The Pact

by Jodi Picoult

  She felt a humming against her hip and shifted, thinking that the amorous couple had gotten a little too close. But the buzzing didn't stop, and when she reached down to find the source she remembered her beeper, which she'd carried in her purse ever since she'd started up Other People's Time. It was James who insisted; what if he had to go back to the hospital and one of the kids needed something?

  Of course, in the way that most preventative medicines work, just having the beeper had managed to ward off emergencies. It had beeped only twice in five years: once, when Kate called to ask where she kept the rug-cleaning supplies, and once when the batteries were low. She fished it out of the bottom of her purse and pushed the button that identified the caller. Her car phone. But who would be in her car at this time of night?

  James had driven it home from the restaurant. After crawling out of her sleeping bag, Gus walked across the street to the nearest phone booth, graffitied with sausagelike initials. As soon as James picked up, she heard the hum of the road beneath the tires.

  "Gus," James said, his voice catching. "You've got to come."

  And a moment later, leaving her sleeping bag behind, she started to run.

  THEY WOULDN'T TAKE the lights out of his eyes. The fixtures hung over him, bright silver saucers that made him wince. He felt at least three people touching him--laying hands, shouting directions, cutting off his clothes. He could not move his arms or legs, and when he tried, he felt straps lacing across them, a collar anchoring his head.

  "BP's falling," said a woman. "It's only seventy over palp."

  "Pupils dilated but unresponsive. Christopher? Christopher? Can you hear me?"

  "He's tachycardic. Get me two large-bore IVs, either fourteen or sixteen gauge, stat. Give him D-5 normal saline, wide open for a liter to start with, please. And I want to draw some bloods ... get a CBC with diff, platelets, coags, chem-20, UA, tox screen, and send a type and screen to the blood bank."

  Then there was a stabbing pain in the crook of his arm and the sharp sound of ripping adhesive tape. "What have we got?" asked a new voice, and the woman spoke again. "A holy mess," she said. Chris felt a sharp prick near his forehead, which had him arcing against his restraints and floating back to the soft, warm hands of a nurse. "It's okay, Chris," she soothed. How did they know his name?

  "There's some visible cranium. Call radiology, we need them to clear the C-spine."

  There was a scurry of noise, of yelling. Chris slid his eyes to the slit in the curtain off to his right and saw his father. This was the hospital; his father worked at the hospital. But he wasn't in his white coat. He was wearing street clothes, a shirt that wasn't even buttoned right. He was standing with Emily's parents, trying to get past a bunch of nurses who wouldn't let him by.

  Chris flailed so suddenly he managed to rip the IV out of his arm. He looked directly at Michael Gold and screamed, but there was no sound, no noise, just wave after wave of fear.

  "I DON'T GIVE A FUCK about procedure," James Harte said, and then there was a crash of instruments and a scuffle of footsteps that diverted the attention of the nurses enough to let him duck behind the stained curtain. His son was fighting backboard restraints and a Philadelphia collar. There was blood everywhere, all over his face and shirt and neck. "I'm Dr. Harte," he said to the ER physician who was barreling toward them. "Courtesy staff," he added. He reached out and firmly grasped Chris's hand. "What's going on?"

  "EMTs brought him in with a girl," the doctor said quietly. "From what we can see, he's got a scalp laceration. We were about to send him to radiology to check skull and cervical vertebral fractures, and if they report back negative, we'll get him down to CT scan."

  James felt Chris squeeze his hand so tightly his wedding band dug into the skin. Surely, he thought, he's all right if he has this strength. "Emily," Chris whispered hoarsely. "Where'd they take Em?"

  "James?" a tentative voice asked. He turned around to see Melanie and Michael hovering at the edge of the curtain, horrified, no doubt, by all that blood. God only knew how they'd gotten past the dragons at triage. "Is Chris all right?"

  "He's fine," James said, more for himself than for anyone else in the room. "He's going to be just fine."

  A resident hung up a telephone receiver. "Radiology's waiting," she said. The ER doctor nodded toward James. "You can go with him," he said. "Keep him calm."

  James walked beside the gurney, but he did not let go of his son's hand. He began trotting as the ER staff wheeled it more quickly past the Golds. "How's Emily?" he remembered to ask, and disappeared before they could answer.

  The doctor who'd been attending Chris turned around. "You're Mr. and Mrs. Gold?" he asked.

  They came forward simultaneously.

  "Can you step outside with me?"

  THE DOCTOR LED THEM to a small alcove behind the coffee machines, decorated with nubby blue couches and ugly Formica end tables, and Melanie instantly relaxed. She was a professional expert when it came to reading verbal or nonverbal clues. If they weren't being led to an examination room on the double, the danger must have passed. Maybe Emily was already up on a patient ward, or off to radiology as Chris was. Maybe she was being brought out to meet them.

  "Please," the doctor said. "Sit down."

  Melanie had every intention of standing, but her knees gave out from beneath her. Michael remained upright, frozen.

  "I'm very sorry," the doctor began, the only words that Melanie could not rework into anything but what they signified. She crumpled further, her body folding into itself, until her head was so deeply buried beneath her shaking arms that she could not hear what the man was saying.

  "Your daughter was pronounced dead on arrival. There was a gunshot wound to the head. It was instantaneous; she didn't suffer." He paused. "I'm going to need one of you to identify the body."

  Michael tried to remember to blink his eyes. Before, it had always been an involuntary act, but right now everything--breathing, standing, being--was strictly tied to his own self-control. "I don't understand," he said, in a voice too high to be his own. "She was with Chris Harte."

  "Yes," the doctor said. "They were brought in together."

  "I don't understand," Michael repeated, when what he really meant was How can she be dead if he's alive?

  "Who did it?" Melanie forced out, her teeth clenched around the question as if it were a bone she had to keep possession of. "Who shot her?"

  The doctor shook his head. "I don't know, Mrs. Gold. I'm sure the police who were at the scene will be here to talk to you shortly."

  Police?

  "Are you ready to go?"

  Michael stared at the doctor, wondering why on earth this man thought he ought to be leaving. Then he remembered. Emily. Her body.

  He followed the doctor back into the ER. Was it his imagination or did the nurses look at him differently now? He passed cubicles with moaning, damaged, living people and finally stopped in front of a curtain with no noise, no bustle, no activity behind it. The doctor waited until Michael inclined his head, then drew back the blind.

  Emily was lying on her back on a table. Michael took a step forward, resting his hand on her hair. Her forehead was smooth, still warm. The doctor was wrong; that was all. She was not dead, she could not be dead, she ... He shifted his hand, and her head lolled toward him, allowing him to see the hole above her right ear, the size of a silver dollar, ragged on the edges and matted with dried blood. But no new blood was trickling.

  "Mr. Gold?" the doctor said.

  Michael nodded and ran out of the examination room. He ran past the man on the stretcher clutching his heart, four times older than Emily would ever be. He ran past the resident carrying a cup of coffee. He ran past Gus Harte, breathless and reaching for him. He picked up speed. Then he turned the corner, sank to his knees, and retched.

  GUS HAD RUN the whole way to Bainbridge Memorial clutching hope to her chest, a package that grew heavier and more unwieldy with every step. But James was not in the ER waiting room
, and all of her wishes for a manageable injury--a broken arm or a light concussion--had vanished when she'd stumbled upon Michael in the triage area. "Look again," she demanded of the triage nurse. "Christopher Harte. He's the son of Dr. James Harte."

  The nurse nodded. "He was in here a while ago," she said. "I just don't know where they've taken him." She glanced up sympathetically. "Why don't I see if anyone else knows something?"

  "Yes," Gus said as imperiously as she could, wilting as soon as the nurse turned her back.

  She let her eyes roam over the serviceable Emergency entranceway, from the empty wheelchairs waiting like wallflowers at a dance to the television shackled to the ceiling. At the edge of the area, Gus saw a swatch of red fabric. She moved toward it, recognizing the scarlet overcoat she and Melanie had found for eighty percent off at Filene's.

  "Mel?" Gus whispered. Melanie lifted her head, her face just as stricken as Michael's had been. "Is Emily hurt too?"

  Melanie stared at her for a long moment. "No," she said carefully. "Emily is not hurt."

  "Oh, thank God--"

  "Em," Melanie interrupted, "is dead."

  "WHAT'S TAKING SO LONG?" Gus asked for the third time, pacing in front of the tiny window in the private room that had been assigned to Christopher. "If he's really all right, then how come they haven't brought him back yet?"

  James sat in the only chair, his head in his hands. He himself had seen the CT scans, and he'd never looked over one with such a fear of finding an intracranial contusion or an epidural hemorrhage. But Chris's brain was intact; his wounds superficial. They had taken him back to the ER to be stitched up by a surgeon; he would be monitored overnight and then sent for additional tests the next day.

  "Did he say anything to you? About what happened?"

  James shook his head. "He was scared, Gus. In pain. I wasn't going to push him." He stood up and leaned against the doorframe. "He asked where they'd brought Emily."

  Gus turned slowly. "You didn't tell him," she said.

  "No." James swallowed thickly. "At the time I didn't even think about it. About them being together when this happened."

  Gus crossed the room and slipped her arms around James. Even now, he stiffened; he had not been brought up to embrace in public places, and brushes with death did not alter the rules. "I don't want to think about it," she murmured, laying her cheek against his back. "I saw Melanie, and I keep imagining how easily that could have been me."

  James pushed her away and walked toward the radiator, belching out its heat. "What the hell were they thinking, driving through a bad neighborhood?"

  "What neighborhood?" Gus said, seizing on the new detail. "Where did the ambulance come in from?"

  James turned to her. "I don't know," he said. "I just assumed."

  Suddenly she was a woman with a mission. "I could go back down to Emergency while we're waiting," Gus said. "They have to have that sort of information logged." She strode purposefully toward the door, but as she went to pull it, it was opened from the outside. A male orderly wheeled in Chris, his head swathed in thick white bandages.

  She was rooted to the floor, unable to connect this sunken boy with the strong son who had towered over her just that morning. The nurse explained something that Gus didn't bother to listen to, and then she and the orderly left the room.

  Gus heard her own breathing providing a backbeat for the thin drip, drip of Chris's IV. His eyes were glassy with sedatives, unfocused with fear. Gus sat down on the edge of the bed and cradled him in her arms. "Ssh," she said, as he started to cry against the front of her sweater, first thin tears and then loud, unstoppable sobs. "It's all right."

  Within minutes Chris's hiccups leveled, and his eyes closed. Gus tried to hold him to her, even after his big body went slack in her arms. She glanced at James, who was sitting in the chair beside the hospital bed like a stiff and stoic sentry. He wanted to cry, but he wouldn't. James hadn't cried since he'd been seven.

  Gus did not like to cry around him, either. It was not that he ever told her she shouldn't, but the plain fact that now he wasn't as visibly upset as she was made her feel foolish rather than sensitive. She bit her lip and pulled open the door of the room, wanting to have her breakdown in private. In the hallway, she flattened her palms against the cool cinder block wall and tried to think of just yesterday, when she had gone grocery shopping and had cleaned the downstairs bathroom and had yelled at Chris for leaving the milk out on the kitchen counter all day so it spoiled. Yesterday, when everything had made sense.

  "Excuse me."

  Gus turned her head to see a tall, dark-haired woman. "I'm Detective-Sergeant Marrone of the Bainbridge police. Would you be Mrs. Harte?"

  She nodded and shook the policewoman's hand. "Were you the one who found them?"

  "No, I wasn't. But I was called in to the scene. I need to ask you some questions."

  "Oh," Gus said, surprised. "I thought you might be able to answer mine."

  Detective Marrone smiled; Gus was momentarily stunned at how beautiful that one transformation made her. "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours," she said.

  "I can't imagine I'll be much help," Gus said. "What did you want to know?"

  The detective took out a pad and a pen. "Did your son tell you he was going out tonight?"

  "Yes."

  "Did he tell you where he was going?"

  "No," Gus said. "But he's seventeen, and he's always been very responsible." She glanced at the hospital room door. "Until tonight," she added.

  "Uh-huh. Did you know Emily Gold, Mrs. Harte?"

  Gus immediately felt tears well in her eyes. Embarrassed, she swiped at them with the backs of her hands. "Yes," she said. "Em is ... was like a daughter to me."

  "And what was she to your son?"

  "His girlfriend." Gus was more confused now than before. Had Emily been involved in something illegal or dangerous? Was that why Chris had been driving through a bad neighborhood?

  She did not realize that she'd spoken aloud until Detective Marrone's brows drew together. "A bad neighborhood?"

  "Well," Gus said, coloring. "We know there was a gun involved."

  The detective snapped shut her notebook and started for the door. "I'd like to talk to Chris now," she said.

  "You can't," Gus insisted, blocking the other woman's way. "He's asleep. He needs his rest. Besides, he doesn't even know about Emily yet. We couldn't tell him, not like this. He loved her."

  Detective Marrone stared at Gus. "Maybe," she said. "But he also may have shot her."

  THEN

  Fall 1979

  From the way Melanie hefted the small brick of banana bread in the palm of her hand, her husband was not sure if she was planning to eat it or to throw it. She closed the front door, still shiny with new paint, and carried the loaf to the two cartons that were substituting as a makeshift kitchen table. With reverent fingers she touched the French-wire ribbon and untangled a card decorated with a hand-drawn horse. "'Welcome,'" she read, "'to the NEIGH-borhood.'"

  "Your veterinary reputation has preceded you," she said, handing the card to Michael.

  Michael scanned the brief message, smiled, and tore open the cellophane. "It's good," he said. "Try some?"

  Melanie paled. Even the thought of banana bread--of any food really--before noon made her queasy these days. Which was odd because every book she'd read on the subject of pregnancy--and she'd read many--said that by now, her fourth month, she should be feeling better. "I'll call to thank them," she said, retrieving the card. "Oh. My." She glanced up at Michael. "Gus and James. And they sent baked goods. Do you think they're ... you know?"

  "Gay?"

  "I would have said 'embarking on an alternative lifestyle.'"

  "But you didn't," Michael said, grinning. He lifted a box and started up the stairs.

  "Well," Melanie diplomatically announced, "whatever their ... orientation, I'm sure they're perfectly nice." But as she dialed, she was wondering again what kind of town they had move
d to.

  She had not wanted to come to Bainbridge; she'd been perfectly happy in Boston, and even that was a stretch from her native Ohio. But this town might as well have been on the edge of nowhere, and she had never been very good at forging friendships, and couldn't Michael have found large animals to minister to somewhere farther south?

  A woman answered on the third ring. "Grand Central Station," the voice said, and Melanie slammed down the phone. She redialed more carefully, this time getting the same voice with a smile in it, crisply saying, "Hartes."

  "Yes," Melanie said. "I'm calling from next door. Melanie Gold. I wanted to thank the Hartes for the bread."

  "Oh, great. You got it. Are you all moved in yet?"

  There was a silence while Melanie wondered who this person was and what protocol was in this part of the country; if one went about revealing one's whole life to a housekeeper or nanny. "Is James or Gus there?" Melanie asked quietly. "I, um, would like to introduce myself."

  "I'm Gus," the woman said.

  "But you're not a man," Melanie blurted.

  Gus Harte laughed. "You mean you thought--wow! Nope, sorry to disappoint, but last time I checked I was female. Gus, as in Augusta. But no one's called me that since my grandmother died trying to. Hey, do you need a hand over there? James is out and I've cleaned my living room to within an inch of its life. I've got nothing to do." Before Melanie could demur, Gus made the decision for her. "Leave the door open," she said. "I'll be there in a few minutes."

  Melanie was still staring at the receiver when Michael came back into the kitchen, carrying a large carton of china. "Did you talk to Gus Harte?" he grunted. "What's he like?"

  She had just opened her mouth to answer when the front door burst open, slamming back against its hinges on a gust of wind to reveal an extremely pregnant woman with a festival of wild hair and the incongruously sweet smile of a saint.