The Distant Shore (Stone Trilogy)

by Mariam Kobras

  Jon burst through the swinging doors like a violent storm, Art on his heels.

  “What happened? God damn it, what happened? Where is she, where is Naomi?” He reeled back when Solveigh broke out in loud, helpless sobbing.

  It was Sean who took his arm and said calmly, “Come with me, Jon. I’ll explain.”

  But Jon could not take in what he was hearing; his brain simply refused to process the information behind the words, the horror was just too great. He heard phrases like cardiac arrest, blood loss and operating, and even death. He nodded gamely when Sean asked him if he understood, but it was not true.

  “Stewart is dead? Dead? He was killed?”

  “Yes.”

  “But Naomi? What happened, Sean?”

  Sean sighed and repeated his terrible report.

  “I want to see her now.”

  “She’s in surgery, Jon. And the way the doctor put it, it will take some time. She was gravely injured. We will have to wait.”

  “No, I won’t wait.” There was a nurses’ desk close by, and he went there and put his fist down on the counter. “My wife. I want to know, right now. I want to see her, and I want to speak to a competent physician.”

  The woman behind the desk tried to calm him down, but he only shook his head at her excuses. “No, I’m not taking any of that crap. You go and get someone out here who will tell me what’s going on this instant, or I’ll go in there and find out myself!”

  “Jon.” Sean tried to pull him back but was shaken off impatiently.

  “Where is she now? What are they doing to her, why can’t I see her?”

  “Sir,” she answered, “they are trying to save her life. You can’t do anything right now, but I assure you, as soon as there is news you will be informed.”

  “Save her life?” Desperation made his voice break. “Save her life? Is she dying? Is Naomi dying?”

  Sean had never seen anything like the sudden, naked fear on his friend’s face as Jon wheeled around and made for the shut doors that led into the OR suite.

  “Jon,” he called after him, but it was Harry who grabbed the silk lapels of Jon’s tux and slammed him into the wall, knocking the breath out of him.

  “Stay here, you fool! And calm down. You’re not helping her, and you’re not doing yourself any good, either.”

  For a moment, it looked as if Jon was going to hit Harry, but he sagged against him instead.

  “Sit here.” Harry pushed him down on a chair next to a huge potted palm. “I’ll get you some coffee.”

  He scrutinized the others: Solveigh, her lips drawn and pale, Russ, his arm around her, Sal, dazed and disoriented, Sean, withdrawn and very still, and Art, trying hard to gain control. “Hell, coffee would be good for all of us.” He signaled to the nurse, who nodded gratefully and picked up the phone.

  The hallway grew very quiet the longer the night wore on.

  Grace arrived with a bewildered, frightened Joshua, who immediately sought out his father, bringing a small spark of life to Jon’s ashen face for an instant before they both sank back into the fear that surrounded them like a grey cloak. Around three in the morning Joshua fell asleep, his head on Jon’s knee, covered by the jacket Art had taken off and draped over him.

  “It’s taking so long,” Jon whispered to Sean. “Why don’t they send someone out to tell us how it’s going? At least inform us what her injuries are? I don’t think I can take much more waiting.” For the first time ever, he looked his age; there were deep lines around his mouth and dark smudges under his eyes, worry and fatigue in his expression.

  “I’ll go,” Sean offered, but Jon shook his head.

  “No,” was his weary reply, “I need to do this myself.”

  Carefully he shifted Joshua from his leg and rose, stiff and exhausted, and left the room. Sal and Sean followed him anxiously with their eyes.

  The nurse phoned, and a few moments later a doctor came out to see him. Jon’s heart turned to ice at the sight of the man in his green scrubs, the front liberally splattered and smeared with blood. The surgeon wiped his brow and yawned, but collected himself quickly. It was very bad, he said, and they were still working on her. The bullet had passed through her body and splintered the lowest rib. That in itself was not too bad, but the bone splinters had pierced her lung and liver, and they had to remove parts of both. They had repaired the liver now, but the lung was giving them trouble. Her heart was very weak from the enormous amount of blood lost. And she had a head injury, a hematoma, from the fall, which they would try to remove before her brain was damaged.

  “So far,” he concluded, “We’ve had to give her thirty units of blood, but I fear we aren’t done yet.”

  “But she’ll be okay?” Jon hardly dared to ask. “She is going to pull through, right?”

  The physician hesitated for a moment. “There are six surgeons in there, the best we have, and we are the best in the state. She is a strong woman.” Again he waited before he added. “Get some sleep, if you can. It will be several more hours.”

  Jon needed to be alone.

  The lobby was quiet and nearly empty at this time of night, but outside an ambulance passed by with howling sirens toward the ER entrance. A couple of white-clad men, medics or doctors, were standing near the door, talking and laughing at something. There was a TV mounted to the wall in a niche with a couch, and he settled there to watch the images flickering over the screen. A solitary woman was nestled in the corner; her head leaning against the beige upholstery, a crumpled handkerchief in her hands. She gazed at him from red-rimmed eyes and looked away again quickly, as if she did not want to notice him.

  The TV was set to a local news channel, showing the accidents and disturbances of the night: a number of police cars chasing a white pickup along the highway, a house on fire in one of the suburbs, and then, a report on the shooting at the Academy Awards.

  Horrified, Jon watched it happen. He saw Naomi walking beside Sal, Sean trailing behind, and how she dropped to the ground. He saw Stewart rush over to help her and then collapse. Sean, falling to his knees beside her, the crush of people, the panic in the crowd, medics, police, sirens, flashlights, and in the center of it all, Naomi. Then the police honing in on the crumpled form of a woman and dragging her away, her red hair spilling over their hands, more blood, more rescue attempts, someone trying to help Stewart, and again, Naomi, being reanimated now, the paddles on her skin, Sean, stepping away, red stains on his shirt, and Harry as he stormed toward them. The entire gruesome scene had been recorded. The famous star’s wife, gunned down after the awards show—and what a juicy, sensational morsel of drama it was.

  “You should be with your wife.”

  Surprised, he turned to the woman in the corner. She was regarding him tiredly, kneading the piece of cloth in her fingers.

  “Your wife,” she repeated as if she was speaking to an uncomprehending child. “She needs you. Why are you sitting here? Go back to her.”

  “She’s in surgery,” Jon replied. “I can’t do anything at the moment.”

  “But when she wakes up you should be there. She should see you there by her bed.”

  The surrealism of the entire situation made it nearly impossible for him to collect a sane thought, let alone lead a coherent conversation.

  “I don’t think she will wake up very soon.” He unbuttoned his jacket and leaned back, tired and battered, fear churning in him like bile. “If at all. God.”

  There was a slow nod. The woman was not unattractive, maybe in her mid-forties, his own age, dusky-skinned and with an ample but well-defined body, her hair still black with a few single white strands that looked strangely interesting.

  “My husband just died. He was watching football, and then he died. He was fifty-two, and apparently healthy. Then he gets up to get himself a beer and drops dead on the kitchen floor, just like that. Never knew what hit him. They brought him here, but it was too late. I don’t want to go home. There’s no one there.”

  �
�No children?” he asked, and she shook her head.

  At least, Jon thought, at least he had that. If she did not survive the night, there was Joshua, and Jon knew he would give up everything and retire to share his son’s life. Shocked by his own thoughts, he jumped up and rubbed his face.

  “You’re right. I have to go back.”

  Only when he had reached the elevators did Jon have the sense to turn back and call: “Thank you. Take care!”

  But either she did not hear or did not care, for there was no response.

  The early morning routine had returned to the hospital hallway before those ominous doors to the forbidden area opened again, disgorging a group of physicians who looked as exhausted as those waiting for them outside.

  “You can see your wife now,” the same man who had talked to Jon earlier said. “The nurse will take you in.”

  Jon felt the others draw closer to him, building a circle of support.

  “We’ve done everything we could,” the surgeon went on. “She has lost half of her right lung and about as much of her liver. Her heart is still volatile, very weak. The hematoma has been removed, and her brain should be okay. For now, we’ve put her in a drug-induced coma, and we’ll keep it up for a while.”

  “So she will live?” Sean pressed Jon’s arm to steady him when he swayed, relief flooding through him.

  “If there are no further complications, yes. But she is critical, as you can imagine, with those injuries, and she has a very long period of healing ahead of her.”

  “Oh, thank God,” Solveigh breathed, and then broke out again in ragged sobbing.

  “The family,” Sal mumbled. “We forgot to call her family. Jon, go see her. I’ll do it, don’t worry.”

  The sand on the beach had changed. It was brilliantly white and as soft as down. It was warm under her feet, comfortably warm, just like the fragrant breeze rustling through the dense green trees farther up on the land and the few stray palms standing near the water. The shore followed a gentle curve into the distance, where it ended in a rocky headland with a huge blue moon rising above it, so close that its body could be recognized as a sphere. The ocean shone a deep improbable turquoise, turning to a paler shade with the surf, while the sky was lusciously violet, so dark it was nearly black. Great glittering wheels of stars turned in a slow, majestic dance, galaxies spinning through space like spiderwebs of light, rows of pearls and lacy concoctions, sugar candy. Music came from them, a slow, low hum overlaid by a sweeping, elusive melody that seemed, impossibly, to combine a multitude of tunes into one complex, many-layered score, a cosmic symphony she heard and understood, even followed under her breath, and which seemed to run through her entire body like a second stream of blood.

  “The music of the spheres,” she heard a voice say. “Listen well.”

  She turned, but no one was there. She was all alone in this eerie, beautiful landscape, but she was no longer so deadly tired, and she felt aware of herself for the first time in an eternity.

  “Open your eyes,” the same voice ordered, “and look.”

  This seemed a ridiculous thing to do. She thought her eyes were open, because she was seeing the beach and the sky, but she did as she was told.

  It was surprisingly hard, almost as if she had to push through her own flesh, but the landscape opened up before her and pulled her in.

  She was in a hospital room, like the kind you see in the movies or on TV, with many blinking and beeping machines, and a glass wall to a nurses’ station. She knew it was her lying in the bed with all those monitors, hurting. The body she had dropped into was a vessel of pain, tied down by tubes, needles, and bandages.

  A man was standing beside her, his head lowered and his hands helplessly by his side. He seemed familiar; seeing him, she felt comforted and safe, but she could not remember who he was. There were tears on his face and he was whispering something to her. She wanted to tell him not to be so sad and not to cry, but once more the terrible fatigue swept over her.

  The man raised his eyes to look at her.

  “I’m so sorry, my love,” he said tenderly. “I’m so, so sorry. It’s my fault. I was selfish, I wanted you here and you came, and now this terrible thing has happened. Please come back to me, Naomi. Please, Baby.”

  He sounded so heartbroken and lonely that she wanted to reach out to him and promise that everything would be all right, but she could not.

  “I’ll take better care of you,” he was saying. “You will never, never get hurt again, but please don’t leave me. Baby, you know I need you, and Joshua needs you. Please, we have only just started our lives together. There’s so much living still to do…”

  She sighed tiredly. The beach beckoned, and the lovely music.

  Jon refused to leave her side again.

  “Go home,” Sal urged. “Take a shower and get some rest. She’s in good hands. I’ll stay here with her until you return.”

  But he would not budge. She might wake up, and he wanted to be there, did not want her to find herself alone in that horrible hospital bed and think that he had deserted her.

  “Don’t be stupid, Jon,” Sal said. “As if she would ever think that. And anyway, she’s sedated. They won’t let her wake up for a few days. You know that.”

  Joshua was upset and scared, but he calmed down when Jon told him he had seen Naomi, that she was sleeping now and was going to be okay, but it would take some time.

  “Joshua,” Jon explained, his arm around his son’s shoulders, “I promise, I will not leave her alone for a single minute. Go with Grace and Harry and try not to worry. Sleep and eat, and in the afternoon come back and you can see your mom.”

  Russ had taken Solveigh away. Art and Sal were downstairs talking to the press.

  Two nurses were with her when Jon returned, checking the machines and IV bags and changing her position carefully.

  “Her hair is clotted with blood,” one of them whispered to him. “I’ll come back later and wash it. For now, we’ll leave her alone.”

  They brought him breakfast, and later in the day lunch, but he only managed to choke down some tepid coffee, which he drank while he sat at her bedside.

  She was not breathing on her own; the tube taped to her lips seemed incredibly brutal to him, an invasion of her dignity and privacy.

  He listened to the low hiss of the oxygen and the beeping of the heart monitor, watched the blinking lights, and fell into the uneasy sleep of exhaustion, his head awkwardly on a corner of her blanket, her fingers in his.

  The nurse was back with Naomi, washing her hair with sponge, when he returned from a quick shower and changed into the fresh clothes Russ had brought for him.

  Very carefully, she was picking up every strand and lock, patting it gently to remove the grime and blood. He stared dolefully at the basin she had on her knees, the water in it turning a dirty red.

  “I watched the show,” the woman told him. “Your wife was so pretty up there on the stage. I nearly cried because she was so moved by the award.”

  “She never thought she deserved it. Somehow she never realizes how good she really is at writing.”

  The nurse nodded silently, and he had the impression she had no idea what he was talking about. “I need fresh water,” she said. “It’s so much.”

  More clotted blood came out of the long tresses.

  “But she will heal? She will be well again, right?”

  The woman looked up at him. “You know I’m not able to answer that question. But from what I can see, her chances are good, if nothing untoward happens.”

  “Like what?” Jon pulled up the chair again and took Naomi’s cool hand in his. There was no reaction when he pressed it slightly.

  There was a brief hesitation. “Like another cardiac arrest, an infection, or inflammation. Something like that. You should talk to her doctors.”

  “But she is out of immediate danger?”

  “You need to ask the doctor,” she repeated.

  Sal and Art cast fur
tive glances at each other. A couple of times Sal considered interfering, but in the end it was a family matter, and they had no business being present when Naomi’s father bore down on Jon, shouting bitter accusations at him.

  “You!” Olaf threw at Jon with all the pent-up fury he had been harboring. “You are nothing but temptation and danger, a womanizer and a seducer, and I’m taking her back home to safety. You will never see her again, and this time I’ll make sure of that. Screw around all you like and let your lovers kill each other, but Naomi won’t be one of your victims again, you bastard!”

  Lucia tried to pull him back, but he shook her off.

  “You think throwing all that money her way will make things better? You think those useless trophies are of any importance? They mean nothing at all!”

  “She’ll not go anywhere,” Jon responded just as vehemently, “until she can make that decision herself. You’re not going to move her against her will.”

  “As if you have a say in that!”

  Sal had the impression that Olaf was ready to hit Jon, he was that angry.

  “Well, I do. I’m her husband, and as such I get to decide what happens with her, and not you. She will stay here in safety until she tells me otherwise.”

  “In safety!” Olaf stepped up closer to him, his fists balled by his side. “Safety? You let her get shot by your former mistress? Right out on the street too, and she has to suffer the indignity, on top of everything else, of being seen helpless and half-naked by the world while she lies bleeding on the pavement!”

  Jon fell silent, his head lowered before the onslaught.

  “We took care of her safety, Olaf,” Sal intervened. “Believe me, we did, even against her will.”

  “So it’s her fault now, is that it?” Olaf rounded on him. “She put herself in the way of that gun?”

  “Please stop this,” Lucia broke in. “Listen to yourselves! Shame on you all, fighting like this, when the only thing that matters is Naomi’s recovery.”

  She left them standing in the hallway and went in to Naomi, who was still sedated and motionless.