A Ring of Endless Light: The Austin Family Chronicles, Book 4

by L'Engle, Madeleine;

  I shook my head. “No. There’s someone from the lab with him. I’d just be in the way. No.”

  He got down on his knees on the hot tarmac. “Vicky. I’m sorry.” He turned his most haunting Hamlet look on me. “I apologize. From the heart. Honestly. I don’t know what got into me, or why I thought it necessary to frighten you. Please. Let me drive you to that Polynesian restaurant and put some food in you. Please. I’m sorry. Truly.”

  Was he? Was Zachary ever truly sorry?

  But how else was I to get home? Art was gone. We were standing alone on the landing field.

  He helped me into the car and unhooked the seat belt. Then he got in on the driver’s side. Now that he had me in the car he sounded more like himself. “Maybe I thought a few drastic measures were needed to wake you up.”

  “I’m not asleep.”

  “You live in a dream world.” He started the car and we drove away from the airport, in the opposite direction from the hospital and the city. “I wish your dream world could be the real world, but it isn’t, and the real world’s going to be a shock to you.”

  “I’m not a child, Zach. I know there are bad things. But the horrors aren’t all the world. I know they’re there, you don’t have to make it a life’s work proving it to me.” My voice was tight and tense and higher than usual; I was still not over the terror. “The bad things are there, but they aren’t all of it.”

  “More than you’re willing to admit.”

  “I told you I’m willing to admit the horrors. You’re not willing to admit the good things.”

  “I read the papers. I don’t keep my head buried in the sand.” He took one hand off the wheel and put it on my knee. With one of his abrupt and total changes he said, “You’re a good thing, Vicky. You’re the most good thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  He melted me only moderately.

  “Say, do you think Art really meant it about no more lessons?”

  “I don’t think Art says things he doesn’t mean.”

  “He’ll cool off.” But Zachary’s voice held a tinge of anxiety.

  “Don’t count on it. Not soon.”

  “I’m not going to quit flying. If Art won’t teach me I’ll find someone else who will, even if I have to drive a hundred miles to another airport.”

  “Speaking of the real world,” I said, “most people don’t have enough money to buy their way out of things or to get them whatever they want, no matter what it costs.”

  “Money’s what makes it possible to cope with the real world. If you don’t get it, it’ll get you.”

  I leaned back and closed my eyes and let the wind blow against my face. Terror had seemed to make me exhausted. Maybe my worlds weren’t very big, the worlds of Thornhill and the Island and my family, but they were, I thought, just as real as Zachary’s.

  The Polynesian restaurant was fun and different, and Zachary was on his best and most charming behavior, calling me princess and treating me like one. It was after nine when we left, and it was nearly an hour’s drive back to the dock.

  When we got there Cor was sitting on his keg in front of the chessboard, but Leo wasn’t opposite him. As Zachary slowed the car to a stop, Cor stood up and moved stiffly toward us.

  “Where’s Leo?” Zachary demanded. “We told him ten.”

  Cor took his unlit pipe out of his mouth and cleared his throat. “Leo, he got a hurry call to get back to the Island.”

  “Listen!” Zachary was indignant. “I hired Leo for the afternoon and evening. I’m paying him for his services.” He looked to where Leo’s launch was in its regular berth, waiting. “So where is he?”

  Cor cleared his throat again and put his pipe back in his mouth, speaking around it. I’d never seen it lit. “Money can’t buy everything. Leo was needed.”

  “What for?” Zachary demanded. “His boat’s right here, so where is he?”

  Cor was having a hard time saying whatever it was he was trying to say. “Coast Guard ambulance left the Island. Some woman starting labor a month early.”

  Zachary’s irritation mounted. “What’s that got to do with it?” Suddenly I was frightened.

  Cor mumbled around his pipe. “It’s Miss Vicky’s grandfather. He needed blood.”

  “Hemorrhage?” I asked.

  “I guess. Leo was off in a flash to get him and bring him back here to the hospital.”

  I looked at the launch, rising and dipping against its moorings.

  Cor said, “Leo went with your folks to the hospital to see if he could give blood. Said you’d probably want to get right over to the hospital to see your grandfather.”

  “Zach—” I turned to him.

  He was already hurrying to the car and I ran after him, calling out thanks to Cor.

  I didn’t say anything as the needle of the speedometer crept up, past sixty, past seventy. All I wanted was to get to Grandfather, to Mother and Daddy, as fast as possible.

  There were only a few cars in the parking lot. We ran to the main entrance and it was dark and closed. AFTER 9:00 P.M. USE EMERGENCY ENTRANCE, the sign read.

  Zachary grunted, took my hand, and we ran around to the emergency entrance. Zachary pushed open the door and we went in to the smell of fear and misery. It wasn’t as crowded as it had been the morning Leo and I’d been there, but it was bad enough. I didn’t see Grandfather or Mother or Daddy.

  We stood in line at the desk.

  It seemed like forever. There was a mother ahead of us, with a child with its arm twisted in an odd position, obviously broken. There were a couple of young men who looked completely normal and I couldn’t see why they were in the emergency room. There was an old woman who was wheezing. Several nurses were moving about, checking, and I had to admit that they did not lose their tempers, even with people who must have tried their patience to the limit. One woman was screaming in Spanish what was obviously abuse, and I couldn’t see that there was anything wrong with her at all.

  Behind us I heard a siren and a flurry, and a stretcher was pushed into the emergency room, followed by another, and then another. The flashing lights of the ambulances were brighter than the interior lights as they whirled round and round, but they carried none of the comfort of the lighthouse beam, only more terror. This was the kind of scene my father had to face frequently, that Suzy would have to learn to face—

  “Either a car crash or a tavern brawl,” Zachary said. The line at the nurses’ desk stalled as everybody rushed after the stretchers. Finally one of the nurses returned to her place.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” Zachary suggested. “I’ll keep your place in line.”

  “No. I’ll wait here.”

  Time crawled as slowly as a slug creeping along the path to the stable, and I thought of John and Suzy and Rob waiting there.

  At last it was our turn. “My grandfather—” I stumbled over the words in my anxiety. “Mr. Eaton—my parents brought him—my father’s Dr. Austin—they brought him in for a blood transfusion.”

  “Oh, yes, I remember,” the nurse said. “Internal bleeding. They’ll be admitting him. It’s all being taken care of, so you just sit here and wait till your parents come for you.”

  “And J-Jeb—Dr. Nutteley,” I stammered. “He’s a patient here, with a skull fracture, and I wondered if he’s regained consciousness—”

  “I wouldn’t know about that, and I’m too busy to—” The nurse looked around the room. The Spanish woman was still going at the top of her lungs. “Just sit down and wait for your parents. I’m sure they’ll be along as soon as they get your grandfather comfortable.”

  I realized that she was being kind and patient with me, yet all I felt was fear and impatience. Internal bleeding—what did that mean? How bad was it? I turned to ask, but I knew that she wouldn’t—or couldn’t—tell me, so I said thanks and went and sat on one of the benches.

  Zachary wrinkled his nose. “What a stench. I suppose I was brought in through here. I’m glad I don’t remember any of that par
t of it.” He didn’t sit down but stood in front of me, shifting his weight from side to side in a trapped way. “I can’t take—” he started, then said, with a change of tone, “I’m going to go see what I can find out. I’m sure some of the nurses will remember me. Wait here.”

  I didn’t protest. I just watched him leave through the inner door that led into the main body of the hospital. It was very clear to me that he was running away, abandoning me to this terrible place he couldn’t stand.

  Adam. Adam wouldn’t have run out on me.

  And there was nothing for me to do but wait.

  Wait.

  I felt as exhausted as though I’d been running up and down mountains all day, but whether they were exterior or interior mountains I did not know.

  I closed my eyes and it was as though I were up in the plane again, feeling the jolting drop and swerve as Art grabbed the controls—

  I opened my eyes, to see Grace coming in. She was carrying Binnie. When she saw me she hurried over and thrust the child at me. “Here. Hold my Robin for me.” She dumped her on my lap. “She always passes out after a seizure. This time I’m not going to be made to wait forever.” And she rushed frantically to the nurses’ desk, thrusting into the line.

  The little girl stirred slightly and shifted position. It was like holding Rob. I put the back of my hand against her cheek and it was cold and clammy.

  Once again I heard the scream of an ambulance and then shouting and cries and stretchers being rushed in and everybody running. I heard one of the doctors groan, “My God, what a night.”

  Again the child stirred in my arms and a strange animal sound came out of her throat and her legs began to flail. I’d never seen anybody having a convulsion before, but there was no question in my mind as to what was happening to Binnie, and all I knew was that you were supposed to keep people who were having seizures from swallowing their tongues. I grabbed Mother’s filmy wool shawl with one hand, trying to hold Binnie with the other, and stuffed a wad of the shawl in her mouth.

  Pinkish foam was coming from her lips, her nose. The horrible animal sounds continued, and the jerking. It was all I could do to hold her. I looked frantically around but everybody was busy with the people coming in on stretchers. At the nurses’ desk Grace was gesticulating and crying.

  And then all my attention had to be on keeping Binnie’s wild jerking from throwing her out of my arms and onto the floor. Desperately I held her. And then the noises from her throat, the flailing of her limbs and the arching of her body stopped as suddenly as they had begun, and I remembered Grace saying, “She always passes out after a seizure.”

  The inner door opened and my parents came in and I could not get up and run to them because I was holding Binnie’s limp body. I saw that my mother’s cheeks were wet with tears, and with hearing suddenly grown acute, I heard her say, “I don’t want him kept here. They’ll plug him into a life-support system—”

  “I won’t let that happen,” my father said.

  “You can’t help it.” Mother spoke through sobs. “They’ll do it when your back is turned. I don’t want to leave him here. They won’t let him stay human—” I had never before seen my mother like that, totally out of control.

  “Victoria,” Daddy said sternly, “right now what we have to do is find Vicky and Zachary. Leo said he left a message at the dock for them to come here.” He began looking around the crowded room, and just as he saw me and started toward me, Grace and a nurse came hurrying from the opposite direction.

  I looked down at Binnie’s body, which felt heavy in my arms. The shawl had fallen out of her mouth and was flecked with blood. Her face was dead white. “She had a convulsion,” I said. “I put the shawl in her mouth to keep her from swallowing her tongue.”

  “Good girl,” the nurse said.

  Binnie’s mouth was open, her tongue lolling like a dog’s. There was blood on her teeth, her lips. Her mouth closed, then opened again in a tiny sigh. The heaviness of her body became a different heaviness, although she had not moved.

  The nurse reached for her wrist, fingers tightening where the pulse should be.

  Grace started to scream. “My God, I’ll kill him, it’s his fault,” and her words dribbled off into shrill, agonized screaming.

  I did not need anyone to tell me that Binnie was dead.

  I, too, screamed, but mine was an interior scream, because there was no sound.

  Twelve

  The darkness closed in.

  Someone took Binnie away.

  Someone told me that I’d done the right thing. She had died not from the seizure but from her weakened heart. A nurse put her arm around Grace and led her across the stilled room and into one of the cubicles.

  The ambulance lights were still flashing around but they could not cut through the dark.

  I think I saw Leo, but then again it might have been Zachary, because I could not tell in the dark whether I was seeing the picture or the negative.

  Leo.

  He was saying, “Mrs. Austin’s right. We can’t leave him here.”

  And then Daddy was speaking but I couldn’t hear what he was saying, and then Leo was squatting down in front of me and reaching for my hands.

  I pulled them back. “Don’t touch me till I wash—”

  I had held death. I was still holding death. There was blood on my hands, the blood of a little girl who might almost have been Rob.

  A nurse came with a wet cloth and alcohol and cleaned my hands.

  Mother had stopped crying and was Mother again, her arms around me, comforting me. “We’ll take you home now, Vicky. Leo’s waiting.”

  “Not without Grandfather. We can’t leave Grandfather in this place.”

  “We won’t leave him,” Daddy said. “I promise.” Daddy’s promises, unlike Zachary’s, were to be trusted.

  “The internal bleeding—”

  “It’s stopped,” Daddy said. “For now. He’s had a transfusion. We’ll get him home as soon as he’s rested a bit.”

  “How—”

  “The Coast Guard ambulance boat can take him on their way home.”

  “Come,” Mother said.

  But her words were a dim roar against my eardrums. I was lost in a cloud of terror, with dim pictures transposing themselves one on top of the other, a falling plane, Binnie, Rob, Grandfather …

  There was no light.

  The darkness was deep and there was no dazzle.

  There was no point in being human in a world of emergency rooms where a little girl could die because there weren’t enough nurses or doctors

  in a world where desperate fishermen clubbed a thousand porpoises to death

  in a world where human beings stole from dead bodies, from pieces of dead bodies

  Maybe Zachary was right after all

  and I was wrong

  and Basil and Norberta and Njord were wrong

  and Adam

  and Jeb

  and Jeb might now be dead

  or a vegetable—

  “Vicky!” Daddy was shaking me. I tried to look at him but I couldn’t focus.

  “Vicky, where’s Zachary?”

  I shook my head.

  “We need him to drive you to the launch so Leo can take you and Mother home.”

  “Grandfather—”

  “I’ll stay with Grandfather till he’s ready. We’ll be home almost as soon as you are.”

  I closed my eyes again.

  “Vicky, where is Zachary?”

  “He—left.” I jerked one shoulder toward the inner door.

  Leo said, “I’ll get him.”

  I heard Mother and Daddy talking but it was in nightmare darkness, and sound only added to the darkness. Mother was sitting on the bench beside me, her arm around me.

  I had to make some kind of response.

  “My dress,” I said. “We have to burn my dress.”

  “It’ll wash out,” Mother said.

  “No. No. We have to put it in the incinerator.
Binnie …”

  Mother’s arm tightened around me. “You did all the right things, darling, and she wasn’t alone when she died. She was with someone who cared about her.”

  Daddy said, “It was just as well for Binnie, sweetheart. The resident said she couldn’t have lasted more than a couple of weeks, no matter what. You were a brave, wonderful girl, and we’re very proud of you.”

  “Grace—where’s Grace?”

  “Her husband came to take her home.”

  “She said it was his fault.”

  “It wasn’t anybody’s fault. Even regular medication and blood transfusions wouldn’t have helped her for long.”

  “She—reminded—me—of—Rob.” I let my head drop down against Mother’s shoulder as my words dropped into the dark.

  Leo stood in front of us again. “I can’t find him. And that sports car of his isn’t in the parking lot.”

  So he was gone. Run out on me.

  It figured.

  I closed my eyes.

  I didn’t hear what any of the voices said.

  Then my hands were held firmly. Not my parents’ hands. Adam.

  “You called me,” he said.

  He’d come in the Coast Guard cutter, the one he’d used when he’d first tried to make contact with Basil and his pod. He’d borrowed Cor’s pickup and driven as fast as the old truck would go.

  When he’d heard the call he was sleeping. At first he thought it was Jeb, and he knew he had to get to the hospital as quickly as possible. Halfway across the water he’d realized that it wasn’t Jeb’s voice but mine.

  “But you couldn’t possibly have heard anything,” Leo protested.

  “Vicky called me and I came.”

  And then Zachary strolled in.

  When everything was over he came back.

  The darkness came down on me again.

  I am told that Adam took me home, but I don’t remember anything.

  I am told that Zachary drove Mother and Leo to the dock, and Leo took Mother home.

  But all I remember is darkness, and going out in the darkness to the incinerator and thrusting my dress into it, and Mother’s shawl.