Henry Franks

by Peter Adam Salomon

He pushed with his feet and slipped down the hall to his bedroom door, using the knob to pull himself up far enough to slide the key in the deadbolt. He collapsed to the floor again, vision swimming. He shook his head trying to clear it, but it didn’t help.

  On hands and knees, he crawled to the generator under the bed, hoping there was still gas in it. Over and over again, he pulled the starter until the humming filled the room. He dragged himself to the corner, pulling down the floor lamp by its cord until he could reach the button to turn it on. Light flooded the room and he looked back to the door. A long trail of blood covered the floor.

  “Let’s go,” Henry said, pulling Justine toward him.

  He carried his laptop, using the monitor as a flashlight to walk across the room and down the stairs. At the bottom, the floor was soaked from the rain and the door swung back and forth, unable to close. From his father’s room, light filled the hallway that Henry rarely walked down.

  They raced to the front door and Henry closed it, shoving his shoulder against the wood so the lock would turn. The sound of the sirens diminished but the screaming of the rain and wind continued.

  “Dad?” Henry said, trying to scream louder than the storm as thunder shook the house again.

  Together, they moved to where the tile changed to hardwood. At the end of the hallway, the door to his father’s room swung ajar, light bleeding through the opening.

  “Henry?” Justine said, her fingers moist in his as the blood streaks across the floor came into view.

  At the door, Henry eased it farther open with his foot, not letting go of Justine’s hand. In the far corner a floor lamp lay on its side, sending a cone of light into the wall. Odd shadows danced as the lamp rolled slowly back and forth. A twin mattress sat on the floor, squeezed against the wall, nothing but a thin quilt covering it.

  “Oh,” Justine said, her fingers squeezing hard enough to bruise although he couldn’t feel the touch.

  Banks of medical equipment glowed green and red around an empty hospital bed and multiple IV stands, tubes snaking down, attached to nothing. Leather restraints lay open on the mattress and a respirator sat dormant next to them. More equipment, lining the walls, came into view as the door opened fully.

  “Dad!” Henry yelled as his father’s body came into view, on the floor on the other side of the hospital bed. He dropped the laptop to the floor and worked his way around the room, stepping into a puddle of blood as he knelt next to his father. “Call 911!”

  “No,” his father said, his voice choked and weak. “No police.”

  Justine picked up the phone. “No dial tone.”

  “No police,” his father said again.

  “Why?” Henry asked. He checked his father’s throat, unable to feel, with his numb fingers, how strong the pulse was. “Justine?”

  She cradled his father’s head in her lap, her fingers resting on his neck. Blood stained the front of his shirt and his face was bruised in the light from the medical equipment. Sirens continued outside and the front door crashed open once again in the wind.

  “He needs a doctor,” Justine said, her eyes white as she looked up.

  “Get out,” his father said. “Now, Henry.”

  “We’re not leaving you. They’re evacuating the island.”

  “No.” The word was too soft to hear. “No.”

  “Dad!” Henry put his numb palms on either side of his father’s face, turning him to look into his eyes. “We need to leave.”

  “I’m sorry, Henry.”

  “Let’s go,” he said, but no one moved.

  His father’s fingers fluttered weakly on his arm, scratching at the scar around his wrist. “I tried,” his father said, the words ending in a cough, a thin trickle of blood leaking out of his mouth and down his chin.

  “Dad?”

  The front door slammed closed, cutting off the sirens. The hissing echoed down the hall as though the hurricane was stalking them.

  “Get out!” his father pushed them away, rolling onto his side to point at the door. “Now!”

  Justine took Henry’s hand as the generator sputtered once and went still, plunging the room into darkness.

  “The basement,” Justine said.

  Henry looked toward the bedroom door, where his father was struggling to stand before it.

  “I don’t think we can go that way,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” William said, using the floor lamp to get up, then holding it like an unwieldy sword and swinging it back and forth in front of the door.

  A flash of lightning ripped across the sky, sending shadows around the room. Henry grabbed his father’s arm but he pushed him away.

  “Your mother”—his father’s words caught on a series of coughs as the front door crashed open once again—“isn’t very happy with me.”

  The sirens wailed through the house, carried on the wind and the rain as Hurricane Erika arrived on Saint Simons Island with a peal of thunder.

  “I’m sorry,” his father said. “She has nowhere else to go.”

  twenty eight

  Justine’s hand in Henry’s was far away, the storm farther still. Memories flickered on the edge of awareness but nothing was solid, nothing was real. He let her go and his fingers grasped the air, struggling to cling to a reality that was vaguely transparent.

  Breathe.

  The word was almost a silent hiss drowning in the storm.

  Just breathe.

  “Henry?” Justine cried out, shaking his arm.

  He stood like a statue, unmoving.

  “No,” he said, the word a whisper. Then, again, “No.”

  His father took a step toward him, but Henry backed away. “She died. In the accident.” He wiped his fingers across his face. His hand came away covered in blood from his nose. “You told me—it was raining. You said there was an accident.”

  “Henry,” his father said, his hand reaching toward his son.

  “You told me she died.”

  The wind stormed across the island, a bitter roar slamming branches against the roof. Thunder shook the house as lightning sent shadows flashing around the room. The three of them stood there and no one said a word for a long moment.

  “Henry,” his father and Justine said at the same time.

  He looked back and forth between the two of them, blinking, as tears fell down like rain.

  “You died, Henry, not your mother.” His father’s voice was raw as he staggered against the floor lamp, the blood pooling at his feet.

  “The cancer?” Justine asked, her voice breaking on the words.

  William’s eyes opened wide. “You know?”

  Henry nodded.

  “The cancer was killing you, yes.”

  “But?” Henry asked after too long of a silence.

  “You died,” his father said, taking another step toward him, “when I cut your head off.”

  “Save my son,” Christine said, her dark hazel eyes almost green in the fluorescent kitchen lighting.

  “He’s my son too, Chrissy.”

  “I carried him,” she said. “I raised him while you worked. Save my son!”

  “How?” Frank put his coffee mug down untouched, then walked up to her but she turned away when he tried to put his arms around her. “What would you like me to do? The stem-cell transplant failed. It made things worse, for crying out loud.”

  “I don’t care how, just save him. I can’t stand by and watch him die and do nothing.”

  “I love you,” he said, but if she heard, she gave no indication. “Chrissy?”

  She looked up at him, a single glance before turning away.

  “Have you talked to Dr. Saville?” he asked, the words as neutral as he could make them.

  “About?” she said, then spun around to face him. “The fact that my son is dying? Everyone knows that, Frank.”

  “Your medication?”

  “Please, like you’d notice if I took it or not.” She rubbed her eyes, then pasted a smile on her face. “
Like you care,” she said, so quietly the words were no more than a hiss.

  “Are you?”

  “They made me sick,” she said. “Well, sicker. I’d rather be me than nauseous.”

  He sat down, dropping his head in his hands and biting his tongue to keep quiet. Taking a deep breath, he looked back up at her. “There are other medications you can try, remember?”

  “So I can force myself to be happy while my son dies, Frank? Is that the cure you want for me? No, I will not. Never. I’m sorry I can’t be the happy little homemaker you thought you married.” She laughed, a bitter sarcastic sound that lacked any trace of warmth. “Or do you still think we’re the perfect family?”

  He looked up at her, his breath short and hard as his heart tried to escape his body and break into little pieces.

  “I love you.”

  “I know,” she said, a smile just touching the edges of her chapped lips. “I’ve just forgotten why.” The words hung in the air long after she ran from the room.

  “What would you have me do, Chrissy?” he asked the emptiness. “What?”

  She came out of nowhere, barreling into him, her fingers clenched into claws raking down his face. The tips came away bloody and her eyes, wide and red and staring, didn’t even blink as she tried to catch her breath. A thin line of drool fell from her mouth to the floor. She snarled, then slammed her fist against the wall when he ducked her punch.

  She gasped with the pain, then slid to the floor in a heap, her chest rising and falling faster than he could count. He reached a finger against her throat, trying to check her pulse, but she rolled away, kicking out at him.

  “Save him,” she said, her voice somewhere between a whisper and a moan. Then she screamed, the sound high-pitched and painful. “Save my son!” She gulped air in between words, trying to catch her breath.

  “How?” he said, trying to get his arms around her, to calm her, to hold her down. Her fingers clawed against his hands and the scratches on his face burned as she twisted around to try to bite him. She thrust her head back and up, into his chin, and he felt the rush of copper as he bit through his tongue.

  Still, he wrestled her to the ground, forcing her down, her heart beating so strongly that he could feel it where his chest rested on her back. She shook beneath him and then released a harsh sob.

  “Save my son,” she said, more like a little girl asking Santa for a present than a grown woman talking to her husband. “Save him. Please, Frank. You can do that for me, right? You always said you’d do anything for me, to make me happy, to make me marry you. You said that. You promised.”

  “I’m sorry, Chrissy.” His voice was quiet where he nestled his face in her hair. The usual sweet smell had been replaced by an acrid, sweaty odor, and dandruff flakes fell to the floor with her motions. “There’s nothing I can do. The cancer’s spread through most of his body. The stem-cell transplant was the last best hope.”

  “Then transplant something else,” she said. Her voice, raw from screaming, still hissed out, like a child’s doll talking. “If you love me, Frank, you’ll save him. Transplant something else. Won’t that work? You promised. Transplant everything—I don’t care, just save my son!”

  She beat her head against him again but he didn’t feel the blows, his eyes tearing as her words echoed in his head, his heart still within his chest.

  He let her go and didn’t even watch as she scrambled across the floor, crawling down the hall to Henry’s room.

  twenty nine

  “Dr. Saville?” Henry asked, his voice little more than a whisper.

  “Chrissy’s doctor. Your mom told her, after the operation. She wanted to help but there was nothing she could do.” His father looked around the room and his shoulders slumped.

  “Victor.” Henry said, the name strangely familiar when spoken out loud.

  “Was dying. A suicide,” his father said. “How do you know all this?”

  “It wasn’t easy.” Justine closed the distance between herself and Henry, stretching out for his hand.

  Her fingers were warm, and strength flowed through her grip where they merged with his own. When he looked at her, she smiled, warm honey-brown eyes lit from within, glowing in the midst of the storm.

  “It took months, practicing, studying, before I was ready,” his father said. “I was so afraid you’d die before I found a donor match.”

  The storm shook the shutters, banging them against the house in a fury of wind and noise.

  “Your mom wasn’t well, Henry,” he said. “Worried for you, not eating, not sleeping, but she pulled herself together enough to help me with you, to save you. We did it all for you.”

  The scalpel rested on the skin right above Victor’s spinal cord and Frank looked at his wife. She smiled behind the mask, shifting the fabric. “Save our son,” she said.

  The blade sliced through the skin and the muscles beneath as he began the painstaking job of harvesting the head. A video camera feeding off the loupe view recorded every moment, software tagging the muscle groups, the individual veins and arteries.

  Blood pooled down through the gurney to a series of tubes and into an automatic bucket brigade Frank had devised. The monitors were silent, muted, as the carotid was neatly sliced and Frank clipped a tag on the tie-off. On the screen, a flat green line scrolled by as machinery kicked into gear to keep the body alive.

  Deeper, through the trachea, the esophagus, until only the spinal cord connected Victor to his head. The bone saw roared to life in the silence, slicing in one quick move through the vertebrae and their protected bundle of nerves.

  Delicately, Frank lifted the separated head and placed it in a nutrient bath while Chrissy worked to stem the bleeding from the gaping wound, tying off the ends with loops of surgical tubing and pumps to prevent hypovolemia rather than cauterizing, in order to simplify the second phase of the surgery. The constant fear of decreased blood volume in the donor body was with him every step of the way.

  In all, it had taken less than ten minutes to decapitate Victor.

  A flip of a switch and anti-rejection meds joined the anesthesia flowing through the IV tubes.

  Frank stripped off his bloody gloves, tossing them in the trash, and quickly regloved. He turned around to Henry.

  The scalpel rested on his skin while Chrissy rushed over to place one last kiss on her son’s forehead.

  “Breathe,” Frank said as he sliced through his son’s neck. The second decapitation was quicker, routine, as the muscle groups curled back from the cut, the blood spurting in decreasing waves from the carotid as Frank sliced through Henry’s spinal cord.

  Blood dripped to the plastic sheeting over the carpeting as he carried his son’s head as gently as he could to Victor’s gurney.

  With as much care and precision as he could manage, Frank sewed Henry’s head on, beginning with the external and anterior jugular to get the blood flowing to Henry’s brain, then following the template off the video feed in the corner of his glasses.

  With his microscopic forceps and surgical tweezers, the sutures were as fine as medical science could provide. The nerves, impossible to sew, he welded, using surgical lasers to merge stem cells and create a perfect anastomosis between Henry’s brain stem and Victor’s spinal cord. Ventral ramus, vagus, phrenic, brachial plexus; the laser danced in his fingers until he clamped the artificial disc between C6 and C7 and moved on to the trachea a couple of hours later.

  Around it all, he sewed the muscles back together until all that was left was the skin. The heavy line of stitches crawled across Henry’s neck, then Frank wrapped bandages around the whole and allowed himself time to stretch.

  Chrissy stood next to Henry’s body, holding the lifeless hand, her eyes closed.

  Frank pulled off his gloves, tossed them with the others, and checked the time. Two hours until dawn. A flip of a switch turned the volume back on, and Frank and Chrissy listened but there was nothing to hear, the flat green line on the monitor unbroken.
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  Frank pushed Chrissy out of the way and dragged the defibrillator to the side of the bed. “Clear,” he said before touching the paddles to his son’s chest. Henry’s new body spasmed off the gurney, jumping at the hit of electricity. Still, the machines were silent.

  “Clear!” Again, Henry’s back arched up.

  Frank closed his eyes and then re-charged the paddles. He was about to shock his son once more when the machines beeped. He listened to the beeping of Victor’s heart, Henry’s head resting between restraints to prevent movement, and began to cry.

  “Well?” Chrissy asked, her fingers resting on her son’s cheek.

  Frank shrugged, unable to face her. “He’s alive.”

  Henry’s dad took another step closer, balancing with the lamp. His breath came in ragged gasps, and blood was still flowing from his scalp despite the towel he’d wrapped around it.

  “And the rest of me?” Henry asked, the words forced out through clenched teeth as he waved his numb hand in front of his father’s face.

  “I couldn’t figure out the dosages, the anti-rejection meds,” his father said. “Parts of you started to die.”

  “Die?” Justine asked.

  “I saved what I could, replaced what I couldn’t.” He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  Henry shook his head, his hair falling in front of his eyes. “No,” he finally said. “We need to evacuate. We can talk later.”

  “It’s too late,” his father said.

  “Why?”

  “She couldn’t live without you, Henry.” His father sank to his knees, sliding down the lamp until he was kneeling in a pool of his own blood. Lightning flashed right outside the window and the thunder was right on top of them. Hissing filled the room as the front door banged open in the wind. “I couldn’t live without her.”

  “He’s not going to wake up, is he?” she asked. Limp hair covered her face as her head rose and fell, pillowed on Henry’s chest. Brittle fingers rested on her son’s cheek, the cracked fingernails softly drumming on his skin.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You killed him,” she said. “I watched you cut his head off.”