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"I know who you are. You're the premier doorknob caddy in all of Providence Plantations. You've got a wise mouth, and you pick the crackers out of the Chex Mix, and you hate math and…"
It's kind of cool, watching Campbell try to fill in all the blanks.
"… you like boys?" he finishes, but that one's a question.
"Some of them are okay," I admit, "but they probably all grow up to be like you."
He smiles. "God forbid."
"What are you going to do next?"
Campbell shrugs. "I may actually have to take on a paying case."
"So you can continue to support Julia in the style to which she's accustomed?"
"Yeah," he laughs. "Something like that."
It gets quiet for a moment, so all I can hear is the squelch of the windshield wipers. I slip my hands under my thighs, sit on them. "What you said at the trial… do you really think I'll be amazing in ten years?"
"Why, A
"Forget I said anything."
He glances at me. "Yes, I do. I imagine you'll be breaking guy's hearts, or painting in Montmartre, or flying fighter jets, or hiking through undiscovered countries." He pauses. "Maybe all of the above."
There was a time when, like Kate, I'd wanted to be a ballerina. But since then I've gone through a thousand different stages: I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to be a paleontologist. I wanted to be a backup singer for Aretha Franklin, a member of the Cabinet, a Yellowstone National Park ranger. Now, based on the day, I sometimes want to be a microsurgeon, a poet, a ghost hunter.
Only one thing's a constant. "Ten years from now," I say, "I'd like to be Kate's sister."
BRIAN
MY BEEPER GOES OFF just as Kate starts another course of dialysis. An MVA, two cars, with Pl-a motor vehicle accident with injuries. 'They need me," I tell Sara. 'You'll be okay?"
The ambulance is headed to the corner of Eddy and Fountain, a bad intersection to begin with, rendered worse by this weather. By the time I arrive, the cops have blocked off the area. It's a T-bone: the two vehicles rammed together by sheer force into a conglomerate of twisted steel. The truck made out better; the smaller BMW is literally bent like a smile around its front end. I get out of the car and into the pouring rain, find the first policeman I can. "Three injured," he says. "One's already en route."
I find Red working the Jaws of Life, trying to cut through the driver's side of the second car to get to the victims. "What have you got?" I shout over the sirens.
"First driver went through the windshield," he yells back. "Caesar took her in the ambulance. The second ambulance is on its way. There are two people in here, from what I can see, but both doors are accordions."
"Let me see if I can crawl over the top of the truck." I start to work my way up the slick metal and shattered glass. My foot goes through a hole I couldn't see in the flatbed, and I curse and try to get myself untangled. With careful movements I pull myself into the pleated cab of the truck, maneuver myself forward. The driver must have flown out the windshield over the height of the little BMW; the entire front end of the Ford-150 has plowed through the sports car's passenger side, as if it were made of paper.
I have to crawl out what was the window of the truck, because the engine is between me and whoever's inside the BMW. But if I twist myself a certain way, there is a tiny space where I can nearly fit myself, one that puts me up against the tempered glass, spiderweb-shattered, stained red with blood. And just as Red forces the driver's side door free with the Jaws and a dog comes whimpering out, I realize that the face pressed up against the other side of the broken window is A
"Get them out," I yell, "get them out now!" I do not know how I force myself back out of this snarled skeleton to knock Red out of the way; how I unhook Campbell Alexander from his seat belt and drag him to lay in the street with the rain pelting around him; how I reach inside to where my daughter is still and wide-eyed, strapped into her belt the way she is supposed to be and Jesus God no.
Paulie comes out of nowhere and lays his hands on her and before I know what I'm doing I deck him, sending him sprawling. "Fuck, Brian," he says, holding his jaw.
"It's A
When they understand, they try to hold me back and do this work for me, but it is my baby, my baby, and I am having none of it. I get her onto a backboard and strap her down, let them load her onto the ambulance. I tip back the bottom of her chin, ready to intubate, but see the little scar she got from falling on Jesse's ice skate, and fall apart. Red moves me aside and does it instead, then takes her pulse. "It's weak, Cap," he says, "but it's there."
He puts in an IV line while I pick up the radio and call in our ETA. 'Thirteen-year-old female, MVA, severe closed head injury…" When the cardiac monitor blanks out, I drop the receiver and start CPR. "Get the paddles," I order, and I pull open A
We bag her and put in an IV. Paulie screams into the loading zone for ambulances and throws open the back doors. On the trailer, A
They will not let me into the trauma room. A flock of firefighters dribble in for support. One of them goes up to get Sara, who arrives frantic. "Where is she? What happened?"
"A car accident," I manage. "I didn't know who it was until I got there." My eyes fill up. Do I tell her that she is not breathing independently? Do I tell her that the EKG flatlined? Do I tell her that I have spent the past few minutes questioning every single thing I did on that call, from the way I crawled over the truck to the moment I pulled her from the wreckage, certain that my emotion compromised what should have been done, what could have been done?
At that moment I hear Campbell Alexander, and the sound of something being thrown against a wall. "Goddammit," he says. "Just tell me whether or not she was brought here!"
He bursts out of the doorway of another trauma room, his arm in a cast, his clothes bloodied. The dog, limping, is at his side. Immediately, Campbell's eyes home in on mine. "Where's A
I don't answer, because what the hell can I say. And that's all it takes for him to understand. "Oh, Jesus," he whispers. "Oh God, no."
The doctor comes out of A
The sound that comes out of me is primal, inhuman, all-knowing. "What does that mean?" Sara's words peck at me. "What is he saying, Brian?"
"A
There are stars in the night sky that look brighter than the others, and when you look at them through a telescope you realize you are looking at twins. The two stars rotate around each other, sometimes taking nearly a hundred years to do it. They create so much gravitational pull there's no room around for anything else. You might see a blue star, for example, and realize only later that it has a white dwarf as a companion-that first one shines so bright, by the time you notice the second one, it's really too late.