by Ginger Booth
I squeaked. He laughed and hugged me tighter. “I can invite all my army buddies,” he teased me. “All the Cocos, Rescos, regular Army, your hometown, our new town…” We both laughed at the absurdity of that big a wedding.
The laughter died with a barking cough on my part. As the ear-ringing wore off, I was becoming more aware of my lungs protesting the day.
Emmett added, “Wish we could have momma there. And your brother Jay. But we’ll have enough people without them.” We broke out chuckling again.
And I started coughing again. This time I couldn’t stop. After a minute, Emmett called Sump to send medics on the double, and hurriedly pulled warm clothes onto me. I tried to refuse, insisting I’d be OK in a minute. But I couldn’t catch my breath.
The medics arrived. Emmett met them in nothing more than his briefs. He made them carry me down to the clinic immediately. He promised me he’d follow as soon as he washed and put some clothes on himself.
I woke disoriented and gagging. Someone had stuck a tube down my windpipe. Completely freaked out by this, I tried banging for help, and then began to rip it out of me.
“Nurse!” a man yelled imperiously nearby. “Ms. Baker needs you ASAP! Dee! Stop! Wait for the nurse!”
The voice was familiar, but it wasn’t Emmett. So I ignored him and continued my battle to tear the gagging serpent from my mouth. I half-succeeded in the seconds before the male army nurse arrived. He hurriedly finished the job.
“The doctor may want that back in,” he warned me.
“Screw the doctor!” I gasped. I couldn’t get enough air. Of course, that’s probably why I was on a lung ventilator. I hadn’t considered that before ripping it out.
The nurse ignored me, and hurriedly got an oxygen mask affixed on my face, and pushed me to lay back.
“Up, UP!” I demanded, patting around frantically for a bed control device.
“Just do what she says, Adderley,” the other man opined. I couldn’t see him behind the nurse and a fragment of privacy curtain. “Even worse patient than I am.”
“I see that, sir,” the nurse agreed waspishly. “Please calm down, Ms. Baker. Would you prefer I call you Dee? I’m Specialist Albert Adderley. I’ll be your nurse on day shift.” He raised the head of my bed to half-sitting. At my insistent grasping, he granted me custody of the bed control dongle.
I raised the head of the bed higher, to almost sitting upright. I ordered myself to calm down. Elevating my head worked a treat – it always does when my lungs are heavy like they were now. Besides, I felt more in control, less vulnerable, sitting up and clutching the remote. I breathed deep and gurgly from the oxygen mask.
I recognized the surroundings. This pocket hospital occupied a mauve banquet hall on the ground floor of the airport hotel. It was well-equipped. It was also fairly full. I wasn’t the only casualty from the fracas at MIT. I recognized several soldiers from Sump’s company in other beds. But my next-bed neighbor and I were spaced apart from the rest of the inmates.
Nurse Adderley observed from my bedside with arms crossed. Once I was breathing a little easier, he clamped the familiar O2 meter on my finger. I leaned forward to get a look at the meter readout. Adderley pressed me back into the bed with a sigh. “It says ninety-two out of a hundred. You still need oxygen.”
I pulled the face mask off to demand, “Cannula.” The face mask felt like wet air. I wanted winter dry air to evaporate the gunk out of my lungs. I replaced the mask in a show of good faith. But a cannula would be less intrusive, a simple air hose delivering whiffs of oxygen into my nostrils.
The man behind nurse Adderley, apparently in the next bed, chuckled. Adderley shot him a sour look.
“Alright, we’ll try a cannula. But!” He waved a finger under my nose. “Your oxygen sat has to stay above ninety. If it goes below, you’re back on the mask. If it goes below ninety in the mask, you’re back on the ventilator. Understood?”
I nodded in exaggerated meekness. He affixed a cannula, and took my oxygen sat again. He shook his head. “Eighty-nine.”
“Close enough!” I said brightly. Well, actually, I croaked like a frog. “I’m feeling better. Really!”
“Looks like ninety to me, Adderley,” my neighbor said. “Your butt is covered. Leave her be.”
“With respect, sir,” Adderley said in exasperation. He took the oxygen sat meter from my finger and clamped it on the man in the next bed. “You’re one to talk. Finally up to ninety.”
“Thank you, Specialist, that will be all,” my fellow cranky patient dismissed him.
“They don’t pay you enough for these two, nurse,” Emmett said, arriving at the foot of my bed. “Let me watch them for a bit, alright?”
Adderley scowled. “Yes, sir.” He stuck a finger at me again. “You have one half hour to get better at breathing. I’ll be back.”
The nurse out of the way, Emmett came to kiss me and sit on the bed, holding my hand. “Good to see you awake again, darlin’,” he said. “Scared me last night.” After a little more relieved nuzzling, he turned to the neighbor. “How are you doing, sir?”
Emmett flicked back the curtain between the beds, as far as it could go. The semi-familiar voice was Ivan Link in the next bed, sharing my breathing equipment.
“At ease, Emmett,” Link growled. “Breathing better. Too much time to think.” He was addressing that with workaholism. Computer and phone, tablet and pen and paper turned his over-bed hospital table into a full desk.
A man after my own heart. “I want that,” I said, pointing. “Where’s my phone and computer?”
“Uh-huh,” Emmett said. He leaned over and pressed his forehead to mine, for a whispered conversation. “Nearly lost you last night, darlin’.”
“I’m fine.”
“Uh-huh. You’re drugged to the gills. You remember what opiates feel like?”
“Oh.” Yes, now that he mentioned it, this did feel familiar.
“Be good today, and I’ll bring you a computer tomorrow.”
“A whole day!” I wailed. Or rather, I tried to wail. It came out pretty wispy. “Let me have a phone?”
Emmett pressed his nose into mine. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Dee Baker. Stop pushing yourself. Get well.” He sat up and squeezed my hand. “Guess what! I’m taking the day off, to be with you!”
In reflex, I cast a glance in Adderley’s direction.
“Uh-huh,” Emmett said. “I’ll keep you from subverting the staff. You, too.” That last was directed at Link. More subdued, he added, “Is your mind feeling any clearer, Ivan?”
Link nodded reluctantly. “Damnedest thing.” He scrubbed his face with a hand, bit his lip. Then he divulged, “My wife and daughter.” It took him another few seconds to bring the rest out. “Our house is fine. In Gloucester. They dropped my son off at a friend’s. Then went shopping. Down by the waterfront. Just before the tsunami. Abby and Leah.” He swallowed. “They finally found the car. Not the bodies.”
Emmett stepped over to grasp his hand and shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Ivan. May they rest in peace. Do you want your son here? I’ll have someone bring him. Aaron, right?”
Link shook his head violently, as though trying to stop the tears.
“Just an hour or two,” Emmett urged. “You need each other now, sir.”
While Emmett ministered to Link, my tears flowed. Like Link, I’d kept myself busy. I’d grieved for the drowned coast, the wildlife, but not really the people. I hadn’t run into people who’d lost loved ones to the waves. I lost my temper and lashed out while Emmett was MIA. My anger at Link evaporated, and I kind of missed it. Forced to sit still, I finally cried for the dead victims of the tsunami.
Link fought the tears harder – like most tough men, he resisted crying. When they finally came to him anyway, the strangled, barking sobs were hideous to hear.
Emmett didn’t fight tears. His flowed smoothly down his face, his voice barely huskier than usual.
I wanted to stay angry at the
stupid public of Hudson, too, especially the mob in Cambridge. But unfortunately, I understood. And with that understanding I realized I was just sad, and scared. And they were, too.
I’d been cynical about my overblown wedding plans, calling it ‘bread and circuses.’ As though I despised people so foolish as to be distracted from life and death matters by a pretty wedding dress. But hadn’t I been? Distracted and cheered by Jewel’s dress designs? At some level, this was little different from wanting to make love after nearly getting killed, or after a funeral. Sex or a wedding, we seized life and defied despair. Death happened, and would come for us all. Life is a fatal condition. But for now, we live.
All that sobbing did bad things to our blood oxygen saturation. Adderley allowed us as long as he could – tears heal, too – but then he rolled Link’s toys out of reach and gave us both sedatives. Adderley and Link seemed far more confident of their pharmaceutical security than I was. But Emmett insisted, and I took the pill.
Adderley took over for Emmett in holding Link’s hand, and talking to him softly. Emmett clambered onto the bed with me, and held me quietly while I dozed, all cried out.
32
Interesting fact: Military biomedical R&D, especially as connected to the death angel Canton Bertovich, sounded sinister. But Bertovich coordinated field trials of performance-enhancing cocktails, such as super-electrolyte pick-me-ups and protein bars. The Army had some remarkably effective treatments for getting sick and exhausted soldiers back on their feet and combat-ready in a hurry.
“I owe you an apology, Dee,” Link volunteered gruffly the next day, while we were alone. “I shouldn’t have spoken to you the way I did, when Cullen marched on Seabrook.”
We both had hospital over-bed tables now, fully kitted out with our computing and communications devices. Unlike the rooms upstairs, we even had 24-hour power and military-grade secure wired Internet instead of wi-fi. For the moment, Emmett was off interviewing New England officers elsewhere in the airport complex.
Army drugs were surprisingly good. My chest no longer felt like lead, and my O2 sat reading was up to 96 with just a cannula. I’d lost my voice, though. I was trying to wheedle Adderley into letting me sleep upstairs with Emmett tonight. He wasn’t buying it.
“Apology accepted,” I replied to Link, in the loudest whisper I could manage. “And understood. We’d been worried about your judgment since the Connecticut transfer,” I explained. “If that came out as disrespect, I regret that.” That was as close to a return apology as I could honestly come. It was also too many words. I barked a cough that made my head ache.
“Anthrax?” I whispered with a frown. I never heard the end of that story.
“There was no anthrax scare,” Link admitted. “They threatened my family.” He blew out and laid his head back against the pillow, looking up at the ceiling. Condemning himself, I suspected.
“No right response to that,” I croaked. “That’s why taking hostages works. You can tell Sean stuff like that, Ivan. Trust him.”
He nodded a curt thanks, and got back to work.
I turned back to reviewing how Pam and PR News had fared without me for a couple days. Emmett had waded in for me, to make sure my point of view was represented. I thought he did that better than I could have. I had no idea what kind of denial to broadcast in response to Eddie York’s New England Patriot News and Queen of Censors attack. With Emmett’s input, PR News broadcast a description of the crime – libel and inciting to riot – and that Eddie York was in HomeSec custody.
His body was in their custody, at least.
Jennifer Alvarez, our news reader, followed up this sketch of the facts with a quiet statement. “PR News director Dee Baker was hospitalized after the riot. She is unavailable for comment tonight. But PR News stands by her absolutely. Amenac and PR News have worked tirelessly to cooperate with the martial law governments and negotiate relaxation of the censorship rules. Not so that people could lash out, like Eddie York did. But to help people cooperate. To promote trade, improve agriculture, join together constructively to accomplish great things, like Project Reunion, the relief of Narragansett, and our missing persons database. We consider her not the ‘Queen of Censors’, but the Princess of Compassion.
“And on that note,” Jennifer turned to the other camera with a broad smile, “PR News is delighted to announce the upcoming wedding, of our Princess of Compassion Dee Baker, to the Prince of Rescos, Emmett MacLaren! A date has not yet been set. But we expect April or May, in the Apple. The other day, I visited with Jewel Colvin, the artiste Dee hired to make her wedding dress, in the Tribeca mini-city.”
Ooh. I needed to find time, real soon now, to visit Jewel’s lush loft studio in Tribeca. The walls looked like a harem exploded in there, while a troop of fashionable mannequins carried on with aloof poise. We caught brief glimpses of Jewel’s assistants, checking the fit of a sub-assembly on one of the less-dressed dress forms or hat-stand heads.
This first teaser installment focused purely on Jewel herself – a great choice, I thought. The seamstress had taken my warning to heart, and finessed her look for the screen. The loud mohawk was trimmed down to a gentler orange top tuft and duck-tail. Her black leathers were offset by a higher proportion of feminine details.
“Oh, I’ve had this studio a dozen years, yeah,” Jewel said. “Yeah, fashion design is my life work. The starving year made a big impression, of course. What I want to say now, with my art? Is that we live. We love. We express. A lot of people here need help to wake up, rise out of mourning, I think. And we’re often disfigured.” She pulled away her scarf to invite the camera to close in on her burn scars. “One of my specialties is asymmetric fashion. To mask the scars, and bring out the beauty.”
Jewel had the sweetest smile.
“We all have a dark side, from the starving. Things we did, that are painful to remember. My clothing helps people to own that, but also to embrace life again. New possibilities. It’s OK to be happy again, you know? It’s safe to love again.”
Back at the anchor desk, Jennifer added, “Be sure to tune in tomorrow for Jewel’s expert tips on how to mask scars and figure problem areas.”
Perfect. Pam intended to string out this brief interview with a dressmaker for a week, with teasers. And Jewel’s dreamy sweetness and eccentric charisma could pull it off.
I looked up and paused the replay as guests headed toward us across the banquet hall. A handsome middle-aged woman and a tall boy, maybe seventeen. The latter tried to tough it out a moment, then ran to his dad. Ivan Link crushed his son Aaron to him, but his eyes never left the woman.
“Abby?” he breathed. “I thought you were dead!”
She shrugged a little. “You said you were thinking of divorce. After…after I lost Leah…” She crumpled into grief, hiding her lower face in heavily bandaged hands.
Ivan practically flew out of the bed to crush her, too, in an embrace.
I tried not to eavesdrop, but that wasn’t possible. Abby Link and their daughter Leah were surprised by the tsunami in Gloucester, still in their car. When the car wedged upside-down against a building, both of them managed to work their way free, but were separated in the raging water. Abby managed to break into a strong brick building and climb to safety.
Leah was gone.
Abby didn’t contact Ivan because she just couldn’t face him. But she was released from post-dunking medical care after a week. She was alone in the house when soldiers brought Aaron home to pack some clothes. The boy stayed at his friend’s house until then, the other parents unwilling to let him go until his father was free to collect him.
Abby didn’t want to come along to visit Ivan. But Aaron refused to leave without her. The soldiers called Emmett, who broke through this stalemate over the phone.
What a mess.
When Emmett returned, I clung to him. I croaked softly in his ear, “We talk to each other about stuff. Face it together.”
“We do,” he assured me. “I love that a
bout us.”
“Emmett,” Link said softly, “are you seeing this? Virginia.”
His family had gone home, without him for now. The three of us each had an over-bed hospital table for a work desk, Emmett seated on the side of my bed facing Ivan Link across his laptop.
Emmett tapped a few times, then stilled.
“What?” I husked. I checked. My own inbox didn’t contain any red flags or subject ‘Virginia.’ Emmett forwarded me an email with two keystrokes. He had plenty of practice and macros for that.
The email was intercepted from Admiral Sondi O’Hara, governor-admiral of Greater Virginia, sending to the Northeast fleet. She demanded assistance to ‘soften’ Jersey’s Delaware Bay shore preparatory to ‘resettlement’ of Delmarva peninsula refugees.
In other words, she demanded the Navy help Virginia invade Jersey. And Virginia held the Navy’s shore facilities and families, dammit. But it was our Navy, too!
“Hudson loves Navy,” I croaked, and grabbed my phone.
Emmett nabbed the phone out of my hands. “No talking.”
I held out a hand to demand it back. “You need this,” I insisted.
“I’m curious, Emmett,” Link said. “Let her.”
As soon as I got the phone back, I called Will in Totoket, Amenac–PR’s lead man on graphics. “Will,” I whispered. “Emergency blanket ad campaign. Hudson loves Navy.”
“You sound like hell,” Will replied. “Yeah, I actually played with that after Cam’s speech. You know, when he said ‘Hudson loves Navy.’ Let me show you some banners.”
The link hit my inbox before he finished his sentence. He sent me a page with five different banner ad designs, each with square and rectangular variations for use in different shaped ad slots on Amenac. One was basic navy blue with strong white typography, ‘Hudson’ on a faint tracing of cityscape, ‘Navy’ on ocean, the two meeting in docks below a crimson heart. Then there was a full-color cityscape to seascape version. Apple heart anchor, on simple navy blue. Fireworks from Navy ships during Project Reunion. Navy officers arm-in-arm with every other military branch, grinning at the after-party from the Project Reunion Thanksgiving feed.