Rewrite Redemption (42 page)

 “Constantine!” I screamed. The front of his shirt was red, and the stain was spreading fast.
Ohmygod!
He was hurt!

He was hurt bad.

Twitching erratically, he clutched his hand to his chest. He lifted it and blood dripped off his fingers. He stared at me, his mouth struggling to form words that never reached the air. Then his body jerked. His head fell back and he let out this terrifying moan.

I heard a sick, cackling laugh, and I looked up to see Joe tearing into the aspen trees, jerking, weaving, and waving a pistol. That stupid, stupid, son of a bitch shot my Constantine! And he was running towards
me
. Transfixed by fear, my brain froze. And my heart pounded so hard, it hurt to breathe. I searched frantically for something to use as a weapon. There was nothing. I had nothing. I had absolutely, freakin nothing.

But damn it! I wasn’t dead yet.

I leapt into frenetic, adrenaline action, ripping open Constantine’s shirt. Blood flowed out the wound and ran down the sides of his chest. I tore off my hoodie and flung it aside. I ripped off my pajama top and stuffed the soft side on the wound. I pressed hard, desperate to stop the bleeding.

The air pushed down on me, thick, heavy, and suffocating. Every movement I made was against the tide. I struggled to focus. Stop the blood. That’s all I knew. I needed to stop the blood. Me. There was no 911. “Constantine,” I cried again. “Please, please, be okay.” And in that horrifying moment I knew. I
loved
him! I did. I had to save him.

He let out a heartrending moan.

I let out a sob.

His eyes fluttered open. He stared up at me, trying desperately to speak. I heard a tattered whisper in my mind, but I couldn’t understand it. He took the bullet meant for me, and now he was going to die. I poured all my energy into him, but something was wrong. I was depleted by the run. I needed my tree. I needed
any
tree. He jerked with a spasm and sprayed me with blood. And then his eyes closed and he went limp.

“Noooo!” I screamed into the madness, willing for it to stop, willing for him to live, willing him not to leave me. In the distance, Remy Zero wailed, “Just save me…” It was sickening surreal, that horrible part in the movie, right before somebody dies.

I
hated
that part!

Joe stopped about thirty feet away, laughing like a lunatic. He fired a shot that scattered dirt over top of us. We’d pushed him over the edge, that’s for sure. He was practically foaming at the mouth. He hurled curses at me, calling me a witch, drawing it out, trying to scare me.

He did. I was terrified. He had a gun.

I had nothing.

Laughing manically, he fired a shot in the air just to screw with me. He fired another one at my feet, toying with me like a cat with a mouse.

I shoved the terror back with blazing determination. Looking the devil in the eye, I yanked the pepper spray out, and sprayed it in his direction. He backed off, sneering, and shaking wildly. I sprang into a crouch, ready to launch myself at him. But the second I let go of Constantine’s wound; it started gushing. I couldn’t leave him. And I had nothing. I had absolutely nothing.

But I wasn’t about to let the psycho see me cave.

“You stupid son of a bitch,” I hissed, trying to fake him out. “You’re going to regret the day you messed with me. You’re right. I
am
a witch and I put a curse on you. You better run
now
, or you’re a dead man. Go! Be gone!”

It didn’t work. He didn’t run. But he quit taunting me. He lowered the gun and spit on the ground. Then he got this crazed sneer on his face. “Time to die, witch!” he shrieked. He fired, the gun shaking with his fury.

I flinched as the bullet grazed my shoulder. Pain seared down my arm, but I ignored it. The psycho fired again, but he was out of bullets. He swore as he struggled to reload.

Trembling with fear, I tore my eyes away from him. I bent down and touched my cheek against Constantine’s, my tears mingling with his blood. “I love you,” I choked out, sobbing. “I love you,” I said again. If it was over, I had to tell him.

He lay silent on the ground.

An ugly snicker from Joe jerked me upright. He came closer this time, obviously no longer afraid of me. Stopping ten feet away, he swore and made the sign of the cross. He raised his gun again.

I shut my eyes and held my breath, trembling with terror. But there was a thwack and a then slurping sound.

Not
a boom.

I looked up to see a knife sticking through the psycho’s throat—Hosa’s knife.

Joe fell without sound, his hate-filled eyes turning empty as the life filtered out of them. He hit the ground, twitched, and then was still.

I looked around in disbelief. Hosa was propped on one elbow, face white from blood loss. His expression was grave. He gave me a little nod when our eyes met. I nodded back and turned to Constantine who was breathing in slow, staggering gasps.

A chance, we had a chance.

I knew this part. Maybe not life and death, but I knew hurt, and pain, and injury. I knew something about putting back together what a psycho had torn apart. I had practice with Ipod. I leapt into frenzied activity, shooting a look of gratitude at Hosa. “Press on your leg!” I yelled. “Stop the blood!” I wanted to help Hosa, but I wanted to help Constantine more.

Con’s face was white and his eyelids were bruised purple. His shallow breathing came in sharp wheezes as if someone was pounding on his chest. His hands rested limp at his side. His nails and lips were turning blue. I pressed my palm flat over the cloth and focused on stopping the gushing blood. This wound was big, way bigger than anything Ipod ever had.

I needed more.

I wasn’t touching a tree, and I couldn’t drag Constantine without letting go of the wound. I put my palm to the ground, searching, connecting, begging for help from the huge, ancient matrix of roots beneath me.
Hurry, hurry!

There was a second of nothing.

And then…the aspen grove
responded.

The air vibrated, and not just one tree, a chorus of trees, thousands of them sang their power. I gathered that power, and I pulled. I pulled
hard
. I pulled power from the ground, through Constantine’s back, pushing the bullet right through his chest. It just popped through the wound with a little sucking sound.

I grasped for the bullet, but my shaking fingers slipped on the blood. I took a corner of the shirt and used it to yank it out and stuff it in my pocket. I flowed calm across his forehead and pain relief down his chest. He’d need it for what I had to do next.

I pressed hard on the wound and focused on his lung. Somehow by touching him, I could see the lung—where it was torn, where it needed reinforcement—like I had a split screen in my head, one side showing a good lung, and the other showing his damaged one. I made his hurt lung match the one on the screen. I knitted it together and made it move up and down, pump oxygen through his body. I made it whole.

He gasped for air, clutching his throat.  

“Slow…take deep breaths,” I told him, touching my hand to his cheek. “It’s okay. You were shot, but the aspen grove is healing you. It’s over. We’re safe.”

He grabbed my arm and looked up at me, his eyes wide. I brushed his hair back and tried to smile to reassure him. His eyes closed again as he fought for air. His ragged breathing evened out. The color seeped slowly back into his face. His fingernails turned pink. He coughed up a pool of blood from his lungs. I turned him to the side so it could flow out onto the ground. Then I turned him back and wiped his face off with my bloodied pajama top.

He took a real breath.

I let mine go.

I turned to the wound itself, blood vessels to reattach, nerves to calm and restore function to. Then I fused the cracked rib and knit the muscle of his chest back together. I did it all without thinking. Something inside me just took over as if I’d done it a thousand times before. I didn’t question it. There was no time.

I began to breathe in harmony with him, tuning my energy to his frequency, and slowly pulled his breathing, his heartbeat, to a slower pace. I pulled the cloth away. His skin was red and angry, and there was a big, ugly scar where the bullet had pierced his chest. But it was closed, no stitches needed.

He opened his eyes, his beautiful, blue eyes, and my heart sang in harmony with the aspen trees. He looked up at me, and I could feel his heartbeat, strong and pulsing.

Thank you, thank you, thank you
, became the song my mind sang, over and over.
Thank you, thank you
…keeping time with his heart.

“Just lie still,” I said to Constantine. It was hard to leave his side, but he was no longer critical. I could speed up the healing later. I needed to move—this was triage. “I’ll be right back. Hosa’s hurt too.”

I ran to the Indian. When I crouched down beside him, he moved his hand, giving me access, gritting his teeth with the pain. Since he was conscious and breathing, and not on the immediate verge of dying, I focused on disbursing the pain. Once the pain was gone, his body would heal faster. I’d done it many times with Ipod; times when his beast of a father had beaten him so badly he could barely move. I broke up the pain and let it drain into the ground.

Hosa got a look of pure wonder on his face. His cheek muscles relaxed, and his mouth softened. He took a deep cleansing breath and closed his eyes for a moment in relief. But he opened them again to watch me intently as I worked on his leg.

I pulled again from the chorus of trees, pulled the energy through the back of Hosa’s leg, focusing on the metal inside, drawing it towards me. The bullet popped out of the wound, and Hosa reached down and pulled it out himself, actually grinning. He wiped it off on the cloth and stuck it in the pouch at his neck. He was one tough Indian.

I focused on healing the muscle and tissue. Then I closed up the wound. It was still red and warm to touch. But now it would heal clean. I gave it one more wave to jolt his white blood cells into action. I wanted to make sure there was no infection later when I wasn’t around to fix it. I knew that infections were dangerous in the olden days.

I sat back on my heels for a moment and took a breath. I wiped my hands on my pajama pants and shoved my tangled hair behind my shoulders.

Hosa reached out and touched my face. I smiled, patted his leg, and stood. We needed to go. I’d almost gotten us killed by delaying earlier. Edgar was still out there somewhere. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.

The sun had fully risen, and gentle morning light filtered down between the branches of the trees, dancing like fireflies over the tree bark and the two men lying on the ground. Bird song blended with the sound of aspen leaves rustling in the wind. Far, far in the distance music still softly played…Jeff Buckley’s
Hallelujah.
I thought about how we’d all soon be gone, but the music would continue to play with no one to hear it…a funeral dirge for the dead body of the psycho.

Then finally, the music would die too.

I felt a shiver of cold, and realized I was standing there in a thin tank top and blood-soaked pajama bottoms. Wrapping my arms around myself, I looked over at Constantine. He took a bullet for me. I would never forget that. He smiled weakly, and I felt a twinge of something that was so, so
not
the cold, dark emptiness. It was the opposite of it—a wonderful fullness.

“You saved my life,” he said. “You’re amazing.”

“You took a bullet for me,” I said. “So you saved me first.”

And he gave me the sweetest smile, a smile that reached his eyes, a smile that said I was worth taking a bullet for…a smile I knew I’d remember forever. The wonderful fullness inside me grew, and I laughed with delight. The sheer relief I felt to see him breathe without gasping was reason enough to laugh. But the look on his face was icing on the cake.

I walked over to where he was lying, head propped on my hoodie, hair falling in his eyes. “How does it feel?” I asked, kneeling down beside him.

“Excellent,” he answered, looking up at me. “At this moment in time my life is perfect. A few minutes ago, I was a dead man. But now I’m looking into the face of an angel. I’ve never felt more alive.”

“I mean your chest, you dummy,” I said, blushing.

“My chest…well, that’s a little sore, but the rest of me…perfecto.” He struggled to sit up, holding the arm on his bad side against his chest.

“Let me give you a hand,” I said.

I helped him lean back against the huge aspen trunk. He swished his tongue around his mouth and spat some remnants of blood in the grass. “Sorry,” he said, grimacing. “I’m a mess.” He wiped his sleeve across his mouth and gave me a funny look. “So are you. God, is that all
my
blood?”

I nodded. “Well, some is Hosa’s, I guess.”

“Sorry,” he said again. Then he got this concerned look on his face. “A.J., your arm is bleeding.”

I reached up and wiped a stream of drying blood off my arm with my pajama top. “It’s nothing,” I said, “just a flesh wound. It healed when the aspen grove healed you.” I refused to let myself think of how it could have been so much worse—how it almost was. It was over. We were okay. I think he felt the same way, because he just watched me without saying anything.