The Dig

by Michael Siemsen

  “Matthew,” a doctor with silver hair and bright, white smile said to him, “can you hear me okay?”

  Matt nodded a little and was able to manage a “Yeah” with his thick, dry tongue.

  “Do you know your last name, Matthew?”

  Matt nodded again and said, “Tuhna.” He thought it sounded as if he were talking underwater.

  “That’s very good, Matthew. You have no idea how happy I am to hear that.”

  “W’cut mm’ms mff?”

  The doctor just shook his head. “It’s okay, you’ll be able to speak much better in a couple of hours, and worlds better in a couple of days. You probably have a lot of questions.”

  Matt nodded. “Nuh sh’t.”

  “I’m going to answer some of the easy ones for you, so you don’t have to try to strain yourself trying to form the words. First off, ‘Where am I?’ Always a good thing to know, right?”

  Matt felt one side of the bed sink where the doctor sat down. Don’t touch me, dear God, please.

  “You’re currently a patient at the Gribbs Foster Dunham Center in New Rochelle, New York,” the doctor began. “I am your attending, Dr. Ofle. No jokes! Ha-ha. You can call me ‘Matt’ when you are able—should be an easy one for you to remember. Next question: how long? A very short time, relatively speaking—just over a month. Well, a month with us, anyway. You went through a couple of international transfers before we got you. I believe your total length was around two months.”

  A nurse lifted one of his legs, bending it all the way to his chest, pushing the wind from him, then put it down gently and moved to the other. A nurse beside him was flexing his arm up and down.

  “What happened? Well, we’re not really sure about that, but you are not injured in any way as far as we can tell. You are not paralyzed, in spite of the way your body feels right now. Here, feel this…”

  Matt saw him reach for something from beside the bed. He came back with a metal instrument and lifted Matt’s hand.

  “Nnnuh!” Matt groaned at him. “Dnnn’t!”

  “Oh, it’s quite all right, Matthew,” the doctor said cheerfully. “You’ve had a sort of guardian angel here almost every day, and… well, let’s just say the point was well taken, long ago. Everything in here is new and has never been used on anyone but you. Perhaps when you’re better able to communicate, you can tell us all about these allergies of yours.”

  Guardian angel… Tuni! Was she here? Matt felt the object poke his finger.

  “See? Full sensation. Let’s see, other questions—how long until I can move around some more? Get up and about… feed myself? Well, I’d be a liar if I didn’t tell you you’ve got some work ahead of you. The body needs to be moving around; those muscles and tendons need flexing. When they don’t, well, they sort of go to sleep right along with you. We’ve had a great staff in here taking care of you, making sure you remain limber, don’t lose any flexibility, and also to keep you free from any of the other nasty problems that pop up when the body’s immobile.”

  “Wrrrs Tnnneh?”

  “Sorry, Matthew, but like I said, we’re gonna get that mouth working real fast. It’ll come around long before the rest, trust me on that.”

  Outside, he heard a new voice ask, “he’s awake?” English accent… no South African twist—not Tuni?

  A woman with red hair appeared over him and smiled. “Good to see you awake, Matthew,” she said. “I’m Dr. Sylvan, and I’m sure we’ll be talking a lot in a couple of days. For now, a simple nod yes or no will do—don’t fight to get everything off your mind, okay? Let’s try a ‘yes’ nod right now.”

  Matt nodded.

  “Very good; how about a ‘no’?”

  Matt moved his head side to side.

  “No? You can’t do that? Ha-ha-ha, just kidding. Old joke.”

  Strangers streamed in and out of his room, all very excited to see him. Another woman came in a little later and introduced herself as Breeze, the physical therapist. He wanted to ask her if that was her real name or if it just seemed soothing to her broken patients. She said they’d be seeing a lot of each other in the coming weeks.

  So where the hell was Tuni? Did she really come almost every day?

  A couple of hours passed, and Matt had begun exercising his tongue and lips the way Doctor Sylvan instructed him. She said it would not only help his speech improve but also help him drink and eat his first real meal a little later.

  They had propped him up on his pillow so he could see the room around him. He looked around—no TV, but he did have his own bathroom. Wait… how have I been doing that? He slowly reached down and felt the tube under his gown.

  A nurse he had seen before appeared in the doorway and said “knock knock.” She smiled and tilted her head to the side.

  “Hello again, Matthew. Your visitor has returned! I have to say, when you’re able, you’ve got many thank-you’s to bestow on this one!”

  Tuni!

  “Hello, son,” Matt’s father said as he entered the doorway. “Can’t tell you how good it is to see you awake.”

  44

  KYLE PERKINS SET THE PHONE DOWN and stepped outside Peter’s RV. He scanned the field for Tuni but spotted only Peter, sitting at a console while DeMotte carted the ground-penetrating radar unit around. In the distance, he saw several people huddled over another monitor. No Tuni there, either.

  “Hey, Pete!” he shouted, but Peter didn’t hear him. “Damn it…” He would have to jog out. He walked past the tables and the giant baobab and called him again.

  “What’s up, Kyle?” Peter replied over the bleeping of the radar pulses.

  “Phone call from the States.”

  “You keep going, Jack,” Peter called to DeMotte. “Same pace. It’s recording. I gotta take this.” He jogged over. “Who is it?”

  “Not sure. They wanted to talk to Tuni, but I don’t know where she is.”

  “She went with Hank and Miles to B site,” Peter told him as they walked to the biggest of several motor homes on the site.

  After wiping his feet on the mat, Peter stepped inside.

  “Hello, this is Pete Sharma. Tuni is currently off-site; may I ask who is calling?” He listened for a moment. “He is? Holy shit! Is he okay, though? This is so wonderful! I’m sorry, who is this again?… Oh, okay, hi. Nice to meet you… yeah… Okay, I’ll tell her as soon as she gets back. Yeah, okay, thanks for calling!”

  Peter hung up the phone and slapped Kyle Perkins on the back, shouting, “He woke up!” as he dashed out the door.

  “Who?” Perkins asked as Peter ran off.

  Peter ran across the field to tell Collette, Rodney, and the others the news about Matt. “Rodney, has Hank got a radio?” he asked, breathless from excitement as much as from the run.

  “I think he charged it this morning,” Rodney replied. “I imagine he would have taken it.” He handed his radio to Peter.

  Peter depressed the button. “A site to Hank, A site to Hank—you there?”

  The radio crackled quietly for a moment.

  “Hank here—what’s up?”

  “Hank, please tell me Tuni is there with you.”

  “Tuni? Tuni who?” Hank said, but Peter could hear Tuni’s voice in the background, shouting, “Silly fool.”

  “Can you put her on, please?” Peter persisted.

  A few seconds later, her voice came through the speaker.

  “Yes, Peter, how can I help you?”

  “Matt woke up.”

  The radio crackled. Everyone huddled around Peter, waiting to hear her response. It cracked again, but Hank’s voice was back.

  “Hey, Pete, did you just say Matt woke up?”

  “That I did, Hank. Where’d Tuni go?”

  “Uh… she’s still in the backseat… just—you okay? Hey, you want to go back to A site? Hang on, Pete. She’s a little, um—hang on.”

  “Is she crying?” Collette asked. “I bet she’s crying.”

  “So, Pete,” Rodney interjected
, “you going to fly him back out here to see what we’ve found so far?”

  Pete smiled and nodded. “I wish. I don’t think Matt Turner’s gonna be visiting Africa anytime soon, though. They said it might be a couple months before he’s out of the hospital, and even after that… you think he’s going to want to come back? He couldn’t wait to leave!”

  “Peter?” Tuni’s voice cracked through the radio. She was sniffling.

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “Can I go? Can I see him?”

  “Of course! They said you’re the first person he asked for. Wouldn’t shut up about you, or so I gather from the nurse there.”

  “Okay… coming back…” They heard the sound of Hank crunching around a U-turn before the radio cracked off.

  Tuni dropped her two duffel bags near the RVs and waved to the others at the tables under the baobab. She had really gotten to know only perhaps forty of the sixty-odd people now working the A and B sites. Pete had assembled specialists from all over the world, and more were on their way. No television vans were parked outside just yet, but that would change soon. Peter had told her that the crew would bide their time and keep mapping until the documentary folks arrived next week. He wanted to be sure they captured everything significant.

  She stepped inside Peter’s RV. Her request was a simple one, but she feared that his by-the-book mind-set would shut her down. He stood as she entered, while Collette remained seated, munching at her sandwich.

  Peter swallowed and said, “So this is it? Tell me you won’t get too comfy over there and leave us out here to rot.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Great. Well…” He leaned forward awkwardly and hugged her.

  “So, Peter… ,” Tuni said with an innocent glance upward. “I have a teensy favor to ask, and you will be simply unable to refuse.”

  “Tell me—anything.”

  “I want to bring it with me.”

  “Uh, okay, I should have said, anything but that! C’mon, how could you even ask? You know the laws and everything. We just got the okay from the ministry to send that package to Meier, and that was like pulling teeth! The inspections alone took a week.”

  “I’m not hearing the emphatic yes I had hoped for, Peter.”

  “Emphatically, no,” he replied.

  She moaned and rolled her eyes. Peter’s face told her the same as his words, and he sat back down at the little round table to finish his chips.

  “Very well. I had to ask. Tah-tah, all! I’ll hopefully be back within a fortnight.” She turned and opened the door.

  “Hang on a sec,” Peter called behind her. She paused on the step and glanced back. “You know that package is going to be in Meier’s hands tomorrow. It might be a bit easier for you to convince him to let you take it on a field trip.”

  Tuni smiled. Jon? Oh, very easy.

  “You’re out of your lovely mind, Tuni,” Dr. Meier told her twenty-six hours later. “The freedoms of the field have clogged your once logical mind.”

  “It’s six hours, tops, Jon. Don’t be a fuss-pot. By the way, is that a new sweater vest?”

  He shook off the compliment and hugged the open box closer to his chest.

  “Do you have any idea how long I’ve waited for this package?” he said. “I woke up at five this morning to get here early just to wait by the dock for FedEx.”

  “You are a great man, Jon. I understand the sacrifice. Not quite the magnitude of Matthew’s, of course, but definitely agonizing. Let me cure your pain again in six hours, okay, dear?” She stepped closer to him and leaned down, prying the box from his hands.

  He made a halfhearted attempt to hold on to it, but he knew it was useless. Had she intentionally given him that glimpse of cleavage? She didn’t have to, but he was appreciative nonetheless.

  As she sauntered away like a runway model, he called behind her, “You take care of that thing as if it were Matt Turner himself, understand?”

  “Cheers, Jon. I’ll send your love to Matthew.”

  Matt sucked his lemonade through the straw and pretended his father wasn’t staring at him. He reached for the plastic fork and began to shovel mashed potatoes into his mouth. While he ate, he hummed nervously and rotated his ankles beneath the sheet. The awkwardness became unbearable, and he reached for the remote, pointing it to his new room’s corner-mounted LCD television.

  “That’s pretty rude, Matthew,” his father said. “I’m not here to watch you eat and flip through channels.”

  “Hmm, no?” Matt replied sarcastically. “Why are you here?”

  “I’m here to help you… and to talk to you.”

  “Right,” Matt nodded exaggeratedly. “I’m just not sure I’m in the mood to help you clear your conscience.”

  “Boy, I was here every single day, making sure they—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got that the last few times. You fluffed my pillows, you yelled at helpless nurses. Admirable. You should be knighted.” He stuffed a chunk of meatloaf into his mouth.

  “Boy, I know you despise me, but I didn’t do any of that for myself, understand? You think it’s all some sort of atonement for… ahem… my guilt.” Matt nodded and smiled his agreement. “But I—that’s why you need to… ah, damn it, forget it. I told her you didn’t want to hear any of it.”

  “Mom was right. Listen to her, please.”

  “I’m not talking about your mother, son. I’m talking about your girlfriend.”

  Matt swallowed a half-chewed bite of meatloaf.

  “Tuni?”

  “Yeah, the black girl.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Matt exclaimed. “You’re still such a racist.”

  “How is that racist? Is she not black? I’ve had many conversations with her, okay?”

  “Right, Dad, awesome. That’s almost as rich as having black friends.”

  “This is ridiculous,” his father said, standing up. “I came here to try to fix what I did—fix it for you, not for me, okay? I… I know what I got. It can’t…” He reached up and shielded his eyes, his voice cracking. Matt let him continue. “What I got inside me, it can’t be fixed. There ain’t no ‘clearing my conscience,’ okay? There’s nothing I could do to fix that.”

  “Look,” Matt said without venom. He tried to keep his chest from quaking—not in front of him. “Mom and Iris are in the cafeteria. Go find them and get yourself some lunch. I don’t want to argue.”

  His father dropped his hand, revealing his reddened eyes and tears. They looked at each other; it was hard for Matt not to look away.

  “When I saw you every day—all the tubes and crap going into your veins and everything—well, I couldn’t help thinking about Jessica Harris…”

  Matt stiffened. “Nope. I don’t want to talk about that. At all, okay?”

  “. . . and how I did that to you. I didn’t give you any choice. You… your little arm with the IV jabbed in it. I thought it was the fastest way—the only way… let you get to the end of the imprint. Son of a bitch was doing who knew what to that little girl, and you could save her. That’s all there was to it. I never put it together, you know?”

  “Look, I said no…”

  “She was twelve; you were twelve. I see it now. For a while now. I know I was just as bad as him, the kidnapper, you know? Except I was doing it to my own goddam son. Four days, I had her torn shirt on your hand. I put you through that. I knew what you must have been experiencing. And you came out of it; you tried to be strong. You had seen the other house and told us where to go, and we got her. Bullet in that piece of shit’s head. We got her out of there.”

  Matt began to lose his composure and began squeezing his face and ears.

  “And what did we do while she was being taken care of and fawned over and going through all her therapy and loved by everyone? We took you out for pizza. Goddammed pizza. I think about it every day. There’s nothing I can say or do to undo it, son. So no, my guilt will stick with me until I die.”

  He walked out, and Mat
t screamed inside. He had let him get in his head. Now I feel guilty about him feeling the way he should about what he did!

  He rubbed at his eyes and tried to get his breathing under control. He was shaking with every breath, and he realized he hadn’t been overcome like this since he was thirteen—when Dad thought it would be a great idea to have Matt and Jessica Harris meet in person so she could thank her savior. Yeah, that would show Matt how it was all worth it! He’d stop complaining and help with more cases!

  Matt pushed the food tray away and reached for a tissue. He blew his nose. Ugh, that was horrible, he thought, and took a deep breath. God, was Tuni ever going to call? Why did she go back to Kenya? She just handed me off to Dad at this place and hopped on a plane. Guess she really got into the whole “excavating old stuff” thing. What was I thinking? They had known each other for, what, a week? She hadn’t even led him on.

  “Hello, Matthew,” said a blend of South African and English accents.

  He looked up and saw her standing in the doorway, a brown box in her hands. He tried to speak, then focused his strength on not bursting into tears. Damn it, now I’m all raw! Horrible timing!

  “Hey,” he finally managed to say.

  Tuni smiled as if holding back tears of her own. She stepped in and set the box down on a chair before walking to his bedside, where she rummaged in her purse for a moment.

  “Sorry… hang on,” she said as she searched. “Ah-hah…”

  He smiled and opened his mouth, and she popped the piece of gum in.

  “I figured after two months you probably needed it pretty badly. Now, I’ve a couple of other things for you.”

  She watched him and dabbed her eyes with a tissue. They stared at each other in silence until she finally stuck her cupped hand out in front of his mouth. He crossed his eyes, looking down at her hand.

  “What?” he said.