Joe King
Jamie ran down the hallway in the direction Amanda indicated, checking names until he found Phillip’s room. “Why’s it locked, Mom?”
“They’re using oxygen,” explained Amanda as she and Joe caught up. “And there’s a really high chance of infection, so they have to be careful to make sure the only people who go in there are the ones who are supposed to.”
“But we’re supposed to, aren’t we? Right?”
“No, sweetheart.” She rested her hand on his shoulder. “That’s why the window’s there. When he’s moved to a regular room, they’ll let us go in, but even then, it won’t be for very long at a time, and we’ll have to scrub and wear masks and gloves first.”
“Why? Is he sick?” Although Jamie had stopped crying, his eyes were still bright with unshed tears. “I thought he was hurt. That’s not the same thing.”
“They say it’s because of the risk of infection,” she repeated, but to Joe’s ears it sounded half-hearted. Behind Jamie, she was wringing her hands, clearly wishing she was inside the room with their older son.
He laid his hand over hers to stop their motion and spoke to her in a low tone. “Are you sure he’ll be all right after seeing this?”
“I’m not going to be all right after seeing this,” she answered, equally low, although Jamie showed no sign of being aware they were speaking. “Or you, either. But he needs to see it to understand why everything’s going to be different for a while. He won’t if we try to hide it.”
“We could just tell him to —”
“No.” She was shaking her head. “He’d just…he won’t follow the rules if we’re not clear. And he’s stronger than you think. They both are. They’ve…” she trailed off as her breath hitched. “They’ve seen me in some pretty dangerous situations already, and hurt, too, but I always pulled through fine. And he might — they say he —”
He wrapped his hand tighter around hers. “We don’t know that yet.”
“But we know it’s…there’s no way it’s not going to take a while, sweetheart.” She lowered her voice, pitching it for Joe alone. “And this time we don’t have the Agency who’ll help us cushion the way they did before. They’ve — they’ve always been careful to help keep the kids out of danger, like they did when you’d been accused of the Prime Minister’s murder.”
“Why aren’t they doing that this time?”
“It’s not related to a case,” she answered. “I mean, we’ll still have normal security in place, and that’s not nothing, but there won’t be anything extra, the way there has been before…” she trailed off. “Before. You know what I mean.”
He nodded.
“Dad might, but I don’t,” said Jamie. “What are you talking about?”
“How grown-up you’re acting,” said Joe smoothly. “You’re really doing a great job handling all this, Jamie.”
He nodded awkwardly before turning back to the window, pressing his nose up against the glass. Phillip was almost unrecognizable, covered in bruises and swathed in bandages from the nose up. The proliferation of monitors, tubes, and other medical equipment around his bed dwarfed him, even though he’d started his adolescent growth spurt this past summer.
Tears had begun sliding down Jamie’s face again. “Is he going to die too?”
“We hope not,” said Amanda, “and it’s a good sign that he came through the surgery as well as he did.”
“But you said it’s going to be a while before things are normal. How long —” his voice caught. “How long is he going to be like…like that?”
“We don’t know, sweetheart. As long as it takes.”
“Will he be normal after?”
Amanda’s eyes dropped to the floor as she took a deep breath, and she began to wring her hands again. Joe remembered one of the nurses mentioning a rehabilitation center, and the doctor had said something about some of the damage potentially being permanent. It was going to be a long, difficult recovery and Phillip might not come all the way back to what he’d been like before.
He shook his head. There wasn’t yet any reason to think he still couldn’t have a normal childhood.
“Mom? Dad? You’re not answering me.”
“It’s too early to tell,” said Amanda quietly.
“Does he…does he know about Grandma?”
Amanda shook her head. Her eyes had become wet and glassy again. “He’s been unconscious since the wreck, Jamie. Even if he hadn’t been, we wouldn’t have told him right away. He needs to focus on getting better.”
“I guess that makes sense,” he said after thinking for a moment. “And I guess it’s good he’s not awake right now, either. All that stuff’s gotta hurt a lot.”
“Yeah,” she acknowledged. Her voice was rough and choked, and her eyes had already drifted back to the other side of the window.
“We’re gonna need to be strong for him, aren’t we?”
Amanda didn’t acknowledge that at all.
Joe stepped in again. “Looks like you’re already working on that, son. You’re right. He will need it. We’re all going to need help being strong. But none of us have to do it alone. That includes you.”
Jamie’s lips twitched. “That’s what Carrie said. And Lee said it won’t ever stop hurting completely, but we’ll get used to it. I guess he will, too, won’t he?”
He laid a hand on his shoulder. “I guess we all will.”
They stood there for a long while, watching without speaking, each of them lost in their own thoughts. The only sound was the steady beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor; another piece of equipment emitted periodic clicks as it cycled through whatever it was doing. Part of him wondered exactly what it was, but another part of him wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He’d seen injuries like this in Estoccia, but somehow, for some reason, this was different.
Of course it was different, he realized as Amanda shifted her stance beside him. This was his son. Their son, their oldest child that they’d made together out of what they’d imagined to be a long-term, sustainable love. Even if they’d been wrong about its nature, he had still come from something wonderful and amazing. He was a touchstone, a symbol, and one of the best things he’d ever had a hand in creating.
Not for the first time, he wondered how Carrie had so easily been willing to give up the idea of having children.
Because it wouldn’t be fair to them, her voice sounded in his head, and I don’t have to have had children to know what it’s like to raise them. She was the oldest of eight siblings. It takes time and energy, Joe, and a lot of both, and we can’t give them what they deserve and have our dreams too.
He found himself blinking away tears, wishing he’d realized this earlier, before he’d done so much damage to the children he already had.
But he had time now, didn’t he? Jamie was still here, and Phillip wasn’t gone. Why was he thinking this way?
Then his awareness sharpened, coming back to the present with a jolt, terminating any further rumination. One of the monitors had started beeping faster. Too fast, it sounded like, and he could dimly hear an alarm going off. Behind him, there were running feet, shouting voices, and then a nurse unlocked the room and rushed in, pulling a curtain across their window.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Don’t do that! We’re his family! What’s —” he stepped toward the door. “Don’t cut us off like that!”
Another nurse stopped him before he crossed into the room. “Mr. King, please. They’re trying to save him. Let them do their job.”
“But what’s going —” he cut himself off in horror. There was a new noise now, another one he’d heard before in Estoccia. One he’d hoped he never had to hear again: the loud buzz of electrical paddles as they charged. He peeked through an opening where the curtain hadn’t completely closed. A nurse was already placing the pads, one on Phillip’s upper chest and the other diagonal from it, nearer his abdomen.
“Clear!” someone shouted. There was a loud thunk, and then the beeping resumed. But it was erratic, wrong, and it accelerated even as the doctor who’d spoken with them earlier came running into the room, skidding slightly as he came to a stop.
The defibrillator finished its next charge cycle. “Clear!”
There was another thunk and then another series of beeps. They had no rhythm but got faster the longer they lasted.
Amanda was beside Joe, craning her neck. Her hands were to her mouth and tears were streaming down her cheeks.
“Damn you, don’t give up!” shouted the doctor. Joe belatedly remembered his name: Dawson. “There was no thoracic damage, nothing — where’s that EKG? Why the hell is he arresting?”
The nurses kept working, adjusting things, charging the defibrillator again and again even as he, Amanda, and Jamie moved from window to doorway. This time, no one stopped them or shoved them aside.
Something wrapped around Joe’s waist and hung on, hard, and he looked down to see Jamie’s face buried in his chest. He put his arms around his younger son and held on tight. Jamie shouldn’t be here. Jamie shouldn’t have to see something like this. Hell, Amanda had been right: none of them should have to see it.
She was keening softly under her breath. Freeing one of his arms, Joe wrapped it around her shoulders and pulled her close. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t anywhere near enough. But it was all he could do as they watched the scene unfold in front of them.
Another charge. Another thunk. Another spate of erratic, accelerating heartbeats. A nurse had a syringe and was injecting something into one of the IV lines. Joe peered at the label and was just able to make out the word epinephrine. Why? Phillip’s heartbeat was accelerating, not slowing down. Then he saw that his chest was fluttering, too, and that Phillip seemed to be struggling to breathe despite being on a ventilator.
Next to the nurse, the doctor was calling out information he didn’t understand, something about hidden thoracic damage and checking for evidence of any blows to the chest. Then he demanded another look at the CT scans, saying something about the medulla. Joe frowned. Wasn’t that a part of the brain?
They set off the defibrillator again, and this time the beeps continued their erratic rhythm without accelerating. He thought that should be a good sign, but Phillip was still fighting to breathe. A faint tinge of blood appeared around his lips, and his chest had developed a pink flush.
There was so much motion, so much activity, so many conflicting sights. The only indicator of how things were actually going was another of the nurses, swearing through tears. “Come on. Come on, don’t do this. You’re too young.”
The heart monitor sounded again. “Defib again, stat!”
Joe heard another buzz, and another thunk, but there were no beeps afterward. There was only a steady tone. The medical team kept working, kept fighting, kept demanding that Phillip find his way through whatever was going on. But nothing happened, and the pink flush on his chest slowly spread up his neck to his face. His fingers began turning the same color.
“No,” whispered Amanda. It would’ve been a scream, but she didn’t seem to be able to summon the volume. Two more nurses started crying.
“No, damn it!” shouted Dawson. His voice was angry and anguished at the same time. “Not this one, too!”
But the nurse at the head of the bed, the one who’d begun crying first, shook her head slowly. Dawson turned away, sweeping his hands across a nearby table and sending its contents crashing to the floor.
“No,” whispered Amanda again, and she fell to her knees. “Not Phillip. Not my son, too. Dear God, dear anyone, anything but this!” Her voice rose to a shriek. “Why are you giving up on him so quickly?”
“Ma’am,” said one of the other nurses. “It’s been twenty-eight minutes.”
In Joe’s arms, Jamie had turned around, and now he began to shake, too. Joe caught him, forcing himself to stay steady, knowing that was what the child needed. Inside, though, he was screaming the same words as Amanda: not Phillip. Not his son. Not this. Anything but this. He was too young. They needed more time with him. Parents weren’t supposed to lose their children!
The head nurse took a ragged breath. “I’m sorry. We have to call it.”
Amanda’s shrieks rose to screams, joined by Jamie as he broke free from Joe, running down the hall toward the waiting room and exit. Joe knew he should follow, but his feet felt as though they were made from lead. They only allowed him the two steps he needed to get next to the wall. He cried out at a sudden, sharp, searing pain in his knuckles. Another equipment failure?
No. The wall had a new hole in it, one that perfectly matched the size of his fist.
It wouldn’t take any time at all to fix it, he knew, but there was no more time. He’d run out of that, run out of chances, run out of everything that mattered.
How in the world was he supposed to go on from here?