Mount Mercy

by Helena Newbury

  He leaned down over me, panting as well...and chuckling. He had a huge grin on his face and it was the most open, the most relaxed, I’d ever seen him. It was infectious: within seconds, I was giggling, too. And then he leaned even lower, wrapped his arms around me and kissed me.

  * * *

  When we’d dressed and turned the lights on, I insisted on clearing up the mess we’d made. The floor was littered with kidney bowls, instruments and boxes of drugs and, as we picked them up, I put them back in their proper places, lining everything up just-so.

  “I swear,” he muttered, “you enjoy the tidying more than the sex.

  I was down on my hands and knees, trying to reach the last kidney bowl, so I whacked him playfully on the leg. The truth was, I was feeling a lot less obsessed with order. A little chaos had done me good. And I’d never look at an operating table the same way again. I took his offered hand and he hauled me to my feet, pulling me up as if I weighed nothing.

  And then he just stood there, my hand clasped in his, staring down at me. “What?” I asked quietly.

  He closed his eyes and sighed. When he opened them again, the pain I saw there made my chest ache. But it was different, now. He wasn’t burying the pain any longer, hiding it away behind cocky arrogance. He was open.

  He was ready.

  “It was my fault,” he said.

  And he told me about the night he lost everything.

  47

  Dominic

  WE SAT SIDE BY SIDE on the operating table and I stared at the shadow we cast on the wall, my big form next to her much smaller one. I spoke mechanically, trying to reduce everything to simple facts that wouldn’t hurt. But each piece of memory was a razor-edged slice of that night that felt like it was cutting my throat. “We were living in Chicago. I was a resident at a hospital, Chrissy was a kindergarten teacher. Rachel was six, obsessed with ballet. I’d just finished my shift, called Chrissy to tell her I was on my way. But then….” The words seemed to thicken and stick to my tongue.

  “A trauma came in,” said Beckett.

  I glanced across at her. She understood me. She understood how I was wired. “A trauma came in,” I confirmed. I took a deep breath. “I could have let someone else take it. We weren’t that busy. But it was a family. Kids. And….” My throat closed up.

  “And you felt like it was your responsibility.”

  I closed my eyes and nodded. Kept them closed as I told her the next part. I could almost hear the buzz of the ER around me. “I didn’t call Chrissy because I knew she’d be pissed. I kept thinking, five more minutes. But we couldn’t get the mother breathing and one of the kids was bleeding into their chest. By the time I finally got everything sorted, I was an hour late.” I swallowed, the glowing scarlet numbers of the ER clock clear in my memory. “Seven fifty-seven,” I rasped. “That’s what time it was when I ran out the door.”

  I still had my eyes closed. I felt her hand cover mine, so delicate and graceful next to my big, clumsy paw. It felt cool against the back of my hand, calming me. “When I got home, the house was dark,” I said. I was still trying to break it down into the facts, but, as I lifted each one towards the surface, the pain welled up underneath, threatening to rush up and drown me. “I thought maybe Chrissy had taken Rachel out for dinner, but her car was there. I knock: no reply. I unlock the door and call for them. Nothing. Maybe the car wouldn’t start and they got a cab. So I—”

  I stopped and couldn’t start again. It was like I’d hit a wall: my lips refused to form the next word. I could feel my feet sinking into the soft carpet Chrissy had chosen, could feel the wallpaper, smooth under my fingertips as I fumbled my way along the wall. I was there. And I couldn’t bear to describe what I was feeling.

  Then there was a pressure against my side. Beckett was leaning into me, pressing herself tightly against me from her hip all the way up to the top of her head, lending me her strength. And it worked.

  “I was already halfway down the hall when it sunk in how dark it was. The light switch was back by the front door and I’m stubborn.” I opened my eyes and glanced at her again, trying to lighten things. “You know how stubborn I am.” I gave her a weak grin, but she just looked right back at me, caring but serious, determined to help. She wasn’t going to let me sidetrack.

  I nodded and carried on. “I wasn’t going to walk back to the door, so I kept going, heading for the living room. But just as I get to the doorway, my foot hits something and I nearly trip. I think maybe Rachel’s left her coat on the floor again, but it’s too heavy. And then... and then a car passes by the house.” I still had my eyes open, but I could see the scene in my head, could see the white light wash across the carpet and catch the edges of the dark shape. “And I could see it was a body. And I feel along the wall and find the light switch.... and I can’t fucking press it.” The dark pain I’d been suppressing for years with women and booze and danger swarmed up my body, crushing my chest with its cold. My voice cracked. “I stand there and inside I’m screaming at myself: get the light on. But there’s a part of me that—that already knows. That saw enough, from the headlights, that it knows who it is on the floor and what I’m going to find.”

  I swallowed and leaned forward, closing my eyes. “I press the light switch. And I’m staring down at my wife, Chrissy, flat out on the floor.” When I drew in my breath, it shuddered. “Blood soaking the carpet around her. She’s—” I swallowed again. “Cold.”

  Beckett’s arms slid around my shoulders and she pressed her cheek to my shoulder. She was taking tiny, soft, scared little breaths, terrified for me then and for me now.

  “Now I get myself moving, I run through the house, switching all the lights on, yelling Rachel’s name. I check her bedroom, even check in the closet in case she’s hiding there. Nothing. And I start to think, maybe she escaped, or maybe she was at a friend’s house when it happened….” I trailed off.

  This part was the hardest.

  “I’m standing in the kitchen,” I tell her. “I’m just about to call the cops when...I see my own reflection in the window. Outside, we had this little back yard and it’s pitch black out there. And I realize I haven’t checked there yet. And….” The pain had me, now: I was beneath its surface and it was consuming me. “And I...I prayed. I hadn’t prayed since I was a kid, but I just stood there thinking please. Please God, not her too. I can’t live without them.” I had to work hard to swallow. “And I hit the switch for the outside light and—she’s lying there. In her pajamas. I run outside but she’s cold, too. I gather her up in my arms and kneel there, crying, her blood soaking my shirt, until I finally manage to call the cops.”

  My shoulder felt hot and wet. I realized Beckett had her face pressed up against me there and that her silent tears were soaking through my scrubs. My eyes had gone wet, too.

  “Two guys,” I managed. “After jewelry and cash. You see—” I had to fight down the nausea and self-hate. “Chrissy opened the door for them because she thought they were me. They got there right when I should have got home.”

  Beckett lifted her head from my shoulder. I could feel her looking at me but couldn’t bear to look at her: I felt too wretched. “Chrissy fought them,” I said mechanically. “They killed her. Rachel ran downstairs when she heard her mother scream. Tried to escape out of the back door, but they caught her in the yard. Didn’t want to leave any witnesses.” I rubbed a hand across my face. “The cops caught them three blocks away. They did it all for a few hundred dollars in cash and a fifty dollar necklace.”

  I finally looked across at her. She knew, now. She understood why I was how I was.

  “If I’d come home—” I started.

  Her hand grabbed my chin, a mirror of what I always did to her. She stared up at me, so small next to me, but so fiercely determined. “It was them,” she told me. “Those two guys. It was no one but them.”

  I glared at her. I’d been holding on too tightly, for too long, to let go of the guilt now.

  But
she glared right back at me and gave a little shake of her head. She wasn’t giving up on me. And for the first time, I dared to believe that maybe, maybe she might be right. Maybe it wasn’t my fault. The pain receded a little—it didn’t disappear, but it shrank back until it wasn’t drowning me. I inhaled... and it felt like the first full breath I’d taken since it happened.

  I stared at Beckett. This incredible woman had conquered so much. Now, together, we’d conquered this. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her into my chest. And then I kissed her, losing myself in her warm sweetness. I wasn’t kidding myself that I was fixed. But for the first time, there was hope. A future for both of us: I had no idea where but as long as it involved her body pressed against mine in a big, warm bed. “Amy,” I said softly—

  The lights went out. The air conditioning whirred to a stop. Both of us blinked in surprise. “Are the power lines down again?” I asked.

  “The power lines never got fixed,” said Beckett, her voice rising in panic. “We’ve been on the emergency generator this whole time. That must have failed.” She looked up at me, her face deathly pale in the moonlight. “Oh Jesus, the ventilators! Rebecca! There’s no power!”

  Both of us scrambled for the door.

  48

  Amy

  IT WAS BLACK. The moon kept going behind clouds and sometimes all we could see was the distant glow of a fire exit sign. It didn’t help that the floor underfoot was slick with water from the firefighters’ hoses. We each slipped and fell as we raced through the dark hallways, grabbing onto the other’s hand to hold us up. I don’t think we’d have found our way at all if the layout of the hospital hadn’t been burned into my mind through years of working there.

  No power meant no elevators so we pounded down four flights of stairs. We crashed into the ER and were greeted by an ear-splitting, discordant wail: every ventilator alarm going off at once. Bartell, Taylor and the nurses were running between patients, using their cell phones as flashlights.

  Maggie emerged from the door to the basement, her hands held up in front of her to ward off our questions. “Generator’s dead,” she panted. “Either the fire damaged it or the water from the hoses.”

  “Can you fix it?!” demanded Bartell.

  “Maybe,” said Maggie, “But it’ll take hours. We need to get another generator. The mining company will have one.”

  “How long for someone to drive over there, grab one and get back here?” asked Corrigan.

  “In this snow?” Bartell shook his head. “Fifty minutes, an hour?”

  “How long will the batteries in the ventilators last?” I asked breathlessly.

  “Five minutes, tops,” said Maggie. “Shit!” She sounded close to tears. I grabbed her hand and squeezed. I understood: keeping the hospital systems running was her job and she felt responsible. But no one could have prepared for this.

  We all looked around at the patients. We had nine people on ventilators. Jesus, this was unbelievable: this was a US hospital, not some refugee camp, and these people were going to die because we couldn’t give them something as basic as electricity. How did this go so wrong? My eyes fell on Rebecca and my chest went tight. I was the one who’d demanded we keep the ER open. She could have been evacuated to Colorado Springs. She might have made it—

  “It’s my fault,” I whispered to myself.

  Corrigan’s hand grabbed mine. I looked up at his moonlit face and he pinned me with his gaze, then sternly shook his head. “We need to do CPR,” he said firmly. “Until the new generator arrives.”

  “There’s not enough people!” said Bartell.

  I looked around desperately. He was right: we’d only had a skeleton staff and then the shooting had injured more people. Maggie couldn’t help: she’d need to go and get the generator and she’d need someone to go with her to help move it. Out of habit, my mind went to Krista. She knew CPR and she was reliable, so that was one patient taken care of—

  My stomach lurched. Krista was one of the patients. She’d die along with Rebecca and the others. Even if we could somehow find enough people, the patients were too weak to survive a solid hour of CPR. They needed ventilators. They needed power.

  An idea came to me. A crazy, last-ditch idea, the sort of thing Corrigan would do. I grabbed his arm. “Get everyone you can find! Get them doing CPR!” I started to run.

  Corrigan grabbed my arm. “Wait! Where are you going?” He pulled me close, his eyes going from me to the darkened hospital. That fierce protective look in his eyes: I don’t want you out there alone.

  I gently pried his hand free. “You have to trust me. I have an idea. Send two people to get a generator, but leave Maggie free, I’ll need her!”

  Corrigan looked frantically around the ER. Patients. Nurses. A few cops. “Most of these people don’t know CPR!”

  “Then teach them!” And I ran to the basement.

  49

  Dominic

  IT WAS TOTAL CHAOS. The ER was pitch-black save for a few cell phones. People were crying out in pain and calling for help, nurses were trying to run between them without running into each other and the frantic, high-pitched alarms of the ventilators made it impossible to think. The nurses were flustered and panicked. Bartell, even with all his years of experience, was sweating. All of them were used to the twenty-first century, where things like this just didn’t happen.

  But I wasn’t. I’d worked in field hospitals, out under the stars in remote villages in the Congo, where the generators used to pack up all the time. All that time trying to bury my loss had been good for something. “Alright!” I bellowed.

  People stopped and looked up, startled.

  “You!” I yelled, pointing at Lloyd. “Do you and the other cops have flashlights in your cars?” He nodded. “Go get them, all of them, and hand them out. Then I want you to drive all the cars up to the doors—”—I pointed—“and shine your headlights in here. Go!”

  He ran.

  “Everybody else! If you’re a cop, if you’re a patient, if your family visiting, if you can walk then I need you over here!”

  They looked at each other uncertainly and then started trickling over, stumbling in the darkness. Eventually, I had two cops, one with an injured leg, a guy in his forties who’d been visiting his mother and a woman who’d just barely struggled out of bed, bandages wrapped around her head. I sent the uninjured cop and the visitor to go and get the generator. The others, I gave a crash course in CPR. Before I’d even finished speaking, the first ventilator failed, its alarm changing to a long, continuous tone that faded away as the batteries ran flat. I rushed forward and started doing chest compressions on the guy. But the other ventilators would start failing any minute. Where the hell is Beckett? What’s she doing?

  I took a deep breath. She’d said to trust her and I did. I just had to keep these people alive until she came back.

  The next ventilator failed. Bartell jumped in and started CPR on the patient. But as I counted the beat in my head and pumped my patient’s chest, I was looking at the dwindling group of people. Two civilians, Lina, Adele, Taylor, Bartell and me. When Lloyd got back, that made eight. There were nine patients. One of them was going to die unless I could find one more volunteer. Maggie? Beckett had said she needed her. Shit! Who else could I get?

  Another ventilator failed. Taylor started CPR. It was freezing in the ER, but I could feel the sweat running down my forehead. How the hell are we going to choose who dies? The oldest? The weakest? Shit! Shit, shit shit!

  The room suddenly lit up as headlights stabbed in through the glass doors. Now at least we could see, a little. I looked around for anyone I’d missed….

  “Adele!” I yelled. “Take over!”

  She took over CPR on my patient. I ran over to the man I’d seen hunched in the corner, his arms behind his back. I grabbed his shirt and hauled him to his feet. Seth blinked as the headlights lit up his face.

  “You went to medical school, right?” I asked.

  He eyed me
doubtfully and then sullenly nodded and dropped his eyes. The poor kid was being eaten up by guilt over what had happened.

  I knew what that was like.

  I saw Lloyd running past, handing out flashlights. “Hey! I need you to take the cuffs off this guy,” I told him.

  Lloyd saw who I was pointing at and blanched. “No! Are you kidding?”

  “I need him!”

  “He’s in custody! He could run! He could get a weapon!”

  I heard the continuous tone as another ventilator failed. Lina started CPR, counting in German under her breath. “Do it!” I snapped.

  Lloyd uncuffed Seth, cursing under his breath.

  “Now you can run,” I told Seth. “You can go back to your dad. Or you can stay here and help us save lives.” I heard another ventilator failing. “But you make a choice, right now, about what you want your life to be.” I didn’t wait to see what happened, just grabbed Lloyd by the shoulder and ran with him back to the critical patients. I took my patient back from Adele and she took the one whose ventilator had just failed. But I could hear another one failing. And when I checked, it was Rebecca’s….

  Seth marched up out of the darkness and silently started CPR on Rebecca. As he pumped her chest, he locked eyes with Taylor. They held the gaze for a long moment before they looked away. He wasn’t forgiven. Not even close.

  But it was a start.

  More and more of the ventilators failed. I only barely had time to talk Lloyd through what to do before he had to jump in, too. And then we were all occupied. The nine of us were all that were keeping nine hearts pumping. We couldn’t do it forever. Rebecca’s fragile body couldn’t take the rough treatment of CPR for long.