The Pact (2 page)

he thought, and did not notice the brake lights of a car at the end of Wood Hollow Road, already turning toward town.

Gus LAY ON THE SIDEWALK between a trio of teenagers with spiked green hair and a couple that was coming as close to sex as possible in a public venue. // Chris ever does that to his hair, she thought, we would . . . Would what? It had never been an issue because, for as long as Gus could remember, Chris had had the same slightly-longer-than-crew-cut hairstyle. And as for Romeo and Juliet here, on her right-well, that was a no-brainer also. As soon as it had begun to matter, Emily and Chris had started dating, which is what everyone had been rooting for in the first place. Four and a half hours from now, her client's sons would have prime seats at a Metallica concert. She'd go home and sleep. By the time she got back there, James would have returned from hunting (she assumed something was in season), Kate would be gearing up for a soccer game, and Chris might just be rolling out of bed. Then Gus would do what she did every other Saturday that she didn't have plans or an invasion of relatives: She'd go to Melanie's, or have Melanie come over, and they'd talk about work and teenagers and husbands. She had several good female friends, but Melanie was the only one for whom the house didn't have to be cleaned, for whom she didn't have to wear her makeup, and around whomrshe could say anything without fear of repercussions, or of looking truly stupid.

“Lady,” one of the green-haired kids said. “You got a smoke?” It came out in a rush, Yagottasmoke, so that at first Gus was stunned at the audacity of the statement. No, she wanted to say, I do not gotta, and you shouldn't either. Then she realized he was wagging a cigarette-at least she hoped it was just a cigarette-in front of her face. “Sorry,” she said, shaking her head.

It was impossible to believe that teenagers such as this existed, not when she had one like Chris, who seemed another breed entirely. Perhaps these children, with their stegosaurus hair and leather vests, only happened to look this way on the off hours, transforming themselves into scrubbed, well-mannered adolescents during the time they spent with their parents. Ridiculous, she told herself. Even the thought of Chris having an alter ego was out of the question. You couldn't give birth to someone and not sense that something so dramatic was going on.

She felt a humming against her hip and shifted, thinking that the amorous couple had gotten a little too close. But the buzzing didn't stop, and when she reached down to find the source she remembered her beeper, which she'd carried in her purse ever since she'd started up Other People's Time. It was James who insisted; what if he had to go back to the hospital and one of the kids needed something?

Of course, in the way that most preventative medicines work, just having the beeper had managed to ward off emergencies. It had beeped only twice in five years: once, when Kate called to ask where she kept the rug-cleaning supplies, and once when the batteries were low. She fished it out of the bottom of her purse and pushed the button that identified the caller. Her car phone. But who would be in her car at this time of night?

James had driven it home from the restaurant. After crawling out of her sleeping bag, Gus walked across the street to the nearest phone booth, graffitied with sausagelike initials. As soon as James picked up, she heard the hum of the road beneath the tires.

“Gus,” James said, his voice catching. “You've got to come.” And a moment later, leaving her sleeping bag behind, she started to run.

THEY WOULDN'T TAKE the lights out of his eyes. The fixtures hung over him, bright silver saucers that made him wince. He felt at least three people touching him-laying hands, shouting directions, cutting off his clothes. He could not move his arms or legs, and when he tried, he felt straps lacing across them, a collar anchoring his head.

“BP's falling,” said a woman. “It's only seventy over palp.”

“Pupils dilated but unresponsive. Christopher? Christopher? Can you hear me?”

"He's tachycardic. Get me two large-bore IVs, either fourteen or sixteen gauge, stat. Give him D-5

normal saline, wide open for a liter to start with, please. And I want to draw some bloods . .. get a CBC with diff, platelets, coags, cherri'20, UA, tox screen, and send a type and screen to the blood bank."

Then there was a stabbing pain in the crook of his arm and the sharp sound of ripping adhesive tape.

“What have we got?” asked a new voice, and the woman spoke again. “A holy mess,” she said. Chris felt a sharp prick near his forehead, which had him arcing against his restraints and floating back to the soft, warm hands of a nurse. “It's okay, Chris,” she soothed. How did they know his name?

“There's some visible cranium. Call radiology, we need them to clear the C-spine.” There was a scurry of noise, of yelling. Chris slid his eyes to the slit in the curtain off to his right and saw his father. This was the hospital; his father worked at the hospital. But he wasn't in his white coat. He was wearing street clothes, a shirt that wasn't even buttoned right. He was standing with Emily's parents, trying to get past a bunch of nurses who wouldn't let him by. Chris flailed so suddenly he managed to rip the IV out of his arm. He looked directly at Michael Gold and screamed, but there was no sound, no noise, just wave after wave of fear.

“I DON'T GIVE A FUCK about procedure,” James Harte said, and then there was a crash of instruments and a scuffle of footsteps that diverted the attention of the nurses enough to let him duck behind the stained curtain. His son was fighting backboard restraints and a Philadelphia collar. There was blood everywhere, all over his face and shirt and neck. “I'm Dr. Harte,” he said to the ER

physician who was barreling toward them. “Courtesy staff,” he added. He reached out and firmly grasped Chris's hand. “What's going on?”

“EMTs brought him in with a girl,” the doctor said quietly. “From what we can see, he's got a scalp laceration. We were about to send him to radiology to check skull and cervical vertebral fractures, and if they report back negative, we'll get him down to CT scan.”

James felt Chris squeeze his hand so tightly his wedding band dug into the skin. Surely, he thought, he's ail right if he has this strength. “Emily,” Chris whispered hoarsely. “Where'd they take Em?”

“James?” a tentative voice asked. He turned around to see Melanie and Michael hovering at the edge of the curtain, horrified, no doubt, by all that blood. God only knew how they'd gotten past the dragons at triage. “Is Chris all right?”

“He's fine,” James said, more for himself than for anyone else in the room. “He's going to be just fine.”

A resident hung up a telephone receiver. “Radiology's waiting,” she said. The ER doctor nodded toward James. “You can go with him,” he said. “Keep him calm.” James walked beside the gurney, but he did not let go of his son's hand. He began trotting as the ER

staff wheeled it more quickly past the Golds. “How's Emily?” he remembered to ask, and disappeared before they could answer.

The doctor who'd been attending Chris turned around. “You're Mr. and Mrs. Gold?” he asked. They came forward simultaneously.

“Can you step outside with me?”

The DOCTOR LED THEM to a small alcove behind the coffee machines, decorated with nubby blue couches and ugly Formica end tables, and Melanie instantly relaxed. She was a professional expert when it came to reading verbal or nonverbal clues. If they weren't being led to an examination room on the double, the danger must have passed. Maybe Emily was already up on a patient ward, or off to radiology as Chris was. Maybe she was being brought out to meet them.

“Please,” the doctor said. “Sit down.”

Melanie had every intention of standing, but her knees gave out from beneath her. Michael remained upright, frozen.

“I'm very sorry,” the doctor began, the only words that Melanie could not rework into anything but what they signified. She crumpled further, her body folding into itself, until her head was so deeply buried beneath her shaking arms that she could not hear what the man was saying.

“Your daughter was pronounced dead on arrival. There was a gunshot wound to the head. It was instantaneous; she didn't suffer.” He paused. “I'm going to need one of you to identify the body.” Michael tried to remember to blink his eyes. Before, it had always been an involuntary act, but right now everything-breathing, standing, being-was strictly tied to his own self-control. “I don't understand,” he said, in a voice too high to be his own. “She was with Chris Harte.”

“Yes,” the doctor said. “They were brought in together.”

“I don't understand,” Michael repeated, when what he really meant was How can she be dead if he's alive?

“Who did it?” Melanie forced out, her teeth clenched around the question as if it were a bone she had to keep possession of. “Who shot her?”

The doctor shook his head. “I don't know, Mrs. Gold. I'm sure the police who were at the scene will be here to talk to you shortly.”

Police?

“Are you ready to go?”

Michael stared at the doctor, wondering why on earth this man thought he ought to be leaving. Then he remembered. Emily. Her body.

He followed the doctor back into the ER. Was it his imagination or did the nurses look at him differently now? He passed cubicles with moaning, damaged, living people and finally stopped in front of a curtain with no noise, no bustle, no activity behind it. The doctor waited until Michael inclined his head, then drew back the blind.

Emily was lying on her back on a table. Michael took a step forward, resting his hand on her hair. Her forehead was smooth, still warm. The doctor was wrong; that was all. She was not dead, she could not be dead, she . .. He shifted his hand, and her head lolled toward him, allowing him to see the hole above her right ear, the size of a silver dollar, ragged on the edges and matted with dried blood. But no new blood was trickling.

“Mr. Gold?” the doctor said.

Michael nodded and ran out of the examination room. He ran past the man on the stretcher clutching his heart, four times older than Emily would ever be. He ran past the resident carrying a cup of coffee. He ran past Gus Harte, breathless and reaching for him. He picked up speed. Then he turned the corner, sank to his knees, and retched.

Gus HAD RUN the whole way to Bainbridge Memorial clutching hope to her chest, a package that grew heavier and more unwieldy with every step. But James was not in the ER waiting room, and all of her wishes for a manageable injury-a broken arm or a light concussion-had vanished when she'd stumbled upon Michael in the triage area. “Look again,” she demanded of the triage nurse.

“Christopher Harte. He's the son of Dr. James Harte.”

The nurse nodded. “He was in here a while ago,” she said. “I just don't know where they've taken him.” She glanced up sympathetically. “Why don't I pee if anyone else knows something?”

“Yes,” Gus said as imperiously as she could, wilting as soon as the nurse turned her back. She let her eyes roam over the serviceable Emergency entranceway, from the empty wheelchairs waiting like wallflowers at a dance to the television shackled to the ceiling. At the edge of the area, Gus saw a swatch of red fabric. She moved toward it, recognizing the scarlet overcoat she and Melanie had found for eighty percent off at Filene's.

“Mel?” Gus whispered. Melanie lifted her head, her face just as stricken as Michael's had been. “Is Emily hurt too?”

Melanie stared at her for a long moment. “No,” she said carefully. “Emily is not hurt.”

“Oh, thank God-”

“Em,” Melanie interrupted, “is dead.”

“WHAT'S TAKING SO LONG?” Gus asked for the third time, pacing in front of the tiny window in the private room that had been assigned to Christopher. “If he's really all right, then how come they haven't brought him back yet?”

James sat in the only chair, his head in his hands. He himself had seen the CT scans, and he'd never looked over one with such a fear of finding an intracranial contusion or an epidural hemorrhage. But Chris's brain was intact; his wounds superficial. They had taken him back to the ER to be stitched up by a surgeon; he would be monitored overnight and then sent for additional tests the next day.

“Did he say anything to you? About what happened?”

James shook his head. “He was scared, Gus. In pain. I wasn't going to push him.” He stood up and leaned against the doorframe. “He asked where they'd brought Emily.” Gus turned slowly. “You didn't tell him,” she said.

“No.” James swallowed thickly. “At the time I didn't even think about it. About them being together when this happened.”

Gus crossed the room and slipped her arms around James. Even now, he stiffened; he had not been brought up to embrace in public places, and brushes with death did not alter the rules. “I don't want to think about it,” she murmured, laying her cheek against his back. “I saw Melanie, and I keep imagining how easily that could have been me.”

James pushed her away and walked toward the radiator, belching out its heat. “What the hell were they thinking, driving through a bad neighborhood?”

“What neighborhood?” Gus said, seizing on the new detail. “Where did the ambulance come in from?”

James turned to her. “I don't know,” he said. “I just assumed.” Suddenly she was a woman with a mission. “I could go back down to Emergency while we're waiting,” Gus said. “They have to have that sort of information logged.” She strode purposefully toward the door, but as she went to pull it, it was opened from the outside. A male orderly wheeled in Chris, his head swathed in thick white bandages.

She was rooted to the floor, unable to connect this sunken boy with the strong son who had towered over her just that morning. The nurse explained something that Gus didn't bother to listen to, and then she and the orderly left the room.

Gus heard her own breathing providing a backbeat for the thin drip, drip of Chris's IV. His eyes were glassy with sedatives, unfocused with fear. Gus sat down on the edge of the bed and cradled him in her arms. “Ssh,” she said, as he started to cry against the front of her sweater, first thin tears and then loud, unstoppable sobs. “It's all right.”