He steps into the dimly lit hall, makes his way to Rachel’s door, and pushes into the room, which is softly illuminated by a night light. He looks at his baby girl.
Baby girl.
It’s odd to think in those terms now, he knows, in light of everything that has happened. But seeing her there, curled into a protective ball, holding that old bear—it’s apt. And he can’t blame her. Can’t blame her for going fetal, escaping within herself to heal. He would probably be this way, too.
He steps over to the complicated metal bed and sits on one of the three chairs next to it. At the sound of the chair squeaking on the floor, Rachel snaps awake with a momentary look of absolute fear on her face. Michael calms her, and she closes her eyes, sighing.
“Daddy,” she whispers.
“Hey Rach.”
She brings her hand to her brow, closes her eyes hard for a moment.
“How are you doing?” Michael asks.
She squints her eyes open. “Can’t shake this headache.”
“I know the feeling.”
She manages a weak smile, and crinkles her nose. “You stink.”
Michael glances down at the clothes he’s been wearing for three straight days. He’s sure they’re more odiferous that he even realizes. The tan polo shirt has sweat stains at the armpits, and even dried blood splotches that probably came from him, but he’s not entirely sure.
“I imagine showers are tough to come by,” he says.
“Almost as tough as ice water.”
“What I’d give for a tall glass.” He reaches over and touches her sweaty hair, the side of her face.
She stays silent, stares straight ahead as he curls her hair behind her ear. In the humid silence, her eyes begin to fill with tears. She lifts an arm toward him, beckoning for an embrace, and he stands and bends over her, holding her. She begins sobbing into his chest, shaking, her muscles clenched. Both of her arms are now around his shoulders; she’s not about to let go.
He lets her cry.
Finally her embrace slackens a bit, and he gradually draws himself away. Her arms fall, and she wipes at her wet cheeks, refocusing her eyes. She looks at him with a rueful smile.
“Sorry Daddy.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry about.”
“But I do! I do!” And the tears threaten again as she shakes her head savagely. “You don’t know—” Her voice hitches loudly. “—you don’t know what it was like, you don’t know—you—”
He doesn’t know how to help her. In the silence that falls between them, he simply touches her hand and watches her.
When Rachel’s mother died five years ago, Rachel and Michael became very close. They weathered the pain together, and they recovered together. He was so in tune with what she needed emotionally then! Maybe the reason he focused so intently on Rachel in that horrible aftermath was to deflect his own reaction to his wife’s death, but the upshot was that it was his proudest moment as Rachel’s father. It’s a terrible notion, perhaps, but it’s true: His best moments as a father came in the wake of his wife’s death.
For a year, he and Rachel were closer than they ever were. When she retreated from her friends at school and was in real danger of becoming a melancholy loner, he didn’t let it happen. He became Ultra Dad, arranging sleepovers and chaperoning trips to the mall and hosting impromptu parties and simply keeping Rachel’s friends close to her. He wanted to make sure that his 14-year-old enjoyed—at least, for the most part—the teen years she deserved to experience.
Often his efforts were in vain. Maybe too often. Sometimes, despite all the energy he could muster, Rachel folded inward upon herself, disappearing into her bedroom for long hours, collapsing onto her bed, sleeping or reading or staring at the wall. Michael didn’t deny her those periods, knowing that she had to endure what she needed to, but he would always quietly suffer on the other side of the house, wanting to help but powerless to do so.
One day, after another six or seven hours spent in solitude in her silent room, she emerged a bit dazed and found Michael in the kitchen nursing a beer. It was his fourth of the evening, and he was in his own daze, but he remembers watching her shuffle into the room to stare at him. They just looked at each other for a long moment. Then she said:
“I miss Mom.”
Michael felt a familiar stab straight in the gut. “I do too, Rach.”
“No, I mean—I mean, I miss her, but … but I—I don’t know—I don’t want to cry about it anymore.”
“Okay,” he said.
“I mean, not for a while.”
“All right.”
He didn’t want to say more for fear that it would be the wrong thing to say.
She stood there some more. Then she meandered over to the refrigerator for a Coke. She popped the tab and fell into the chair across from him. He can still remember that moment clearly, despite his beer haze at the time. The way her shorts and tee-shirt were twisted and frumpy from bed, the way her acne reminded him that he should feed her better, the way her eyes looked blasted from crying but clearer somehow.
“So … let’s do something,” she said.
“What do you want to do?”
“Can we go to a movie?”
It didn’t happen that easily. It’s not as if one day she shook off all her sadness and became the same bright-eyed girl she was before the death of her mother. In fact, further tears came from her room later that night, after their movie, after their laughter. Maybe she felt bad for allowing herself to be happy again. But that night was a turning point for both of them. And getting to that place together—that’s what made all the difference.
They had two strong years, on their own, father and daughter. The best years of his relationship with Rachel.
He tried to introduce Susanna carefully into that father/daughter dynamic. He really did.
He waited longer than he might otherwise have, in deference to Rachel’s healing. But life happens. For a year, their courtship favored Susanna’s apartment and local hotels, but at a certain point everything felt deceptive, and so he casually hosted Susanna for a pizza dinner that included Rachel, and—
—perhaps that was the mistake. The key mistake.
Since that fateful evening, Michael remains convinced that Rachel would have had the same reaction regardless of how many years had passed since her mother’s death. For him, two years of mourning was sufficient. Yes, his wife’s death was a body blow to his soul; it was wrenching. But he felt that he had earned the right to carry on. For Rachel, it might’ve seemed more reasonable that he married for life, that he be content with later years marked by emotional and physical celibacy.
So maybe he was doomed from the start.
Michael loved his daughter, but he needed his own life, too. He just wasn’t sure when Rachel would have been ready for that. He thought the best tactic was to confront the thing head on, but in retrospect, that was the worst tactic.
Rachel considered it a breach of trust. In what seemed a single night, she turned from a healing, increasingly happy girl to a brooding, distrustful teen. He remembers now that it started the day after she got her driver’s license: His sweet-sixteen daughter from the day earlier, all grown-up and ebullient—but still so little behind the wheel of his Acura—collapsed into moody instability, and she never really recovered.
Until yesterday—here at the end of the world—when Rachel burst into his locked, disheveled hospital room, brandishing a smoking shotgun, and said, “Hi Daddy.” His miserable teenager transformed into some kind of action-movie heroine—and not only that, she embraced him as if the past two years had never happened—or had happened in an entirely different way.
His daughter has returned to him, and in dramatic fashion.
And Susanna is apparently gone.
Dead?
But now, Rachel is threatening to become that angry, insecure teen again, the demon that possessed Rachel that night he brought Susanna home. He knows this tone all too well—an
d for the first time, it occurs to him that perhaps he, Michael, is the key differentiator. In his absence, she took on an apocalyptic threat, bravely, heroically. Now that he has returned, she has regressed to what she was before.
She sniffs, exhales loudly now.
“You were unconscious, Dad, you don’t know how—how—how terrible it was! The things that happened, the decisions we made! The decisions I made! I fucked up, Dad, I mean I really—” She draws in a high-pitched gasp and stops talking, the muscles of her face clenching. “And I’m still making shitty decisions! I just—
Michael sits there helplessly, quiet, just stroking her hair while she cries. In his peripheral vision, he’s aware of someone peeking into the room briefly. He turns, sees Bonnie’s face in the shadows. Her eyes meet his very briefly—he thinks he catches a sad, understanding smile—and then she’s gone, down the humid hallway. Why is she still awake?
“Rachel,” he says, “I’m sorry I wasn’t here with you, to help you through—whatever the hell this is. But whatever has happened … no one has the answers. No one knows anything. You were incredible—that’s what everyone is telling me. And the one thing I know for sure is that you were there for me. I’m only here right now because of you. That’s about the bravest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Rachel can only stare straight ahead, subtly shaking her head left and right. Silence swallows up the room, and Michael can hear only his daughter’s breathing. Finally, he can no longer hold his next question inside.
“Rachel …” He swallows. “Do you know what happened to Susanna?”
The muscles of her face flinch. Her wet eyes meet his, and something flickers there, maybe the usual resentment, maybe something new.
“When I woke up, she … she had that thing inside her.”
Michael waits for more, but Rachel goes quiet.
“You don’t know what—?”
“No, I don’t know what happened to her.” Her voice is quiet, seething. “I got out of there. Everything was going to hell, okay? I saw that thing inside her, and I tried to wake her up—” She holds up her hand to show him a palm that appears as if it has been splashed with bleach. “—but that didn’t work. I got out of there to look for you.”
“It’s all right, it’s okay.”
“And then Tony was the same. And his mom. And almost everyone.”
“Shhhh …”
Her voice goes softer. “She’s gone, Daddy. I’m sorry.”
“But you saw what happened upstairs. If it’s possible—”
“She’s gone.”
“Do you mean she’s—”
“I just—she’s gone, okay?” Her voice is a desperate whisper.
Michael looks at his daughter curiously, a sudden ache of foreboding clutching at his chest.
“Is there anything else? Rachel, anything you’re not telling me?”
She turns to him, beseeching. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Daddy—I watched her die. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
Rachel turns away from him and won’t say anything else. Michael stays with her for another half hour, right next to her, considering her, until her eyelids grow heavy once more and she succumbs to sleep. Her features finally relax, and part of him—that part of him that helped his little girl weather the grief of her mother’s death—feels grateful that she has that escape. He places his hand on her brow, feels the warmth there. Ripples of emotion cross her face.
Susanna.
Is she still there, in their bed, where he probably left her that morning? Is she burning in the foothills? What happened to her? His brain still suffering from the effects of a concussion, he finds it difficult to contemplate so many questions at once. He needs to take them one at a time. The first question is lying right in front of him, and yet no answers are forthcoming. Not yet.
Then he kisses Rachel’s forehead and makes his way out of the room.
Beyond the walls, off on the western horizon, the foothills continued to burn.
Chapter 9
Michael can’t sleep.
He glances around in the dimness. The window is still dark. It must be around 3 or 4 a.m. now.
An itch has grabbed hold of his innards, and it’s growing increasingly difficult to ignore. He knows it’s wrapped up with that feeling he had earlier—the notion that these survivors have lived through something together, have battled together, and have formed a bond that Michael doesn’t understand.
That’s what happens when you nap through the entire thing, he thinks in a burst of self-loathing.
Even in this bed, he feels like an outsider.
But there’s more to it than that.
It’s Susanna. His wife. What happened to her? Where is she? When he closes his eyes, he sees her ghostly, beseeching him. Lonely. Lost. Scared. He imagines her out there somewhere, and he feels a crushing hopelessness. He misses her. The feeling is like something heavy yet empty at his core.
I can’t lose a second wife.
The whole situation is playing out like some bizarre wish fulfilment for Rachel. He wishes he could banish that thought from his head, but there it is. It’s part of why this all seems so unreal. He knows how much his daughter has come to resent Susanna. She might even hate her. That festering wound isn’t going to heal instantly—even now, when everything is different. It’s too easy to see Rachel as the angry, moody teen … rather than the bold survivalist who burst through that door.
Michael can’t help but think about the trajectory of his life before this nightmare. The sensual Susanna, alive to his touch. The life they were building together. More important, perhaps, was the life he was building for her—and for Rachel, too! Neither woman ever knew about the life that was in store for them, that he was accumulating at the back of his closet. Their lives were about to change. Because of him. Was it naïve of Michael to believe that healing was about to begin? That he was taking charge of the deteriorating home situation and on the verge of being the hero?
He sighs.
Maybe.
But now everything has abruptly shifted in a very different, horrific way.
Not fair!
He finds that he’s still staring at the window on the other side of the room. After days of near-narcolepsy and exhaustion, he seems to have turned a corner: Now he has insomnia. Great.
Quite suddenly, a thought occurs to him.
He is going to disappoint Bonnie.
He can still hear her voice, reminding him in that way of hers—so like Cassie’s—to get his rest, to let his head heal, to sleep. He knows he needs that sleep. Bonnie would probably scold him for being awake right now. His head is still aching, and his mouth is very dry, and any movement makes him a little dizzy, but yes, he is going to disappoint her.
Just as he would disappoint Rachel if she knew the whole story of her mother’s death and his courtship with Susanna. That is a truth that even the end of the world can’t wrench from him. No, that will go with him to his grave.
My grave.
He edges his way out of his bed, feeling his feet softly hit the floor. In the eerie silence, he moves quietly to the counter and finds a half-empty bottle of water. He twists open the top, drains it down, and places the empty bottle into the trash can below the counter.
How can he even think of leaving Rachel? She risked her life for him—repeatedly. He can’t abandon her now, can he?
Resting in the corner is the shotgun that Rachel used to blast her way to him yesterday. He goes to it, hefts it, gets accustomed to its grip. He knows weapons fairly well—has ancient memories of target practice with his dad behind the family farm outside of St. Louis—and this one is easy to figure out. He ensures that it’s loaded and takes up the box of shells that’s situated immediately above it on the counter. Then he finds a Tylenol sample kit filled with packets, and on a whim, he grabs a few of those, too. All of this goes into Rachel’s backpack, which is tucked in the same corner. Already inside it are some bruised pieces of fruit and
some medical supplies—probably from his own refrigerator and bathroom.
He glances at the large administrative desk beneath the window. He walks over to it and gives it a quick search, turning up a pen and some paper. He sits down in the expansive leather chair and gives careful thought to his note. He’ll be honest about his essential plan. Although he intends to leave this hospital alone, without alerting anyone, he’s not stupid. So he lays out what he has to do, omitting certain information, and details his precise route. On the off chance that he’s held up and can’t return before dawn, he knows Rachel and perhaps the others will come looking for him. He’s confident, given what he’s learned, that he’ll finish what he has to do before that time.
The bottom line is that he has to find Susanna. To discover some kind of truth for himself. To start the process of digging up some memories.
That’s really what this is about, isn’t it?
He folds up the note and leaves it in plain sight on the bed.
Well, that and the money.
Then he takes the backpack and shotgun and enters the dim hallway. He makes his way into the admissions area and faces the double doors leading to the outside.
To the left, slouched on a blue vinyl waiting-room couch, is Kevin. A rifle is balanced atop the worn cushions, and three empty Mountain Dew cans are crumpled at his feet. When he sees Michael enter, the large man sits up straight.
“Hey,” he says, clearing his throat. “I wasn’t sleeping.”
Michael takes a look around. The stairwell has been emptied of furniture, and the way is clear. The seating has been replaced in the waiting area, and the whole area looks clean and orderly, except for the residue of blood.
“How are you feeling?” Kevin asks, blinking his eyes exaggeratedly to wake himself up.
Michael’s hand automatically rises to his forehead. “Like I’ve been down for the count. For too long.”
“Well, like I said before, you’re probably lucky you were out for the worst of it.”
Michael is already shaking his head. “I would’ve given anything to be awake. I’m getting the feeling I was just a burden—deadweight.”
Blood Trilogy (Book 2): Draw Blood Page 8
