Over Yonder, page 18
Another man was racing back to the Vic and removed a short-barrel shotgun from the front seat. He steadied the weapon atop the hood of the Vic and took aim.
Woody put his hand on Rachel’s head. “Get down!”
The deafening blast took out the windshield of the Land Rover as glass shards filled the vehicle.
“Daddy!” shouted Rachel.
“Get on the floor, sweetie! And stay in the car!” He looked at the drunk guy. “And you, do not let her leave this vehicle.”
Woody threw the car in Park and leapt out. He commando crawled through the weeds until he was behind a gas pump. Commando crawling was harder in real life than in Hollywood. Every part of his body was killing him. His chest felt like it was about to implode.
The gun fired again.
The metal casing of the gas pump exploded. Woody made himself as small as he could, crouching behind the innards of the pump.
Another blast.
Woody could hear buckshot whizzing past his ears.
The next discharge took out the front tire of the Land Rover.
“Daddy!”
Woody raced to another gas pump, moving closer to the gunman, and crouched behind it. He was doing mental math. Most police vehicles carry a .33 caliber. The range is only about fifteen yards—at best. Typically, six to ten rounds. Then again, this was not a police car, at least not anymore. Anyone could buy a used police cruiser at an auction.
Another blast rang out.
Woody was hoping this one only held six.
Boom!
Woody closed his eyes, drew in one deep breath, and crossed himself. He shot to his feet, and with all the strength he had left in his weary body, charged the man. Head down. Shoulders square. He collided with the gunman and tackled him to the dirt, and their bodies went rolling in the dust.
Woody wrestled the weapon away from the man. It was a hard-won victory. Then Woody used the butt of the shotgun like a Louisville Slugger, laying the stock against the man’s skull. The guy went down but not for long. He used his boot to kick Woody’s legs from beneath him. Woody fell to the earth, landing squarely on his tailbone. Then the guy, gunless, leapt up and rushed back toward the Vic. In a few moments, the Vic engine was roaring. The other man crawled into the car, clutching his face with both hands.
“Daddy, watch out!”
Woody heard the V-8 cry out as he watched a push bar rushing up at him doing at least thirty-five. Woody lumbered to his feet and faced the oncoming car. He trained the shotgun on the windshield and fired once.
The hood exploded.
So the gun held more than six shots.
He fired again.
The windshield of the Vic disintegrated.
He fired again, and the sound of buckshot slamming into Detroit steel was like trash can lids crashing together. But the car was still coming toward him. Woody threw the empty gun aside and dove out of the way. The Vic squealed into the outer darkness, fishtailing onto the highway, howling into the night.
“Caroline!” Woody called out.
Amos was on the ground, holding Caroline against his chest. In the glow of the Land Rover high beams, he could see that her skin was pale and her lips were turning blue.
“She’s not breathing!” Amos shouted. “Call 911!”
Chapter 38
The human body needs an incredible amount of oxygen and minerals and nutrients to survive. Your brain gets first dibs on all nutrients. The other organs get the leftovers. The body’s veins and arteries are the plumbing system, controlled by a very big public pool pump in your chest, which is always running. Always churning. Always moving product down the line.
Your heart must continually pump tons of blood across approximately sixty thousand miles of blood vessels, twenty-four seven. But if your pump doesn’t have enough pressure, you’re in trouble. Nutrients don’t get to the brain. Oxygen doesn’t reach the organs. Things start shutting down. Low blood pressure can kill you. You learn all this when you have a bad heart.
Shock is just low blood pressure. Very, very low pressure. The layperson’s misconception about shock is that it’s not all that dangerous. You turn white; you get dizzy; you pass out. No big deal. But shock is fatal. One in five people with shock die from it.
“Caroline, stay with me, honey!” Woody shouted.
He held Caroline in his arms, her pulse so weak he couldn’t feel it in her wrists or neck. He used his ear to listen to her heart. It was still beating.
The owner of the Rover staggered out of the vehicle. “Is she going to be okay?”
Rachel was kneeling in the dirt beside Caroline, holding the phone toward Woody’s face while he kept an eye on her airways. Amos was holding Caroline’s head in his hands, using his jacket as a pillow. The cat was curled up beside Woody’s dad.
An emergency worker was on the line; the phone was on speaker. A female voice was talking back to him.
“We need an ambulance!” Woody said.
“Sir, calm down. Where are you, please?”
Woody looked around. “Where are we, Dad?”
“Outside Douglasville,” said the Major. “About three miles off I-20, not far from the eleven-mile marker.”
“Sir, be patient. I’m trying to get a fix on your location.”
“I just told you where I am!”
“Please hold on, sir.”
After Woody’s first heart attack, he learned that when you call 911 from a cell phone, the dispatcher can’t see your location. Dispatch centers must first ask your wireless carrier for this information. After a lapse of time—sometimes a long time—the information is eventually disclosed to 911 from a cell tower in your area. But it’s only an approximation of your location. The location dispatch sees can sometimes be miles away from your true location.
“She’s still not breathing,” said Amos.
“She’s not breathing,” Woody said into the phone.
“Sir, I’ve almost got a fix on your current signal. I need you not to panic, sir.”
Woody wasn’t panicked. He was watching his daughter die. Her chest was no longer moving. He rolled up his sleeves and began chest compressions. He placed both palms atop Caroline’s sternum, and he was counting in rhythm.
“One, two, three, four, five . . .”
“Sir, are you still there?”
“We’re here,” said Amos into the speaker. “He’s doing CPR on her.”
Woody sealed his mouth over Caroline’s and exhaled until her chest rose. He started compressions again and felt his own insides turn into bile.
“Come on, Caroline.”
It all felt too familiar. The chest compressions. The 911 call. The fear. Woody had done the same thing ten years ago when a young woman stepped in front of his truck on a Saturday night.
“Please, Caroline.”
“Sir, I have your location fixed. I’m sending someone to you right now.”
“They’re sending someone!” said Amos.
“One, two, three, four . . .”
“An ambulance is on the way, sir. Should be there in eight minutes. Stay on the line. Can you tell me if the victim is breathing?”
“Eleven, twelve, thirteen . . .”
Chapter 39
The man in forest-green scrubs was looking right at Caroline, shining a penlight into her eyes. Clashing with the bubblegum pink walls of the hospital like bits of cilantro in a puddle of melted bubble gum. Then the guy in scrubs checked one of the monitors.
“Hi,” Caroline said.
Her words were weak. Her throat was dry. She sounded like a fifty-year smoker.
The young man smiled. “Huh?”
He was cute. He was blondish. His face was round like a little boy’s. He wasn’t skinny, but he wasn’t fat. He was just substantial, and it worked for him. He brought to mind a blond surfer who was very active but also liked Little Debbie snacks.
“What’s your name?”
“I’m Chad,” the male nurse said.
“You’re cute, Chad.”
“Um.” He moved the penlight to her other eye. “Thanks?”
Chad did not seem to know how to interpret her exaggerated wink.
He turned to address whoever else was in the room. “Those are just the meds talking. We’ve got her on some pretty stiff stuff.”
“No,” said another male voice. “She is right. You really are very cute.”
Chad took her pulse. Then he touched her forehead and looked into her eyes. Chad had imperfect teeth. She loved imperfect teeth. Imperfect teeth were so real. So honest. Such a wonderful thing. She had imperfect teeth too. Imperfect teeth were great. Who cares about nice teeth. What was the truth of perfect teeth?
Chad was gazing at her. “Honey, I need you to say your name.”
She smiled. “Your name.”
Chad grinned back. “I’d say she’s going to be okay.”
“I like your teeth,” she said.
“My teeth?”
She nodded. “They’re all screwed up.”
Chad raised his eyebrows.
She bared her teeth at him. “See?”
Chad edged away from her as though she were a carrier of plague. That was when she noticed the other people in her room. One of them was Woody. The others were Amos, Elizabeth, and Rachel.
Elizabeth was sitting by the room’s only window drinking from a Starbucks cup, wearing the same green scrubs Chad wore. Rachel was curled up in a chair, sleeping. Woody was standing beside Caroline’s bed. Amos was sitting beside her, holding her hand. She hadn’t noticed the old man clasping her hand until now.
It took her whole seconds to work up the fortitude to speak again. Her throat hurt too badly.
“I’m sorry,” were her first words.
Woody shook his head. “Nothing to be sorry about.” He moved closer to her and took her other hand. “But there’s something important we need to tell you, sweetie. Some news you’re going to need to prepare yourself for. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“What news?”
“It’s about your baby,” said Amos.
Caroline sat up fully. “What about my baby?”
“You went without oxygen for a long time,” said Elizabeth.
The male nurse came back into the room with a knock on the door to announce his arrival. Chad showed her another warm face. But she could no longer find the motivation to smile back, even in her drugged state. Right now she just felt nauseous.
“I quit breathing?”
“Try to calm down,” said Woody.
“Just relax,” said Amos.
The heart monitor was beeping faster.
Caroline touched her stomach. “What happened to my baby?”
“The doctor’s two rooms down,” said Chad. “He should only be a couple minutes now. He’ll be in here shortly.”
Amos squeezed her hand.
* * *
Sometimes your worst fear overtakes you. It just happens. Not fears, plural. Fear, singular. The one fear. The one thing you have been most worried about . . . It finds you. A fear so terrifying that your brain never lets you think of it in advance. It’s a safeguard of the subconscious. Because you wouldn’t be able to tolerate even thinking about your fear for very long without cracking. But then one day it happens. No forewarning. No preamble. No indication that your life is about to change. The fear becomes real. And there’s not a thing you can do about it except let it happen.
This was one of those moments for Caroline.
This was that fear.
The doctor said he had not been able to hear her baby’s pulse. He told her that if a baby goes without oxygen for ten minutes, the child could sustain brain damage. It was simple biology: no air, no life.
The news hit Caroline where she lived. Caroline had been born with physical maladies due to a mother who used narcotics. To see her own child grow up the same way she did. With poor vision. Poor hearing. Poor everything. It was a nightmare. Her great fear.
They wheeled Caroline down the hall. They rode elevators to a lower floor. It was just her and Woody and a medical tech. Caroline wasn’t even sure why she had asked Woody to be there. He was still somewhat of a stranger to her. But she needed someone right now.
Soon, Woody and Caroline were in the ultrasound room. Woody sat in a chair in the corner. Hands in his lap. Eyes closed. His head was down and his mouth was moving slightly. No sound came from his lips, but it looked like he was whispering something to himself.
The female tech came into the exam room with an overtly chipper attitude, designed to put everyone at ease. That wasn’t working either.
Woody raised his head and opened his eyes when the woman entered.
“Were you praying?” Caroline asked.
He just touched her hand.
The tech with the fetal doppler wand made passes over her belly, staring at a screen. The conductive gel on Caroline’s tummy was cold. The tech kept glancing at Caroline’s abdomen, then back to the monitor. And all Caroline could think about in this moment was a memory from when she was a child. Sitting on the living room floor. In her foster parents’ house. A strange house that had never felt like home. She had always been a guest in that house. Nothing inside the house was hers, so she was always just passing through.
In this memory, she was watching TV. She was eleven. She had just lost most of the vision in her left eye. The vision loss had happened suddenly. Nearly overnight. Doctors could not explain it. Nobody could figure it out. They chalked it up to aftereffects of fetal alcohol syndrome. All she knew was that the world was now black on one side of her head. Not dim like before, just black. She was almost blind in her left eye. They might have to enucleate her eyeball someday. Maybe remove it altogether.
That evening she remembered staring at the television in a state of near numbness. Because she had lost vision in one eye, her other eye was having a hard time focusing. Her brain was trying to compensate, and her vision was blurred. SpongeBob SquarePants was on the screen, but she wasn’t really watching. It was just a mass of colors. Shapes. Moving bits of light. She wasn’t really seeing the colors or the shapes on the screen. She was grieving her dead eye. Grieving for the old Caroline who had two good eyes. And wondering who the new Caroline would be and where she would go from here.
She asked Woody to hold her hand.
He took her hand into his own. His fingers were cold but not colder than hers. He used his other hand to warm hers by rubbing them together as though building a fire with two sticks. He was still moving his lips.
On the fetal doppler screen was a mass of blue swirling around in a black background. Just colors. Shapes. Moving bits of light. The woman with the wand wasn’t saying anything. She was just looking at the monitor, staring at the screen with a kind of intensity that made Caroline nauseous.
Bad things happen every day. That was what Caroline was thinking. They happen more to some than to others. Some people just attract bad things. It’s in their genes, somehow. These people are magnets for catastrophe. They can’t help it. They can’t change it. The world is simply against them. End of story.
Woody squeezed her hand between both of his, his lips still forming unspoken words. The lady tech was staring at Caroline with a half smile Caroline didn’t know how to interpret.
“Tell me what you found,” said Caroline.
“I’m sorry,” the tech said. “That’s not my job. The doctor will have to be the one who tells you. It’s policy.”
“How long will that be?” said Woody.
“Shouldn’t be long.”
The tech put down the wand and snapped off her rubber gloves. She turned off the monitor and the screen went black. The room went quiet. The woman flipped on the overhead lights.
“Can’t you tell us anything?” Woody said.
The tech took in a breath. Then she turned to face the machine and flipped a switch. The monitor’s speakers began to radiate a noise. A loud noise. The rhythmic sound was unmistakable. Like a washing machine. She cranked up the volume.
“Do you know what that sound is?” the tech said.
Caroline’s head fell backward onto her pillow as a throbbing sound filled the room. She squeezed Woody’s hand so hard she almost broke it. Hot tears fell down her cheeks and saturated her neck and gown.
“That’s the heart,” said Woody.
Chapter 40
Peter Tabares and Jesús parked their Volvo in front of the run-down home in the wilds of the unincorporated community of Black Creek. The Volvo was an old model but in good shape. And they had needed new wheels. Jesús had driven the Crown Vic into the lake since most of it was peppered with buckshot. Easy come, easy go.
The place had a caved-in roof covered in the obligatory blue tarp, a popular exterior home decor choice in Eastern Kentucky. The porch contained half the contents of the known universe, including not one but two sofas, one deep freezer, an artificial Christmas tree missing branches, and a female blow-up doll.
Peter and Jesús walked up the steps. Peter stood at the front door. There was a gap at the top and at the bottom of the door, letting heat leak through. There was a wreath of sunflowers on the door. Behold, Jesús stood at the door and knocked.
And if he would have knocked any harder, his fist might have penetrated the rotted door and plunged inside the home.
They heard footsteps.
The door opened a few inches, a little chain preventing it from opening all the way. Behind the opening was a young woman. Her hair was white blond with dark-green frosted tips swishing across her face and falling into her eyes like seaweed clinging to the face of the drowned. She was wearing a T-shirt that didn’t come down very far. Her face was so pierced it looked like she’d fallen headfirst into a tackle box.
“Is Taylor home?” Jesús asked.
“You mean Tater?”
“Is he here?”
“Who are you?”
Jesús smiled. “We’ll just wait inside.”
Jesús pushed past her. They both walked inside a home that smelled vaguely like a male dormitory after a very long semester.
