The Dead Don't Dance

by Charles Martin

  Amanda’s stomach tightened, she groan-coughed, and the baby’s right shoulder slipped out.

  “Amos, I got a shoulder.”

  “Gently, Doc.”

  Amanda’s breathing was labored, and she was moaning.

  “Make room for the other shoulder. Don’t be afraid to use your hand. Make room. Pull if you have to, but not on the baby. You know what I mean. You’ve seen this done before.”

  I nodded. I ran my finger along the baby’s back, slid my fingers in between Amanda and the baby, pulled gently outward, and the baby slid out. A wet, gooey, warm baby landed in my hands. Pulling him to me, I saw that he was blue, limp, and silent.

  “He’s out.”

  Amanda let out a long, deep breath.

  “Is he breathing?”

  I stuck my ear against his face.

  “No.”

  Amanda whimpered.

  “D.S.” Amos raised his head, and the veins in his neck showed in the moonlight. “Get him breathing.” His tone was urgent. “Put your mouth over his nose and mouth, and breathe into him. Breathe a full breath, but don’t force it.”

  I cradled Amanda’s son in my arms, placed his mouth and nose in my mouth, and breathed.

  “What’s happening?” Amos asked.

  Again I pulled the baby’s mouth to my cheek. “Nothing.”

  “Do it again.”

  I did. “No good.”

  “Take three fingers and compress his chest. Think of it like you’re pushing on a roll of bread and you don’t want to push through. Just mash it down.”

  I did.

  “Anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  Amos’s eyes showed fear, and he kicked the ground beneath him. “Slap him.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Slap him’? Where?”

  “Slap the kid, Doc! Just slap him!”

  I smacked Amanda’s son on the bottom. He jerked, sucked in a deep, gargled breath, and screamed at the top of his lungs.

  Bathed in the moonlight, we sat listening to Amanda’s newborn son. It was, quite possibly, the most beautiful sound I had ever heard.

  Amos nodded, “Nice job, Doc. Nice job.” His head fell back against the bank, his eyes closed, and there, in the middle of all that, Amos smiled.

  I grabbed the sweatshirt off his head and placed the baby on Amos’s chest. Shining the light on the bank, I found my knife, cut the cord midway between Amanda and the baby, tied a knot, and wrapped the baby tight inside the sweats. Amos’s big hand cradled the child while his right arm covered Amanda.

  “Amanda, honey,” Amos assured her, “this boy’s fine.”

  Kneeling in the snow between Amanda’s legs, I looked down and noticed the dark, sticky flow. “Amos, I got a lot of blood.”

  “How much?” Amos asked.

  I shined the light. “It looks like Maggie.”

  His brow wrinkled. “Can you get us to the hospital in your truck?”

  “Maybe, I’ll check.” Scrambling to the top of the hill, I found my truck quiet. No exhaust was coming from the pipe. It was dead as a doornail. I turned the ignition and mashed the accelerator to the floor, but she had seized up and wouldn’t turn over.

  Sliding back down, I whispered, “It’s dead.”

  “Dylan, you got to get us to the top of this hill. That truck’ll be here soon.”

  I carefully took Amanda under the arms and pulled her toward the top of the hill. Beneath her, the snow trailed red. Digging in his heels, Amos inched upward with his right arm and held the baby with his left. His head was bleeding again. As Amanda and I reached the road, I heard the low whine of gears and saw headlights climbing toward us. As I lay there in the road, in a pool of blood, holding Amanda’s head in my arms, two men jumped out of the truck and ran toward us.

  They quickly placed Amanda on a stretcher, wrapped two blankets over her, and slid her under the topper of the pickup. One of the men took the baby from Amos and then helped him to his feet, holding him steady. I crawled into the truck next to Amanda, and one of the medics handed me the baby. The other man grunted, lifted Amos into the truck, and laid him down on the other side of Amanda.

  The first man looked at me and said, “Do you know her name?”

  I nodded and said through my chattering teeth, “Amanda Lovett.”

  Just before the driver shut the tailgate, Blue jumped in with us. The man ran around to the front of the truck and jumped into the cab. We could hear the radio exchange through the open window between the cab and the back.

  “HQ, this is 716.”

  “Go ahead, 716.”

  “Shireen, we’re inbound with four. I need a blood type check on Amanda Lovett.”

  “Did you say Amanda Lovett?”

  “That’s affirmative.” The driver paused. “And Shireen, tell ’em we need lots of it.”

  As our speed increased, I realized that the driver, whoever he was, was pushing the limits of what the snow and ice would allow. A dim light inside the topper shone on Amos’s eyes. He was looking at me. He didn’t say a word, but his eyes flashed to Amanda and back to me. She was entirely limp.

  I shook my head. Amos’s right hand came up and grabbed hold of Amanda’s. The baby was quiet and still in my arms. His face was shiny and puffy, and his eyes blinked open and shut in the dim light. He appeared to be comfortable, and thanks to Amos’s sweatshirt, mostly dry. A whitish paste covered him, and he was sticking long fingers in his mouth. The little guy was as bald as a cue ball.

  In a few minutes we reached the hospital. The truck stopped; somebody raised the window, lowered the tailgate, and a woman in a white uniform appeared. She reached for the baby, I extended the boy to her, and she disappeared behind two sliding doors and into a host of people.

  Two men pulled Amanda from the truck. They placed her stretcher onto a gurney with wheels and disappeared between the two electric doors. Pastor John and Mrs. Lovett met them at the door and ran along behind them.

  The doors to the emergency room were crowded with people. Two large men dressed in blue smocks jumped into the truck, grunted “One, two, three,” and lifted Amos onto a stretcher, then briskly rolled him through the sliding double doors while holding a towel on his head and shouting his vitals as they ran.

  Back in the truck, I was shivering so hard that my head was bobbing back and forth, and I could not stop my teeth from chattering. Two more nurses climbed into the back of the truck, grabbed me under each arm, and lifted me onto a stretcher. They rolled me inside, down a hall, past a room with a lot of shouting and bright lights, and into a tile-covered room under a stream of a warm shower.

  “Can you stand?” one of them asked.

  I nodded.

  They lifted me off the stretcher and set me on my feet. I was bent half over, my head hanging and my arms pressed against my chest. Warm steam filled my lungs, and warm water crawled down my back.

  I stood.

  One nurse worked to cut off my clothes while the other prepared some sort of IV and a breathing mask. “What hurts?” the first nurse said.

  “N-n-n-nothing.”

  After five minutes in the warm water, he looked up from his cutting and asked again, “What else hurts?”

  “E-e-e-everything.”

  He nodded. “Good. That’s good.”

  chapter twenty-six

  I WOKE UP AND TRIED TO MOVE, BUT DOING SO WAS strangely painful. I ached everywhere, and a hundred nicks and cuts stung most every inch of my body. Clarity came easy in the morning light. I was in the room with Maggie, a patient now myself. Lying there, I remembered Papa kneeling next to Nanny. One strap of his overalls had slid off his shoulders, pushed down by the weight of a broken heart. His big, callused hands were holding hers—tenderness cradled in the palm of might.

  I looked over at Maggs, closed my eyes, and said, “Lord, I’m begging You. Please don’t take her away from me.”

  “Merry Christmas,” I heard from the foot of my bed. I looked up and saw a nurse dressed in white
. She was not the answer I was looking for.

  “How do you feel?”

  I had forgotten it was Christmas morning. “Poorly.”

  “That’s to be expected.”

  “How’s everybody else?”

  “The baby is fine. Deputy Carter is pretty banged up. A few head lacerations, but he says he’ll live. Amanda Lovett is in ICU.”

  “Will she live?”

  “We’ve given her six units of blood. But whatever you two did out there is the reason she’s still here.”

  The nurse left, and I pried myself off the sheets. My boots lay on the floor, but the paramedics had cut them off last night, so they were useless. Maggie would have liked the sight of that. I unhooked my IV, grabbed another hospital gown from the shelf next to the closet, and threw it over my shoulders. I still felt cold, so I pulled another blanket out of the closet and wrapped it around myself. I took three steps and knew immediately that I needed some pain medication, quick. Hunched over, I walked down the hall, and a nurse behind the counter ran around to stop me.

  “Sir, you really need to get back in bed. What happened to your IV?”

  She put her arm around me, trying to guide me back to my room. I stopped and looked at her. “Amos Carter. Where is Deputy Amos Carter?”

  She pointed. “He’s at the end of the hall.”

  I aimed my face in that direction and said, “Let’s go see him.”

  “But sir, he’s sleeping.”

  “Then I’ll just have to wake his lazy butt up.”

  She shadowed me to Amos’s room, supporting me the few times I stumbled, and told another nurse to page the doctor. When I walked in, Amos was lying in his bed with an IV similar to mine. I pulled the metal stool on casters next to his bed and eased down on it. Thinking she had me cornered until the doctor arrived, the nurse left me alone with Amos. His room was lit only by a single dim fluorescent tube on the ceiling. His bald head was covered in a patchwork of stitches. It looked as though someone had played tic-tac-toe on his forehead.

  “Amos?” I whispered. “Amos.”

  His mouth opened. “Hey, buddy.”

  “You okay?”

  “Feel like I been rode hard and put up wet.”

  “What hurts?”

  “Nothing right now.” His eyes darted over his shoulder. “Thanks to that bag.”

  “You gonna be all right?” I asked.

  “I’ll walk out of here.” Amos paused. “Dylan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You did good last night. Real good.” Amos coughed and closed his eyes. “You hear what I’m saying?”

  The doctor snapped his heels together and entered the room. I slid the stool back and stood to meet him.

  “Mr. Styles, you really need to get back to your room. You are in no condi—”

  “Amanda Lovett,” I interrupted him.

  “What?” he said.

  “Amanda Lovett. Where is she?”

  He frowned and put one hand in his pocket. “I don’t suppose you’re going to listen to me, are you?”

  “Please, I just want to see Amanda Lovett.” I wrapped my blanket tighter around me and raised my eyebrows. “Three minutes is all I want.”

  “Dylan, when you came in here, your body temperature was eight-six. Do you know how close . . . ?”

  I straightened, which was painful, and for the first time I looked him squarely in the eyes.

  He thought for a moment. “And after Amanda, it’s back to bed?”

  I nodded.

  “I have your word?”

  “You do.”

  “Come with me, please.” He led me down the hall to a wheelchair. “Will you at least sit?”

  “Thanks,” I said and gingerly sat in the wheelchair.

  Heels clicking on the sterile floor, he wheeled me down the hall, around a corner, and down another long hallway. After he punched in his code on the keypad, he steered me through two doors marked with lots of red reflective tape and ICU on the door. I have to admit, I was thankful for the ride. Outside of Amanda’s room, Mrs. Lovett sat on a bench, her eyes closed and head resting against the wall. Inside, Pastor John knelt next to Amanda’s bed, holding her hand with both of his and resting his head on the mattress. He looked asleep, but I knew better. This was a vigil.

  The doctor checked my pulse and then left me at the foot of Amanda’s bed. The tiny red flashing lights from Amanda’s heart monitor bounced against the walls of the room. The continually expanding and contracting blood-pressure cuff around her right arm breathed in and out audibly, almost like an invisible presence. Amanda’s eyes were shut, and she looked blanched and exhausted.

  Pastor John spoke first. “It was a few hours last night before they could stop the bleeding.” He lifted his head and looked at Amanda. “It seems my grandson’s shoulders were larger than the space God gave him to come into this world. Soon after you arrived, half your class lined up to give blood. The other half arrived an hour or so ago.”

  He wiped away tears. “They gave her six units last night and two more this morning. She hasn’t been awake since she’s been here.” He looked at me. His eyes were bloodshot and sunk deep in his head. He looked as if he could crack at any minute.

  I shuffled to the opposite side of the bed, where I pulled up a chair, sat carefully, slid my hand under Amanda’s, and rested it in my lap. This was the same hand that had brushed my wife’s hair, slipped clean socks on her feet, painted her fingernails, changed her IV, bathed her, and checked her pulse. For a few minutes, we just sat there in the quiet.

  I had done the same thing with Maggie a thousand times. But Amanda’s hand came alive, gripped mine, and held the grip. Behind her eyelids, she knew I was holding her hand, and in return she held mine.

  Pastor John raised his head, and his eyes grew large and round. Tears filled the corners. When I looked up, Amanda was looking at me. Seeing his daughter’s eyes open, and a faint smile bending her lips, Pastor John dropped his head, and his shoulders quivered.

  “Professor?” Amanda whispered.

  “Yes, Amanda.”

  “I heard you talking to God last night.”

  “Is that what you call it?”

  “I do.” She nodded slightly. “You sounded like Job.”

  Mrs. Lovett tiptoed into the room and stood beside her husband.

  “I’m not sure Job used that kind of language,” I said.

  “From where I was sitting,” Amanda continued, half-laughing, “I heard the whole thing.” She closed her eyes again. “And I got to be honest.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, knowing she had baited me and was about to tell me what she really had in mind.

  “You were wrong about one thing.” She pulled my hand to her chest, bringing my face just inches away from hers. “He was in that ditch with us last night. Just like He spent six days tied to a tree with me.” She tilted her head and whispered, “How do you think I made it through?”

  I shrugged.

  “Professor, I’m not that strong.”

  I dropped my head and looked at the white in the palm of her hand. “Maybe.”

  “Professor?”

  I looked up as a tear dropped off my lip and landed on my hand. “Yes, Amanda.”

  “You weren’t alone in that delivery-room puddle of blood. He was there. Covered up with it, just like you. You were never alone.”

  I wrapped my hospital gown tightly around me and shuffled down the hall to the sobbing and grateful hysterics of Pastor and Mrs. Lovett. A nurse informed the ICU waiting room that Amanda Lovett was awake, and it erupted in a chaos of hugging parishioners and friends. Most of my students were there. Marvin and Russell stood next to the waiting room door, drinking Coca-Cola and looking at me. The tape across the insides of their elbows almost made me laugh. The blood of two athletes, flowing through Amanda’s veins, would speed her recovery.

  A hush came over the room as I walked through the sliding doors. Russell stood first. He met me at the door, opened his ar
ms, and bear-hugged me, lifting my feet off the ground. Marvin raised his Coke can, nodded, and said, “Morning, Doc.” His wide grin told me he was having fun.

  When I arrived on Maggie’s floor, my faithful nurse was waiting for me, and the doctor was on the phone. I entered Maggie’s room and found Blue curled up in a ball, sleeping peacefully on his blanket. Beneath the window, Maggie lay angelic and perfectly still. I dropped my blanket and lay down next to her.

  “Sir, you really shouldn’t do that,” the nurse said hastily.

  “Lady,” I said gently, my wife in my arms, “go away.”

  She left, and for the first time in four months and thirteen days, I slid beneath the covers and fell asleep next to my wife. Drifting off, holding back the sleep and fighting the medication, I felt Maggie’s warm breath on my nose.

  A few hours later I woke up to a clear, dark night. No snow falling. I don’t know how long I had been asleep, but they hadn’t moved me. And more importantly, they hadn’t moved Maggie. They had replaced my IV and pumped me with some more fluids.

  I lifted my head and looked at Maggie. I admit it, I expected her to be looking back at me. To be honest, I expected to wake up and see her eyes wide open and as crystal clear as the moment they wheeled her down to delivery.

  They were not. She was sleeping quietly, and beneath her eyelids, her eyes were moving back and forth.

  Maggs was dreaming.

  I’m not quite sure where, but from someplace deep within, where the scabs are hidden, where the doubt can’t go and the scars don’t show, I began to cry. I couldn’t hold it anymore, so I buried my head against Maggie’s chest and cried harder than I have ever cried in my life. My sobbing brought the nurse running. She stood by the bed a few seconds, covered me with a second blanket, and left.

  chapter twenty-seven

  THE NEXT MORNING, MAGGIE AND I WOKE IN EACH other’s arms. Or rather, I woke up holding her in mine. For a while, I just lay there with my arm across her tummy. She had no choice, so I extended the moment as long as possible. I took her socks off and felt her cold feet rest on my legs. It was the first time I had ever willingly let her do that. After a while I sat up, covered her with my blanket, opened the closet, and rummaged through the clothes that I had left over the last four months. Dressing in the early morning light, I noticed that my hands were cut, scabbed, and sore up to my shoulders. I guessed the medication had worn off. I pulled out the IV and walked to the side of the bed.