But I couldn't look away either.
Chapter 123
MAX LOWERED HER RIGHT WING, and she swooped at full speed toward the car. She didn't seem to care about Thomas and his gun.
She torpedoed herself straight at the Mercedes windshield. She must have seen the driver's terrified eyes. Maybe even her own reflection as it rolled across the glass of the windshield.
She screamed, "Murderers! Murderers!" at the top of her voice. I could hear her clearly from several car lengths behind.
The gray sedan went into a severe skid. Two of the wheels left the ground, the whole right side did. Then everything terrifying and bad seemed to happen at once, and much too fast.
Max had come close to hitting the windshield. She must have cut into the driver's vision. And now, both she and the car were spinning out of control.
The sedan tried to avoid colliding with her. Then Max caromed off the spinning, sliding Mercedes.
She was thrown like a raggedy doll toward the woods.
I watched as she hurtled forward, then smashed into an oak tree. She hit the tree trunk unbelievably hard.
I was almost certain she died in that terrible instant of impact. My body shuddered.
Harding Thomas had turned to fire, his head thrust out the window again. He probably couldn't believe his eyes. He watched Max crash into the tree. But he didn't see a low tree hanging over the roadside until it was too late to duck back into the Mercedes.
Thomas's head was horribly wedged, then flattened between the metal of the car and the unyielding wood of the tree trunk. I could hear the savage crushing sound, the crisp snap of bone. I saw the terrified sneer on his mouth wiped away. Blood spattered and spurted everywhere. Flesh and bone was pulverized. I witnessed the instant of the terrible man's painful death.
I braked hard and the Rover went into a long skid. The car spun a full 360 degrees.
The Mercedes sedan was fully out of control, the driver apparently unable to maneuver. Harding Thomas's head and shoulders hung lifelessly out the side window. The car struck the trunk of a tall oak. It bounced off.
Ricocheted sharply to the right. The wheels rose up, then touched down again.
The powerful car plowed over large and small bushes. Then it rattled and bumped down a steep incline. The rocky ravine seemed to rise up to meet it.
I saw Gillian's face pressed against a side window, her mouth open in a scream. I could also see the face of Dr. Anthony Peyser trapped inside.
His eyes were fixed wide and I thought he might be dead already.
The Mercedes rolled. It toppled again and again, picking up speed.
The sides of the car crumpled toward the center. The roof caved in. The windshield blew in a torrent of glass.
Finally the sedan crashed into moss-covered boulders that lay seventy or eighty yards below the road. They must all be dead, I thought to myself.
I pulled myself out of the Land Rover. My vision tunneled. Everything was chaos inside my head. My legs were weak, but I struggled forward toward Max. I was afraid that I was too late.
She lay in a twisted heap at the base of the tree she'd struck. There was a huge gash in her chest. At least one wing looked broken.
"Max! Max!" Matthew was yelling, shrilling loudly as he flew toward her. He made a pitiful, wailing sound that was more like a young bird's than a boy's.
"Max, oh, Max!" I found that I was screaming, too.
Chapter 124
NEARLY TWO HOURS HAD PASSED, but it seemed only minutes. I was shaken, but it didn't matter. I needed to perform at the top range of my capabilities, or maybe even beyond that.
Everything was a blur of urgent, rushing bodies inside Boulder Community Hospital. Kit was being operated on just two rooms away. I was with Max in the largest operating theater. She was conscious, moaning softly, but at least she was alive.
She had sustained severe damage to her chest and to both wings. There were deep cuts and lacerations, broken bones, possibly a collapsed lung.
She'd lost a lot of blood, and that was a serious problem in her case. It was also a unique problem. Max's blood type was nonhuman, nonavian.
It was something in between, Matthew was a match. The twins were a match, and Peter and Wendy had donated what they could spare, I was wearing a light blue mask and scrubs, and for the first time I was in a hospital operating room as a doctor. I was the only real bird authority near Boulder Community. I'd done scores of operations on injured birds that none of the surgeons here knew the first thing about. I was it, and I guess I wouldn't have had it any other way. I didn't want anyone else to work on Max.
Her pulse was thready. Not a good sign. A bad sign, in fact. I looked around the operating room at the solemn and frightened eyes looking back at me. None of them knew what to do here, what to make of me or any of this. They did know that Max was in extremely critical condition.
I sucked it in, and took charge as best I could. "Let's go to work," I said to the hastily assembled emergency team.
I chose isofluorine gas as an anesthetic because it was safer for birds, and I had no idea how sodium Pentothal would affect Max. Also, my long familiarity with isofluorine allowed me to calculate a safe dosage. One or two of the other doctors looked skeptical, but no one questioned me.
Following my instructions, the surgical team carefully wrapped Max's wings to her body before masking her; if she panicked in the twilight of unconsciousness and beat the wings, she could do irreparable damage.
The gas hissed and Max struggled, as I knew she would. She was definitely a fighter. But then she finally went down. There were tears in my eyes and an OR nurse wiped them away. Not the time, not the place for emotions. "I'm right here, Max," I whispered. "Trust me. I'm here, sweetie."
"She's a friend," I explained to the surgical nurse on my right. "I'll be all right."
"I'm sure you will be," the nurse whispered. "I'm right by your side."
I shook off my emotions as best I could. I was in a hospital operating room as a doctor. I had a life to save - a human life - the life of someone I cared about. But I also knew that Max's chances weren't good.
The anesthesiologist nodded at me. We were ready. After making sure that Max was unconscious, I slowly unwrapped her myself. I examined the tears in her wings, and worse, the sucking wound in her breast. The sight of the dark, gaping hole was unnerving.
I couldn't afford sentimentality or any other distractions as I plucked feathers from around the dangerous chest wound. I scrubbed the area and flushed out metal, wood, shards of glass, and more feathers. I was fearful that her lung might be punctured.
Using my scalpel, I began to debride the area, ridding it of ruined skin and tissue. Then I cut.
I worked on the chest wound first. I was afraid of blood leaking into the pericardial cavity. All of us were. But the lung wasn't punctured. It hadn't collapsed. I did what I could, then moved on to other problem areas, other serious wounds.
"I'm right here, Max. I'm still here," I whispered. "Can you hear me?
I know you can hear things better than most of us."
The tendon that stretches from the humerus to the third wing finger of her left wing was badly lacerated, but not severed. I used a Bunnellmayer suture pattern for the tendons, and then closed my incision. I was pretty much working on instinct now.
Beside me a pediatric surgeon worked on a long, deep gash in Max's cheek, and then one under her clavicle. The surgeon, a woman, was good.
For long periods of time, I almost forgot she was there.
Max was fighting so bravely. I knew she would.
"You're doing great, Max. Keep it up. You're the best, Maximum."
I became aware of a nurse sponging my brow. It was something I could definitely have used at the Inn-Patient.
I heard snatches of the hushed conversations of the nurses and doctors around me, but I was concentrating on the complicated operation and didn't pay attention to what they were saying. I needed to figure out how all the
unusual pieces fit together. This operation wasn't in any anatomy books - not at the University of Colorado, not at Berkeley, or Harvard, or Chicago. Not yet, anyway.
I used a PDS suture and performed an end-to-end penorrhaphy. I quickly decided on a simple interrupted pattern, a long row of little knots.
I glanced up at the stainless-steel wall clock. I was stunned that nearly three and a half hours had gone by like an instant. I realized my body was soaking wet.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard one of the doctors softly say, "We've done what we can for her."
Chapter 125
WE COULDN'T LOSE MAX. Not after what we'd been through after what she'd been through.
I waited until she was getting amoxicillin and saline subcue, and then I placed figure-eight-shaped bandages on each of her wings. This would help protect her if she went ballistic when she came to. It was a small thing, but I had done everything else I could for her. I hoped it was enough.
I was close to tears, but I wouldn't allow them to come. Not here, not with the hospital nurses and doctors looking on. I shed my scrubs in the surgeon's locker room and quickly washed up, Then I found my way to the I.C.U.
Kit had been operated on by a second team of surgeons, the best doctors available. He was plugged in to so much monitoring equipment that it was hard to tell where the man ended and the tubes began.
His chart had him down with a broken clavicle, two broken ribs, a punctured lung, and pleurisy. He was receiving a blood transfusion and antibiotics, and all of his vitals were being monitored. His signs were all strong, the opposite of Max's.
I pulled an armchair up to his bedside and I collapsed into it. I sat there for a long time, trancelike, just looking at him. I finally let myself cry.
Tears streamed down both cheeks and I couldn't make them stop once they had started.
I remembered the first time I saw him at the Inn-Patient, when there was an Inn-Patient. And then the magic moment when he sang so beautifully at Villa Vittoria. And our "last night on earth" in Gillian's basement.
So much had happened to us in such a very short time. We'd been through so much together.
I whispered, "I love you, Kit, Tom, whoever you are. I love you so much."
I must have dozed off after that. I don't know for how long. I felt Kit softly stroking my hair.
"Oh, Kit," I said, when I saw he was conscious. I kissed him on the cheek as gently as I could, and he smiled brilliantly.
"How is she?" he asked.
"She's extremely critical. I don't know what will happen. There's no precedent for the operation we did."
I stayed in Kit's room for what seemed a long time, several hours. I didn't have a home to go to, anyway.
Then I slipped upstairs to see about Max. She should be coming out of the anesthetic right about now.
I said a few prayers as I climbed the stairs from the third floor to the fifth. I was lost in thought, wondering about God, and how the recent advances in medicine and science fit into the grand scheme, if there was a grand scheme, or any scheme at all. A phrase was running through my head - all God's creatures. I wondered what it meant now.
I was thinking: Don't let Max die. She's a good little girl, and she's special. Please don't let her die. Are you listening, Lord?
Max was still asleep when I entered her room. She looked so vulnerable and innocent. Seeing Max sick like this was like watching a falling star.
I sat beside her and began a vigil.
Don't let Max die.
Don't let this little girl die.
It was early morning, and I was still with Max when her eyelids finally fluttered open. She looked up at me and I felt that my heart could break.
"Hi, Max. Hi there, sweetheart."
"Hi. Where am I?", she whispered.
"Somewhere safe. A hospital in Boulder. You're with me."
"I heard you talking to me. During the operation, Frannie," she said.
Her voice was very low and I had to strain to hear her words.
I gently kissed her cheek, then her forehead, her other cheek.
Don't let this little girl die, I kept repeating in my head. I was shaking with fear.
She smiled softly. "Did you miss me?" she whispered.
"We all missed you so much. Where were you, sweetheart?"
"Oh. I was really flying."
Max was quiet again, and I could hear that her breathing was strained.
She let me hold her hand, but she didn't say anything else for several minutes. I stroked her damp forehead, her hair. I kissed her warm cheek again and again.
She whispered, "It really is like flying. It's nice. I like it there, Frannie."
And then Max lightly, lightly squeezed my hand.
She closed her eyes.
Max slept.
Chapter 126
SOMETIMES LATE AT NIGHT, I sit in the dark on an old-fashioned rope swing in the front yard. I push myself higher and higher, hoping I might take off and fly. I think about what's happened, and try to make sense of it. I know that plenty of others are trying to do the same.
I'll tell you what happened after the showdown at Gillian's house.
Weeks after the trouble, Kit and I did what we thought we had to do, what we felt was right - we disappeared with the kids: Matthew, Oz, Ic, the twins, and Max.
I won't tell where our home is, but it's safe for right now. Even though it's temporary, it's a good place to live. The government just didn't know what to do with the winged children, or with Kit and me, and the things that we know. We didn't know what to do with the government. Whom to trust? Whom to fear?
A group of conscienceless scientists, at least a couple of powerful people in Washington, and unscrupulous and greedy higher-ups at some important biotech companies, committed unthinkable crimes. They murdered people, including my husband, David. They experimented on humans.
Several of the outlaw group of scientists are dead. Gillian, or rather, Dr. Susan Parkhill, is gone. So is her son, Michael, who had a life expectancy of two hundred years. He perished at four years of age. Dr. Anthony Peyser also died in the car crash near the house in Colorado.
Paranoid theories abound, but the government was involved in some way, and nobody knows exactly how yet. Maybe we never will. There were soldiers in Bear Bluff. To this day, no one has explained why they were there. A handful of FBI agents were involved. Powerful companies were prepared to bid huge sums of money for the first forbidden fruits of the biotech revolution.
Eve survived. She is at a secret army base in North Carolina. No word about the girl has been released to the public. I guess maybe the public doesn't have the right to know.
There was a recent story in the New York Times about the offspring from the three young pregnant women at Gillian's house. According to the report, the infants were born without faces. They were purposely designed that way by Dr. Peyser and his team. The experimental children were created for "parts."
Meanwhile, we're out here in the woods. We're far, far from the civilized world. I suppose it's like a witness protection program, only it's much better for the witnesses, much better for us, anyway.
The kids love it, and so do Kit and I. The fresh air, the sprawling blue skies, our favorite swimming hole, the natural beauty of the land, the freedom to be ourselves without any scrutiny. You can't beat it.
But then somebody found us, of course.
Chapter 127
IT WAS A BRIGHT, sunny, hopeful Saturday afternoon when we arrived at the army base in North Carolina where the surviving "experimental" children were being kept.
The base was located on over 40,000 acres of woods, which were perfect for army training exercises, as well as for hiding the children away from the press and others.
We got there at 1200 hours, and were due at the general's quarters by 0200. Everyone at the military post was extremely nice, the MPS, the general's adjutant - a lieutenant colonel named James Dwyer - the soldiers themselves.
The
children were allowed to go to the affair in casual clothes, which they loved. I wore a beige cowl-neck sweater and blue jeans, while Kit had on khaki pants and a blue blazer. We were incredibly nervous and jumpy as the momentous hour approached, and so were the kids. This would be the biggest day in their lives.
At 0200, we pulled up in front of a large, plantation-style house on a tree-lined road. Up and down the neat, pretty street were magnolias and pines, as well as several large brick houses. The general's house was the most impressive, the handsomest, the obvious choice for the upcoming event.
James Patterson - When the Wind Blows Page 29