by Shawn Grady
We collided and toppled over, crashing to the floor behind her. He latched a grip on my hand that held the other syringe. I clenched his throat. He clawed at my face. I forced the needle closer to him, and he pushed against me.
He maneuvered his feet and leveraged his weight. I skidded up against the wall to bring myself up. He focused his momentum on the syringe, spinning me back toward an exam table. He drove my hand toward the sharp metal corner.
I shouted and dropped the needle, blood spilling from a jagged gash on my hand. A fist drove into my jaw and knocked me from my feet. I struck my head on the tile and the room blackened.
Vision returned in blurry backlit images. Three of Kurtz staggered toward me. I pushed to my feet and swung in vain. My knuckles grazed a shirt button. His form focused, hazy at the edges.
I tackled him, driving toward the table. He hit the edge and arced backward. Lifting his legs, I flipped him onto it. He flailed to roll off, but I caught him by the shoulders and pinned him supine. I drove a salvo of face punches, gripping his collar in the other fist. A spider web of blood streaked across his cheeks.
I struck him.
Again and again and again.
Until the skin sheared from my knuckles and his face became a swollen mass of purple and red.
His arms went limp.
I brought my fist in the air. With shaking realization, I wondered if I’d killed him.
Beyond the foot of the table, Naomi lay unconscious on the floor, hair fanned over the tile, arms draped out.
A sharp sting burned my neck.
I brought my fingers up to find a syringe dangling like a half-broken branch. From the table, Kurtz bared his bloody teeth.
I yanked out the empty syringe and staggered with the sickening realization.
Kurtz burro-kicked me in the chest. I stumbled backward but stayed on my feet. He charged, driving me into the vestibule wall.
The glass shattered. A steel cross member caught my legs below the knees. I struck the ground. A dozen sharp points sent pain across my back. My head clouded. I couldn’t focus. Kurtz stood at the other side of the wall, hands at his sides, shoulders heaving.
His voice sounded distant and muffled. “This ends now.”
He yanked Naomi up by the shoulders and dragged her across the room.
Past the exam table. Past Eli’s office.
Toward the crematory oven.
The world spun and blurred, and feeling left my limbs.
CHAPTER 46
Numbing casts encircled my arms.
I forced a hand to the side pocket in my pants, blinking through the blur to plunge my fingers inside, using more shoulder than anything. I managed a semi-fist and withdrew my hand. The end of the Narcan syringe lay wedged between two fingers. It hung up at the lip of the pocket and fell to the floor.
Respirations became labored. I fought for deeper breaths but found no relief. The room rotated. I shook my head. Haze encroached at the edges of my vision.
I dragged a hand along the floor to the Narcan syringe and captured it in my palm. I bent my elbow and heaved my torso, propping on my side.
If ever I needed to nail an IV, this was it.
I bit down on the plastic needle cover and pulled the syringe free. Sweat drops blurred my eyes. I wiped them with my upper arm.
The room grew hotter.
A cannon of a vein snaked through the crook of one arm – my best shot.
My stomach flip-flopped. Bile coated my throat. I saw two syringes, then three, four. I tried to breathe but was out of breath.
I plopped a hand on my forearm, aimed at the vein, and drove the needle like a diver into a pool.
Shadowed burgundy flashed into the catheter hub.
I set my thumb on the plunger but couldn’t depress it. Shifting my hand to get the heel of my palm against it, I cupped the flanges of the syringe and pushed it in.
No finesse about it. I didn’t ease it in over two minutes, the way they taught in paramedic school. High-dose Narcan would hit my bloodstream like cold water on a scalding pan.
I tilted my head, waiting in fearful anticipation of what was to come. At best, it would block the action of the morphine long enough for me to have a chance to stop Kurtz. At worst, it could hurtle me into intractable seizures.
This isn’t going to feel good.
It screamed in like an eighteen-wheeler – blaring horn and headlights and all.
There was no way to dodge. My mind and body divided through the front grill. A deluge of needles, raining white-hot, pierced my limbs and torso, pinning me to the floor.
It raged and crescendoed.
And ceased.
The world lay silent and barren, a vast desert plain. Then something opened in the sky, a swirling mass of clouds. It spun with violence and descended in a corkscrewing funnel. Raging wind forced into my mouth, down my trachea, expanding my lungs.
I lifted from the ground and the wind turned to rain. Volumes of cold, drenching rain. It dropped me to my knees, the downpour coating my back and neck, my clothes and hair soaked through.
I saw her in front of me.
My mother, lying in the mud.
Life infused her cheeks. Her fingers extended, eyes blinked.
She reached out and touched my face.
“Jonathan.” Her eyes crinkled at the sides.
A clank echoed.
My mother vanished.
Clarity met my mind. Shattered glass littered the floor. The exam room sweltered, and the rattling of a conveyor began.
I palmed a glass shard and stood, primed like a defib in high whine.
CHAPTER 47
I stepped over the window supports and broken glass wall and strode toward the oven.
Kurtz shielded his face at the opening, guiding Naomi feet-first into the burning gullet. Her body vibrated on the roller tray.
I broke into a sprint and slammed Kurtz to the floor. I jerked the lever knob back, forcing the conveyor to a sudden halt. Heat raged. I grabbed Naomi beneath her arms.
Kurtz shouted. He grabbed my chin and twisted. I thrust an elbow in his chest. His grip loosened.
I pivoted. His fist struck me in the face, knocking me to the floor.
Light refracted in blurry halos.
The conveyor clanked into motion.
I shut both eyes and opened them, my vision clearing enough to see Kurtz bent over the lever, his face maniacal. He shifted position and began pushing Naomi’s tray toward the oven himself.
A hammer pounded in my head. I propped myself up, my fingers feeling a jagged edge of broken glass.
I heard Eli. “Knowing your anatomy will save you.”
I gripped the shard and lunged for Kurtz’s legs. He kicked, fists beating at my head. I bear-hugged his thighs and drove the dagger deep behind a knee, slicing through his popliteal artery. I yanked it out and incised the other.
He flailed his arms around his legs, wobbled, then collapsed.
I seized Naomi and heaved away from the tray, tumbling with her to the floor.
Kurtz slumped in a burgeoning pool of blood. He slipped on his elbows, trying and failing repeatedly to get up. He fell back, trembling, his skin pale like rice paper.
I dragged Naomi to the middle of the room.
She wasn’t breathing.
I spun. Frantic.
The other Narcan vial. I stumbled into the office and snatched the second syringe and medication from the safe. I drew it up and scuttled to Naomi’s side.
She lay with no movement in her chest. Cyanosis encircled her lips.
I stretched out her arm and whipped off my belt, tying it tight around her bicep. I patted the skin in the crook of her arm and prayed for a vein.
A blood vessel emerged. Barely visible. Hardly palpable. But it was all I needed. I inserted the needle and a flash of blood shot back in the chamber.
I fed the Narcan into her vein. And when the needle was dry, I pulled it from her arm and threw it across the room. I tilted her he
ad back, placed my mouth over hers, and breathed.
Her chest rose and relaxed.
I breathed again, her chest inflating and falling – but with no rise of its own. I checked her carotid pulse and felt a faint tapping.
Bones’s cell phone sat in my pocket. I pulled it out to dial 9-1-1.
No signal.
We had to get out of the basement. I propped her over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry and listed toward the door, broken glass crunching underfoot.
My thighs burned climbing the stairs. I pushed upward, new hope in movement, like we were escaping the hold of a sinking ship.
I staggered through the darkened reception area, banging off a desk, guided only by the streetlights’ glow through the front-door glass.
I pushed the bar handle with my hip and struggled onto the front walkway, two patches of lawn on either side of it. I fell to my knees on the grass and laid Naomi on a layer of thin evening frost.
I dialed 9-1-1 and felt again for a pulse at her neck.
No heartbeat.
The phone rang.
I repositioned my fingertips on the side of her throat.
The line picked up. “Nine-one-one dispatch. Please state the nature of your emergency: fire, medical, or police.”
“Medical.” My voice sounded hoarse, foreign. “I’m on the front lawn of the – ”
“Please hold while I transfer you to the medical dispatcher.”
Still no pulse.
I traced Naomi’s rib cage to the base of her sternum, placed the heel of my palm on her breastbone, and began chest compressions. Her shoulders and head jerked.
Rushing emotion met a dam in my mind. My eyes ran hot and blurry. Streetlamps turned to glaring stars too close to earth.
Heaven upon us.
Hell beneath.
Eighty-four by twenty-eight.
My left brain counted. One and two and three and four and –
Dispatch picked up the line. “Please state your medical emergency.”
“I’m on the lawn of the morgue at County Hospital with an adult female in full arrest.”
“I understand, sir. An ambulance is on its way. Have you checked for a pulse?”
I chucked the phone and shifted to her head, opening the airway and delivering two more breaths. I scooted back and resumed chest compressions.
God, let her live.
The tiny voice of the dispatcher came from the other side of the walkway.
“Sir? Sir, are you there?”
A siren stabbed the night. An air horn blared. Fire whirled in the light bar of an ambulance turning at the end of the block. It raced down the street, engine revving high.
I moved again to Naomi’s head.
And for a moment, all the furious efforts of the physical and the closing grasp of the spiritual – all of it shifted.
It was no longer Reno, or evening. My hands became another’s – shining like the sun. I felt myself lean beside her, my lips upon hers, and an energy not my own flowed out from me and filled her chest.
Night returned. Dew soaked through to my knees.
A siren shut off. Bones jumped out of the ambulance.
And she drew a breath.
Her eyes flashed opened, pupils dilating.
“Naomi.”
I lifted her to my chest.
She brought a hand to my face and mouthed my name.
I shook my head in disbelief. In awe.
In utter desperate awe and gratitude.
CHAPTER 48
I slept so hard I forgot I was in jail.
The thinness of the mattress, the air temperature several degrees too cool, the smell of ammonia – none of it mattered. A valley and a mountain had been traversed in my life. In one day, over two decades, however one measured it.
I had at once the peace of gazing over a ripe field of wheat, the sun low and golden, and the earth uninterrupted on the horizon, mixed with the bitter gall and haunting ache of a loved one departed too soon.
So it was with a sense of newness and empty tomb excitement that I saw my father standing at the door to my cell.
“Hey, Jonner.” He was clean-shaven, his hair combed to the side, hovering light and dry with a hair-spray hold. His eyes were clear. He wore an alligator polo and pleated slacks.
I rolled off the bed and walked to the barred door. I stuck my hand through, and he took it, locking thumbs with a clasp.
I was quiet for a moment, then said, “Eli’s dead . . . And Kurtz.”
He nodded and squeezed my hand, patting it with his other.
“I heard. I am so sorry, Jonathan.” He let go of my hand. “Eli was a great man. He was . . . He was always there when you needed him. I really am so sorry.” He took a deep breath. “But not for myself anymore.”
Voices echoed around the corner.
He took off his glasses. “I had made guilt my home. Ignored you and your life.” He looked at the floor. “When you came to the bar, I realized that I still had something to offer. Somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that I’d forfeited that right.” He lifted his chin. “I wronged your mother, and I wronged you. Lord knows I can’t change that. But you are my son. You are still my son.”
Bad Moon stepped behind the guard desk. A mechanical buzz rang from the door. “I’d recommend pulling out your arm lest you want to leave it here when you go.”
I moved back.
Detective Humbolt rounded the corner. My dad wiped his eyes and replaced his glasses. Humbolt motioned for me to step out.
I nodded. “Detective.”
“Mr. Trestle.” He held a manila folder. The edges of eight-by-ten black-and-white glossies poked out from a stack of papers and a couple DVDs in plastic holders. He held it up. “It would appear that sufficient evidence has surfaced to allow your release.”
I glanced at my father. He watched Humbolt.
The detective continued. “I know this is a hard subject. But we have security video of Dr. Petrov’s murder. And we also have video of Kurtz’s killing.” He brought his lips together. “The circumstances he created inevitably would have led to another murder, had you not intervened.”
He thumbed through the file folder. “A man named Shintao has been arrested on charges relating to the crimes at hand.” He closed it. “I personally don’t believe that self-defense and the protection of the innocent are any reasons to keep a man jailed. And it would appear that the judge agrees. Per his orders, you’re free to go under two conditions – don’t leave town until the arraignment, and keep daily contact with your court-designated chaperone.”
“Who’s that?”
Humbolt stretched an open palm toward my father. My dad smiled. The detective offered his hand to me.
I looked at it, studied his face, then gripped his hand and shook. “Well, all right, then.”
My dad drove us home. Sitting in his old Ford Tempo, looking at his profile, I saw a dim reflection of Eli in the lines of his face. I saw myself in the shape of his jawline, the angle of his nose, and the curve of his cheekbones.
I shifted in my seat, my back sore from healing glass cuts. “Have you heard how Naomi is?”
“Her parents called. And someone from Aprisa. Dale . . . ?”
“Spitzer?”
“That’s it. She’s doing well. They’re watching her in the cardiac unit, but the prognosis is very positive.”
“So no complications?”
“A little memory loss surrounding the event.”
“That’s probably a good thing.”
“She has some broken ribs.”
Probably from the CPR. That and the fall from the helicopter. But she was alive. Not only living, but well. My heart ached to see her.
I touched the pendant around my neck. I traced the etched words, hearing them in my mind.
I would become a doctor.
And Eli would live on for me in a physician’s words over a millennia old.
We crossed the Truckee River at the Arlington Br
idge, making our way into Old Southwest.
My dad stopped at a crosswalk and ran a hand along his chin. “Humbolt did a little digging into Kurtz’s finances.”
“Yeah?”
“Sounded like Kurtz was leveraged to the hilt, including a couple big loans from some not-so-reputable sources.”
I nodded. “He was trying to grow Aprisa into something bigger.
But it was all based on a business model that didn’t really work.”
“Why didn’t he cut his losses and quit?”
“He said he already had deals on the table to go nationwide. I guess he just needed the stats to back it all up. Fortune and fame at his fingertips. Just had to tweak a few run times, make the big contracts, pay off the bad guys, and all would be good.”
“But this guy, Letell, found out about the time changes?”
“Yeah. And when he started making noise about it, Kurtz resorted to murder to cover things up.”
“But not just he alone.”
“No. He hired at least one thug to do some of the dirty work. And there’s Shintao. He oversaw the accounting department. My guess is that Kurtz paid him well to keep things on the down-low.”
We turned onto a narrow residential street.
I gazed at sidewalks that arched over bulging tree roots. I stared at my hands, incredulous that they’d taken a life. “If Eli hadn’t discovered the cause of death and provided the antidote . . .”
My dad pulled into the driveway. “It’s an incredible gift. For you. For me. Naomi. No one can ever take that fact away.” He put his hand on my shoulder.
I grabbed his wrist and blinked through the moisture in my eyes. “It’s great to have you back, Dad.”
CHAPTER 49
I stopped chasing.
I learned to run a race of endurance, my goal and destination lying on the not-too-distant horizon, in a home unbound by time or death.
Now we see in a mirror dimly.
Almond shoots and cherry blossoms burst forth from stem tips on the university grounds. The temperate May afternoon lent blue skies populated by voluminous white barges. They pasted ethereal, like an aged ceiling mural.
The crowd din and rhythmic repetition of the master of ceremonies simmered in the back of my mind. The full green grass around the old buildings, the warmth of sunbaked bricks, and the special outdoor ceremony for the graduating med school class – it all contributed to filling my heart with a sense of culmination.