
“…but now I’m back, so let’s finish this shit and save the community.”
“What?”
“Say it.”
“I don’t know what to say, I…”
“You know exactly what to say because I just told you what to say.”
Cole’s body felt ready to explode. His heart was jack hammering. He was crying. His hands and knees were shaking. All of the things he felt when he had a panic attack were hitting him hard. He stumbled, she caught him. He tried to reach for a pocket, forgetting that he didn’t have a pill container. She grabbed his arm to stop him.
“No,” she said softly. “Say it.”
“I’m back,” he said, but barely, because he couldn’t really talk. He was sobbing and shaking and a mess, and she was completely put together, cool. “I’m back.”
“Yeah, you are.” She lunged forward and hugged him, and he felt crushed in her embrace, and for so many reasons he never wanted her to let him go. Because he loved her. Because he needed the support right now. Because it made him feel the most alive he’d ever felt. “But it took you long enough.”
“I still don’t know what to say,” Cole said, his cheek pressed against the top of her head. “I don’t have any words.”
He was still shaking. She held him tighter.
She shifted her head, so she could look at his grave.
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