Day Three

by Patricia Spencer

  Jasha’s grip tightened on her elbow. “Come,” he said.

  Indoors, another thin light beam cut through the darkness. The tiny glow caromed off the walls and floor, and led them down stairs to the basement. A trap door creaked open, then fell back on the floor. She glimpsed a dim square of light, half a dozen rough-planked steps, and narrow-gauge railroad-type tracks at the bottom.

  “The tunnel,” she murmured. The rumors were true. It existed, deep beneath the airport runway. Jasha’s men, wrangling Daniel’s body, momentarily obliterated her view.

  She whirled on Jasha. “All this time, you—”

  “There is no time,” he said, pressing her forward. “The Hercules is in its final approach. The Nationalists will stand down on the artillery for only a few minutes before resuming.”

  She had to duck when she reached the bottom. The tunnel ceiling was low—only four-and-a-half feet high.

  In front of her, Daniel was laid on a stretcher. Made of pipe, obviously welded in a metal-working shop, it was designed to ride on the tracks. One of Jasha’s men began pushing, while a man at the front pulled. A third man ran ahead of them, following the string of dim light bulbs.

  “Stay in the middle,” Jasha said. “Live wires on the left, oil pipeline on the right. Go! Quickly!”

  She ran, stumbling, into and out of the pools of light, following the stretcher.

  An intersection appeared ahead of her. A hand-painted sign pointed forward. “Paris—3765 km.”

  “Turn right.”

  Good, she thought crazily. I don’t think I can make it to France.

  The muscles in her lower back burned as she lurched forward, past scores of seemingly-endless support timbers. Jasha gripped the waistband of her pants, keeping her upright. If she fell against the live wires, they would both be electrocuted.

  She heard thumping, a fist against metal doors. She pushed on, breathless.

  Doors clanged open. Light flooded the tunnel. She stopped, hands on knees, drawing great gulps of fresh air into her lungs.

  “The terminal,” Jasha said raggedly. “A little further, Brenna, and we arrive.”

  She nodded, pushed on, saw stairs. She clambered up them on all fours, and fell onto the gray tile floor at Luc Morriseau’s feet.

  “Brenna.”

  Luc’s medics transferred Daniel to the medevac stretcher and hovered over him with a stethoscope and blood pressure cuff. Outside the terminal, she heard the Herc roaring down onto the tarmac.

  Luc squatted beside Brenna. He tipped his head, caught her chin in his fingers, and turned her face to better light. “You’ve been punched.”

  “How long has this patient been unconscious?” a medic shouted. “Does anybody know?” It was T. Brownlee, the man who had previously taken care of Daniel.

  She withdrew from Luc. “An hour?” Two? She was dazed, unsure.

  “Any seizures? Vomiting?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Medevac him.” Luc stood up. He pressed a button on his walkie-talkie and ordered the plane held.

  “He needs to be stabilized, sir.”

  “We may not land another plane. Get him out.”

  “Yes, sir.” Brownlee and the second medic rolled Daniel away.

  Watching him disappear, Brenna clasped her hand over her mouth, fighting back tears.

  Jasha squatted beside her. “You, too,” he said gently. “You must leave.”

  “I can’t,” she whispered. “I left the children. Four children. I have to go back and see if— Oh, Jasha, the infant girl, Squeak…”

  “You are so exhausted, you cannot even stand up,” Luc said. “You are in no condition to—”

  “No.”

  Luc got down to her eye level. “You’re in love with that man,” he said, motioning in the direction of the receding stretcher. “It is plain to see. Get on the aircraft and stay by his side.”

  She shook her head. She couldn’t go. She had to undo what she had done, first.

  Jasha put his hand on her shoulder. “The war is bigger than one woman. Kavsak’s children were betrayed long before you found them.”

  “These children—Squeak—were in my care!”

  He shook his head resolutely. “It is time for you to go, my friend. You have done everything you could.”

  Luc pulled her to her feet. “I can’t keep the aircraft on the ground any longer.”

  “All right,” she lied. “I’ll go.”

  Jasha lifted an arm to embrace her. She hugged him and stepped back. “You keep secrets,” she said.

  “You are a smuggler.” He grinned with the half of his face that wasn’t scarred into immobility, then became serious again. “Someday I will find you and we will talk.”

  She nodded, turning to Luc. “Bye, Luc.”

  He slid his arms around her and held her tightly. “Brenna.”

  “Keep in touch.”

  “Bien sûr. I will catch up in one moment,” he said, turning to Jasha with a scowl.

  She ran after the medics, pulling the memory cards from the camera out of her jacket as she went. “Wait!”

  The medics slowed. She caught up, stuffed the cards into Daniel’s jacket pocket, bent over him, grabbed his hands, and kissed them. “My darling,” she said, tears in her eyes.

  “Ma’am—” T. Brownlee warned.

  “Yes,” she said. “Go.”

  Brownlee and the other medics hastened forward with the stretcher.

  She ran alongside until she reached an intersection with another corridor.

  Behind her, she glimpsed Luc coming toward her.

  She broke away, turned the corner. Out of Luc’s sight, she ran full-out, snaking through hallways until she reached a rear exit. She smashed through double doors, raced past a startled guard, across the parking lot, spidered up the chain link fence, and dropped to the other side.

  “Brenna!”

  Feet pounding on the broken pavement, she crossed the service road and shot into the nearest row house. She stopped, chest heaving, and pressed her back to the wall, peering sideways out the window. On the tarmac, the engines of the Herc accelerated. The lumbering machine gathered speed down the runway and roared into the pink clouds. She watched until it became a speck.

  Godspeed, my love.

  She turned away from the window, dabbing impatiently at her eyes with the palms of her hands.

  She tried to think.

  Down the narrow hallway, a ragged square of daylight marked what had once been a doorway. Beyond it lay the U streets, the warren of identical apartment buildings, and four small children huddled together on a cold floor. Surely Maric would be gone by now. He had a neighborhood to clear, territory to annex. His troops hadn’t been sent out to babysit. He would have moved on. Abandoned them, not shot them.

  Surely.

  She pushed off the wall. In her mental fog last night, in the darkness with Daniel across her shoulders, she had become disoriented. She didn’t know how many streets away the children were. She didn’t know how she’d carry out four of them alone. She just knew that if she scoured the streets systematically, eventually she would find the building with Dragoslav’s body lying on the garbage heap out front.

  She sprinted down the corridor, picking up speed. With the Herc now clear of the airport, the artillery barrage would soon resume. This lull was her chance to cover ground, fast.

  She leapt out into the daylight, feet hitting the road at full speed. Snipe this, she thought. And she ran. Breathless. Heedless. Boots thudding against the torn asphalt, crunching over jagged shards of shattered concrete, skidding as she flashed past bombed-out ruins, one street after another.

  Squeak! Squeak with the dark eyes that gazed into hers and trusted her. I’m coming!

  She turned a corner, saw Dragoslav’s dead white skin reflecting sunlight. She leapt, scrambled onto the piled dirt. Dislodged a long loose plank.

  And heard the unmistakable sound.

  Click.

  L
and mine.

  Chapter 18

  Margaret Ellsworth was home in Portland, Maine, her desk littered with the notes and academic papers she was using to prepare her keynote speech on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for the upcoming American Clinical Psychology Association’s conference in Washington, D.C.

  The phone rang.

  “Buongiorno,” a heavily-accented, young male voice said. “Signora Ellsworth? Mother of Daniel Ellsworth?”

  A sense of dread spread through her. “Yes,” she said. “I am Daniel’s mother.”

  “I am Dottor Marco Saluti, from the hospital in Ancona, Italy. Your son was evacuated from Kavsak by UNPROFOR airlift this morning and brought into our grandi emergenze with a head injury. According to his passport, you are the next of kin…”

  A shock wave rolled through her. “Oh, my God. Is he—”

  “No, no, signora. He is in terapia intensiva. He is unable to speak so we are calling.”

  “My husband and I will be on the next flight,” she said, reaching for paper and pen to record the details.

  At two a.m., local time, the Intensive Care Unit at the Ospedale di Ancona was hushed. At the curved nurse’s station, the staff moved quietly, drawing medications into syringes, setting up IV bags, updating medical records. Margaret and Alden Ellsworth, their travel bags draped over their shoulders, glanced into the surrounding patient rooms, looking for their son as they approached the counter.

  “Buonasera,” the duty nurse said, looking up from her chart.

  Margaret watched her expression change to one of sympathy. Oh, my, the nurse had the grace not to say. Two rumpled old people worn out from a long journey.

  “Posso fare qualcosa per voi?”

  “Daniel Ellsworth?” Margaret said, pointing from herself to Alden. “Mother. Father.”

  “Ah. Camera F,” she said, pointing to a door partway around the circle.

  “Thank you,” Margaret said.

  “Il dottore?” Alden said.

  “Si. Si,” the nurse said, lifting a telephone. “Subito.”

  Margaret, walking in the direction the nurse had indicated, slowed as she passed a room where a stick-thin woman with wispy white hair lay in bed, her mouth open, cheeks sunken in a heavily-lined face. A priest stood at her side, anointing her with holy oils. A half-dozen somber family members fingered rosary beads, praying along with him.

  Alden’s hand landed on Margaret’s shoulder. “Let’s see him first, before we think the worst.”

  She nodded. A few steps ahead, she saw a door that said “Ellsworth” in the name slot, and turned in. A dim lamp by the bedside cast a modest glow over the room.

  She stopped, shocked.

  Daniel was lying on his back, the head of the bed elevated, his face so swollen she was momentarily unsure she had entered the correct room.

  She slid her hand into the crook of Alden’s elbow. He hesitated beside her, as taken aback as she was.

  Deep purple bruises covered Daniel’s face, filling the eye sockets, inflating the eyelids so much that all she could see were slits where his eyes should be. His nose was ballooned to twice its normal size, deviated to the right, and obviously broken. He had stitches over his left eyebrow, small dark scabs sprinkled across his face, and dense beard stubble. He was wired up to a monitor, fluid dripped down an IV tube in his hand, a small electronic box hung over the railing with a fine tube that disappeared under the sleeve of his gown, and a urine bag peeked out beneath the sheets at the side of the bed.

  She exchanged a glance with Alden, took a deep breath, and stepped forward on shaky legs.

  Steadying herself on the bed rail, she leaned over her son’s body. “Oh,” she whispered, her heart breaking at the sight of him. He was as filthy as an indigent, his hair and the folds of his ears were coated with a sandy grit. What in God’s name had happened to him?

  She took his hand, avoiding the scrapes on his knuckles, careful not to squeeze the IV line taped to the back of it. “Daniel,” she said. “It’s me. It’s Mom. I’m here.”

  “Me too, son,” Alden said, leaning over him with her. “Mom and I are both here.”

  She stroked the back of his hand, keeping her touch light as her fingers ran over the scabs. “It’s going to be alright, now. We’re right here. We’re going to take care of you.”

  “You’re safe now, son. It’s all over. We’re going to get you better and take you home, okay?”

  Daniel didn’t respond.

  “Can you wake up, honey? Can you open your eyes? Just for a moment, then you can go back to sleep, okay?” Grief overcame her, and she started to cry. How could she reassure him when she herself wasn’t sure he would be all right?

  She heard the tick-tick of a woman’s pumps, straightened up, and turned, her fingers still twined around Daniel’s hand.

  “Buonasera.”

  A petite, salt-and-pepper-haired woman wearing a long white lab coat over an impeccable burgundy suit walked forward, her hand extended. “I am Dottoressa Nina Alberti, direttrice del personale nell.”

  Alden shook her hand. “I’m Dr. Alden Ellsworth, Daniel’s father. I’m a surgeon. This is my wife, Dr. Margaret Ellsworth. She is a clinical psychologist.”

  Dr. Alberti, seeing Margaret’s tears, squeezed her elbow. “Oh, it is so hard to see our children suffer,” she said, in a universal mother-to-mother tone. “Even when they are grown.”

  “How is he?”

  “Not as bad as he looks. Venga,” she said, tugging the cord for the light over Daniel’s bed. “Come. We examine your son together, step by step.

  “First—what we know: He arrives yesterday morning from Kavsak, on UNPROFOR airlift. Place of origin is important. The patterns of injury we see from war are different than for civilians. So we interpret in that light, capisce?”

  Margaret nodded.

  “Okay. He comes in alone. No shoes, no socks, no shirt. Just jeans and jacket. It is still spring in Kavsak. Without fuel or electricity, homes in the city have no heat. People are cold all the time. So naturally, with insufficient clothing, Daniel experiences hypothermia. He was warmed in transit by the evacuation team so it is not contributory to his currently-reduced alertness.

  “Now, since there is no family, no friend with him to describe what has happened, we have to see what his body tells us. Right away, of course, we see his face. Very dramatic,” she said, gesturing like a maestro building a crescendo in an orchestra. “Blood. Swelling. Broken nose.” Her hands dropped, and fanned the air dismissively. “No. It is important not to triage drama. This is the inflammatory response—a normal process.

  “Our main concern is the brain. Why did your son lose consciousness? What was the mechanism of injury?”

  Dr. Alberti unlatched the bed rail and lowered it. She leaned over Daniel. “See this?” Her small finger hovered over his face, outlining a large, roughly oval-shaped area that was darker purple than the area surrounding it. “This is the core injury. The bruising around it is overflow. This pattern tells me your son was struck in the face with the butt of a rifle.”

  Margaret drew in a hiss.

  “An hour or two before he was evacuated, he encountered an armed man at close range. This man wished to stop Daniel, but not to kill him.”

  “How do you know that?” Margaret asked.

  “The man had a gun, no? But Daniel wasn’t shot.” Dr. Alberti shrugged. “Anyway, with such a blow to the face, the head is suddenly snapped, the brain hits the front of the skull, then rebounds and strikes the rear.”

  “Coup, contre-coup,” Alden said. “Two blows.”

  “Inside the skull, two,” Dr. Alberti said, “but three overall.” She grasped Daniel’s head between her hands, advising him she was going to turn his head. She continued her description for Margaret and Alden. “The patient blacks out, hits the floor, and—” she turned Daniel’s head to reveal the lump on the back of it “—third impact.” She set Daniel’s head back on the pillow. “This injury is between the sca
lp and the skull. The inflammation can expand without crowding the brain.

  “Despite these blows, his limbs are neither tightly flexed, nor rigidly extended. Abnormal postures—decortication and decerebration—are late signs of damage to corticospinal pathways and the brainstem, with a poor prognosis. So, his suppleness is good news. Also good: He is breathing on his own. No seizures have been reported, or observed. He is not vomiting—a sign of pressure building in the brain. His pupils are equal, round, and reactive to light. The corneal reflex is present, along with other reflexes such as coughing, swallowing, and withdrawing from painful stimulus. All of these signs suggest his injury is not profound.”

  “Was a CT scan performed?” Alden asked.

  Margaret sensed that Alden—surgeon that he was—was itching for numbers. He was used to the rapid-fire lab reports, the CTs, the MRIs, the EKGs, the high-tech stuff. But Margaret liked the dottoressa’s narrative, classical style. She could understand what she was being told, and it reassured her that Daniel’s physician was paying attention to him. In the States, Margaret had seen doctors actually walk past their patients and go assess their monitors. Margaret felt confident that Dr. Alberti could still practice medicine if the electricity went out.

  “Minor swelling in the frontal and temporal lobes,” Dr. Alberti told them. “Negative for intra-cranial hemorrhage or skull fracture. Also, we have ruled out spinal injury.”

  “How was the blood work?” he asked.

  “Water does not flow from taps in Kavsak,” she said, seemingly off-topic. “The citizens must take jugs to the streets to a few dangerous collection points. Those places are prime spots for sniper attacks, and shelling. It is worth your life to get a glass of water. This being so, all our Kavsak patients arrive dehydrated. You pinch a little skin on their forearms and it stays up like a tiny tent.” She explained to Margaret that with dehydration, the equilibrium between the body’s water and electrolytes such as sodium, calcium, and potassium becomes imbalanced. “If the pH goes to extremes, it can cause loss of consciousness. Daniel’s lab results confirmed dehydration, but not an extreme case. So, again, not a factor.”

  Dr. Alberti tapped Daniel’s IV tube with the tips of her fingers, and smiled. “Since he cannot drink by mouth, we give him a straw, ah? We are seeing normal urine output, so we know the kidneys are functioning well. The abdomen is soft, with bowel sounds in all four quadrants, and no tenderness. The circulatory system is also fine. When there is low blood volume, or poor circulation,” she told Margaret, “the body prioritizes the vital organs and sacrifices the extremities. But if you notice, your son’s hands and feet are warm and pink.” To Alden, she said: “SaO2 is 95 percent.”