by Joe Hart
A ripple of emotion crosses Hiraku’s features. His hand clenches the paper, working it within his fist.
Ian sidles around Lee who has also inched forward.
Hiraku’s jaw tightens and his eyes glisten. “All I wanted was to be a father. And she took it from me.” His gaze shifts from Merrill, skims over Lee, and finds Zoey as the baby kicks within the blankets and makes a loud cooing.
It is like a transparent veil falls over him as he looks from her face to the infant she holds. His expression softens as if he’s seen something familiar.
“Jiaying?” Hiraku tilts his head and brings the handgun to bear on her.
Shouts erupt and movement is everywhere.
Ian steps forward and fires his rifle from the hip.
A hole appears in Hiraku’s jacket above his navel and there is a spray of crimson behind him.
The handgun’s muzzle travels away from her toward Ian as Hiraku stumbles backward.
He fires.
Ian jerks and loses his balance, rifle twisting from his hands.
Zoey hears screaming as she shields the baby and realizes it’s coming from her.
Hiraku totters, somehow still on his feet. A ribbon of blood leaks from his bottom lip and paints a crimson goatee on his chin.
His eyes find hers, and there is true recognition there.
And hatred.
He raises the pistol toward her again.
But Lee is already in motion, running forward, head down, his feet coming free of the ground as he dives.
Lee’s shoulder connects with Hiraku’s stomach, forcing a hollow woof of air from his lungs.
The handgun flies free, landing in the dirt as both men crash to the ground.
They roll twice, arms and limbs entwined, bared teeth and flapping coats.
And before it happens, Zoey sees what’s coming and tries to cry out but all her air is gone and she’s lost in a vacuum of horror.
Lee and Hiraku tumble over the edge of the cliff, a bark of surprise coming from one of them.
Then they’re gone, swallowed by the drop.
“No!” Zoey screams, rushing forward. It is a million miles and only a few harried steps before she’s there, forcing herself to look down even though she knows what she’ll see.
The river is seventy feet below, the current a swirling mass of debris and cloudy water. Neither man is anywhere to be seen.
The baby squalls, but she barely hears her.
Gone.
Lee is gone.
An arm encircles her shoulders, holding her upright as she sways.
The foul water chuffs and laps against the valley walls, and it is a sound of hunger, or perhaps satisfaction. Distantly she thinks that she’s going to be sick. Zoey begins to turn away to do so when something moves below her.
An arm.
A wordless sound comes from her as she leans out as far as she dares, someone’s hands grasping at her clothing.
Twenty feet down, a serrated shelf of rock juts out like a broken jaw. Lee lies upon it, his right arm, the one she saw move, twisted at a stomach-churning angle. A pool of red expands at an alarming rate around his head and his broken arm twitches once more and is still.
“Down there!” Zoey yells, pointing. Merrill and Tia follow the direction of her gestures and race to the ASV. A moment later the big vehicle is parked a dozen feet from the drop and Merrill steps from the interior with a stout length of rope he ties quickly around his waist. At the front of the ASV he pauses and with Tia’s help attaches the rope to a cabled winch. Tia runs the controls, spooling out slack until Merrill has enough to lower himself over the edge.
The seconds tick by in complete silence with only the wind and the burbling river to break it. After what seems like an interminable amount of time, Merrill calls out and Tia begins winding the cable in, slow and sure.
Lee slowly appears. Merrill has trussed the rope around Lee’s midback and hips, forming a type of cradle while Merrill himself clings to an extra loop in its bottom.
“Is he . . . ?” Zoey says as Tia and Merrill unhook the harness from around Lee’s back.
“He’s alive, but he hit his head and his arm is shattered. Where’s Chelsea?”
“Here,” she says, dropping to her knees beside Lee. “Tia, get my bag, it’s over by Ian. Zoey, step back and give me some room.”
She does as Chelsea says, a sense of unreality descending upon her. How long since she was thinking that they had time?
Enough time? What a foolish thought. There is never enough.
Zoey swallows the bile that’s trying to surge up her throat and steps out of the way as Tia hurries past, clutching Chelsea’s medical bag. Something occurs to her then that slipped free of her mind after seeing Lee fall.
Ian. He was hit.
She glances to where he fell, sure that if Chelsea is focusing on Lee, Ian must be only wounded.
The old man lies on his back, Rita, Sherell, and Lyle to one side, Seamus sitting motionless on his other. Lyle glances up at her as she approaches and quickly looks away.
“How is—?” But the rest of the question dies in her throat.
Blood covers Ian’s chest. So much so that if she didn’t know he’d been wearing a white shirt beneath his long coat, she would’ve guessed it was originally red. A dark hole to the left of his breastbone pumps a feeble stream of blood again and again.
“Oh no,” she breathes, kneeling down beside him. His head is propped on someone’s jacket, and his gray beard is soaked red. His eyes are open and they stare at the clouded sky between lazy blinks.
“Chelsea said it nicked his heart,” Lyle murmurs as Sherell turns away, pressing her face into Rita’s shoulder. Rita stares dumbly down at Ian’s chest, her gaze wooden and unseeing. Seamus makes a deep whining sound and his tongue appears, licking once at Ian’s temple.
Zoey finds one of Ian’s hands, holding the baby with the other arm. He squeezes her fingers, his gaze coming to rest on her.
“Zoey.” His voice is quiet but clear.
“I’m right here.”
He nods. “I’m getting tired.”
She stifles a sob. “It’s okay.”
“I’m so glad you found us.”
“Me too.”
He swallows thickly, trying to focus on her face. “Lynn?”
She hesitates but then squeezes his hand. “I’m here.”
“Do you remember the animals at the zoo? Do you remember when I took you to the zoo?”
“I remember.”
“You always loved animals.” He smiles and his eyes drift partially closed. “And I loved you.” His wound no longer pumps blood, and his chest falls, a final sigh coming from him, and he is still.
“I love you too,” Zoey says.
Through her tears she places his limp hand on his chest and softly brushes his eyelids shut with her palm. Seamus whines again, nuzzling Ian’s hair before Lyle rises to guide the big dog away.
“I’ll take care of him,” Nell says from behind her, lightly touching her quaking shoulder. When she doesn’t move, Nell helps her to her feet. “You go be with Lee.”
Zoey nods, brushing away tears to look one last time at Ian. If it weren’t for the blood, he might be taking a nap. His face is serene and relaxed, many of the wrinkles smoothed out.
Her daughter begins to fuss. Amid everything, she has been mostly quiet, simply observing. Now her features crinkle with annoyance, and she twists as if she wants to crawl away.
Newton stands several yards to her right, awkwardly holding the other baby. He gives her a pained look but tries to smile even as Merrill, Chelsea, and Tia suddenly count to three loudly.
They’ve placed Lee on a blanket and are carrying him toward the ASV’s open door.
“We have to get him somewhere that I can operate,” Chelsea says as they slide him onto the floor of the vehicle.
“What’s the matter?”
“I won’t know for sure until I can get him on a table.”
“Let’s go, everyone!” Merrill shouts, climbing into the driver’s seat. “We gotta move!”
Lyle and Nell carry Ian’s body past, his form now wrapped in a dark sheet of some kind. Shroud, she thinks to herself. It stopped being a sheet when they placed him in it. Then it’s her turn to get in the ASV.
As she prepares to climb the steps she spots something on the ground and picks it up. It is the paper Hiraku was holding before he was shot. She carries it with her without thinking as she takes a place on one of the benches beside Lee. His face is remarkably unblemished, only a shallow cut across the bridge of his nose. But then she notices the dark red blotch seeping through a white wrap of gauze around the side of his head.
Tia begins closing the door and Zoey catches a last glimpse of the house and the river valley beyond where the ARC once stood. Past it is the ruins of the dam, a broken mouth of concrete still gushing water.
Then the door slams shut and they’re moving away from the plateau, away from the river, and on into the cold glare of the early day.
61
The long hallway echoes with her steps as she paces down its length, each insignificant feature becoming a landmark.
Here is the cracked tile in the floor, shattered like a mirror.
Here the long strip of paint drooping away from the wall where moisture invaded through a leak in the ceiling.
Here the wide door with light glowing from its rectangular window. The one she’s not allowed past.
Zoey turns and begins her circuit all over again, moving slowly back down the corridor, past dark rooms and the smell of old chemicals to where some of the group waits. Her daughter, the first girl she’s taken to thinking of her as since she was the infant Zoey traded herself for, lies asleep in her arms. The other baby rests with Nell who is feeding her from the makeshift bottle Chelsea created. The rest of the group either stands near the long bank of windows at the start of the hall or sits on a bench attached to the wall. Merrill is the only one absent besides Chelsea, and she wishes desperately he were either here waiting with her or she were behind the door with him. With Lee.
The nearest town with a hospital had been twenty miles away. It took them less than fifteen minutes to get there, the ASV seeming to become airborne over small bumps at times. After finding the medical center they had located the operating room on the second floor and hauled Lee inside, Chelsea’s warning to stay out in the hall with the others still ringing in her ears.
How long has it been? Two hours? Three? She can’t say. All she knows is the tension is eating her like acid from the inside out, the need to know, so much worse than anything else she’s ever experienced. She is back in the hospital waiting for Eli to recover, but at least then she was able to speak to him, even if it was for the last time.
Zoey shoves away the notion of never talking to Lee again and gets herself to sit. She tries to focus on the child she’s holding—her small, perfect face, the warm weight of her soft body. But almost at once she recalls Lee yelling to her before she was forced into the vehicle with Vivian. He was asking her what he should name the baby.
And now she wants to know the same thing. She needs to hear his confident voice, feel the strength of his arms around her, because she’s not sure she’ll be able to continue without him. Not now, not after everything that’s happened. She imagines the door opening at the end of the hallway, Merrill’s and Chelsea’s stricken faces, the deadened hole expanding inside her, but most of all she sees the long days stretching out ahead without Lee. They are a wasteland, barren and cold with only the heavy weight of his absence to fill them up.
She adjusts herself into a more comfortable position, and something brushes the back of her fingers on her right hand. She grasps it and draws it from her jacket pocket.
Hiraku’s folded paper.
She didn’t open it on the ride here. She doesn’t recall tucking it away, but she must have, and now an irresistible compulsion overcomes her.
Zoey unfolds the tattered page and stares.
Some of the brush-stroked ink is marred by streaks of blood, but the image is clear, the talent that created it undeniable. The woman in the painting is young and pretty, her dark hair cut near her shoulders, almond eyes full of life that gaze down to her arms where a swaddled infant lies looking back up at her, the baby’s features subtly mirroring her mother’s. How she knows the baby is a girl, Zoey doesn’t understand, she simply does. The mother and child sit on a blanket upon a sandy beach, several gentle waves washing up behind them in the background. There is a slightly surreal quality to the picture; whether it is the angles of the subjects or the overall energy the scene gives off, she’s not sure, but somehow she’s certain that this is not a memory, it is a dream. A day imagined but never realized. Near the bottom is a small scrawl of illegible text in what appears to be a different type of ink than the painting, possibly a ballpoint pen, followed by a string of numbers.
49.6506° N, 125.4494° W
She frowns, struggling to determine a meaning from them. She’s about to ask Nell, who’s sitting across from her, to take a look when the door to the operating room opens.
Before she can read their expressions, Zoey is moving down the corridor toward Merrill and Chelsea. As she nears, she can see they both look exhausted. There is a spattering of blood on Chelsea’s left shoulder and her shirtsleeves, which she’s rolled up, are tinted crimson as well.
Zoey stops before them, glancing from one to the other and back again, but she can’t get herself to utter any words.
“He’s alive,” Chelsea says, the calm assuredness of her voice unable to hide the ugly thing waiting beyond what she’s saying. “But he’s had major trauma to his skull and his brain has swollen badly.”
Zoey swallows, feeling her lower lip trembling. “What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t know what’s going to happen to him. His breathing and heart rate are both stable now so that tells me his brain stem isn’t overly damaged and we’ve been able to relieve some of the swelling by inserting a port into his skull, but I’m worried there might be some hypoxia.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a lack of oxygen to the brain possibly caused by the swelling.”
“But you said you helped the swelling now?”
“I relieved some of it, but that’s not the problem. If he does have hypoxia the damage may already be done.”
Zoey glances from Chelsea to Merrill. “What are you saying?”
“Lee might never wake up again,” Merrill says. “And if he does he may not ever be the same.”
Sherell places a steadying hand on her shoulder as a frown creases her face. “But he’s alive. He’ll come back, right? If he’s alive he’ll wake up and come back.”
“We don’t know,” Chelsea says, coming closer to place an arm around her. “I wish I could say something different, but right now all we can do is wait. There’s no power here to perform any significant testing, and even if there was I don’t know if I’d be able to interpret the results correctly or do anything past what I’ve already done. My experience with cerebral trauma was limited while I was learning medicine. I’m sorry, Zoey.”
She feels the tears start to burn at the back of her eyes and blinks them away. She’s so sick of crying. She’s done with it. Lee isn’t gone, he’s alive.
“He’s strong,” she says, trying to smile and nearly managing it.
Chelsea nods. “We’ll keep close watch over him. There’s nothing saying he won’t wake up.”
“Can I see him?”
“Of course.”
Zoey transfers her daughter into Sherell’s waiting arms without waking her and follows Chelsea through the operating room door. There is a dank area with several sinks and cabinets then a set of double doors that squeak loudly as they push through them.
Three solar lanterns light the large space on the other side of the doors. It is circular, lined with rolling tables and alien apparatus while its ce
nter is taken up by a wide bed on casters. Lee lies in its middle covered in a heap of blankets, his chest rising and falling in slow rhythm.
“I’ll leave you alone,” Chelsea says, retreating.
Zoey moves forward to the bedside, a tingle of horror flowing through her as she spots a metal tube protruding from the side of Lee’s skull close to where it rests on a pillow. Blood drips in slow drops from the tube into a shallow pan.
She reaches hesitantly beneath the blankets, finding his hand, and the fear that it will be cold dissolves.
It is as warm as the first time she held it.
“Hi,” she says, studying the pallor of his face. She watches his closed eyelids, hoping to see the pupils move under them, but they remain still. “I know you can hear me. You’re going to be all right. Chelsea did a good job, and now all you have to do is wake up, okay? The hard part’s over. You saved us. You saved me.” She pauses, the sensation of water closing over her almost as strong as it was after the dam broke. She concentrates on his hand as if it is the only thing tethering her to reality. And in that moment a memory surfaces so poignant it sends an ache through her chest.
“Before I found you in Seattle, I imagined us together. We were somewhere in the mountains at a little house we’d built. I saw you and our daughter, and we were happy. I never guessed we’d have two instead of one.” She laughs but it is stilted and short. “What I’m saying is there’s more to do. You left me once, and you promised you’d never do it again.” She squeezes his hand with both of hers. “I believe you. So you come back to me and keep your promise.”
A tear rolls down her cheek and she wipes it away, sniffling a little. She leans over and kisses Lee lightly on the corner of his mouth before tucking his hand back away and smoothing his blankets out. With each step she takes away from him it feels like the last, but she casts the thought aside. She cannot break now. Her strength is all she has left.
Merrill and Chelsea wait outside in the hallway. Chelsea gives her a quick hug before moving back into the operating room.
“Where is everyone?” she asks, giving the empty corridor a glance.