Authors: Charles Martin
"I can't live like this! I can't! Please! What kind of a sick life is this?" Cindy pulled at her shirt. `Just cut me open. Take mine. I don't want it anymore, and if she can't live, I don't want to." She cried and shook her head as though bees were stinging her face.
I held her tight and said nothing. I felt the release, the warmth of tears on my chest, the rise and fall of anguish and despair.
How many times had I wanted to scream the same way? To purge myself and release the pain in my soul. But somehow, I never had. Maybe those who felt free to do so were only those who didn't possess the guilt of having put the pain there in the first place.
Minutes passed. Finally she wiped her eyes, sat back in the seat, and propped her feet on the dashboard. I put the stick in drive, and we wound slowly through the campus and into the drivethrough at The Varsity. I ordered a shake and a PC: short for "pure chocolate." Nothing but some chocolate milk poured over crushed ice. When the drinks arrived, we sipped in silence.
A WEEK PASSED. A LONG ONE. ANNIE HAD GROWN QUIET SINCE she woke, but she took the news as well as could be expected. While I tinkered with the surface coating on the Hacker and the surface coating on my heart, Cindy and Annie read some of the books in my house and ran their toes through the sand along the shore of the lake.
Without their knowledge, Royer and I had delivered a perfusion machine to Rabun County, along with half the sixteen pints of blood donated by her many friends. It was a just-in-case precaution. If Annie ran into trouble and we were lucky enough to get her to Rabun, that machine would give us options that we might not have otherwise. We also, with Annie's knowledge, gave her stepped-up doses of what might be considered ultrahigh amounts of antibiotics. Since we had given her the painful shots in her legs, we had kept Annie's blood swimming in the best and most aggressive antibiotics we could administer without killing her.
One morning, after I had made her swallow her horse pills, she gulped, wrinkled her lips, and then tugged on the leg of my jeans. I knelt on the kitchen floor and brought my face level to hers. Reaching behind her neck, she unclasped her sandal, gave it a long look, and motioned me closer. As I leaned in, she hung it around my neck. "It's yours now."
Cindy held up the doorframe and watched, her eyes on Annie.
I shook my head. "Annie, I can't. . ."
Annie shook her head, held out her hand like a stop sign, and took a deep breath. "Nope, we've talked about it." She looked at Cindy, Cindy looked at me, and Annie looked back. "Besides, I already told you ... I won't need it."
I looked down and read the thumb-worn letters on the back.
Annie continued, "But! There's one condition."
I looked up. "What's that?"
She stood up on her chair and pulled me up with her-her eyes level with mine. "You must always remember ..." She patted my heart gently with her hand.
My heart knew what was coming, and it took every ounce of strength within me to let her finish. The tears collected in the corners of my eyes, but she caught them before they fell.
"Whether I wake up or not ...... she whispered, "I'll have a new heart."
I picked her off the chair, wrapped my arms around her neck, and knew then that she was right.
IT WAS NOW LATE SEPTEMBER, WHAT CHARLIE AND I REFERRED to as the wet and ugly month. When the late summer hurricanes made their annual migration across Florida, they would demolish whatever cities happened to be in their paths, spin out their madness across the rest of the state, and then turn northeast and drive the residue of their systems up through Georgia and beyond. There they would continue their terror, mostly through rainfall, before flinging themselves back out into the northern Atlantic and disappearing.
Most systems spun out their anger and dwindled by the time they reached Atlanta, but occasionally, one system would reach the residue of another system moving south out of Canada. When those two systems collided, cold air from Canada hitting the warm air from the Gulf, problems arose. The Palm Sunday Killer caught everyone by surprise because of the time of year and the fact that, according to the weatherman, no system was soon to collide with any other system. I guess that's why it was remembered as a "killer."
At least with hurricanes, we knew to be on the lookout. Problem was, on Saturday evening, we were quietly listening for the ringing or pulsating of cell phones and pagers. Not the sound of a freight train pummeling straight up the lake.
There's not a train track within several miles of Lake Burton. Sometimes, at night, when the air is clear, you can hear a faraway whistle, but never during daylight hours. That's why the sound of a coming train brought me running out of the woodshop.
I saw the waterspout rising above the trees and felt the air charged with electricity. By the time I got to Annie, she had seen the spout and frozen in fear. I picked her up, and she and Cindy and I ran back toward the workshop. We reached the doors just as the trees started snapping around us. I turned, and the spout rose about a mile high out of the lake and toppled from side to side like a flag waving in the breeze.
I leaned against a rolling toolbox, inching it out of the way, and the roof started to shake. When the tin started peeling back and the glass windows shattered, I flipped their heart-of-pine kitchen table on end, covering half the door, rolled the toolbox in front of it to wedge it into place, and we slipped farther back into the L-shaped bunk room and turned the corner.
Inside the rock, it was quiet, damp, and very dark. We sat on my bunk, huddled together, unable to see our hands in front of our faces. Cindy cradled Annie in her lap while I blanketed the both of them. The noise and flashing light around the corner told me that the workshop was coming apart at the seams.
Behind it all, Annie was whispering. I could only hear bits and pieces.
"... bind up the brokenhearted ... beauty for ashes ... oil of joy for mourning ..."
For maybe thirty seconds, we braced for the blow that would bring the rock down around us, and then, just as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone. Blue light and silence crept around the corner. We sat in the dark rock hole, listening to the sound of our breathing. And that's when it hit me.
Annie had quit whispering.
I felt her wrist for a distal pulse and didn't find one. I touched her neck and felt the fibrillation.
In the dark, Cindy couldn't see what was going on, but she didn't need to. "Reese?" she said with the panic building.
I grabbed Annie and pushed against the table and toolbox that now lay on its side. I walked out into where the workshop had once been and looked around, but it was gone. Tools, power cords, and wood splinters covered the ground as though someone had taken a weed whacker to every tool I'd ever owned. The only thing still in its place was the concrete floor. The walls, roof, everything, had disappeared.
Before me lay the lake, scattered in debris that had once made up homes for miles down the lake. I looked for the boathouse, but the only thing that remained were the twenty-four pilings it had once stood on. No walls, no deck, no hammock. If I had to guess, I'd say the Hacker never even hit the water before the tornado gave it wings and sent it heavenward.
I looked at Annie. Her color was ashen, her lips blue, her eyes were falling back behind her lids, and her body was a twitching combination of limpness and lockjaw rigidity. She had maybe three minutes. If I could make it to the house, I might have time. I turned, but except for the chimney, the house too was gone. And along with it, everything I needed.
I laid Annie on the floor and flung open the drawer of the toolbox, slinging tools and parts of tools across the floor. Inside, I found Charlie's bag of barbecue basting utensils. Inside was the injecting needle. I pulled the needle, lit the lighter in my pocket, and fanned the needle through the flame.
While Cindy watched, I spoke slowly and didn't look at her. I nodded toward the bunk room. "The bag beneath the bed." I kept a small first-aid kit beneath our bunks in the event that either of its ever got cut or hurt in the workshop.
Cindy flung herself into the bunk room and just as quickly returned, dropping the bag on the ground and kneeling opposite me, awaiting orders.
I looked at her. "Do you trust me?"
She nodded and placed her hands along Annie's sides, as if to brace her for whatever I was about to do. I thought about Annie's body and how what I was about to do would ravage her body with infection. The only hope we had was that the stepped-up doses of antibiotics could hold off whatever would creep into her system until we could get her into a sterile field.
I pulled off the top of Annie's bathing suit, ran my fingers along her sternum, found the point I was looking for, and slammed the needle down and into her chest. When it pierced the pericardium, it showered me in Annie's blood, releasing the pressure. I pointed toward the toolbox and said as calmly as I could. "Second drawer, blue-handled pliers."
Cindy ripped open the drawer, fumbled through eight or ten different sets of pliers, until she found the angled wire cutters I was looking for. I turned Annie on her side and slit the skin along her rib. It was about that time Charlie climbed through the debris and out of the lake. He had a cut on his face, another cut somewhere on his head, and his left arm was hanging limp and lifeless. He spoke softly, "Stitch, what do you need?"
I knew from the look of the trees around me that there was no way I could get the Suburban down the drive and out onto the hard road. "I need a ride out of here." In the distance, I heard the high-pitched whine of a jet Ski screaming across the lake. "Get to the edge of the lake and wave your arms. If that's Termite, I need him."
Charlie disappeared, and the fear across Cindy's face told me all I needed to know. Annie had started breathing, but I had about one minute to patch the hole in her heart before I lost all ability to keep it pumping. I pointed at the bottle of Betadine and nodded at Cindy. "Cover my hands."
The sound of the Jet Ski approached, stopped, then screamed away as quickly as it had appeared. In ten seconds it was gone, and in all probability, Termite was traveling somewhere around ninety miles an hour across a lake littered with nail-split debris. Cindy doused my hands, turning them an ugly yellowish brown. I washed in Betadine and looked at her. She held out the pliers and nodded.
I opened a suture pack and bit the thread like a seamstress. I grabbed the pliers, clipped the rib, spread open the cavity, cut the pericardium, and there before me lay Annie's disease-ridden, sick and dying heart. With blue skies above and no roof or tree limbs to obstruct it, light was not a problem.
I found the small hole, which was not difficult, made five quick stitches, and pulled the purse string tight. Unlike Emma's, Annie's tissue was not brittle. Her youth might just get her to the hospital.
Annie's heart fibrillated, twitched violently, and jolted, pumping weakly but pumping. It held. Looking at the mess around me, we had fifteen minutes on the outside. After which Annie would most likely bleed to death if her heart didn't quit first.
I motioned to the cell phone on my belt. Cindy picked it up and dialed Royer without having to be told. Three seconds later she had him on the line. She nodded and held the phone for me to speak. My tone of voice told him as much as anything.
"Royer, transmural rupture with pericardial tamponade." In the distance I heard a ski boat screaming toward us. "We've got no fluids, and ten minutes max. Tell Life Flight I'll meet them on the meadow next to the trout hatchery."
"The what?!"
`Just tell them! They'll understand. And tell the folks at Rabun to get the pump up and running."
Annie's loss of fluids was about to become a problem, and I had no lactated Ringer's. I looked around. Think, Reese! Think!
Charlie reappeared, his left arm dangling. The picture of him, hurt and holding his arm, reminded me. I motioned again at the contents of the medical bag scattered around Cindy on the floor.
"That plastic bag there."
She picked it up, bit off a corner, and pulled out the IV tubing from inside.
"Good," I said. "Now, insert those needles into each end."
Cindy plugged the needle-tipped ends of the IV into the ends of the tubing, then held it out to me. Dipping it in Betadine, I inserted one end into my right arm, and immediately the tube filled with blood. When it began running out the other end, I dipped the other end in Betadine and inserted it into the large vein in Annie's right groin. The advantage of using so large a vein was that it would carry large amounts of my blood directly into Annie's heart.
I pulled the watch off my wrist and handed it to Cindy. "Tell me when eight minutes are up." I lifted Annie off the ground, made sure the line wasn't crimped, and walked quickly to the beach. When I got there, Termite was docking what looked like a cigarette boat. It was probably twenty-eight feet long, had two engines on the back, and looked like it would travel a hundred miles an hour. By the looks of Termite's face and hair, it had.
I stepped into the boat, Cindy and Charlie did likewise, and Termite looked at me. Panic and disbelief riddled his face.
"Termite," I said, "I need you to get us to the ramp at the hatchery."
He looked at Annie and nodded. I laid Annie down in the boat, her head toward the engines, and knelt above her. I was counting on gravity and the angle of the boat in the water to pull the blood more quickly down into her chest cavity-and brain.
"Termite," I said, looking up from Annie, "now. "
He threw the boat into reverse, backed us out of the finger, and then pushed the stick forward, never stopping. He slammed the stick as far forward as it would go. Cindy and Charlie braced in the seats next to me, I knelt over Annie, and the boat screamed across the glassy lake. When I saw the speedometer, we were moving at eighty-seven miles an hour.
Three minutes later, Termite turned the corner, slowed the boat to maybe thirty miles an hour, cut the engines, and trimmed them above the waterline. When they were clear, we hit the boat ramp square in the middle. The ramp launched us up along the carpeted runners and into the grassy meadow next to the playground along the hatchery. The boat slid along the grass and into the soft sand of the playground, where it dug in and slowed to a tilted stop.