I fire, and she twists sideways, my bullet hitting her in the shoulder as another passes through the side of her head. As she topples, I scramble up to wrench the tubing from her hand. Jay’s face hits the floor.
Anders yanks Sophie’s body aside. There’s no help for her. I know that. Grief darts through me, grief for a woman we’d tried so hard to save. Anders had been right shooting to kill, though. He didn’t know whether I would actually pull the trigger, and he couldn’t risk aiming for her shoulder.
With Sophie gone, we both scramble for Jay. He’s facedown on the floor, unmoving. I flip him over. His eyes are closed, and that damned tubing is still embedded in his neck. I go to pull it free, and Anders says “No!” just in time.
“Move!” a voice says. “Both of you. Move, now!”
We part for April as my sister shoulders her way in.
“The tubing—” I begin.
“I see it.”
“He’s not breathing. He’s—”
“Casey.” Her eyes meet mine. “Let me do my job.”
“What do you need?” Anders asks.
April tells him, and we all scramble to obey.
FOURTEEN
Jay is alive. That is all I can say. Alive, for now.
He stopped breathing, and it wasn’t a simple matter of CPR to bring him back. Adrenaline can give ordinary people the strength to overturn cars to free their trapped children. It can also, when fueled by madness and rage, give them the strength to yank plastic tubing through a windpipe. Getting Jay breathing again took all my sister’s emergency-ward experience. Without her, he would have died. Even with her …
Jay did not leap up, gasping, when his heart started again. His brain has been deprived of oxygen for too long. He’s in a coma, and even if he recovers …
For now, we will not speculate on his mental condition if he recovers. Our focus is on making sure he does recover.
Ten seconds.
That’s what I keep thinking. Ten seconds. Maybe even five. Yes, I’m quite certain it’s five.
If I’d pulled that trigger five seconds faster, Jay would be dealing with a sore throat and nightmares. Traumatized, but alive.
Five seconds faster and Anders would have seen me shoot Sophie and stayed his own finger, and she’d be alive.
Five seconds. A blip so fast we barely register its passing. How can I possibly be judged for missing such a narrow window?
Because it is not the blink of an eye. After Jay is stable, I measure time in five-second intervals. That’s how long it takes Anders to cross the room and retrieve gloves from a drawer. That’s how long it takes April to tell Diana she should leave, and Diana to protest. That’s how long it takes for Dalton to burst in, frantic because he’d been in the forest and returned to hear I’d been attacked by a patient. That’s how long it takes for me to go outside and ask Kenny to reassure people that the situation is under control.
Five seconds.
I might have saved two lives if I pulled that trigger five seconds earlier.
Yet I couldn’t. I know that. I made a mistake fourteen years ago, let anger and outrage pull a trigger for me, and a man died for it. A man who deserved to be punished for what he did, but who did not deserve to die.
Too fast. Too slow. When it comes to this, it will forever be one or the other. There is no time I have ever fired a gun and later rested confident that I did exactly the right thing, even when, in the back of my mind, I know I did the only thing.
I will question it.
Anders will, too.
There will be late nights, the two of us, huddled in some quiet place, nursing drinks, whispering our doubts to the only person who truly understands them. I love Dalton with all my soul, and he has done things he regrets, but only Anders and I share this in our past—the shame of pulling a trigger when we shouldn’t have.
Now we are locked together in a new regret. I will tell him that he did the right thing and saved my life, and he will not believe it. He will tell me that I did the right thing in trying to save Sophie, and I will not believe it.
I saw the plastic tubing around Jay’s neck. I saw blood. I should have shot Sophie right then. But I misjudged. I thought I had the situation under control, and it was only when she yanked that tubing that I realized my mistake.
Five seconds.
“I would like to speak to my sister alone now,” April announces.
I jump. I think we all do as her voice cuts through the tiny room. Dalton’s grip tightens on my hand—I hadn’t even realized he was holding it until now.
“Eric,” April says, “you may have Casey back in ten minutes. I need to speak to her alone.”
Anders nods and waves Dalton to the door. They go out back. April waits until they’re gone and then walks to the door, her head tilting.
“They aren’t going to eavesdrop, April,” I say.
“Not intentionally, no.” She pauses and then, satisfied, returns to me. “I have a dilemma, and I wish to consult with you.”
Her words make my stomach flip in a sensation so alien that it takes a moment for me to identify it.
My sister is admitting she has a problem.
She wants to talk to me about it.
She may even need my advice.
I have been waiting for this moment all my life. How many times did I want to ask for her advice, but I couldn’t because we didn’t have that kind of relationship? If she had opened the door, though, I’d have leaped through. Even just the proof that my perfect sister had problems, needed advice, would have meant so much. I grew up feeling like the screwup, the girl who never quite got her shit together, because April did everything effortlessly.
“Okay,” I say. “What is it?”
“I want to say that I am unable to properly care for this patient in his condition.”
I nod. “I would disagree, but I understand if you feel you can’t—”
“No.” The word comes out sharp. “I do not wish you to understand, Casey. I can care for him. In his current state, a hospital could do nothing for him that I cannot. Moreover, here, he can receive the undivided attention of staff at all hours, and if he comes to require more than we can offer, I can personally arrange a discreet transfer to a Vancouver facility.”
“Okay…”
“The problem is that I don’t want that.”
I lean against the counter. “You don’t want the burden of his care. You have enough to do here, so we’d understand—”
“No. It is not a burden. It’s that I do not want the responsibility for his care. I wish to transfer it to someone else. My expectations for a full recovery are low, and I wish to make that someone else’s responsibility. I want to spare myself the guilt of feeling as if I could have done more.”
“Ah. Well, I’d rather have spared myself the guilt of not acting fast enough to save Jay. Or not figuring out how to save Sophie.”
“This isn’t about you, Casey.”
“No, it’s not. I’m making a point. We are all going to second-guess here. What if Diana had alerted us when Jay first removed the restraints? What if we’d sedated Sophie right away? What if I didn’t break the damn needle injecting it? What if I’d shot her before she strangled Jay?”
“Yes, you should have shot—”
I lift a hand. “Really not what I need right now, April.”
She hesitates and then nods. “I apologize. I would have preferred you’d shot her sooner, but I understand that you made the choice you thought was correct.”
I try not to stiffen at that. She doesn’t mean an insult. I just hear “you thought” more emphatically than she says it.
“However,” April continues, “I’m not sure what this has to do with my situation.”
“I’m questioning what I did. You’re questioning what you will do—and leaning toward the path of least resistance.”
She snaps upright, her eyes narrowing. I meet her gaze with a level stare and, after a moment, she gives a sharp nod.
“I think you’ve already answered that.”
“I am attempting, Casey, to admit that my assessment of my abilities can be overly confident, and therefore I’m seeking your advice.”
I walk to Jay and look down at his unconscious form. “This man is alive because of you. Saving him would have been well beyond my medical skill set and Will’s. Yes, you have an ego, but you’ve earned it. Male surgeons have plenty of it. We just aren’t as accustomed to seeing it from women.”
“Why?” she asks, and it’s a genuine question.
I shrug. “Confidence is attractive in men. Humility is attractive in women. Not saying that’s right—it just seems to be how it is. If there is nothing more that a hospital could do for him, then I will tell the council you’ve offered to care for him. Ultimately, the choice is theirs.”
She nods. “Then I am offering.”
“And I will let you know what they say. For now…” I look from Jay to the three bodies on the floor to the open storage room door. “We need to look after Sophie. She deserves that much.”
* * *
There will be no autopsy for Sophie. Possibly no grave either, beyond the one we will place her in once the ground thaws. Sometimes it is possible to return people to their loved ones. Sometimes it is not.
When residents come, they must answer that question in advance. If you die before your release, do you want us to attempt to return your body? Most say no. I suspect their loved ones would be appalled, but that’s really who a grave is for, isn’t it? Those who loved us and wish to have a place they can visit, knowing we are there. Except we aren’t. We are dust and earth, and it would make more sense to visit us through photographs and letters and memories.
Returning a body isn’t easy. Before residents leave for Rockton, they can only tell friends and relatives that they’re “going away.” That means we can’t ship the family a covered casket and expect them to accept it without question. When residents insist on their body going home, it’s “found” in another location, through an anonymous tip. I apologize to any police department that has to deal with that particular mystery.
Fortunately, that hasn’t happened since I’ve been here. We’ve had only one natural death, an older woman with no remaining family … because she’d murdered her husband. As for the victims of violence? There’s no way to send them home even if they wished it. I would never inflict that on a family … or a police department.
The most we can do for Sophie is return her to where her companions lie. That’s partly consideration—at least she’ll rest among friends—but it’s practicality, too. When people come searching, if they do somehow find the grave, at least the bodies will be together.
I’ll need to interview Diana and try to figure out what set Sophie off. I don’t expect to get anything. From Diana’s frantic babbling, Jay hadn’t even gotten to my question about the dual camps. He’d been easing her in by reminding her where she was and promising that we were looking after her. She’d seemed to understand. She’d been calm, a little teary-eyed. Then she’d realized she was restrained and panicked, and Jay made the mistake of being a compassionate human being. He’d started to untie her, just as Diana had that first morning. Diana wanted to check with me, but Jay said we were busy, and he’d take responsibility. He untied Sophie and then …
We will never know what went through Sophie’s mind at the moment she attacked. I can guess, though. As hard as Jay had tried to reassure her, she hadn’t been reassured. Her mind still conjured the demons of her delirium, and she couldn’t help thinking she was a captive. After all, she was tied down, wasn’t she?
She’d played tearful victim to relax Jay’s guard. It was the smart thing to do. It’s what I’d tell someone in her place to do. Play up your “feminine passivity” to get the guy to untie you. Once he does? Attack. Which she did, and with the language barrier, we couldn’t explain well enough to convince her she hadn’t been captured by monsters.
She apparently did know English. Just enough to call me a liar. Lying about taking care of her. Lying about being a hospital. Lying about trying to help her friends.
I’m not the one she’d attacked, though. That was the person she could communicate with. The one person who could have helped explain what was happening.
Jay.
If not for this, I think he might have passed his time in Rockton under our radar. Another quiet resident, here to take advantage of the sanctuary we offered. A decent guy who’d poked his head above the parapet to help.
Did I take advantage of that?
Did I properly explain the risks?
I should have made sure Jay was protected. Despite Sophie’s outbursts, though, I considered her a low threat. Restraints and sedative, and she’d be fine. We just had to wait until she was lucid enough to understand the situation and stop fighting. Jay thought we’d reached that point, so he’d set her free.
The blame ultimately lies with me for being too busy chasing corpses and killers to properly assess the danger Jay faced. Now he’s in a coma, possibly brain-damaged, because he tried to be helpful.
When Dalton returns, I’m moving blindly through the exam room, tidying and straightening. He murmurs something to April, and the next thing I know, I’m walking through the forest to our backyard.
He opens the door and nudges me through. I stop in the doorway, my heels digging in.
“I need to speak to the council,” I say.
“It can wait.”
“It can’t. I need to talk to them and finish autopsying the settlers and move Sophie’s body and figure out what the hell I’m going to tell the residents and—”
I stumble and grab the doorway, straightening as Dalton catches me. He says something. I don’t hear it.
I need to get out of here.
Out of Rockton.
It’s like a horrible anxiety dream where every choice I make gets someone killed, and nobody else sees that. Nobody takes me aside and says, “You need to stop.”
You need to get out of here.
You’re only making things worse.
Dalton rubs my arms, and I wheel to see him there, frozen in worry and rising panic.
In his face, I see the problem.
Dalton lets me do what I like, trusts me to make choices, because he loves me, and he’s terrified of losing me.
What if I worked in the general store? Could I do that? Please?
The words hover over my tongue. I taste hope in them, and I imagine saying them and—
And what the fuck am I doing?
Am I serious?
Please, Eric, let me work in the store, so I don’t have to make the hard choices. So I’m spared the guilt of making another mistake. You can handle it all instead, okay?
I take a deep breath. Then I lift one finger and gather my wits enough to walk into the kitchen, take the tequila bottle, and down a shot. Then I stand there, holding the counter as the alcohol burns through me.
Storm slips in, and I jump. She must have followed us to the house. I somehow missed a giant black dog at my side until she sneaks in, sensing my mood and trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. Just like someone else …
Dalton stands in the doorway, his expression saying he’s trying very, very hard not to hover.
“I was about to ask if there were any openings at the general store,” I say.
His gaze searches mine. It sounds like a joke, but he checks first and sees the truth. He walks over, fills the shot glass, and downs it, coughing slightly.
“Yeah,” he says. “I was wondering whether Isabel’s still looking for help.”
“You’d make a lousy bartender. Everyone would get exactly one chance to tell you their problems. Then you’d offer solutions, and if they came back complaining about the same shit, having done nothing to solve the problem, you’d send them
packing. The Roc would go out of business in a month.”
“Truth.”
I push my shot glass toward him.
He glances down at it. “You know if I fill that, I gotta dispense my unsolicited advice, too.”
“That’s what I’m hoping.”
He tipples a little into the glass.
“Half a shot?” I say.
“For half-assed advice.”
I chuckle and down it.
“This job sucks,” he says. “Yours and mine both suck, but especially yours. You have a fucking awesome knack for being right there whenever shit goes down. You made choices. Will made choices. Diana made choices. So did Jay. So did Sophie, and maybe she wasn’t in a mental state to make good ones, but her mistakes started when she chose to go out in the forest without a sat phone.”
“Someone else in her group might have had one.”
“Then she chose not to go back and get it.”
“That isn’t fair.”
He leans against the counter. “Yep, it’s not. Just like it isn’t fair to blame Will for taking a headshot to save you and Jay. Like it isn’t fair to blame Jay for trying to help out. Like it isn’t fair to blame you for holding off on your shot, hoping it wouldn’t be needed.”
“I notice you left Diana out there.”
“That’s ’cause I totally blame Diana for being a fucking idiot.” He catches my gaze and exhales. “Fine. Diana did warn Jay not to untie Sophie, and she’d been about to come and tell you when Sophie leaped up. However, I’m still blaming Diana for doing nothing after that except scream her fool head off.”
I shake my head. He reaches into the cupboard and pulls out a bag of miniature chocolate bars. I’m about to joke that he’s ramping up his bribes to keep me here when I remember what I was just thinking a few moments ago.
That hadn’t been fair. If I sucked at my job, Dalton would find me a new position. He wanted me here, but never at the expense of endangering others. Thinking that had been a moment of weakness and self-pity, and I’m glad I hadn’t said anything.
“These are new,” I say as he hands me a couple of tiny bars.
He shrugs. “Saw them in Dawson. Figured I’d hide them until you pulled out that electronic book reader you bought me.”
A Stranger in Town Page 12
