The Wind Thief (Vanished, #4), page 3
I pick up my bag and take careful steps away, keeping to the full darkness even after the trading post disappears around the bend. Once I’m back in Grant’s truck, I click on the battery and flip on the headlights, but I coast in neutral back down the pass for a good long while before firing up the engine.
Back near the turnoff, Grant waves me over. He looks miraculously unmussed despite his eighteen-year-old bravado, all gung ho to go toe-to-toe with Hosteen.
I pull in behind the newly shoed Old Boat and throw the car into park. I’m still flicking away that burn from the tips of my fingers as I step out.
“How’d it go?” we ask at almost the same time.
“You first,” I say.
Grant takes off his hat and wipes sweat from his forehead, looking up the pass behind me. “I sat on the grill out here and waited, saw him coming, even nodded, but he never even slowed.” He puts his hat back on and his hands on his hips. “It’s the damnedest thing. I know he saw me. But he seemed in a real hurry to get up Crooked Snake. Never even slowed.”
“He has company,” I say.
“What kind of company?” Grant asks.
“The kind that makes me want to get the heck out of here and talk about it back home.”
Grant pops his hat back on and dusts his hands off on his jeans. “So that kind of company, then. Sounds about right, considerin’ it’s Hos and all, and I don’t think he ever kept good company in his life. Except for Kai, of course.”
“I’ve got a theory on her condition as well,” I say. “I’ll tell you all about it.”
Grant hops into the truck, and I hop in the Old Boat, and as I pull back onto the access road toward town, I can still feel the weight of those blind eyes questing after me.
3
CAROLINE ADAMS
About ten years ago, I spent an entire sleepless night eating something between three and five bags of low-cal popcorn and making a list of the pros and cons of staying on as a nurse at the Chaco Health Clinic. To my absolute nonsurprise, it became a list laying out the pros and cons of the two men I was in love with at the time, one of whom was and still is dead.
Believe it or not, things got weirder from there. But long story short, I decided, wisely, to hitch my wagon with Owen, the man I loved who was alive. With each passing year, I’m more and more convinced that I made the right decision although—I’m not going to lie—sometimes, on really dark nights when the sky over the Rez looks like diamonds scattered across velvet and I swear I’m seeing to infinity, I can almost feel him: Ben Dejooli—the Walker, now—and I’d give almost anything just to be able to talk to him again.
That’s just silly because I will be able to, one day. You will too. All of us will. That’s his job. But I’m not talking about “talking” in a professional capacity. I’d just like to sit with him again and chat about his world and my world and how crazy it is that two people can be a world apart, sitting in the same room.
I dropped that letter of resignation in my supervisor’s box at the CHC that day, and I thought I was doing a brave thing, as if quitting the completely overrun CHC and taking their top doctor with me on a mission to restore a cosmic balance would also somehow put an end to the nonstop flow of mid- to heavy-grade suffering that walks in and out of the clinic doors every day.
That was, as our Arroyo friend the Smoker likes to say, “some white-people-shit way of thinking, right there.”
Don’t worry. He doesn’t say it like it’s a bad thing, necessarily—more like an inevitable thing, the way someone might shake their head at a puppy chewing on the laundry. And in this case, at least, he’s right. Turns out the Navajo need as much help at the CHC as they do out in the field, so now Owen and I split our time doing both. I suppose you could say I sort of unresigned. We’re still freelancers, but as far as I can tell, the only real difference is we get paid whenever IHC gets around to it instead of every two weeks.
The Smoker sells what he calls “native cures” at a card table outside the CHC. I’d call it a side hustle, but I think it’s his main hustle unless his main hustle is just staying alive at the Arroyo. He sets up at the street corner by the Quik-N-Go, which also just happens to be the requisite one hundred feet from the CHC entrance so that he can keep ripping his cigarettes. Some of these “cures” aren’t half bad, actually. The osha root and the piñon-sap salves might help some inflammation. He has some blackberry-root-and-honey mix in old lip balm containers that might not hurt people if it is what he says it is.
Others, I’m not so sure of: dream catchers, smudge sticks, medicine wheels, and various rocks he says have spirit power or whatever. When I look at these, I can’t help but hear Owen’s voice. The day I actually observe a smudge stick smudging away cirrhosis, I’ll be first in line at that table. And the medical side of me knows he’s right—mostly.
I can actually see the smoke those sticks of sage are supposed to affect. Call it an aura. Call it spectral sight. Call it whatever you want. I see colors coming off of people, and I have a pretty good idea of what they mean. Sometimes I can calm them, too, making them change. Owen is right that a smudge stick isn’t going to clear the smoke of a person who’s terminally ill, but it does make it move, make it shimmer, give it a little bit of life when it’s growing yellow and brittle. Smoke recognizes smoke. The Navajo know that.
I pause at the table, and the Smoker looks up at me as he finishes his Quik-N-Go burrito and plucks a cigarette from behind his ear. He flips it between thumb and forefinger as naturally as I chew gum.
“Ya’at’eeh, paleface!” he says, and by now, I know he means it as kindly as a guy like him can mean it. “Is today the day you finally come around to the true medicine?”
I snort. Unless he’s got some anxiety meds mixed in with all those crystals or a pregnancy test in that pack of his, he can’t help me. But I’m not about to get into that with the Smoker right now, or ever. Instead, I pick up a clump of pink quartz from the table and look at him with one eye very cocked.
“Crystals? Really? I’m pretty sure that’s not even like a Navajo thing. That’s a hippie-dippie thing.”
“Where you think the hippies got it?” he asks, stirring the pile with his yellowed fingernail. “All I know is I’ve seen rocks do strange things.”
He looks at me for what feels like a minute but is likely just a few seconds, and my crow totem suddenly feels heavy in my pocket. Sometimes, I feel the entire reservation knows about the Circle and what the crow totems can do and how it’s our job to protect the Keeper, to protect Grant, to protect the bell and protect the balance.
Then he coughs generously into his elbow, which I appreciate, and the look is gone. “And even if they ain’t shit, I got the whole sack of them from my auntie who picked them up for pennies at an estate sale in Gallup. A man’s gotta make a living, right?”
Funny how even his benign smile—the way he talks straight to me—makes me feel more like a part of this place than anything I do to patch up the same people that come in and out of the CHC revolving door. Don’t get me wrong—it’s gotta be done—but the Rez can make people feel very lonely. Crazy how you can feel alone even when you’re with your family. Owen, Grant, and I—lonely together.
Joey does his best to bring us in to the Navajo community, but he can only do so much. Ben used to help bridge that gap, too, but he’s been MIA. Grant’s the only one who could really ask after him, through Chaco, but Chaco has been pretty quiet on the subject of Ben lately, and I’m a little afraid to ask why. Every time I do, I get cryptic answers from the bird, like It’s hard work being Death, or the worst, I wish I knew. Chaco knows everything. Or he should.
I put on a smile. The Smoker doesn’t need to see behind the curtain. I like talking to him on my way into work, but that’s where it needs to stay.
“Just promise me this,” I say. “If someone comes up to you with a gunshot wound or, like, pale and inches from collapsing, don’t sell them some crystals. Tell them to cross the street and come on into the clinic. Can you do that?”
The Smoker takes a drag and sniffs as if that’s some huge ask. “Fair. I don’t want anyone collapsing at my office. Bad for business.” He lifts one corner of his mouth one millimeter, which is how I know he’s joking.
I wave my way through a cloud of cigarette smoke to cross the street. “So is that a no on the pink crystal?” he calls after me. “How about I just put it on hold, then?”
Inside the CHC, the emergency intake is as packed as an inner-city bus station at rush hour, but without all the charm. People sit side by side lining the walls and back-to-back clumped in the middle. The place is roiling in the type of smoke only I can see, the color of discomfort, fear, pain. It wafts across the space in brown and gray like a gust of wind kicking up grit in a dirty alley. I’ve seen the CHC full before, and no emergency room is ever going to have what you might call good vibes, but I’m having a hard time thinking of the last time it had this kind of smoke in it. I can’t quite remember when it started to get this bad, but it feels like the smoke gets heavier every week.
I move over to the front desk, where our longtime intake secretary, Dee, looks spooked, like she’s wandered into the wrong building.
“Glad you’re here. This place is full moon wild today,” she says, turning to her yellowed computer. Her press-ons clack each key like it’s a typewriter. “Schedule has you starting in Room Five. Don’t forget to clock in.”
I take the schedule off the tray of our ancient printer and move through the door into the back to key in my contractor ID. The alley haze is here too. Dirty smoke like the end of a fireworks show floats through the halls and seeps out from the exam rooms. Dr. Sadler, one of the few full-timers, presses past. I can smell stale sweat on him, nervous sweat. Dr. Sadler is never nervous. He’s been here for so long that I have no idea what his actual specialty is, not that the clinic is exactly picky. When it gets busy, everybody is a generalist.
“One of those days,” he says, looking at me and twirling a forefinger around his temple. “Any chance you could call Owen in? I think we’re gonna be in for a long night, otherwise.”
“He’s on a house call,” I say. “But I can give him a ring once he gets back in service.”
Sadler lets out a breath that tells me all I need to know, then he’s off, waddling in his baggy khakis faster than I’ve seen him move in months.
I pluck out my phone and give Owen a call, suddenly wanting to hear his voice. He was always good in these situations back at ABQ General, and I think Sadler is right. Whatever is going on here, he needs to know about it.
The call goes straight to voice mail, of course.
“Hi, honey. Hope things are going okay with Kai. If you have any gas left in the tank, I think you should come to the clinic. It’s… hazy in here. If you know what I mean. Weird hazy.”
I hang up and take a deep breath, already feeling the stress sweat prickling my armpits. A decade doing this, off and on, and I still sweat more than I’d like to admit whenever I look at a packed schedule. And then, of course, the sweat makes me cold, which makes me tense, which makes me sweat more. It’s a fun thing I do.
I gently knock on the door to Exam Room Five in that perfunctory way that says I’m coming in either way, and we’re off.
Three hours and nine twenty-minute patient slots later, my eyes are burning, and I’ve got that pinched feeling, like from a ponytail that’s too tight. But it’s all over me. I’ve got tight-ponytail body.
I pause in front of my next exam room and take a quick second to try to mentally talk my anxiety down. I haven’t felt this piled on at work since my days on the oncology floor, and it’s coming back at me a bit like PTSD. Whenever I used to get like this at ABQ General, I would take a bathroom break and drink some water. Grant drinks tons of water. He has a whole jug in his truck. He was horrified when I told him I’ve gone entire eight-hour shifts too busy to take even a sip of water. I told him to try being a floor nurse. We stop getting horrified pretty soon, of pretty much everything.
My next patient can wait five minutes.
The staff bathroom on the emergency floor of the clinic isn’t exactly a place of respite, but at least it’s got an air freshener, some room to sit, and a solid lock. As soon as the bolt clicks home, I feel a bit lighter. I check my phone, see a text from Owen that says, “Be there soon,” and feel lighter still.
I remember now why I left floor nursing. What I can’t quite remember is why I threw myself back into it with fewer resources and more crow’s feet around the eyes.
I hear Owen in my head again. “It’s the people. The Navajo.”
And he’s right, of course. Between the time I enter an exam room and the time I leave, I know I’ve quieted some smoke, which gives me just enough of a spark to move to the next exam room. But I also know that “just enough” can keep someone going right up until the day it doesn’t. And that, my friends, is what you call burnout. The CHC is ground zero for burnout, especially for people like Owen, who will bleed themselves dry if you let them.
With a second to breathe, I take stock of how oddly similar each patient has been, one to the next. Their symptoms may vary—fatigue, stomach issues, nerve pain, quite a few fainting spells—but I know by the smoke that something similar lies beneath all of them. It’s no secret that rez life is no picnic, but weariness seems to be seeping into folks’ spirits these days.
I tap idly at the leather totem bag in my pocket. Something about today has the feel of the crow side, the thin side. And if that’s the case, only a few of us can do anything about it.
A pang of nausea brings me back to the present, where I’m still holed up in a bathroom, sitting on a toilet. Charming. My next patient has been waiting too long. I brace myself to get up, and my eyes fall on all the boxes of toiletry supplies we hide back here to replenish up front. It’s donated stuff, mostly—condoms and hand sanitizer and tampons and little packets of ibuprofen—which Dee puts in the front bathroom in little batches because otherwise they get grabbed by the handful, teenage-trick-or-treater style.
One of those things is a pregnancy test. We have boxes of them here. I could take ten and nobody would notice.
Of course, all I would really need is one. Funny how that is. Whenever Dee restocks up front, the pregnancy tests are always the last standing. Condoms go first, which I’m all for. Ibuprofen next. Pregnancy tests last. We’ve had a few theories on that here. One is that condoms and ibuprofen are repeat goods, things people need again and again. But a pregnancy test? Taking ten tests after that first one wouldn’t make a woman any more or less pregnant. She’s done the thing. It’s written in stone. Or in pee on a little stick, as it were.
The second theory is that a lot of women just don’t want to know. For whatever reason—and most of them are probably tragic here, let’s be honest—they just don’t want that on their plate. The plate’s full up with all sorts of other stuff that also sucks, so this sucky thing can wait in line.
And right now, I could be put in that camp. Not the “tragic” part—just the part with the full plate.
Still, I grab one and tuck it into a pocket before I let my mind catch up with what I’m doing. That’s another old nursing trick that seems to have jogged loose today—sometimes, people can make their bodies do things they don’t want to do if they do them quick enough that their minds can’t catch up.
Is that a healthy way to live? Probably not. Is it necessary when wiping asses and inserting catheters and, in general, helping people limp along for a living? You bet it is.
I leave the bathroom, somehow feeling more fragile than when I went in, which isn’t a good sign, and when I open my next exam room, I find Owen Bennet already there. He turns to me with that unique, well-water-blue smoke of his wisping off his shoulders, still and calm and as aquiline as his eyes, and I’m reminded instantly why I love him.
The patient here is another young woman with the same sickly smoke.
“I’ve got this one,” Owen tells me, and although I can tell that he’s tired and, by the rare smudges of dirt on his usually immaculate oxfords, he’s been all over the Rez. But when he smiles at me, I feel like I can breathe for the first time all night.
I hope my eyes say as much as I nod and back out the door. I have another patient—there’s always another patient on days like this—but first, water. Be like Grant. The tap is next to the coffee. The coffee is awful. The tap water is awesome.
Go figure.
I’m sitting with Owen in the CHC staff room, which is about the size of the waiting room in any oil-change shop and shares most of the smells. He’s actually drinking the coffee, fearless man that he is. Maybe it’s just a survival tactic at this point. Either way, he’s pulled his tie down a smidge and unbuttoned his collar, which I long ago learned means Owen Bennet is on the verge of falling asleep standing, but his Yankee work ethic refuses to let that happen.
We’ve been together long enough that we can sit side by side without saying a word and still have a conversation. On days like this, I’m reminded of how lucky I am to have that.
Owen is staring at nothing in particular on the scuffed vinyl floor when he says, “Remember when we used to meet in the break room at ABQ General like this?”
I smile at the memory. “More like I’d wait until I knew you had a break between patients, and then I’d ‘happen to run into you.’”
His laugh is tired but true. “And I’d wait until I saw you there before I took any break.” He rubs at his eyes with a forearm, true doctor style—no face touching. “You know, there’s a world in which we may never have met.”
“Except for Ben,” I say. It’s out of my mouth before I know it.
We’ve gone months without talking about Ben Dejooli, months without feeling the need to. Because he’s gone years without reaching out to us. We can speculate on where he’s gone only so long—the material gets stale.
