The Night Season (8 page)

CHAPTER

14

Crash carts, up
close, looked like Craftsman auto supply tool chests. Take away the IV pole, the green oxygen tank, and that’s what you were left with—a sturdy, waist-high red metal chest of drawers, each drawer tidily labeled. But instead of
SOCKET WRENCHES
and
HEX BOLTS
, these drawers were labeled
BREATHING
and
CIRCULATION
.

Susan wasn’t crying. It surprised her. She would probably cry later. But right now she just felt a shattering sense of dread.

The door to Henry’s room was wide open, but Claire wasn’t looking. She was outside the door, in the hallway, her back against the wall, turned away from Henry, both hands over her mouth. Why did people do that? Susan wondered. Were they trying to keep their emotions in, or keep the world out?

Archie was in the hall, next to Claire. He had his hand on her upper arm. He was just standing there with her, in his blue-and-white gown and white robe, his bare calves and hospital slippers. Susan envied their closeness. They looked like they were holding each other up. She hugged her own arms across her chest.

Claire. Henry. Archie. They had known each other so long, been through so much. Susan felt like an interloper, like maybe she should go. Who was she to them, anyway? She still couldn’t figure out exactly what Archie thought of her.

But while Claire didn’t seem to be able to bring herself to look, Susan couldn’t bring herself to look away.

There were things that Susan wished she didn’t know. Details she’d picked up through the years of writing stories that haunted her still. The ingredients in movie theater popcorn butter, for instance. The amounts of fecal matter that can be found in most bowling ball finger holes. And how long a bedbug can live between feedings (one year).

Right now Susan was wishing that she hadn’t done the story about defibrillation. Because she knew that patients rarely survived if they needed more than three shocks.

And Henry had already had two.

She looked over at Archie and Claire again. They were sharing some private moment, heads close. Were they praying? Susan had never asked Archie about religion. She figured that if he had any, he’d given it up in that basement with Gretchen Lowell.

Susan didn’t know how to pray. She couldn’t think of a single prayer. She wondered, if she Googled one on her phone, if it would count. Probably not. She should have taken that theology class in college. Most of her religious education came from playing Mary Magdalene in a high school production of
Jesus Christ Superstar
. That’s where growing up with hippies got you.

When her father died, her mother read from
The Tibetan Book of the Dead:

Remember the clear light, the pure clear white light from which everything in the universe comes, to which everything in the universe returns; the original nature of your own mind. The natural state of the universe unmanifest.

Susan still didn’t know what it meant.

Henry’s mouth opened and closed, like a fish gasping for water on dry land. His tongue pushed past his lips, then retracted. His elbows were bent and his arms writhed slowly at his sides.

But he wasn’t alive.

It was muscle spasms, from the first two shocks.

It was better that Claire and Archie didn’t see this.

“Stand clear,” the automated external defibrillator said. “Do not touch the patient. Analyzing rhythm.” The computerized female voice sounded like one of those GPS navigation ladies. Calm. Competent. Bossy.

Defibrillators had come a long way since they’d tried to revive Susan’s father with panels that looked like a pair of travel irons.

Henry’s hospital gown was open and his gray-haired chest was bare except for two white adhesive pads, one on his right shoulder above the nipple, the other on his left flank at the bottom of his rib cage. White wires stretched from the pads to the machine on the crash cart. He looked ashen and sunken, like an old man.

They’d used a dummy the day that Susan had seen the new AEDs demonstrated. The machines saved time. In the old days, there’d been crash teams—someone from cardiology, respiration. It took a village to read the ECG, interpret it, and operate the machine. With the AEDs, the nearest medical staff could begin defib immediately.

This was what they’d said at the press conference when the hospital had switched to the new technology.

“Stand clear,” the AED said again. “Do not touch the patient. Analyzing rhythm.”

It was so quiet then that Susan could hear her pulse beating in her ears. Her throat swelled.

The five medical personnel in the room stood in suspended animation around Henry’s bed, waiting for the shock.

People didn’t arch their backs and jerk off the table the way they did on hospital shows. They just sort of flinched. No one had talked about that at the press conference.

“Come on,” one of the doctors said, like he was in his car and the engine wouldn’t turn over.

Susan felt Archie looking at her and glanced over at him. She knew that he could hear the quiet, too. He was watching her, waiting for the slump of her shoulders, the tremble of her jaw—some clue that it was over. Claire had sunk down to the floor and was resting her head on her knees. It had been too long. You didn’t need a press conference on defibrillation to know that.

Susan turned her gaze back into the room, just in time to see the AED administer the third shock.

Remember the clear light, the pure clear white light from which everything in the universe comes, to which everything in the universe returns; the original nature of your own mind. The natural state of the universe unmanifest.

She saw Henry wince. Like someone startled by a distant sound.

She held her breath. The pulse in her ears thrummed.

“Check pulse,” the AED said calmly. “If no pulse, give CPR.”

Susan couldn’t see the heart monitor, not that she could have made anything of it. It had the attention of everyone in the room, though. They watched it without blinking, without moving a muscle, like they were at mission control waiting for Neil Armstrong to announce that he’d landed on the moon.

One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

Susan had always gotten in Henry’s way. She’d annoyed him from the start. He’d been trying to protect Archie, and she came along intent on making Archie relive his nightmare. Henry had tried to protect her, too, to keep her safe. But she’d ignored every warning he’d ever tossed her way, nearly getting herself killed in the process. That was how she was with men in authority. She either rebelled against them with all her might, or fell in love. Never anything in between.

Wait.

Henry’s jaw moved.

Not a muscle spasm. Susan didn’t know how, but she knew it to be true without hesitation. This was something different. Something intentional. His jaw opened. His chest—which had seemed so sunken and pale, so decrepit—expanded and lifted. His skin flushed.

“He’s breathing,” someone said.

Susan felt hot tears running down her cheeks. If Henry lived through this, she would listen to him, she wouldn’t get in the way, she’d be less annoying.

Please, God. I promise.

“We’ve got a heartbeat,” someone else said. “It’s getting stronger.”

Susan turned toward Archie and Claire and grinned, wiping her face with her sleeve. They had heard. Archie was already helping Claire to her feet.

Susan’s phone rang. She knew who it was. She reached into her purse and turned off the volume.

CHAPTER

15

Archie was used
to pain. There was the physical pain—the ribs that still ached where Gretchen had broken them, the acid that burned deep in his throat where the poison Gretchen had fed him had eaten through his esophagus. He’d mostly learned to live with it. He’d taught himself not to take deep breaths, to sit up when he ate, to sleep on his back. The emotional pain had taken longer. But he could look at himself in the mirror now, scars and all. He could spend time with his children without the crushing weight of guilt that clung to him like a smell.

There was always pain.

The trick was to make it part of you.

The machine inhaling and exhaling for Henry made breathing sound easy. Steady, strong. Each breath exactly the same as the last. You could trick yourself into taking that kind of breathing for granted.

It was eleven
P.M.
, and the hospital was quiet. They’d moved Henry to the ICU, a land without doors, where all the patient rooms had three walls and were open to a central area, like a hospital dollhouse or a TV sitcom set. Everything in there was made out of molded tan plastic that reminded Archie of school cafeteria trays. Speckled linoleum floors; a soap pump and paper towel dispenser on the wall above a sink. The effect was part cheap motel, part public restroom.

Archie was sitting there in sweatpants and a sweatshirt borrowed from some hospital storeroom, his own clothes a wet bundle in a plastic bag at his feet, next to his coat.

The ecosystem had been restored, everything was in order.

Henry was alive for now, heart beating, blood pumping. But the tox screens hadn’t turned up anything yet, so there was nothing the doctors could do but try to keep Henry breathing until his body fought off whatever was shutting it down. Archie wasn’t about to sit around and wait for Henry’s heart to stop again.

There were plenty of things that Archie wasn’t good at. He knew that. He could tick them off like the names of family members. He hadn’t been a good husband. He’d been weak, self-indulgent, and careless. He’d given in to temptation, and lied. He’d disappointed the people who depended on him. But he was a good detective, always a good detective—always that. He could find killers. He could save lives.

The front of his head throbbed. He pushed a thumb and forefinger against his sinuses. He could taste the river water at the back of his throat, rusty and dank like flat cola. It was the middle of the night, but sleep was still far off. He was vaguely aware that Claire had gone downstairs to meet her sister. He hadn’t known that Claire had a sister. But she was here now. That was good. The sister would be here for Claire, Claire for Henry. That meant that Archie could go and do the thing he was good at—his job.

They had to get back to the park. They had to re-create Henry’s last steps. Archie’s team was already down there. They had to stay ahead of the flood.

He’d apparently lost his boots in the river. The sweats and hospital booties would get him out the door. But he had to go back to his apartment to change before he could work.

But first Archie had to talk to the boy.

The boy had to have gone in the river at least a half mile from where Henry had been found. There had been thousands of people between them. But Gretchen had taught Archie not to believe in coincidence, and he wondered now if the attack on Henry and the boy going into the Willamette were related somehow. Had Henry seen something? Had he tried to help?

Archie leaned forward and cupped a hand on Henry’s arm. It was cooler than it should have been, like something not quite alive. Henry’s eyes were closed, and a faint sheen of sweat glazed his forehead. A vein zigzagged across his temple.

“Keep an eye on things here for me,” Archie said. His voice sounded rough and loud in the silence.

He stepped out of the room and nearly ran into Susan, who had her hands filled with individually wrapped packets of saltines and was carrying a tower of foil-topped plastic containers of orange juice pinned between her chin and fist.

“I’ve got food,” she said. Her raspberry-colored hair looked especially wild, electric from the rain and hospital lights. She seemed to see him notice it, and blew at a piece that had flopped over one eye. It fluttered up, and then fell back exactly where it had been. She’d taken off her yellow raincoat and tied it around her waist.

A nurse scrambled out from behind a desk. Her scrubs were pink and fitted, with cargo pockets on the pants. Her blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail. At first Archie thought she was going to admonish him for having left the ER, but she was glaring at Susan’s armload of snacks. “You can’t just take all that,” she said to Susan.

Susan rotated a half step and shielded the food. “It was in unlocked cabinets.”

Archie stepped between them. “I need to talk to the boy I came in with,” he said to the nurse. He used his best voice-of-authority, though the sweat suit probably worked against him. The elastic waistband barely stayed up over his hips.

The nurse pulled at her ponytail. “He’s resting.”

“It’s police business,” Archie said, a little more firmly.

Her upper lip tightened. She had the telltale fine lines of a smoker around her mouth. “I’ll have to check with my supervisor.” She turned and hurried off. Her white sneakers didn’t make a sound on the linoleum.

Archie held on to his bag of clothes and waited. If they wouldn’t let him talk to the kid, there wasn’t much he could do about it. He looked back toward Henry’s room, but he could only see Henry’s feet from here. A pair of lumps under a tan blanket. Archie thought he could still hear the machine, though: inhaling, exhaling …

Susan cleared her throat.

Archie glanced over at her. She was still balancing that ridiculous column of juice. The hair was still in her face.

“Room eleven,” she said in a stage whisper.

It took him a second.

She jerked her head in the direction of the nurses’ station, and Archie followed her gaze until he noticed the giant whiteboard hung on the wall. On it were the names and room numbers of every patient on the ward.
JOHN DOE
,
HYPOTHERMIA
,
ROOM 11
.

The kid was still listed as John Doe. It had been two hours since they’d been brought in. It had to be all over the news. But if they didn’t have a name, it meant that the boy hadn’t been claimed.

How does a kid disappear during a flood and nobody notice?

Henry was in room three.

The ICU was horseshoe-shaped. For luck, Archie would have joked, if he’d been feeling lighter-hearted.

He started walking, counting down the dollhouse rooms as he went, Susan on his heels, still with the snacks. There wasn’t a hallway, just a variation in linoleum tile color, a thick black path on the floor where a hallway might have been. Archie glanced in at each bed they passed, finding only slack, unconscious faces. No balloons. No flowers. Unanimated like that, even the people looked the same.

“Next one,” Susan said.

Room eleven.

Three walls. A sink. A wood-grain-veneer cabinet. Same colors and bathroom aesthetic. Except the tan molded plastic bed in this room was empty. Someone had been there, and recently. The white sheets were thrown back, the pillow dented. But there was no one in the room now.

Archie checked the number above the bed.

It was the right room. Archie recognized what looked to be heating blankets cast aside on the floor.

“Maybe he checked out,” Susan said.

Had his parents come and gotten him after all?

The nurse in pink scrubs silently jogged up in her white sneakers. Another woman, older and sturdier, followed behind her.

The pink nurse squinted at Archie and gave him a disapproving frown. “You can’t…” she started to say, but trailed off when she saw the empty bed. Her eyes widened. She was wearing blue mascara.

“Where is he?” Archie asked.

She looked over at the other nurse, who was wearing green scrubs—old-school, no cargo pants for her—and glasses around her neck on a practical-looking gold chain. A tiny silver angel was pinned above her heart. Pink’s supervisor, Archie guessed.

The pink nurse hesitated and fluttered a hand in the air. “He should be here,” she said.

Susan was still holding the snacks, though no one seemed that concerned about it anymore.

They all stood staring at the empty bed like it might get up and walk off, too.

“Marcie,” the supervisor called calmly to someone back at the desk, “did eleven get taken somewhere for tests?”

“No,” Marcie called back.

“Then where is he?” Archie said again between gritted teeth.

“Check the bathroom,” the supervisor said, and the pink nurse scrambled to a nearby door and opened it.

“Empty,” she reported.

They all looked helplessly at one another.

How could a kid just disappear from an ICU? A kid nobody reports missing, and nobody notices walk away from his hospital bed in the dead of night.

“Call security,” Archie said. “Maybe he’s still in the hospital.”

“We never got his name,” the supervisor said, almost to herself. “He never said a word.”

Susan moved forward, and Archie almost told her to stop, to stay out of the boy’s room, but there was something about her sudden purpose that made him wait. He watched as she walked up to the bed and opened her arms and let the juice containers and saltine packets tumble onto the mattress.

“She can’t just take all those snacks,” the pink nurse said again.

“No one cares about the snacks, Heather,” her supervisor snapped.

Susan dropped to her hands and knees and reached under the bed. No one moved. Susan withdrew her hand from under the bed. There was something in it. She rocked back on her heels and held her hand out toward Archie, palm up, like a street kid looking for a buck.

Archie shuffled forward and stared down at the object on Susan’s palm. It was rusted metal and looked like a key, but it was tiny—the size of a tack. Like something that would open a very small door.

“What is it?” Archie asked.

“Search me,” Susan said.