کتاب 06-07

7

Later, Nick told Harper everything, using a combination of sign language and notes. He was there for the whole thing. He was holding Father Storey’s hand when the old man stopped breathing.

Nick had been in a nervous state when Harper left with Ben to hit the ambulance. Somehow he had worked out what was up and was sure someone was going to die. Michael Lindqvist had tried to settle him down. They had beans and tea and played Battleship. The second time Nick yawned, Michael said it was time for a nap, and even though Nick said he wasn’t tired, he was asleep in the cot next to his grandfather inside of five minutes.

He had a dream of light falling in the darkness, a torch dropping from a sky of midnight blue. The torch plummeted behind some hills and there was a red flash and the world began to shiver and rattle, as if some hidden scaffolding beneath the green grass were coming apart. Nick jumped awake, but the clattering sound continued.

Which was when he saw it: Father Storey’s head snapping from side to side and foam running from the corners of his mouth. Father Storey’s whole bed jittered and shook. Nick ran into the waiting room, where Michael was on watch, flipping through a Ranger Rick that was older than Nick himself. He dragged Michael off the couch and propelled him into the ward, hauled him along to Father Storey’s bedside. Michael froze at the foot of the cot, rigid with shock.

Nick ran around his cot to his little satchel of clothes and books and dug out the most valuable item in all the world that night: his slide whistle. He shoved up a window and began to blow.

It was not the Fireman who answered the call, but Allie, and half a dozen Lookouts. By the time they got there, Father Storey had gone still. His chest had ceased its labored rise and fall. His eyelids had a gray, sickly pallor. Nick held his cold, gaunt hand, the skin loose on the bones, while Michael wept with the savagery of a small, bereft child.

Allie brushed past them both. She used a finger to scoop the foam and vomit out of Father Storey’s mouth, put her lips over his, and exhaled into his lungs. She braided her fingers together and began to thrust against the center of his chest. She had learned CPR two summers before, when she was a counselor-in-training at Camp Wyndham, had received her instruction and certification from John Rookwood. So: in some ways the Fireman had answered the whistle after all.

She was at it for close to five minutes, a long, desperate, silent, timeless time, driving her hands down onto his chest and breathing into his mouth in front of a steadily growing audience. But it wasn’t until Carol arrived—until she shoved through the curtain and screamed, “Dad!”—that Father Storey coughed, gagged, and with a weary sigh, began to breathe on his own again.

Aunt Carol called him back from the dead, Nick wrote Harper.

Your sister called him back, Harper scribbled in reply, but she had the unpleasant notion that most people would think the same as Nick and would credit Carol with a kind of miracle. After all, she already drove back death by leading them in song every day. Was this really so different? Once again she had confronted death, armed only with her voice, and once again the doomed had been saved.

Harper spent an hour at Father Storey’s side, removing the feeding tube she had run down his nostril, getting him on a clean drip, changing his diaper and the pillowcase, which was stained with an acrid-smelling mix of vomit and blood. His pulse was strong but erratic, speeding along for a few beats, slowing, then staggering back into a hurry. His whiskery face was gray, almost colorless, and his eyelids were open on slits to show the whites of his eyes.

A stroke, she thought. He was stroking out, a little at a time. Whatever she had hoped or believed up until then, she thought now it was very unlikely the good old man would ever open his eyes or give her a smile again.

She dug up tweezers, sterile thread, a needle, bandages, and iodine, and went looking for Ben Patchett. By then it was early morning, the light watery and dismal, which perfectly mirrored how she felt.

She found Ben with Carol in the waiting room. He sat with one cheek of his ass on the edge of the coffee table, keeping his weight off the other cheek. He had been methodically picking the largest pieces of glass out of his face and arm and making a pile of them: a glistening heap of bright shards and shiny red needles.

Most of the rest had left, though Michael and Allie remained. They sat on the couch, holding hands. Michael had stopped crying, but there were white lines etched on his cheeks, tracing the path of his tears. Jamie leaned against the door. The side of her face was swollen in a ripe red bruise.

Carol said, “He’s dying.”

“He’s stable. He’s getting fluids. I think he’s fine for now. You’re tired, Carol. You should go home. Try and rest. Your father needs you to be strong.”

“Yes. I will be. I intend exactly that. To be strong.” Carol fixed Harper with a fevered, unblinking stare. “Here is a thought for you. If my father had died, someone in this camp—maybe a few someones—would be glad. Whoever bashed in his head is praying for him to die. You want sickness? There are people in this place who wish my father dead with all their hearts. Who probably wish me dead. I don’t know why. I can’t make sense of it. I only want us all to be safe . . . safe and good to each other. But there are some who want my father gone, who want me gone, who want to tear us apart and turn us against each other. That’s sickness, Nurse Willowes, and nothing you brought back from the ambulance can cure it. It can’t be cured. It can only be cut out.”

Harper thought Carol sounded overtired and overwrought and didn’t think this was worth replying to. She shifted her gaze to Allie. Harper wanted to thank her for saving Father Storey’s life, but when she opened her mouth, she remembered how Allie had stood there and watched while the other girls kicked snow on her and cut off her hair. The words died before they made it to her lips.

Instead, she spoke to Ben. “Come into the ward and get those pants off. I want to clean your wounds.”

Before Ben could rise to his feet, Carol spoke again. “You walked away from my father once and you were almost captured. You walked away a second time and my father had a fit and almost died. He did die. And was called back. You aren’t walking away again. You will stay here in the infirmary until he recovers.”

“Carol,” Harper said, struggling with all her heart for tenderness, “I can’t promise you he will recover. I don’t want to deceive you about his chances.”

“I don’t want to deceive you about yours, either,” Carol said. “You may think letting him die will make room for you and the Fireman—”

“What?” Harper asked.

“—but when my father’s time in this camp is over, so is yours, Ms. Willowes. If he dies, you’re done here. I want you to understand the stakes. You said yourself it is time for me to be strong. I agree. I need to be strong enough to hold people to account, and that is what I mean to do.”

The Dragonscale scrawled on Harper’s chest prickled painfully, heating up against her sweater.

“I will do everything I can,” Harper said, struggling to keep her voice even. “I love your father. So does John. He doesn’t have any interest in taking over or running the show. Neither do I! Carol, I just want a safe place to see this baby into the world. That’s it. I’m not looking to undermine anyone or anything. But you need to understand—if he does die—despite my best efforts—”

“If that happens you go,” Carol said. There was, suddenly, a new calm in her voice. She was sitting straighter, her pose almost regal. “And so I trust you will not let it happen.”

Harper’s breath was fast and short. For the second time in one night, she felt like she was pinned down, trapped by lethal fire. “I can’t promise I can keep him alive, Carol. No one could promise that. He’s been grievously injured, and his age makes a full recovery . . . very unlikely.” She paused, then said, “You don’t mean what you’re saying. Sending me away would put the whole camp at risk. What if I was picked up by the sort of people who tried to kill us tonight? They’d force me to tell everything I know—that’s what Ben says.”

“Not if your baby was here with us,” Carol said. “You’d keep quiet then, no matter what they did to you. Of course I wouldn’t send you away until after you gave birth, no matter what happens to my father. And of course I wouldn’t punish the infant by sending him away with you. That’s no way to treat a child. No. If my father dies, you go, but the baby will stay here with us to ensure your silence. I’d look after him myself.”