by Pam Godwin
“Her airway is cleared.” A weighted moment clung to Michio’s words, then…
A high-pitched wail hit my ears. My breath hitched, and my chest swelled. The sound of her beautiful voice filled my entire being, and I heard myself crying, my vision flooding in red.
I blinked, clearing my eyes, as Michio leaned over me and placed her tiny body on my chest. Oh my God, she was real. She was here, breathing, warm, mine. Theirs.
I tried uselessly to raise my arms, desperate to hold her. A second later, my arms lifted, guided by Jesse and Roark, their hands adjusting mine into an embrace around her body. Their arms wrapped around me as I peered down at her for the first time.
Pink skin, eyes closed, a tuft of coppery hair, her little fist nuzzled against her mouth. She took my breath away.
“Perfect,” I choked and smiled at her fathers.
They didn’t return my smile. Michio had already moved back my legs, his face a sheet of white and taut with distress. I couldn’t feel pain or pressure anymore, and it became harder to fill my lungs with air. He knew… My heart shattered into thousands of jagged shards. He knew I was fading. Oh God, I was dying, and I needed more time with him.
“Michio, stop. Come here.”
“No, goddammit!” His shout scraped over my skin, his face sculpted in stone. “I can fix this.”
He bent between my legs, blood up to his elbows, his hand inside me, his other pressed on my belly, compressing my uterus between his palms. Jesse’s hard glare fixed on Michio, his arm wrapped around me and the baby. Roark, a gorgeous mirage with tears dripping off his cheeks like water, stroked a finger across my brow and pulled me closer, as if trying to draw me into his despair.
I didn’t have to see their faces to know what was happening. I smelled the blood, tasted Roark’s tears as they fell upon my lips, and heard Michio’s frantic breaths. My life was seeping from my body in shivering waves, and an approaching hush rang in my ears. Pitch-black smothered me, and my muscles twitched to escape it.
Evie, don’t listen to them. Don’t follow them. A weak plea, calling from a distance. The voice grew louder, more demanding.
“You’re not leaving us, Evie!” Jesse shouted. Hands gripped my face. “Evie! Open your fucking eyes!”
Light bled in and with it came the buzz of wings. Red wings. Black spots. They danced like dust motes in the sparkle of the sun, hovering around Michio’s tear-streaked face, climbing through the blond halo of Roark’s hair, and fluttering past Jesse, following the path of his stricken gaze.
Their flight took them to the far side of the garden, and there, hovering at the edge of my vision, was Annie and Aaron. Preserved forever at the sweet ages of seven and six, they held hands between their transparent forms, watching us.
I whimpered, both longing to hold them and fighting to stay.
“No!” Jesse screamed at them, his arms pulling me against him. “You’re not taking her!”
The swarm of ladybirds circled around them, pulling on my breaths, waiting.
“I can’t get her uterus to tighten.” Michio was sobbing now, his shoulders jerking through each violent shudder. “Her blood’s not clotting.”
“Please, come here.” I wheezed, my skin trembling. So cold. Numb. I couldn’t move. Every breath was a tremendous effort.
He climbed up my body and straddled my hips, bracing over me and the baby. Defeat twisted his face. “The doctors are coming. They’ll be able to help.”
But I knew they couldn’t. Machines and surgeries and blood transfusions wouldn’t stop this. Fate was inevitable, and this baby needed my energy, my power. I wouldn’t take it back.
Jesse and Roark wrapped around my sides, enveloping me in the heat of their bodies, their hands soothing, their breaths fast and wet.
“Evie.” Jesse cupped my face. “Stay with us. Listen to my voice.”
I forced my heavy eyelids open and concentrated, not on the apparitions and ladybirds that beckoned me, but on the familiarity of his timbre, on Michio’s eyes begging me to fight, and on the love radiating from Roark’s soft touches.
A tear skipped down Jesse’s cheek. “We’re going to find a boat. A really big, fancy yacht. Even bigger than the one in Italy. You remember it?”
I nodded weakly, my heart clenching.
“It's where we’re all going to live as soon as you recover. The five of us and Darwin.” His voice broke, his fingers tightening on my face. “It'll be our own private sanctuary in the ocean. When you see it, you won’t ever want to leave. We’ll have the sun on our faces and the water to protect us from aphids.”
“I think I killed all the aphids.”
A sob scratched from his throat, but he cut it off and attempted a smile. “So you did.”
Roark leaned in, one hand on my head, and the other molding over the baby’s back as she slept. “We’ll skinny dip in the water every morning. None of us will wear clothes. Ever.” His brogue rolled thickly, heavy with tears. “Ye won’t be able to keep your eyes off me.”
He successfully molded his lips into a full grin, but it didn’t touch his liquid emerald eyes. He squeezed them shut and pressed his face against the side of mine as he struggled to muffle the keening in his throat.
Michio stared at me with what could only be shock as tears silently rained from his frozen brown eyes. I hoped he was ignoring the wet feel of my blood on his hands and instead was thinking about the yacht and the joy they would find together. As he inched closer, he adjusted the baby to snuggle against my neck, which allowed me to turn my face and kiss her soft, warm cheek.
His face drew nearer to mine, his tone sharp. “Don’t give up, Evie. Don’t you leave us.”
My breaths shallowed, and darkness closed in around me, but I fought it. Fought to keep my eyes open. Fought for another precious moment with my family.
“I’m not afraid,” I whispered, making every breath count. “I’ll always be with you, right here.” I stroked my finger against our daughter’s tiny shoulder. “I’ll always love you.”
We had all lost people we loved. Death had become so ingrained in us it was easy to let it overshadow what was right in front of us. But they held the tiny embodiment of life in their arms. They had never had children so they couldn’t fully understand the magnitude of happiness and love she would bring them. They would discover it soon, and they would wonder how they ever lived without her.
I couldn’t feel her weight on my chest, and my lungs lost their grip on the last of my air. My breath streamed away, acceptance of my fate stealing my fight.
“No.” Jesse said, sternly. “Don’t you dare let go. You’ll fight this. Fucking fight it, Evie!”
The sounds of Roark’s sobbing trembled the air, and Michio’s body rocked against mine, wracked with his misery. With shredded breaths, they demanded I stay awake, pleaded for me to keep my eyes open, their shouts gentling into desperate kisses on my hands and face. When each of their mouths found mine, I tasted the salt of their anguish, and I knew they tasted my good-bye.
I’d given them my mind, my heart, and my body. Staring up at them, with their beautifully strong faces backlit by the rising sun, I sank into darkness.
I was their sunset.
And she was their glorious sunrise.
“Dawn.” I managed one more breath. “Her name is Dawn.”
When Evening fell from the sky,
the ground shook with the sobs of her people.
She left us in darkness.
But from her rivers of blood, rose a great star.
She’d given us the sun.
~ Father Roark Molony
Roark
Evie was gone, and the garden sank into a deep terrible silence, except for the shreds of air ripping from the fissure inside me, the empty hole where her soul used to be. I tried to reach for God, my lips numb and straining to find words of prayer, but the only sounds I could form were those of unbearable anguish.
Jesse jumped to his feet and raced to the far side of the
garden. “Nooooo! No, Evie, please!”
He swung his arms through the swarm of ladybirds, his bloodshot eyes tracing their path as they flew toward the sky. It was as though they were carrying away her spirit. And ours with it.
“No no no no no.” Jesse dropped to his knees, holding his head in his hands, his body shaking with great, hiccupping sobs. “She’s gone, she’s gone. Oh God, she’s fucking gone.”
The torment inside me hardened into a knot of indescribable hell, sinking like a fiery brick. The agonizing sounds of Jesse’s vocal chords shoved it deeper, twisting and burning in my stomach.
With shaking hands, Michio gathered our baby into his arms and pressed her against my chest. The moment I secured the little bundle in my clumsy hands, he grabbed Evie’s body and dragged her into his lap, his head falling back with the sudden force of his roar. Darwin was right there with him, whining and licking Evie’s pale face, as Michio sobbed and screamed her name until his screams became my own.
I ached to comfort him, both him and Jesse, but grief was pouring from my throat, violently, uncontrollably. It made the baby cry, her tiny wails tearing away my breaths, as my body shook against the brutality of inescapable pain.
“Shhh.” I cupped her scrunched up face in my hand, my vision blurring. “Dawn.” So beautiful and precious, just like her mother.
The stomp of feet surrounded us, voices rose, followed by the sudden wrench of Shea’s crying. But nothing was as loud as the agony thundering in my chest. Holding Dawn carefully against me, I crawled through the pool of blood and wrapped an arm around Michio’s rocking body, hoping to console him, needing to lean on him.
He didn’t give me his eyes, but his hand flew up, searching for mine. I caught his fingers, and he squeezed tightly, pulling me closer with Evie’s body cradled between us. Closing my eyes, I dug deep inside me, and after several struggling moments, I found the strength to administer the sacrament of Extreme Unction.
“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.” A torrent of tears and misery fell out with the words, splattering the chest of the woman I loved. Once I was able to fill my lungs again, I whispered the prayer I’d dreaded for eight months. “Let there be extinguished in you all power of the devil by the imposition of our hands, and by the invocation of the glorious and holy Mother of God, the Virgin Mary…”
A pair of familiar hands pulled Evie’s shorts on, dragging them up her bloody legs and working them into place. I looked up and collided with Jesse’s red eyes.
He reached for Dawn. “The doctors need to check her over.” He didn’t sound like himself, his drawling accent scratching hoarsely, torturing every syllable.
I released Michio’s hand and lifted the baby, watching as Jesse walked stiffly toward the waiting doctors, his eyes locked on the child in his arms.
Michio’s sobs had ebbed into wheezing breaths, his face buried against Evie’s neck, and his grip on her body showing no signs of letting her go.
With my arms now free, I pried him away from her and held him against me as I finished the sacrament. “By this holy unction and his own most gracious mercy, may the Lord cherish every perfect action you committed through sight, hearing, smell, taste and speech, touch, ability to walk.” As I said the words, I touched her eyelids, ears, nostrils, lips, hands, and feet.
Michio rubbed his eyes then narrowed them at me. “You changed the verbiage.”
I nodded. “The Lord doesn’t need to pardon her sins.”
“She was perfect.” He caressed her face, staring at her with infinite longing.
I knew what that felt like. I ached to hear her voice, to feel her touch, to see her stunning smile just one more time.
Jesse returned and bent over Evie. He gathered her hands in his, pressed his mouth against her fingers, and leaned down to kiss her lips. “I’ll miss you.” His stomach buckled, as if giving beneath a punch. He breathed through it, eyes closed. Then he opened them and kissed her again. “I love you.”
Squeezing my shoulder as he stood, he strode out of the garden and into the dam’s tunnel system.
I lifted Evie’s hand and traced the bumps of her knuckles. Michio combed his fingers through her hair, staring vacantly at her face, both of us delaying our good-byes. Darwin hadn’t left her side either, his furry body pacing back and forth, panting, and letting out whines of distress.
Shea squatted between us, her dark skin glossy with tears, and gripped our hands. “We’ll clean up the baby and prepare…” She stared at Evie, chin trembling before she hardened her jaw and continued. “She told me what she wanted. We’ll take care of it. Go find your boy.”
As she slipped away, I crawled over Evie’s body and touched our foreheads together. “Thank you for loving me. I promise we won’t be alone. I will always love you and worship you.”
I trailed my nose along hers and kissed her lips for the last time. I let myself cry, let my love wet her beautiful face. Then I pulled myself away and found Michio’s eyes. “I’ll wait for you at the door.”
From the edge of the garden, I watched him hold her, whisper to her, and kiss his good-byes. When he finally wrenched himself away, he tried to pull Darwin with him. Together they fought, dragged their feet, and eventually joined me at the door.
He raised his bloody hands and stared at the medallion he’d removed from her neck. “She said she wanted our daughter to have this.”
“I know.” I closed my fingers over it, wrapping around his, and squeezed.
We walked through the dam to find Jesse. It was easy enough, since we could sense one another the way we’d only recently been able to sense Evie. The absence of the bright hum of her aura was yet another emptiness to pile on top of the emptiness.
We found Jesse in one of the passageways, crouched against the wall, head in his hands. He stood when we approached. We didn’t speak, didn’t have to. Together we ran the tunnels. We didn’t sprint at the superhuman speed our bodies were now built for. We jogged at Evie’s pace, with Darwin at our heels. We jogged every mile within the dam. Then we did again and again. Our muscles flexed, our legs moved in sync, and I imagined Evie running alongside us, watching us, her huge golden eyes heating with love and desire. I kept an eye on Jesse and Michio beside me, their expressions etched with shock and sadness, and their gazes lost in thought. Lost with Evie.
That night, we stood along the railing on the surface of the dam, facing the Colorado River and the pyre that floated between the shores. Moonlight illuminated the wood planks and the lifeless body of my soul lying atop it.
The hushed din of the surrounding crowds echoed between the canyon walls. Everyone was here. Shea and her baby, her sobbing frame supported by Paul and Eddie. Link, Hunter, Ronnie, the soldiers, the physicians, all were accounted for, united in their grief.
Darwin paced the length of the half-wall, restless and searching. He broke my heart.
I patted my hip. “Darwin, hier.”
He came, leaning against my leg as I scratched his head.
Beside me, Michio snuggled Dawn to his chest, holding her as tightly as he’d held Evie only hours earlier.
Jesse leaned around Michio, a flaming arrow anchored in his bow, and met my eyes. When I gave him a nod, he turned back toward the river, aimed, and released. The ball of fire arced through the black sky, and the pyre roared into flames.
I smelled the smoke, tasted her death, and felt the inferno of reality. It left me cold.
Evie had made a lot of preparations before she died, but with regard to her funeral, her instructions to Shea had been simple. Do whatever would give the people hope.
When the intake towers pumped the river water, along with her ashes, and carried it to the other side, they believed the turbines would pull her essence from the water and generate enough energy to resurrect her. That was their hope.
It was a fool’s dream, but I’d learned that with Evie anything was possible.
Jesse and Michio watched the blaze climb toward the sky. Dawn sucked o
n her finger, asleep against Michio’s chest.
I closed my eyes and prayed, but in my most harrowing moment, the prayers offered no comfort.
As the fire died down and the pyre sank into the river, Michio spoke into the night sky. “You told us she was the cure for the deepest pain.” His voice strained. “We lost our cure.”
I touched the sleeping baby in his arms. “Now we have her.”
Jesse stared at the river. “When Evie’s husband died, she did this alone.”
We weren’t alone.
Side-by-side, we braced for the eternal hour of darkness ahead.
But she’d left us with a bright light to help us find our way out.
She’d given us Dawn.
The distance between hypothesis and conclusion is measured in scientific steps.
But how do you measure love?
The steps begin with a leap of faith.
And end with a very hard fall.
~ Dr. Michio Nealy
Michio
Six Years Later…
Before Evie, I’d arranged my life around my pursuit of scientific knowledge, a disciple dedicated to raising questions and chasing possibilities. When the plague wiped out ninety percent of the human race, my focus narrowed and clung to one significant answer. The only possibility. The sole surviving woman.
She wasn’t just the answer to our extinction. She was my answer. To everything.
I gave her my heart, freely, and she wrapped hers around it, making it bigger, stronger, and mighty enough to share with her Lakota, her priest, and her daughter. Three people, who loved me as much as Evie had.
Most of the time.
Right now, they were staring at me like I didn’t have a heart at all.
“Daddy, be nice.” Dawn wrapped her arms around Darwin’s graying neck and gave me a pouty look, one that reminded me when I was being a cold-hearted dick.
Jesse lay on the blood-soaked tiles in the living room of our houseboat, bowing his back in agony and seething through his fangs. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
