The Queen pbf-5

by Steven James

  Then they were both on him, pinning him down.

  Riley, who was pale and breathless on the floor nearby, gasped that he needed help. “In a minute, buddy,” one of the agents said. Then he leaned close to Terry, his breath stale and sausagey, his tone smug. “Your two buddies blew ’emselves into paradise right outside the door.” He pressed his knee against the GSW tunneling through Terry’s hand. White light blistered apart inside his head and he clenched his teeth, but he couldn’t keep from crying out in pain. “Didn’t account for American engineering, though. This place is built to withstand a lot more ’an that.”

  Trying to fight off the pain, Terry rolled his head to the side and saw a woman whom he didn’t recognize enter the room. She wore a white coat and carried a medical kit and a large syringe.

  Terry tried to wrestle free, but his legs were useless and he could barely move his arms or torso beneath the merciless grip of the two agents holding him down.

  The woman knelt beside him. “Looks like you’ve been given a transfer order, Mr. Manoji.”

  Then, the man who’d ground his knee against Terry’s wounded hand grabbed his head and forced the left side of Terry’s face to the floor. Out of the corner of his eye Terry could see the woman positioning the needle against his neck.

  “This comes to you compliments of FBI Director Wellington and CIA Director O’Dell,” she said. “Don’t worry. It’s a transfer to a much better place.”

  And as Terry Manoji screamed, the woman in the white coat depressed the plunger of the syringe.

  98

  Tessa sat beside Amber’s bed.

  Her stepaunt was unconscious, on oxygen, a nasogastric tube inserted through her nose. The doctors had worked hard at emptying the drugs from her system, but she hadn’t responded well.

  Sean pulled the other chair to the bedside, took Amber’s hand in one of his and with the other brushed a strand of hair from her eyes.

  For the moment it was just the three of them in the room.

  Tessa put out of her mind the unthinkable possibility that Amber wasn’t going to make it. Her stepaunt was going to be okay. She was definitely going to be okay.

  Yes, yes she was.

  Having forgotten her phone at Amber’s house, Tessa tried calling Patrick from the room phone, but he didn’t answer. Neither did Lien-hua.

  Scrolling through her mental database of names, of numbers, she tried Agent Jake Vanderveld’s cell number and managed to reach him at the Schoenberg Inn, where he was searching for a snowmobile to get to someplace in the national forest. Tessa tried to tell him about Amber, but he cut her off and proudly announced that Patrick had just helped save the lives of a million people.

  What is he talking about? Is he even being serious?

  “Um…” What do you say to that? “Awesome.” Yes, she was curious about what he’d said, but for the moment she stuck with the news of Amber’s overdose, got through the summary.

  “If Pat’s in the base,” Agent Vanderveld said, “he’s out of cell contact. I’m not sure I can get him the message until I get there. Do you need me to come to the hospital?”

  “I’m sure he’ll fill you in later. Just, when you find him, tell him to get here as soon as he can, okay? How did he save a million people?”

  “We’ll explain it all later. I’ll get him the message. I hope Amber is going to be all right.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  Don’t worry, she will.

  As Tessa was hanging up, a nurse soundlessly came into the room to check on Amber, but evidently there’d been no change. A few moments later, she left after encouraging Sean and Tessa to hang in there: “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine.” But she didn’t make eye contact with either of them, and the half smile she offered wasn’t very convincing.

  After they were alone with Amber again, Tessa and Sean sat quietly in the throbbing, ticking silence of the room. Between them, Amber breathed in the machine-fed oxygen.

  And did not wake up.

  She’ll be okay, Tessa told herself. She really will.

  Tessa hadn’t been paying much attention to Sean, but now realized his eyes were moist. She figured that if there were times when it was okay for a grown man to cry, this was one of them. But he probably doesn’t want a teenage girl watching him “I’m so sorry,” he whispered to Amber. “I let you down.”

  After a short silence, Tessa said, “She loves you. She does. She felt really bad about everything.”

  He lowered his head into his hands, and ever so slightly his broad shoulders began to shake.

  Leave him with her. He needs to be alone.

  “Um, I’m gonna go grab us some Cokes.” It was pathetic, but it was all she could think of to say. “Or something. I’ll be back in a bit.”

  He nodded a quiet reply, and she eased out of the room.

  When they’d entered the hospital, Tessa had noticed some vending machines in the lobby. So now, she took the elevator down one level to the ground floor.

  It struck her that even though she’d helped Amber tonight, tried to do all she could, Amber still might not make it.

  A good deed doesn’t balance out a bad one. A kind act doesn’t make scars disappear. Everyone dies eventually. You can’t stop it, just forestall it.

  Not the right thoughts to be having.

  She left the elevator and was halfway to the lobby when she saw a sign to the hospital’s chapel. A narrow window on the door revealed that the chapel was really just a sliver of a room with subdued lighting, six folding chairs, some kneeling cushions, and a small, unvarnished wooden cross hanging up front.

  After a moment’s deliberation, Tessa slipped inside and, figuring it would be a little too weird kneeling on a cushion, took a seat on the closest chair.

  No one else was there, and the air was filled with a sterile hospitally smell but also something else, something fainter, some kind of gentle perfume, soft and floral and lingering from someone who must’ve only recently left the room.

  Words from Tessa’s mother came to her: “You need to learn to believe in grace as much as you do in pain, in forgiveness as much as you do in shame.”

  In other words, find a place where hope is real again!

  Hope. Real hope.

  “Please let Amber live.” Tessa said the words audibly to give them more weight, to help convince herself that they were going to come true. “Give her another chance.”

  The cross at the front of the room was simple, wooden, and rough, and it made her think of the story she’d read, about the woman weeping at Jesus’s feet, the woman who knew she was a great sinner, who knew she had a ton of stuff she needed to be forgiven for.

  I want to believe, I do. Like that woman.

  Like Amber.

  Like Mom.

  Tessa’s conversations with her psychiatrist, with Patrick, with her stepaunt, about God and love and forgiveness all seemed to whirl around her: “I’m sinking into a place I can’t climb out of on my own,” she’d told her shrink… “When you ask someone to forgive you, you’re really asking the other person to sacrifice for the benefit of the relationship,” Amber had explained… “Denial isn’t the answer. Somehow forgiveness, or making amends, or some sort of penance, has to be,” Patrick had said.

  And Jesus had reassured that weeping, broken woman, “Your faith has saved you, go in peace.”

  Someone needs to sacrifice for someone else to be forgiven.

  At the house, Tessa had asked Amber which came first, love or forgiveness, but now it struck her that neither one does, that both love and forgiveness follow something else “Your faith has saved you, go in peace.”

  Tessa felt a tear easing down her cheek.

  Denial is too cheap a cure.

  And so, she did not deny it. She did not deny anything. I’m sorry for the kind of person I can be, for the evil I’m capable of.

  And in the soft silence of the chapel, she heard a soul-whispered voice that seemed to somehow come from both in
side her heart and also from someplace far beyond herself: “I know.”

  Will you forgive me? Please, I “I already have.”

  The sailboat painting came to mind, the one that’d seemed so real to her, that had invited her to step from one eternity to another, to arrive at the other side of the canvas.

  And in that moment Tessa felt something pure wash over the part of her soul that had been dark and ruined for so long. Words came to her, just like they might’ve if she had her notebook in front of her, and the words were both a confession of her sins and an acceptance of blood-bought grace. Four simple lines: i am the clever architect of oblivion; you are the wondrous carpenter of hearts.

  She waited for more poetry, more reassurance, but no more words came. The poem was over.

  And please save Amber.

  But the voice did not speak to her again.

  She wiped away the tear that had escaped her eye.

  “Please.”

  The perfume in the air dissipated, and only the pale sanitized smell of the hospital remained.

  Tessa repeated her prayer for Amber, but no matter how earnestly she pleaded out this intercession for her stepaunt, she heard nothing but silence.

  Unsettled by the sudden whiplash of emotions-from the bright glimmer of peace to a tightening knot of fear, Tessa stood and backed out of the room.

  Maybe you were just imagining things. Wishful thinking, making up a divine response in order to cover your shame. To find a way to deal with your past.

  Disheartened, confused, she reached the vending machines. And then, not far from her, on the other side of the lobby, the front doors of the hospital whisked open, and she saw Patrick, her father, emerge from the storm.

  99

  I heard Tessa call my name, and it took only a moment to find her near the soda machines. “Hey”-I hurried toward her-“how’s Amber?”

  “I don’t think she’s doing so well.”

  I felt my heart squirm. “Which room?”

  “220. It seemed like Sean needed a little time alone with her. I came out here.” She paused. “To get some Cokes.”

  Though anxious to get to the room, if Sean needed to be alone with Amber right now, it gave me a chance to catch up with Tessa on what’d happened. “Tessa, tell me what-”

  “The kidnapped lady, did you find her?”

  “Yes. She’s fine. Listen-”

  “How did you save a million people tonight?”

  “No. I didn’t. Iran did.”

  She looked at me questioningly. “A million people?”

  “It’s a long story. I’ll explain later. Tell me what happened with Amber.”

  Finally, Tessa switched gears and, while I hurriedly purchased the cans of soda, she filled me in about the power outage, the overdose, her efforts to awaken Amber, Sean’s arrival, their harried flight to the hospital.

  The final Coke tumbled through the machine, I retrieved it, and we walked to the elevator.

  I was struck by how, at every step of the way-from picking the lock, to waking Amber in the shower, to thinking of the dish soap and remembering to bring the pill bottles to the hospital, Tessa had exhibited clear, quick thinking under incredible pressure.

  Then the elevator doors closed and we were on our way to the second floor. “So how are you doing through all this?” I asked.

  She was slow in responding. “I went to the chapel. Something happened.” She hesitated. “Earlier tonight you told me that somehow forgiveness, or making amends, or some sort of penance, has to be the answer.”

  “Yes.”

  “But if you have to do penance or make amends, then it means the forgiveness wasn’t complete, right? I mean, if it was, there’d be no need for them. If you can make up for the past, why would you need to be forgiven for it?”

  “I’m not sure I know what you’re saying here.”

  She looked heavyhearted, distressed. “Apart from forgiveness, can you think of any way of dealing with your past that doesn’t involve some form of denial or negotiation?”

  I didn’t know how to respond.

  Mental compartmentalization, rationalization, justification, repression… all forms of denial or just different genres of excuses.

  “No,” I said frankly, “I can’t.”

  The doors dinged open.

  She took a heavy breath. “Anyway, the nurse keeps telling us Amber’s going to be okay. So that’s good.”

  “Yes.” And, as abruptly as it had begun, our forgiveness conversation was over.

  We exited the elevator. Passed room 210… 212…

  Despite myself, I thought of the conversation I’d had with Lien-hua about twists at the end of stories, how the people who deserve to live don’t always make it. I refused to let myself consider such things.

  216…218…

  We arrived at the room and I knocked softly. Sean called for us to come in, and when we entered, to my great relief, I saw that Amber was sitting up in bed. Conscious. A nurse was removing her NG tube.

  “Amber?” Tessa stared at her dumbfounded. “How are… how do you feel?”

  If Tessa had been right that Amber was unconscious just minutes ago, the turnaround was nothing short of extraordinary.

  “I’m okay.” Amber’s voice was faint and scratchy. The nurse stepped aside. “Thanks to you and Sean.”

  As we gathered at her bedside, Amber tried to apologize for all the trouble she’d caused, for “how stupid she’d been,” for making everyone so upset and scared, but none of us were accusing her of anything, no one was angry, we were just thankful she was still here with us. She shared her tearful, profound gratitude to Tessa and Sean for helping her, but they downplayed their role as “what anyone would’ve done.”

  Then, for what seemed like a long time but might’ve only been a minute or two, no one said anything. Finally, Sean was the one to break the silence, telling Amber plainly that he would change: that he’d give up drinking once and for all, if that’s what she wanted, if that’s what it took-anything-if she’d just give him, give their marriage, one more shot.

  Amber looked past him toward the window, and when she didn’t reply, I was afraid it might be too late for them, that whatever they’d had was over, but then she rested her hand gently on his arm, and the small gesture said as much, if not more, than any words would have.

  “We can do this,” he vowed.

  “Yes,” she replied softly. “Okay.”

  The moment was heartfelt and moving but short-lived because then Sean looked my way. “How’s your jaw?”

  “It’ll be fine. But you throw one mean punch.”

  “You deserved that, you know.”

  “Yeah.” I searched clumsily for the right thing to say. “I’m glad everything’s out in the open.”

  Sean took Amber’s hand in his own. “The past is past, all right?”

  “I hope things can be-”

  “We move on, okay?”

  I gladly accepted the offer. “Yes. Thank you. We move on.”

  Amber nodded as well, then asked if she could have a few minutes alone with Sean, so Tessa and I slipped into the hallway, and, almost immediately when we were alone, Tessa said, “I need to tell you something, but I don’t want you to make fun of me or anything.”

  “Of course not.”

  “You know how Mom used to say that I needed to learn to believe in grace, in forgiveness, stuff like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think maybe I’m starting to.”

  “Tessa, that’s fantastic. Why would you think I’d make fun of you for that?”

  She was quiet. Then, rather than answer my question, she said, “You remember how you told me I was good at beating myself up?”

  “I was only trying to-”

  “No. It’s okay.” A nurse passed us, carrying a food tray toward a room farther down the hall. “But here’s the thing: I’m not the only one. You’re a world-class self-beater-upper. You never slept with Amber, right? And Sean’s n
ot gonna hold your little emotional fling against you, so you need to accept that. Like he said, move on.”

  I was quiet.

  “All right?” she pressed.

  “Okay.”

  “And this whole deal with believing or not believing him about the accident. Under the bridge.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “There’s a chapel down on the first floor if you need to use it. Take care of business.”

  “Um. Thanks.” I wasn’t sure if she was being serious or not.

  She looked as if she were going to respond, but held back. “You told me Iran saved a million people.”

  “They shot down a ballistic missile that was heading for Jerusalem.”

  “But Jake told me you saved them?”

  “He was exaggerating. I just shared some thoughts on why it would be a good idea for them to stop the missile.”

  She looked at me dubiously. “What are you talking about? Iran hates Israel.”

  “Well, think about it like this: if you were Israel’s president and a nuclear missile was coming at you from the general vicinity of Iran-”

  “You’d assume they fired it.”

  “Sure, and you’d respond immediately, send missiles, bombers, whatever you had, against the country whose president had, for years, threatened you with annihilation.”

  “So you told Iran-”

  “Well, the Secretary of State did, actually, it might’ve even been the president. I don’t know who exactly-”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Whatever, you know what I mean-told them that the only way to save themselves-”

  “Was to save their worst enemy.”

  She let that sink in, then shook her head. “No. That doesn’t seem like enough.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “I wasn’t sure it would be either, so I sent word for the Secretary of State to contact the Supreme Leader of Iran.”

  “The religious leader.”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact, in many ways, he has more influence than the president.”

  “I know that,” she said impatiently. “I’m not completely in the dark about the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East.”