Say That Again

by Sasson, Gemini

  The third time he came up, he was cradling a small, limp form in his arms.

  It was Hannah — her skin as blue as glacial ice.

  chapter 7: Hunter

  By the time the whirr of helicopter blades broke overhead, they had been trying to resuscitate her for six minutes. Hunter meant to stop checking his watch. It was better not to know. But what else was there to do when all you could do was stand by helplessly as your child’s life hung by a fraying thread?

  “Still no pulse,” Hunter heard one of the rescue workers say.

  “Keep working,” the other replied. “The water was ice cold. There’s always a chance.”

  The chopper landed on a grassy patch about a hundred yards from where they’d found Hannah. The three rescue workers, who’d been alternating CPR the whole time, paused just long enough to hoist her lifeless body onto a stretcher and rush her to the helicopter. Before she was even secure, they resumed chest compressions. One of the chopper medics relayed information to the on-ground first responders, then the door slammed shut and up Hannah went, an angel ascending.

  “They’re taking her to Somerset Community Hospital,” the female rescue worker said as the helicopter grew smaller and smaller against a grim and wintry sky. “You can follow us there.”

  “How far is it?” Jenn’s hand drifted to Hunter’s. She laced her fingers through his.

  “By car? Thirty-five minutes normally, but if we turn on the sirens, we can probably cut close to ten minutes off. It’s mostly highway.”

  Twenty-five minutes before they’d know Hannah’s fate. Twenty-five minutes before they could see or hold her again. So short a time in the overall scheme of things. And yet so long.

  Minutes later, all three were in the truck, Maura gripping the sides of her mother’s seat from the back of the crew cab. They left all their belongings behind. Hunter wasn’t even sure he’d locked the front door of the cabin or closed it all the way. If the bears wanted to raid their food stores, it was an insignificant sacrifice. Thieves could even take all their stuff. It didn’t matter. They had to get to Hannah’s side. She would sense that they were there. She would fight. Surely.

  Hunter’s knuckles whitened as he gripped the steering wheel, trying to keep up with the ambulance as it tore over the dirt road and out onto the two-lane state highway. The journey at first was slow as they navigated the winding road. The shoulder was narrow, dropping off on either side to sheer-sided cliffs or abutting tree-choked hills. One misjudgment and they could plow into a tree trunk or plunge down a ravine.

  Soon, they turned onto a divided highway, straight and gently rolling. Cars veered to the shoulder, yielding, as the siren blared. Throughout the trip, none of them spoke. What could they say? That they hoped Hannah would be revived? That they feared she might not? That they were praying for a miracle?

  Hunter refused to submit to his worst fears. He, of all people, knew that death was never a given, no matter how bleak the situation.

  And bleak it was when they arrived at the hospital. They were herded into a dimly lit, empty doctor’s office, their initial inquiries as to Hannah’s condition met only with promises that someone would be with them shortly.

  Sitting next to each other on the couch, Maura leaned against her mother’s arm as Jenn stroked her knee. Hunter sat in a leather armchair next to them, his elbows digging into his thighs, his hands clenched together in a knot.

  Every now and then, someone passed by the glass wall separating the office from the corridor and Hunter would launch from the chair, go to the glass, then pace a few lengths of the room before sitting back down. Finally, the door clicked open.

  “How is she? Can we see her?” Jenn begged of the nurse who came into the office.

  The nurse, who looked almost too young to have even graduated from nursing school, glanced in the hallway behind her. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. Really.” Frowning, she tilted her head in sympathy, then looked toward the certificates lining the wall in the office. “But she’s in the best hands possible. If you need anything, I’m just down the hall at the station.”

  Then she went, leaving the three of them in profound silence.

  The leather of Hunter’s chair squeaked as he twisted around to view the framed certificates. They were advanced degrees for a Dr. Danielle Townsley from Cornell and Johns Hopkins, as well as more specific ones indicating specialized training in pediatric surgery and emergency medicine. Credentials enough to merit her being in some bigger hub than Somerset Community Hospital. It made him wonder why she would have chosen to be employed here in small town Kentucky. The pay couldn’t be the reason. Maybe she had family around here?

  He went to the desk and turned a photo around. It was of a woman with light blond hair, perhaps in her early thirties, with sharp cheekbones and model good looks that hinted at a Scandinavian heritage, her face clean of makeup and her hair pulled back into a loose bun. On one hip, she held a dark-skinned baby with large doe-like eyes. Clustered around her were several more African children, their feet dusty and their smiles big. They stood before a round hut with low walls, its pointed roof fashioned from some kind of reed or grass. They looked happy. She looked happy.

  Beside it was a smaller photo of her in a wedding dress, somewhat younger, and her equally attractive groom standing behind her with his arms around her waist, as he planted a kiss in the crook of her neck. Hunter picked it up, studying it, wanting to believe that this was a woman not only of great compassion, but capable of performing miracles.

  Footsteps sounded just outside the door. Hunter was still holding the wedding photo when Dr. Townsley walked in wearing scrubs. She paused for a moment, staring at the picture in his hands, her weary face hardening.

  Without introduction, she marched past him, pulled out the chair behind her desk, and sat. She folded her hands together on the desktop and gazed at each of them in turn.

  Hunter planted his knuckles on the desk and leaned toward her. “Please, don’t keep us in the dark any longer. We need to know.”

  “If she’s going to live, you mean?” she said point blank.

  Jenn inhaled sharply and pressed herself against the back of the couch.

  “Yes,” Hunter said. “Were they able to revive her?”

  “No.” The word fell like a nuclear bomb in the small confines of her office. But upon seeing Jenn start to weep mournfully, Dr. Townsley plucked a tissue from the box on her desk and handed it to her, then returned to her seat. “They weren’t able to get her heart beating by the time she arrived here. However ... she was submerged in icy water for well over half an hour. That may just have saved her life.”

  Hunter glanced at Jenn, but her eyes were scrunched closed, the unused tissue wadded in her fist. He turned back to the doctor. “We don’t understand.”

  “Of course not,” she said almost smugly, sighing as if it were too much of a chore to bother explaining. She rocked back in her chair, two fingers pressed to her temple. “By the time your daughter Hannah came to Emergency, she wasn’t breathing and she’d been without a pulse for nearly an hour. Our monitors detected no cardiac activity, either. Her pupils were dilated, a possible indication of brain damage, but certainly not definitive.”

  Inside, Hunter cringed at the news. None of it was good. Why didn’t she just get to the point? Tact was one thing; evasiveness was another.

  Dr. Townsley reached inside a small fridge next to her chair and pulled out an energy drink, the kind with dangerous amounts of caffeine. Her lips tilted in a smirk. “Allow me this one vice, will you? Bringing patients back from the verge of certain death is very draining.”

  Hunter wasn’t sure if she meant Hannah or someone else — there’d been a young family involved in an auto accident already being treated before they got there with Hannah — so he sat down next to Jenn, prepared for the blow he hoped wasn’t coming.

  She popped the tab open with long fuchsia fingernails and chugged a few swallows before continuing. “Fortunately for Hann
ah, her first responders are a stubborn crew. They tend to work harder on children because their bodies are so resilient. Or maybe because they have kids of their own, I don’t know. Anyway, they kept forcing air into her lungs and doing chest compressions, effectively massaging her heart and forcing blood to move through her veins.

  “We were notified of her impending arrival. Luckily, I happened to be on duty. Had I not been ... Well, we won’t go there. Let’s just say that not all doctors are equal. We hooked her up to a bypass machine, gradually introducing warmed fluids into her veins and warm air into her lungs.”

  Alert now, Jenn inched forward on her seat. “So her heart’s beating now? She’s going to be okay?”

  “Oh ... no. Not yet. We’re still working on her in ICU. I just wanted to keep you apprised of her treatment.”

  Jenn gripped her knees murderously. Hunter clamped a hand on her thigh to keep her from leaping forward and throttling the doctor. But it didn’t stop her from speaking her mind.

  “You’re telling us that after an hour she’s still not breathing and her heart hasn’t beat on its own, yet you’ve got this all under control? How is that?”

  “I urge you to remain calm, Mrs. McHugh. We’re using the most advanced science to —”

  “I’ll calm down” — Jenn shot up from her seat, hands clenched like hammers at her sides — “when you let me see my daughter and tell me what’s going on with her!”

  Unruffled, Dr. Townsley slowly stood. She tugged her surgical cap farther down onto her forehead and collected her energy drink. “I’ll tell you when I know something for sure. Our team is rewarming her gradually from the inside out. It takes time to do it right. And we won’t know the full extent of her condition until later. Much later.”

  She started toward the door, then turned around, her voice sincere and confident. “Anyone else would have given up on her by now. Lucky for you, I’m not anyone else.”

  chapter 8: Echo

  My luck was not going well lately. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this sure wasn’t it.

  The old woman who captured me took me to a building on the edge of town. On the outside it was plain, made of cement block. Not a home, or a barn, but some other place with a distinct and perhaps sinister purpose. I sensed it far down in my gut, like a little worm there nibbling at my insides.

  She hauled me from the cage and tucked me against her gaunt ribs. The moment she shoved the rear door of the van shut, they started — a chorus of dogs barking with a mixture of fear and excitement. I quivered in response, imagining that inside was a pack of them, ready to devour me whole. I squirmed in her grasp, but she clutched me tighter, her hold surprisingly strong, and shuffled toward the front door.

  As soon as she opened it, the stinging odor of urine hit me full force. And not just that of dogs, but cats, too, which repulsed me even more. I had always handled my business neatly, eliminating in the farthest corner of our pen and making certain not to tread in it later. Apparently, the animals in this place had no such manners. They were savages. Wild things. And I did not relish being among them.

  Inside, the sounds were even louder and more of them. Barking, nails scrabbling on concrete, the rattling of metal. Behind the counter that the old woman went to, another woman sat. She was broad-framed and wore a sour look as she scratched at a piece of paper with a pen. A phone was pressed to her ear. For several minutes, she ignored the old woman, speaking back into the phone, then writing more, and sometimes stopping to tap at a keyboard.

  The old woman cleared her throat as she shifted me to her other hip. I kicked as hard as I could, trying to free myself, but she grabbed the hair at the back of my neck and held on. If I tried to jump, she’d dangle me by my fur.

  “Can I —?” the other woman began. Her face relaxed. “Oh, Delores. Not a cat this time, huh?”

  “Nope. Think I already got ‘em all. This little varmint here was in my chicken coop.” She thrust me onto the slick counter. My legs splayed out from beneath me until I was plastered flat on it. “Cute, in an awkward kind of way, don’t you think, Evelyn?”

  “Did it kill any birds? Because you know what we do with dogs that kill livestock.”

  I peered over the edge of the counter, judging the drop to the floor and distance to the door.

  Delores drew me back to her chest. “Aw, hell no. Pretty harmless little thing. Kind of shy, actually. Rooster Cogburn was beating the holy heck out o’ him.”

  “You don’t say? Hang on a minute, will you?” She resumed talking on the phone.

  A minute turned into two, which turned into ten. My left leg was going numb where Delores’s elbow was pressing into it. Two other people passed through an adjoining hallway, toting bottles of pungent liquid, an armload of towels, and empty buckets. Shortly after that, a mother and her small child were escorted out into the reception area. The little boy clutched a small kitten, which looked absolutely terrified. It hung, mewing and wailing, from his sweater by its nails.

  The little boy dragged a sleeve across his runny nose. “I wuv my key cat, Mawmy.”

  “What are you going to name him?” the mother asked.

  He squeezed the kitten so hard its eyes bulged. “I gonna call him Bwocko.”

  I shuddered in sympathy, wishing I could free the poor kitten from its suffering. Even though I detested cats.

  “Brocko?”

  “Aft da pres’dent — Bwocko Bama.”

  She blinked several times. “Ohhh, okay.”

  Evelyn slammed the phone down in its cradle. Digging her hands through her short, flame red hair, she rolled her eyes. “Some people! You just want to ... Never mind.” She shook her head, forced a smile. “Anyway ... Let me take care of these other folks, Delores, then I’ll take this pup off your hands, all right?”

  “All right,” Delores said, although she didn’t look too happy about having to wait even longer.

  Delores claimed one of two plastic chairs in the tiny reception area, placing me on her lap. Right next to the door. Which unfortunately opened on the other side. Still, if I timed it just right, there was a chance when the boy and his mother went out that I could make a break for it.

  So I sat there calmly, furtively glancing at the door from time to time, calculating my trajectory and speed, and speculating what I would do once I bolted to freedom. First, I had to get as far from this place as possible. Second, I would avoid chickens at all costs. No matter how hungry I was. They could be dead, plucked, and served on a platter. I wasn’t ever going to go near them again. Lesson learned.

  The mother filled out a lengthy form as Evelyn explained it to her. Beside her, the boy fidgeted. He stroked his kitten as he eyed me with mounting curiosity. I lowered my head and shifted away from him. He was very impolite. His stare made me uncomfortable.

  Soon, Delores was leaning against the wall, her eyelids growing heavy. She propped her ruddy cheek against a gnarled fist and closed her eyes. The lightest of snores tickled her lips. Her arm twitched and her hold on me loosened.

  Then, opportunity opened wide before me. The mother had grabbed the doorknob and pulled, tugging the boy behind her. A slice of daylight fell across the linoleum floor.

  I jumped — and hit the floor sliding. My front legs flew out before me, while my back legs spun sideways. I fell with a thunk on my side, the wind expelling from my lungs.

  Momentarily dazed, I struggled upright. A cool breeze from outdoors blew in my face. I sniffed freedom. In this case, it smelled like leaked engine oil and asphalt. Nails curled, I tried to dig into the floor to vault forward, but it was even slicker than the countertop. I couldn’t make my legs do what I wanted.

  Whether she was unaware of me or ignoring me, I don’t know, but the mother continued on out the door, yanking the little boy behind her as he watched me. The door began to drift shut.

  Defeated, I relaxed, letting the pads of my paws come in contact with the floor. As they did, I sensed better traction. I staggered forward a step, then
two. Delores was still asleep. The door was still open a crack. I scurried forth, sticking my nose out to wedge the door farther open.

  Wham!

  Evelyn palmed the door shut. Just as I looked up at her, she looped a leash around my neck, winking. “Almost lost you, little guy. Great big world out there. You don’t want to be all on your own, do you?”

  I strained toward the door to let her know that was precisely what I wanted.

  “Awww, are you scared?” Her voice was gravelly and deep for a woman’s. She reeled me in. “Poor wittle fing.”

  I took offense to her condescending tone. Was I supposed to like this place? Why would I want to stay somewhere that smelled this bad? And who was she that I should trust her? For all I knew she had a forked tail hidden under that tent-like sweatshirt and a pair of horns concealed beneath that forest of spiky hair.

  “Hey, Delores, wake up.” Evelyn nudged the old woman.

  A snort ripped from Delores’s throat. Startled, she sat up and wiped a string of drool from her chin. It took a few moments for her to come to her senses.

  “I’m going to take him in back now, all right, Delores?”

  Delores flapped a hand at Evelyn, stood slowly, and shuffled to the door, stumbling slightly on the welcome mat. She went outside without one look back.

  Suddenly, I felt the loop around my neck tighten and my whole body sliding across the floor.

  “Come on now, little guy. I’ve got just the place for you.”

  After I hit the small rug in the hallway and it bunched up under me, she scooped me up, squishing me to her ample chest. It was softer than Delores’s chest, at least. But her shirt reeked of cigarettes.

  She walked past a metal door. From the crack beneath it, barks and yips rang out. Then we went past a room filled with stacks of metal cages. I caught a glimpse of a cat staring out through the wire grid of one of the cage doors, disdain plain on her patched orange and black face. She yawned, as if bored, then stretched, turning her head as she watched us go by.