"Help!" Nat ran for it just as a stricken and bloodied CO. came out of the room, leaving the door open on a horrifying scene.
"They've gone crazy, they've all gone crazy." The CO. was physically shaking, and behind him, another CO. lay on the floor, a makeshift knife plunged into his chest. A muscle-bound African American inmate lay curled next to the CO., blood soaking his T-shirt. Both men looked dead, and the CO. at the door was in shock.
"You have to help me!" Nat grabbed his shoulders. "My friend's being attacked!"
"What? Where?" the CO. asked, his dark eyes focusing as he came to his senses.
"The classroom near the entrance." Nat pointed behind her. "Angus Holt. We were teaching. And another CO. needs help in the hallway."
"Shit!" The CO. took off running, just as Nat heard a moan from the room and looked toward the sound. The CO. on the ground was still moving, the homemade metal knife protruding grotesquely from his chest. He turned his head toward the door and stretched his hand to her, across the floor.
He's still alive. Nat ran into the room and knelt beside the man, horrified. She could barely look at his chest. She knew to leave the knife in place. She'd read it somewhere. He'd lose more blood if she pulled it out. Blood soaked the pocket of his blue uniform, but not from the knife. He had another stab wound.
Nat pressed her hand over the wound. Hot blood burbled through her fingers, and she felt sick to her stomach. The C.O.'s face had gone ashen. She had to stop the blood flow. She yanked her silk scarf off her neck, wadded it into a ball, and pressed it as hard as she could against his wound. If she could stop the blood, she could keep him alive until help came.
"It's okay, it's okay," she said, over and over. Her heart hammered. She prayed that the other CO. had found Angus. She couldn't leave this one. He focused on her. Then his blue eyes rolled back into his eye sockets. In the next instant, she felt his hand squeezing her forearm as if in a death grip.
"Hang in, please, hang in." Nat felt her tears welling again. She pressed harder with her scarf. Its silk ran red with fresh blood, warm under her cupped palm. The C.O.'s lips were moving. Blood bubbled from his mouth and leaked down the side of his face. He tugged on her arm. He was trying to say something.
Tell... my wife," he whispered. Blood hiccupped from his mouth, a sight so grisly Nat almost cried out. He said, "Please. Tell her."
"I will, I will. I'll tell her you love her," Nat said, finishing his sentence, her words rushing out in a choked sob.
"No, no," the CO. moaned, shaking his head. "No. It's . . . under the floor."
What? Nat blinked, shaken. What did he say? Between the sirens and her shock, she could hardly hear him. She leaned over, her ear to his mouth. "What did you say?"
"Tell... her." The CO. struggled for breath. "Tell her it's ... under the floor."
"Okay, I'll tell her, I promise." Nat pressed hard but blood soaked the scarf. In the next second, the C.O.'s eyelids stopped fluttering. His blue eyes fixed. The grip on her arm loosened abruptly. His hand fell back, the fingers still bent.
"No!" Nat knew CPR. She couldn't let him die. She bent over, pinched his lips open, and huffed into his mouth, tasting salty, hot blood. Two breaths, then she straightened up and pressed with all her might on his chest.
One, two, three, four. "Please, come back!" Nat bore down, pressing hard. The scarf fell off him. Blood bubbled gruesomely from the other wound. She kept pressing and counting. The C.O.'s eyes didn't move. He didn't react to her shouts. She finished the count of chest palpitations and bent over again, trying to breathe life into him.
She kept pressing. She heard a sickening gurgling from his throat, and in the background, faraway shouts. Suddenly, an explosion resonated in her chest. What the hell was going on? Where had that come from? The RHU? What had blown up?
Nat struggled not to panic. She kept pressing, but the CO. didn't move. She bent over and huffed a short, powerful breath into his mouth, then stopped. The poor man was dead. She had to let him go. She had tried her best. She had to get to Angus. The explosion.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered. She wiped her eyes, streaking warmth across her face. Blood. She scrambled to her feet and ran from the room and into the hallway. A siren blared a continuous state of emergency. The lockdown announcement blasted over and over. Smoke wafted down the corridor, layering the air with gray streaks.
She ran down the hall, veered around the corner, and sprinted for the classroom. Thick smoke billowed down the hall, singeing her eyes and filling her nostrils. She took a breath and felt herself gag. There was a fire in the prison, and she was locked inside. So was Angus. They would all burn to death.
Suddenly there came the deafening blast of a percussive explosion. Nat was thrown to the floor. The side of her face hit the concrete. Her knees slammed down hard. She rolled in shock and pain into the cinderblock wall.
"NATALIE!"
Nat opened her eyes to see Angus running through the smoke to her. He reached her, knelt down, and scooped her up in his arms.
"Your Grace." He grinned, his forehead bleeding, and Nat felt a rush of relief that approached delirium. Behind him was the CO. she'd sent to him.
"This way!" the CO. shouted. "Move!" He hustled them to the barred door at the entrance, where another CO. in black SWAT gear met them, unlocked the door, and hurried them all out of the prison and into the cold.
Chapter 7
Wrapped in a thin blue blanket, Nat sat on a gurney in the back of an idling ambulance, while an EMT dressed the gash on her cheek. He was thirtyish, with prematurely salt-and-pepper hair and earnest brown eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses. He wore a bunchy nylon jacket over his blue uniform, which bore a bright patch Nat didn't bother to read. She had forgotten the EMT's name. She had been here an hour, and her thoughts were still scrambled. She felt shaken, sad, and so exhausted she was almost sleepy.
"One more minute." The paramedic dabbed goopy Neosporin onto her cheek, his hands encased in latex gloves of pale purple.
Ouch. "Thanks."
"How's your head? Better?"
"Yes, thanks," Nat answered. The throbbing had almost stopped. Her knees and butt felt tender. She pulled the blanket closer, covering her torn shirt; the ambulance was drafty. The parking lot outside the prison was serving as a makeshift infirmary and staging area for the cops and press who swarmed the compound.
"Okay, let's cover this baby up." The paramedic unlatched a stainless steel drawer, retrieved a box of butterfly bandages, and opened it. While he worked, Nat spotted Angus through the ambulance's back window. A gauze bandage covered part of his forehead, and he still had on his bloody workshirt. He was talking with two tall state troopers in stiff, wide-brimmed hats set at a slightly forward angle. They wore gray uniforms with black insulated jackets and heavy gun belts. Angus gestured to the troopers, who squared off, arms folded identically, at a distance from him. He was clearly pissing them off, so he must have been feeling better.
This is my lucky sweater.
Nat sipped water from a Poland Spring bottle. Was it even the same day that Angus had said that? She tried to block out the image of the CO. bleeding to death on the rug, blood hiccupping from his mouth. She hadn't even known that was possible. She had never seen anybody die before. She couldn't shake the memory.
"Okay, you're all done." The paramedic pressed the butterfly bandage gingerly into place. "You'll be sore for a while, but I don't think anything's broken. Like I said, just to be on the safe side, I'd get to the hospital and talk to a doc. Any concussion can be serious. You're a little lady to be in such a big fight."
"Thanks." Nat was only half listening as she watched Angus. He was gesturing more emphatically, and one of the troopers was gesturing back. It looked like a sixties rewind, the longhair vs. the cops.
"Last point I should mention." The paramedic closed the bandage box, slid it back into the drawer, and latched the drawer. "You should get yourself an AIDS test. The blood on your hands can't all be yours."
“You have any questions, about the dressing or anything?"
“Yes.”
"Okay, shoot."
"There was a C.O., a guard, inside." Nat swallowed hard. "He had a knife in his chest. . . and another wound. I found him. There was blood... everywhere. I know CPR. I did CPR on him."
"Oh, it was a guard's blood? Well, officially I'm telling you to get the test, but between us, you don't have to worry. The guards are tested for AIDS in their annual, so you should be fine."
"No, it's not that. I tried to help him, but I couldn't." Nat didn't know why she was even telling him this. "I wonder if I could have tried something else, or done something better than I did—"
"I see," the paramedic said softly. "I know what you're worried about, and you shouldn't be. I saw him when they carried him out. He didn't have a chance. That shiv in his chest, there was nothing you could have done." He placed a hand on Nat's arm to comfort her, but it reminded her of the C.O.'s death grip.
"What could I have done better, or different? You're an expert. What could you have done?"
"There was nothing I could have done."
Tell my wife. Nat tried to block out the words. The whisper.
"Don't blame yourself." The paramedic eased back onto the black-padded bench seat across from the gurney, and he gazed at her in a steady, centering way. "Believe me, I've had to let a lot of really nice people go. Old people. Someone's mom. Or kids, really little ones. You'll never get used to it. Natural deaths I can deal with. But violent death, it's the worst. Car accidents are the worst. Pool drownings, the worst." He shook his head. "It's all the worst."
Nat knew what he meant, now. It was the carnage. Human beings, butchered like so much meat. The CO. and the inmate, lying dead.
"We don't get a lot of this out here, not as much as Philly. But we get some business from Chester, that's for sure. Considering the knife wounds that man had, it was a miracle he was alive when you found him."
Tell my wife. "He ... talked to me."
"You heard his last words?"
Nat nodded. She couldn't speak. Maybe the CO. was waiting to tell somebody. Maybe that was why he hadn't yet died when she got to him.
"Now I understand. Now I get it. Okay." The paramedic sighed, leaning over on his haunches in his bunchy jacket. "That's happened to me more than a few times, and it's tough."
Nat struggled to remain in control. For a minute she felt as if she were talking to a priest. Or Dr. Phil.
"This is how I look at it," the paramedic said after a moment. "What happened to you, it's sacred. You heard a man's most personal, intimate words. But it's kinda goofy because you're a stranger."
Nat nodded.
"That's how you feel, right? It's goofy?"
Random, her students would have said.
"Listen, once a man dying in a car wreck told me he had a daughter no one knew about. He wanted to keep it secret but he had to unburden himself. To someone, even a stranger." The paramedic paused, his forehead creased with the memory. "Sometimes they give you a message for someone they love. For their wife, or their son. I used to feel like I wished I hadn't heard it, like it was a burden. I almost quit this gig."
Tell my wife.
But I was talking to one of my buddies, and he said, 'just flip it.' Think about it different, because there was a reason they told it to you. It wasn't a burden, it was a gift." The paramedic patted her arm again. "Okay?"
"Okay," Nat said thickly. If he gave you a message for someone, deliver it. You can't avoid it, anyway." The paramedic smiled, almost ruefully. "In my experience, the loved one will seek you out and give you the third degree. Be prepared for that. They'll want to know, "What were his last words?' 'Did he say he loved me?' "Was she thinking of me?' 'Did she suffer?' They'll ask you everything." He shook his head. "My last piece of advice? Don't pretty it up. Don't tell em what they want to hear. You're just the messenger. Tell the truth."
Tell my wife.
"I got a question from one widow, after her husband died in a car accident. She wanted to know if he'd said the name Sonya. I told her, 'No, I'm very sorry, he didn't say your name.' She said, 'Good. My name's Lillian. Sonya's his girlfriend.'" The paramedic laughed, and Nat managed a smile, because he was trying to cheer her up.
Tell my wife. The words were still there when she stopped laughing. They weren't going away anytime soon.
"If you go to the hospital, they can give you something to calm you down a little. Help you with the pain, too." The paramedic gave her a final pat. "Drugs, I can't dispense. Advice, you don't need a license for."
"I'm fine, thanks." Nat looked out the window to see Angus striding to her ambulance, ahead of the two state police troopers. She wondered who had won the argument, because nobody looked happy. She rose unsteadily. "Here they come. The cops and my colleague."
"Stop. Sit down a minute." The paramedic eased her back onto the gurney, which wasn't difficult. "You can talk to them here. I'll go out and see if anybody needs me."
"Do you need the ambulance?"
"Nah, anybody's who's going to the hospital has already gone. If I get a call from dispatch, I'll throw you out."
"Thanks for your help," Nat said, and the paramedic rose, crossed to the door, and left, letting in a blast of frigid air.
Angus stuck his head inside, and Nat gasped.
Chapter 8
Up close, Angus's face was a wreck. Under the gauze pad, his right eye puffed up, a rosy color. A nasty bruise blanketed his left cheek, and black stitches puckered his lip. Blood spattered the front of his workshirt. "How's the patient?" he asked, his blue eyes concerned, nevertheless. "You all right?"
"Better than you, I think."
"Oh, you mean this?" Angus pointed at his mouth with a puffy grin. "Only when I laugh. But we have a more pressing subject than my rugged good looks." He leaned into the ambulance, his long arms braced on each door, effectively blocking two state troopers behind him. "Got the staties with me, since they don't have local police out here."
"No local police?" Nat didn't understand.
It's common in rural areas. They can't afford a local force, so they rely on state police. They interviewed me but they still want to talk to you, to support the charges against Buford. I told them this isn't the place or the time."
Nat shuddered. Buford. His breath. His hands. Tell me you don't feel up to talking to them, and I'll tell them to take a hike."
"Mr. Holt, that's not your call." The trooper's dark eyes flashed under his wide brim, though his voice remained under control. "You're interfering with police business. It's important that we interview her while her memory's still fresh."
"Show a little sensitivity, would you? She's a crime victim, and you don't need her statement. I'm an eyewitness. I gave you my statement." Angus raised his voice, but the trooper ignored him and turned to Nat.
"Ms. Greco, we understand that this is difficult, and we're prepared to make it as easy as possible. We'll interview you here, rather than asking you to come down to the barracks."
"It can wait until tomorrow or the next day," Angus interjected, but Nat waved him off.
"I can give it now. Let's get it over with." Nat didn't want a fight. She'd seen enough fighting for a lifetime.
"They're being ridiculous." Angus pursed his stitched lips. "You should be going to a hospital, not giving a statement to support a charge they can file right now."
"It's fine, thanks." Nat wrapped the blankets closer around her. "Come in, please, everybody."
Angus harrumphed under his breath and stepped into the ambulance ahead of the troopers, ducking his head to fit inside. His
boots clomped on the corrugated-metal floor as he crossed to Nat. He sat heavily beside her on the gurney, which squeaked under his weight. He bristled with pique, but when he looked over at her, his eyes softened. "I'm so sorry, about all of this. I wouldn't have brought you here if I had thought it was unsafe."
"I know that." Nat heard the guilt behind his words.
"I can't apologize enough. I'm so sorry."
"We're both okay, and that's what matters," Nat said, meaning it.
"Take this, by the way." Angus set an insulated black jacket onto her lap. "For the ride home. I got it from Tanisa. She wanted you to have it. I'm not sure when you're getting your coat back."
Daddy's Girl Page 5
