My Soul to Keep

by Melanie Wells

  I finally collected myself and pulled back, blowing my nose for the hundredth time that night.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said.

  “Of course.”

  “I almost didn’t call.”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  “Me too.”

  “What happened?”

  I told him the story, watching his face fall as he listened.

  “Is she okay?”

  “Christine? I think so.”

  “What caused it?”

  “They’re saying maybe asthma.”

  “Can I see her?”

  I almost said yes, but then I noticed his smell.

  “When did you start smoking?”

  “Um, never?”

  “You smell like smoke.”

  “I have not been smoking.”

  “I don’t think you should go in there. The smoke might trigger another attack.” I squinted at him. “What, did some dead emphysema victim roll into the shop tonight?”

  “I’ve been at Poor David’s …”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “… listening to a band.”

  “By yourself?”

  I shouldn’t have said it. I knew as soon as it was out of the gate that I should have held it back. But it just charged out like a stallion at the bell.

  My impulses never listen to me. Another of my Top Ten Terrible Traits.

  I felt my chin quiver as I waited for an answer.

  “Dylan, I’m not going to tell you who I was with tonight.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s none of your business.”

  “Make it my business.”

  He shook his head. “You’re really a piece of work—you know that?”

  I sniffed and squared my shoulders. “I saw you make a phone call before you left my house.”

  He rolled his eyes and groaned.

  “You seemed really happy. Did you have a date tonight?”

  David pursed his lips and dropped his eyes, staring at his folded hands for a moment. Then he kissed me on the cheek, stood up, and looked at me with genuine sadness in his face. “Tell Christine I came to see her,” he said softly.

  I watched dumbly as he turned and walked away. He pushed the button for the elevator, his feet shifting uncomfortably as he waited, head down, shoulders tense. When the elevator came, he stepped inside and found a spot in the small crowd of hospital staff.

  His back was still turned toward me as the stainless-steel doors closed behind him.

  8

  I COULD FEEL THE sun coming through the slats in the blinds. My hair was tickling my face, fanned forward by the blizzard of air conditioning blasting out of the vent behind me. My bones ached. I winced and rotated my shoulders to unstick them. The light shone in stripes on the smudged wallpaper—up and down, like the bars of a jail cell.

  I looked around, remembered where I was, and grimaced as I tried to move, stretching my legs out in front of my chair. I’d dreamed I was sleeping on a bus. And not a nice Greyhound, either. One of those creaky yellow school buses with the stiff vinyl seats. With no heat. In winter.

  But it was just a horrible, not-quite-reclining hospital chair—the kind that smells of old clothes and old germs and Lysol. I longed for some Clorox disinfecting wipes and a hot shower with antibacterial soap.

  Liz was gone. Christine was curled up in her hospital bed, sleeping soundly, her thumb in her mouth and her feet tangled up in her blankets. I glanced at the clock. Six thirty.

  I stood and slipped my feet into my flip-flops. The icebox chill in the room had purpled my toes. I wondered idly where I could score a pair of tube socks. I straightened Christine’s covers, tucking her feet under her blanket and making a mental note to myself to bring her a quilt from home if she had to stay another night.

  I checked my phone for messages. Normally I approach phone messages with a dread more appropriate for, say, facing a firing squad without a cigarette. But for once, I was crushed that there were none. I winced as I remembered the exchange I’d had with David a few hours before.

  I wanted to claim stress-induced psychosis, but I knew it wouldn’t fly. That unfortunate woman standing in front of David demanding that he justify his private behavior had been the real me—the worst me, to be sure, but the real one nonetheless. I keep thinking the other me, my better self, will wrestle the crummy one to the ground, hogtie her, and (quite literally) beat the hell out of her. But my better self, unfortunately, is a wimp and a sluggard. She’s far too lazy to be bothered and probably afraid of me to boot, familiar as she must be with my legendarily poor attitude and foul disposition. Coward.

  I wrapped myself in a thin cotton hospital blanket, sat back down in my chair, and began contemplating my future. The view from here was grim. I pictured myself living alone in some creaky house in a formerly middle-class neighborhood, one of those weird old women who smells vaguely of Avon products and talcum powder, wandering around in a sleeveless housecoat and ratty pink slippers. The scene was vivid and depressing: the lunchroom-lady arms, the wiry apricot hair flat on one side, an inch of gray at the roots. A weedy yard full of skinny cats and pet raccoons. I shut my eyes and tried not to sink completely into full-on despair.

  “Dylan?”

  I looked up. Maria stood there in pink hospital scrubs, name tag clipped to her shirt, stethoscope draped around her neck. She’d aged ten years since Saturday. She gripped a pen and hugged a clipboard to her chest like she needed something to hold.

  “Tell me you’re not working today,” I said.

  She shot me a look. “I can’t sit home and do nothing. I’ll lose my mind. What’s left of it.”

  She walked over to Christine’s bed and picked up the chart.

  “Did Liz call you?” I asked.

  “Martinez told me.”

  “How did he know?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t ask.” She looked at Christine. “How’s she been?”

  “She slept through the night.”

  Maria put her clipboard down and flipped open Christine’s chart. “Asthma?” She looked up at me.

  “Liz said she doesn’t have asthma.”

  She paged through the chart. “Lindsay. He’s good.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The pediatrician who admitted her. Lucky break he was on call last night. If there were a better answer, he would have found it.” She scanned the pages. “He hasn’t ordered any more tests. Albuterol and Singulair …”

  “What are those?”

  “Asthma drugs.” She slapped the chart shut and hooked it back on to the foot of the bed. She picked up her clipboard, crossed her arms again, and shivered. “Something’s just wrong.”

  “What do you think she has?”

  “I’m not talking about Christine.” She looked around the room. “It’s the whole thing. Everything’s off center.”

  I cringed and felt goose bumps come up on my arms as the chill in the room intensified. “Liz said the same thing last night.”

  She grimaced. “It’s like we fell into a wormhole or something. Like it all fell apart at once.”

  I thought maybe if I stayed real still and held my breath, Maria wouldn’t notice my constant proximity to the wormhole and dump me as a friend.

  “It’s like we stepped into some other universe. Someplace I don’t want to be.”

  I nodded. I didn’t want to be here either. “Any word from Enrique today?”

  She shook her head. “They’re canvassing, asking about the other car, the white one. That’s the last I heard.” She stretched her neck side to side, her forehead creased with strain. “Two FBI agents showed up at my house last night and started plugging things into my phone lines.”

  “The FBI? DPD is off the case?”

  “No, not off. The FBI comes in to help after a certain point, I guess. They have a whole separate unit for child kidnappings. They showed up with computers, phones, big black suitcases full of things with wires and
plugs.”

  Something sparked vaguely in my mind. “That’s right. Didn’t that start with—”

  Maria nodded ruefully. “The Lindbergh case. Fat lot of good it did. They found that kid too late.”

  There was nothing to say to that. We both just let it hang there.

  “How are you?” I asked finally.

  She sat down and massaged her temples. “Don’t ask me. I can’t talk about it. If I even think about it, I’ll fall apart.”

  Her pager buzzed. She glanced at the message. “I gotta go.”

  “ER?”

  “Delivery. She’s ready to push.” She sighed. “Life is so insistent.”

  “I can’t believe you’re delivering babies today.”

  “I told them I’d take it four hours at a time. We’ll see how I do after the first half-shift. I’m off at eleven. I’ll check in with you then.” She stood and adjusted her stethoscope. “Babies give me hope.”

  She left and I sat there alone, staring at Christine, watching her breathe.

  A nurse came in bearing a partitioned meal tray and a foam cup. She set the tray down on the bed table and scooted it over to me.

  “Brought you some breakfast, honey.”

  She pulled the lid off the foam cup and handed me some coffee, which I accepted gratefully. Then she lifted the cover off the tray and revealed two slices of limp toast, a dried-up sausage that looked like old dog poo, and the crowning blow, a slimy pile of runny, far-too-yellow scrambled eggs.

  I loathe eggs—a lifelong aversion to which I am irrevocably committed. The smell alone almost doubled me over.

  I looked up at her and smiled weakly, checking the ID hanging on a lanyard around her neck. “Thank you, Wanda. You’re very thoughtful.”

  “You gotta eat. Keep your strength up.” She fussed over Christine’s monitors for a minute, then checked her vitals.

  “Have you seen her mother?” I asked.

  “Thought you were the mother.” The nurse glanced down at Christine’s face. “She favors you. You an aunt or something?”

  “Just a friend.”

  “I came on at seven. I’ll check at the nurses’ station, see if they know.”

  She left, and I slapped the cover back onto the breakfast tray. I held the tray at arm’s length, walked it across the room to the closet, closed the door tightly, and dropped a towel in front of the crack to seal it off completely.

  I foraged around Christine’s night table, found a pen and a pad of paper, and began scribbling notes. I needed to figure out a way to talk to the DPD shrink who had interviewed Christine. I scratched out a list of questions. I made another list for the ER doctor. I wanted to talk to him, if possible, though I figured he couldn’t tell me anything without a family member present.

  Where was Liz anyway? I checked the clock. Almost eight. She’d been gone over an hour.

  Christine stirred. I walked over to the bed and put my face down by hers, waiting for her to open her eyes.

  Her brown lashes fluttered and parted. She smiled when she saw me. “I knew you were here.”

  “Of course I am. I’m right here, Punkin.” I brushed the hair out of her eyes. “How you doing, sweetie?”

  “My throat hurts.”

  “I think it’s from the tube they had in you. It might hurt for a little while.”

  She moved her eyes around the room.

  “Where’s Mommy?”

  “She had to leave for a minute. She’s coming right back.”

  Her gaze settled on the closet door. “Will you move that towel away?”

  I turned to look at the towel, still shoved against the crack to block the egg smell.

  “The one on the floor?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Sure, sweetie.” I walked over to the closet and picked the towel up, folding it neatly and laying it on the floor beside the closet.

  “Better?”

  She smiled. “Can I have some ice cream?”

  “You bet.”

  She stuck her thumb in her mouth. “Strawberry,” she mumbled.

  “Coming right up.”

  I stepped out into the hall and signaled Wanda, who came in and checked on Christine while I hustled down the hall, and returned a moment later with some strawberry ice cream.

  I pulled the cardboard off the top of the cup and handed it to Christine, who pushed her spoon into it weakly and shoveled a small bite into her mouth.

  She smiled dreamily. “Yummy for my tummy.”

  I watched her eat, adoring this kid who was breaking my heart with her sweet, quirky personality. Next time I crossed paths with Peter Terry, I was going to skin him alive for coming anywhere near my little borrowed family.

  Christine was perking up, her face gaining color with each bite of Blue Bell. Then her brow furrowed. “Where’s Nicholas?”

  I could feel my shoulders tighten. “Nicholas is gone, Punkin. Remember?”

  She looked at me quizically. “I saw him in the closet.”

  “I think that might have been a dream, sweetie. Remember? He’s with the man from the park.”

  She frowned and took another bite.

  I sat next to her on the bed. “Did you have some bad dreams?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Did you dream about Nicholas?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I pulled her to me and hugged her. “It’s okay now. They were just dreams. Dreams can’t hurt you.”

  Most of the time, anyway.

  “I like Nicholas,” she said. “He’s funny.”

  “Did you know bunny rabbits hate ice cream?” I said brightly. “All they like is crunchy food.”

  “I used to like crunchy food. Now I like ice cream. Does Eeyore miss me?”

  “Of course. He can’t wait for you to come home.”

  She finished her ice cream and then drank a full cup of water, slurping it greedily.

  “Thirsty, huh?” I said.

  She nodded and handed me the cup, which I refilled and handed to her.

  She drank the whole thing, handed it back to me, then snuggled into her pillow and quickly fell asleep.

  I tiptoed over and checked the closet, just to satisfy my paranoia. It was empty, of course, except for the stinky cafeteria tray, which I took out to the hall and left on the floor outside the room.

  I’d dialed Liz’s number a dozen times that morning. Now I sat in my Lysol-scented chair and pushed Redial over and over again. It went straight to voice mail every time. I checked the two waiting rooms at either end of Christine’s floor. Both were full, but there was no sign of Liz. By the time she finally appeared, I’d edged past worried and was closing in on frantic. She’d been gone at least two hours.

  “Where have you been?” I demanded in a whisper, my anxiety quickly transposing into anger, as it so often does. Another Top Ten Terrible Trait. I scolded myself mentally and tried to calm down.

  “Dispatch,” she whispered back.

  “What’s dispatch?”

  “The hospital has a radio dispatch station for helicopter landings and ambulance communication. I was trying to reach Andy.”

  It hadn’t dawned on me once in this entire time that she hadn’t mentioned talking to him. “Doesn’t he have a phone?”

  “He has a satellite phone with him, but it hasn’t been picking up. If the phone’s not working, they can only be reached by radio.”

  She pulled me out into the hall. I could tell by the look on her face that something was wrong.

  “I’m not even sure they got there,” she said quietly.

  “When did they leave?”

  “Saturday afternoon.”

  “That’s three days ago. How long does it take to get to Guatemala?”

  “Chicago to Guatemala City with a stop for fuel—somewhere around six hours in the Gulfstream. They’d switch to a twin engine in Guatemala City and fly into the jungle. That’s another couple of hours.”

  “So what does that mean?”

  “It mean
s nobody knows where they are.”

  9

  I STARED AT LIZ, the dumb, open-mouthed feeling numbing me once again. I was completely unable to process what I was hearing. “Did they land?” I asked, finally. “Surely someone knows whether or not they landed. Did you call the airport?”

  “There is no airport. Just a landing strip. A short landing strip. Out in the middle of nowhere.”

  “What could have happened to them?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Well, what are they doing all the way down there anyway? Who takes preschoolers into the jungle?” I asked, exasperated.

  She crossed her arms and glared at me. “Why, I believe we do, Dylan. Crazy us—we want our kids to grow up with a sense of gratitude for what they have and a burden for service to others who are less fortunate.”

  “Oh.” I could feel my face turning red. “Well, that’s a good reason.”

  “Thank you. I thought so.”

  “Did you try to reach Tony?”

  “Of course, I tried to reach Tony. There’s no phone, Dylan.”

  “What about the radio? What’s wrong with the radio?”

  “The radio must be out. I couldn’t raise anyone. I talked to a ham operator in the area who said that a plane landed on Saturday, but he didn’t have the tail number.”

  “What’s that—like a license plate?”

  She nodded.

  “So there’s no way of knowing if it was their plane.”

  “It probably was. There aren’t too many planes landing in the area.”

  “Could you e-mail Tony and find out if he knows where they are?”

  “Dylan, there is no e-mail. Okay? There’s weather in the area. The infrastructure is terrible. Everything goes out when it storms.” At this point she was so exasperated with me, she was talking to me like I was a special-needs donkey. She slowed down and drew out her words. “They … cannot … be … reached.”

  “Is anyone looking for them?”

  “They’ll dispatch a rescue crew as soon as the weather clears. Until then, there’s nothing to be done.”

  “What if they landed? What then? How long does it take to get to the orphanage?”