Before Darfur, I hated the death penalty. I loudly declared capital punishment as government-sanctioned murder. Two wrongs didn’t make a right. But in Darfur, I witnessed government-sanctioned murder executed with ruthless efficiency by the hands of the Janjaweed. I didn’t stop the rebel from killing the soldier.
The rebel fought against the organized government and, by his mere existence, endangered his people. As long as he was alive, the Janjaweed would hunt down and kill everyone in his race. But, if he surrendered, what guarantee was there that the Janjaweed would withdraw? The rebel had to exist, had to fight for what was right, because the alternative was unthinkable.
But did Nathan present the same evil as the Janjaweed? Was Greg as righteous as the rebel? More importantly, who decided? Who judged the righteousness of man? I thought to ask Mason, but already knew how he’d answer.
I was not eager to rush headlong into another theological debate, so I shelved the question. It didn’t concern me; I only had to write the articles and let Mason, or God, sort out the rest. Only Nadine mattered. The doctors had already commended her into the hands of death and washed theirs of guilt. I wouldn’t give up. I may not have believed in God, but I wasn’t about to gamble Nadine’s life on the point.
* * *
Aida hushed me as I walked in and motioned to the back room. “Sleeping.”
“How long?”
Aida checked her watch. “An hour. Sit.” She patted the couch next to her. A harrowing heat moved in as I drove from Mason’s to Aida’s. The birds outside busied themselves finding shade rather than singing. No breeze rustled the leaves of her well-manicured trees. Her refrigerator hummed. Her fingers scratched over the pages of a Stephen King novel. “How’d it go with Greg?”
I shrugged.
“He has that effect on people.”
“You know him?”
“The trial was all over the news. I was young then, only ten or eleven. Can’t remember much.”
“Have you talked to him?”
She nodded. “Kind of unnerving, isn’t he?”
“How am I supposed to spin this into something good?”
A broad smile split her face. “Shouldn’t be too hard. It’s right up your alley.”
I took a deep breath. How should I choose my words? “Write a few articles like mine and people assume you’re an optimist. I try to focus on the good, but it’s always in the midst of evil. We, people, we’re evil.”
“And?”
“Didn’t you hear what I said?”
“If you can find a way to isolate the hope in Darfur, you should be able to find something positive in Greg’s story.”
“Nadine helped me with that article.”
“I know.”
I sighed. “I understand the elimination of evil. Still, he killed a kid. It wasn’t like he was gunning down a murderer.”
“Nathan didn’t kill Sarah. He killed the baby, and that’s what killed Sarah. Worse than murder, if you ask me.”
I scratched my nose and leaned forward. She had a point. Perhaps I should play up the evil of Nathan to better paint Greg. I’d have to tone down Greg’s brutality, rage, and lack of remorse.
In the process of reviewing the interview in my mind, I thought of something else. I turned to Aida. “How much has Mason told you?”
“About?”
“The articles. Why I’m writing them.”
“Enough.”
“I don’t buy this whole ‘God’s going to destroy Hailey’ bit. You can’t honestly believe it either.”
Aida shrugged.
“You see? This is why the rest of the world thinks Christians are ignorant. This is kid’s stuff, something out of Sunday School. You’re an adult, a nurse, a woman of science. How can you, in good conscience, believe this?”
I wanted to feel more conviction in my views, wanted to sound more degrading and confrontational. I wanted to be angry, but my words didn’t have the edge I’d hoped for.
“You’re the one writing the articles.”
“Doesn’t mean I believe.”
“I know you, Connor. Say you don’t believe all you want. Fact is, you’re writing the articles.”
Chapter 10
Saturday, September 5th
I’d exhausted Aida’s reserves of coffee somewhere around 4 a.m., and her supply of purified water ran low. She’d kill me if I turned all her dishwashing water into coffee. I left her a note on the counter, apologizing for any inconvenience I’d caused by drinking a week’s worth of coffee in one night. I planned on sleeping until noon, though I doubted I’d be able to get much rest at all.
At least I’d finished the article. It wasn’t up to my usual standards, but my fatigue out-voted my diligence. Closing the door softly, I made my way through the dark guestroom and took off my shirt. The night air kept the room cool. I looked forward to sliding under the sheets next to Nadine. She’d been asleep for close to nine hours already.
Her white nightgown rested loosely on her thin shoulders. Her skin paled to a pallid gray, but her eyes blackened like bruises. Her innocence and pity only intensified her beauty. I pulled the sheet back and slid beside her, draped an arm over her gaunt frame.
She stirred. “What time is it?”
“Late. Go back to sleep.”
“Are you just getting to bed?”
“The article wasn’t working with me.”
Her breath grew heavier. “I’m proud of you.”
I took her hand, rested my fingers on hers, pressed them gently like piano keys.
She spread her fingers, let mine fall between them. “What you’re doing is good. These people need you.”
I set my glasses on the table. Sweat beaded on my chest and forehead. I smelled like a locker room. “Yeah?”
She rolled over to face me and put her hand on my cheek.
Her tenderness punched me. How many nights did she have left? How could I waste time writing? I couldn’t spend another second away from her. Tomorrow I’d tell Mason I quit. No amount of money could change my mind; time with Nadine couldn’t have a dollar sign strapped to it. I leaned close to her ear. “I love you.”
She smiled, her lips thin as stems. I kissed her forehead, and she rolled over.
Exhaustion pushed me to sleep, but my mind wouldn’t cooperate. Too much caffeine drove my brain like a Maserati. I sighed and timed my breathing with the soft rise-and-fall of Nadine’s chest. I counted each inhale-exhale like sheep over a fence.
In, out. In, out. In, out.
Her chest stopped.
In, I thought. Breathe in.
Nothing. My eyes snapped open, I shook her gently. She didn’t move and all at once I remembered the story of Job. I heard the words the Lord gives and takes away.
No. Not this time.
I shook her hard, but she still didn’t move. Her pallid hue softened to a pastel blue.
“Aida!” My shout rattled the door. I sat up and shook Nadine harder. “Aida!”
Fast footsteps, then the door. “What, what? Talk to me, Connor.”
“Not breathing.” I whispered a desperate prayer.
Aida scuttled around the bed. “Get off her. She’ll never breathe with your fat self suffocating her.”
“Two days,” I whispered. “Is that the best you can do?” The question was not directed toward Aida.
“Her color’s turning.” Aida climbed on the bed. “How long has she been like this?” Bending at her hips, she brought her lips to Nadine’s. She blew forcefully until Nadine’s chest rose.
“A minute, maybe more, I don’t know. She was breathing; it was in-out-in-out and then nothing.”
Aida pulled her fingers from Nadine’s neck. “No pulse.”
“Oh, God.”
> Aida blew into Nadine’s mouth again. She put both hands on the center of Nadine’s chest and pushed hard, fast, counted each compression. “911, Connor.”
Such composure in her voice, such command. I grabbed my cell phone, fought to steady my hands to dial the number.
The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.
“Not her,” I whispered. “Take me, please. I’ll do anything.”
“911, what’s your emergency?”
I couldn’t breathe. “My wife. Please, I need an ambulance.”
“Give me the phone.” Aida’s voice was firm and unwavering. She blew into Nadine again and snatched the phone from my shaking hand. “Female, thirty-two years old, full arrest. I’m doing CPR, but need someone out here fast to help.” Aida held the phone to her ear with her shoulder while she pressed frantically on Nadine’s chest and recited the address. She dropped the phone immediately after.
“God, please.” It was the frantic, naked plea---.
The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.
I fell on my knees, my hand gripping Nadine’s. Through half-choked sobs I said, “Anything.”
* * *
On September 13th, 2001, I sat on the foot of Emily Bristol’s bed in Hoboken, New Jersey. She moved slowly as if she’d come straight home from her kick-boxing workouts. She put her shirts into a large suitcase, one at a time, handling each with such care you might think they were moments from vanishing. I couldn’t blame her. Two days ago, the entire nation watched the Twin Towers fall, a fifth of the Pentagon collapse. These were symbols of our freedom, our economic and military strength. Our nation hadn’t faced our fragility like this since Pearl Harbor. Emily, like the rest of us, must wonder about permanency. What could we trust to last?
The supreme chaos of New York, like the concrete mist hovering heavy in the air, would take days to settle.
It’d have been pointless to ask the hackneyed reporter questions—“How do you feel? What were you thinking when they fell?” Her answers shone in her cheerless green eyes. In the suffocating silence, she stifled her tears, as if she’d woven an intricate red tapestry in her eyes to hold them at bay.
From the corner of the room, her aunt Felicia muttered, “Pointless.” She’d said it three times in the last ten minutes. I didn’t respond. What could I say?
Finally, the anguish and awkwardness building past my comfortable resolve, I offered a few words. “I lost my mother when I was fifteen.”
Emily nodded, her way of recognizing what I’d said, but declining to comment.
Operating on my reporter’s instinct, I pressed on, hoping that talking about myself would encourage her to talk about her. “My biological father took off when I was one-and-a-half. Said he had to find himself. My mother told me the story when I was twelve. I sent him a mirror for his birthday.”
Despite the oppressive weight of sadness, Emily and Felicia laughed.
“Had a few stepdads. Mean drunks. At some point, they became different versions of the same man. They all kind of blur together. I remember stories, but not the man. Was it mean drunk 1.0 or 4.2? Didn’t matter, I guess, except that I wish it was them, the mean drunks, instead of your parents.”
Emily paused, closed her eyes for a moment. “Plenty of them in there, too. That’s what gets me.” Her voice gained some confidence and, it seemed, distracted her from the horrifying task of packing all her stuff to move to Maine with her aunt. “It wasn’t just Mom and Dad. It was thousands of people, and what did they do?”
She sat down, folded her hands in her lap. “Ahmir shined Dad’s shoes each morning. His wife worked on the twelfth floor. She was pregnant. Six months. A baby boy. What about them? What about the baby?”
She stood back up, surveyed her room. She couldn’t fit it all in one suitcase.
Felicia muttered, “Pointless.”
She scribbled something on a yellow pad of sticky notes, stuck it on her pink lamp. “I was supposed to meet Mom for dinner that night. We were going to go to this little place on the 80th floor. There’s a guy there, and he only works on Tuesdays, because the other days he works another job on another floor, but he makes the best Reuben sandwiches. Mom and I have a standing date.” She cleared her throat. “Had.”
Tears burned behind my eyes, and I blinked them back. I had a recorder on so my note-taking wouldn’t be a distraction to her.
Aunt Felicia waddled in from Emily’s bathroom holding a toothbrush and toothpaste. “Pointless. The whole thing. That’s what I keep thinking. All this senseless death. What was the point?”
“They wanted to scare us,” Emily said. “But Mom and Dad didn’t scare easy, you know? And I think, in some way, it’s kinda my job to move on now. Life doesn’t really stop no matter how much I want it to. I’m doing something good. This packing, moving to Maine, all that, that’s my job as an American, as a Christian, keep going no matter what, you know?”
I didn’t.
* * *
“Ambulance is taking too long.” Aida had worked tirelessly on Nadine for minutes, for hours, for days and weeks and years.
How had Emily been strong enough at sixteen to recognize her life wasn’t inextricably tied to her parents? How could she move on?
Aida punched Nadine hard in the chest with a sickening thump, and I collapsed to the floor. I couldn’t shut my mind up, and the voices came faster now, please, anything, the Lord gives and takes away, anything, please, the Lord gives and takes anything, I can’t, please Lord, please God, please—anything, I’ll do anything.
Nadine sputtered.
Aida said, “Come on!” Another breath, another thump, another sputter.
Then choking and gasping.
I stood so quickly my head spun, and my knees buckled. I steadied myself. Nadine was breathing, but I wasn’t.
Thank you, God, thank you.
I grabbed her terrifyingly cold hand.
This hadn’t been an accident. She’d stopped breathing the minute I decided to quit, and started when I vowed to do anything. I knew I couldn’t quit.
Not if I wanted Nadine to live.
Chapter 11
Saturday, September 5th
On the flimsy white aluminum railing that enclosed Aida’s patio, a black spider dangled by a thread, caught in the gentle breeze. Desperately swinging, legs flailing, the spider reached for something solid to latch onto, something to stabilize him. Still, swaying and swinging, two legs held onto the near invisible thread, the only connection, thin as it was, to anything solid. I understood that spider.
The sun glinted off Mason’s shaved head. In black sunglasses, a sweatshirt, jeans and flip flops, he’d dressed more for the beach than the desert. “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t want his apology, but I understood the sentiment. Emotionally exhausted, I lacked the strength to argue or to be angry. I hadn’t slept, shaved or showered in over twenty-four hours. I’d only brushed my teeth because Aida threatened to kick me out if I didn’t get rid of my coffee breath.
The morning chill had not yet burned away. Mason cracked his knuckles. “I don’t want to make this any harder than it already is. I didn’t envision it being like this.”
“Did you make the rules?”
“No.”
“Then don’t apologize.”
“You know we’re in this together, right? We’re kinda tied together, you and me.”
“We’re not tied together. We are not partners or friends or brothers or cousins or anything like it. I don’t have to like you, but we don’t have to be enemies, either.”
He frowned. “I’m guessing you’re done, then?”
“Wish I could quit. But I can’t. Can I do more than one a day? What if I interviewed everyone first, then sat down to write. Would He be okay with that?”
Mason shrug
ged. “I’m not Him.”
I folded my arms. “I didn’t sleep last night. A little short on patience, so stop playing games and just answer my questions, okay? If I’m going to do this, I want to do it quick. And if God’s the one who told you to hire me, then you’re my only connection to Him.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way. You can talk to Him, too, you know.”
I laughed. “Think so?”
A chill swept over the patio. Mason shivered. He shoved his hands deep in his pockets, arms rigid, back straight, but shoulders slumped. He bowed his head, stared at his flip flops. “I know how you feel when it comes to God.”
I made no effort to hide my agitation. “Do you know how I feel about people assuming they know how I feel?”
“Angry. Frustrated, like you’re mad at something or someone even though you don’t know if they even exist. Am I close?”
“Ballpark.”
“You want to blame Him for Nadine, but at the same time you want to call out to Him, because who else can help?”
“It’s not just Nadine,” I said. “It’s things like September 11th, Katrina, Darfur, the holocaust, Thailand’s tsunami, all that. What kind of God does that? So many good people, why destroy them like that?”
“You can’t say God did all those things. Maybe He allowed it, but He definitely didn’t cause it.”
“What’s the difference.”
Mason slipped his flip-flops off and curled his toes under his feet. “First of all, it’d imply He wanted to destroy people. I don’t think that’s the case. Second of all, it doesn’t take into account the people He saved. For every tragic death, I can show you three or four miracles of people narrowly escaping death. See what I mean?”
“Are you saying God couldn’t have stopped those things?”
“Not at all. I’m saying we’re all sinners, and because of that, we have to die. Yes, it’s tragic when good people die. Fact is, no one’s perfect, and we have to be if we want to go to Heaven.”
The Bargain - One man stands between a destitute town and total destruction. Page 8