The clinic is poorly equipped, an old EKG machine providing the information that her heart beats. A loud beeping begins as Shane probes within, looking for any bleeding that needs to be stopped. I step forward in alarm. Shane sticks a stethoscope against her chest as Mary pulls out a mask and Ambu bag and begins forcing air into Niahm’s lungs. Shane begins pushing on her chest. My own chest tightens in response. I hurry to stand near her head.
“Breath, Niahm, breath,” I plead. “Don’t leave me now, please, don’t leave.” I continue saying this over and over as Shane and Mary fight for her life. Finally they both stop, and I look at Shane with terror spiking throughout.
“She’s breathing,” he says. I release the breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“This girl needs a hospital,” Mary says.
“No,” Shane and Stacy say at the same time. Mary’s brows raise suspiciously.
“There are some bad men after us,” Stacy says urgently. “If they find her, they’ll finish what they started.”
I decide Shane must have given Stacy a little history while they waited for me. For Mary’s part, I doubt it’s a strange story in this world she lives in. She shakes her head and hands Shane some sterile gloves.
“Let’s get her sewed up, then,” she says. “Otherwise, this little girl is going to bleed to death.”
It’s over an hour later by the time Shane snips the final suture. Mary has placed an oxygen mask on Niahm, checking the printout on the EKG machine occasionally. Blood and IV solution drip slowly into her arm. Mary turns to the sink and wets a washcloth, and begins cleaning the blood from Niahm. There’s so much of it—too much.
Mary glances at her watch. “Well, the clinic is closed for the night. Normally I’d kick y’all out, but I suppose with this little deposit,” she pats her pocket which holds the money I’d dumped on the table, “I suppose you’re trustworthy enough.”
“Thanks, Mary, you’re a gem,” Shane tells her, kissing her cheek, causing the tough Mary to blush. She waves a dismissive hand at him and pulls her jacket on.
“You’re gonna want to lock the door behind us,” she says. “I suppose you’ll still be here in the morning.”
“If we can move her, we’ll go,” Shane says. Mary nods as if she’d been expecting that answer.
“Call this number,” she hands a card to Shane. “Joran is the night watchman who comes by to check the place. I’ll let him know you’re here, and that you’ll call if you’re leaving. He can come lock up.”
“Thank you, Mary. You’ve been amazing.” Shane squeezes her upper arm.
“You wanna come work here?” she asks, only half-teasing him. “We always need anyone with any kind of medical expertise.”
“I’d consider it just for you,” he says.
“Sure you would,” she laughs, following the burly man out the door. I hear Shane lock the door before coming back to where Stacy and I stand over Niahm. I have no doubt Stacy is willing her to live as hard as I am.
“We should try to get some sleep,” Shane says. Both Stacy and I give him a look which he interprets easily enough. “Fine, I’ll get some sleep while you watch over her. All we can do now is wait.” He pauses. “She’s lost a lot of blood. I didn’t see much internal bleeding, but without the proper equipment, I can’t say for certain.”
He crosses the narrow hallway into another room and I hear the gurney creak as he lies down on it. I turn my gaze to Stacy, who is pale and drawn.
“Stacy, you should try to sleep,” I say gently.
“What about you?” she shoots back.
“I don’t need much sleep,” I say honestly. “Shane doesn’t either. He’ll be back in here within the hour. We can watch her.”
Stacy shakes her head. “I’m not going anywhere, Sam. I would like some answers, though. For example, where is Jean? Why isn’t she with you guys?”
I look down at Niahm’s inert form, washed out and bloodless, her chest barely rising and falling. I’m not sure how much she can hear, so I don’t want to say anything that might interfere with her recovery.
“She created a distraction so Niahm could escape,” I say.
“What kind of distraction?” she presses.
“She’s fine, I’m sure,” I say. I think if they had her they wouldn’t have kept pursuing us.” It’s a blatant lie, but I can’t say what I really believe, that she couldn’t have possibly escaped.
“Why were they after her?” Stacy asks.
“Old enemies, I guess,” I say.
“So, we’re all enemies by association?”
“Yeah, I guess you could say that.” I know the answers I’m giving her are incomplete, but I don’t have good explanations for her without the full truth. “They haven’t seen you though, so you should be safe.”
“But, why would they—” Her words are cut off by the high pitched alarm of the ancient EKG machine going off. Both our eyes fly to Niahm.
“Niahm!” I shout, searching out her pulse even as Shane comes flying into the room. He puts the stethoscope in his ears and curses loudly. He rips the oxygen mask from her face, replacing it with the Ambu bag.
“Squeeze this every five seconds or so,” he directs me. He begins chest compressions. Stacy pushes back against the wall, horror on her face. She looks how I feel.
“Niahm, don’t do this,” I command roughly. “You’ve gotta hold on. Please. Don’t leave me.” The last words are whispered.
“Stacy, roll that cart over here,” Shane yells. Stacy immediately does as she’s told, rolling the red cart that, ill equipped as it is, holds the keys to bringing Niahm back. “You’re going to need to take over for Sam,” he says. “Samuel, get over here and do chest compressions.”
Stacy takes the bag, calm now. I hurry over and begin pressing down on Niahm’s chest, cringing with each compression, feeling the hairline cracks in her ribs at my touch on her bare skin. Tears run freely down my face and I don’t care. Shane fills a syringe and plunges it into the IV line. Nothing. He grabs the paddles and yells, “Clear!” as he shocks her. Nothing. He repeats everything he knows, jaw clenched as each new procedure yields no results in the flat line printing out of the machine.
“Stop!” Stacy screams. I look at her, see that her own face is covered with tears. “Don’t do anything else to her. Please.”
“No,” I yell, refusing to stop now—or ever.
“Samuel,” Shane says. “There’s nothing left.” He reaches out to touch my shoulder. I shove him with both fists, sending him flying across the room, crashing into a mobile shelving unit before turning back to Niahm. Stacy is backing away, eyes glued to Niahm’s face.
“Keep going,” I shout at her, but she ignores me. With a curse, I lean down to blow air into Niahm’s lungs. Then Shane is leaping at me, tackling me to the floor, Stacy screaming. I fight with all I have, but he manages to restrain me.
“She’s gone, Samuel. There is nothing left.”
“No.” This time it comes out as little more than a wailing moan, and I have a glimpse of what it must have been like for Niahm, thinking I was dead on the floor of the motel room. Suddenly, Stacy is in my arms, and with Shane holding both of us, we allow our grief to explode in the room.
Chapter 53
Sam
“Samuel.” Shane’s voice penetrates the horror filled fog I’m hiding in. “Samuel, there’s still a chance.” I try to decipher his words. Still a chance to what?
“Samuel.” I look up at him. He pulls me away from Stacy and into a standing position. Stacy watches us from her supine position, sobs hiccupping from her. “There’s still a chance,” he repeats with an eye flick toward Niahm. I look at her myself, forcing my eyes to go to her still form.
Stacy seems to comprehend his meaning before me as she pushes herself up. “What do you mean, Shane? You mean there’s still a chance for her to live? What? How?”
Suddenly his meaning comes clear, and I gasp in a breath as I go to Niah
m.
“What are you talking about?” Stacy demands loudly. “Tell me!”
Shane looks at Stacy, then moves to the opposite side of Niahm. I take her hand in mine, searching desperately for anything. All I see is blackness. Stacy shakes my arm.
“Sam! What is he talking about? Are you some kind of... vampire, or something?” That gets my attention and I look at her. There is fear and disbelief in her eyes, but also hope. “If you are, Sam, and you can... I don’t know, bite her or whatever to save her, then do it.”
“I’m not a vampire,” I say.
“Then what?” Her voice brooks no refusal to answer.
“We can’t die,” Shane says. Stacy’s gaze flies to Shane.
“Why?” It’s an odd question. She should have been asking what? in disbelief.
Shane shakes his head. “We don’t know, really. There isn’t any magic trick, or—”
“Then why do you say there’s a chance? Can you give her something?”
Shane shakes his head again. “No. If she’s immortal, she’ll wake on her own.”
“If she’s... ” Now Stacy’s voice reveals her skepticism. “Why would you even think she’s... you know, what you said.”
“Her eyes,” I answer. Stacy’s gaze returns to me, and I swipe the contacts from my eyes. She gasps as she sees my eyes that are so like Niahm’s.
“Yours, too?” she asks Shane.
“Yes. And... and Jean’s as well.”
“Her grandma?” Stacy’s shocked. “Jean is... um, she can’t die either?”
I nod. She looks at Niahm.
“So, what do we need to do? How do we save her?” She’s all business.
“We can’t do anything but wait,” I say.
“We need to get out of here,” Shane says.
“How long?” Stacy asks.
“It can take as long as three days.”
“Three days?” Stacy looks at me again. “Did she know? About you, I mean?”
I nod. “I showed her.”
“You showed... wait, let me guess, this would be about a couple weeks ago when she spent the night crying and wouldn’t tell me why?” I nod and she says, “So is that why she broke up with you?”
“No,” I admit. “Something else.”
“Something you’re not going to tell me.”
“No,” I say. “Not now. Now we need to get her out of here. We need to go somewhere safe while we wait.”
Shane drops another pile of money in the drawer with a note for Mary to replace the supplies we used, apologizing for leaving such a mess, and instructions that they need to update some of their equipment, which he will arrange to have sent as soon as he can. He goes out and pulls the van around to the front door after calling Joran to let him know we’re leaving.
I carry Niahm’s limp form out and place her in the back of the van on a blanket. I sit next to her, pulling her head into my lap, her hand clasped firmly in mine, looking for any flicker of awareness. I’m exhausted in a way I haven’t been for centuries. I want to hope, try to keep my faith alive, but it’s near impossible. Her rims were still too wide. Even if she were immortal, it’s probable that she died too soon. Despair threatens to overwhelm me.
I can feel Stacy’s eyes on me, watching me and Niahm in equal turn. Shane is driving, too far away to be included in her scrutiny. I can feel that she wants to ask questions, but her concentration on willing Niahm alive is nearly as intense as mine.
Three hours later Shane pulls into the lot of the motel outside of Goshen. He’s taken a roundabout way getting here to be certain we weren’t being followed. He opens the door to the very room I’d taken Niahm to, waits for us to enter, then moves the van to hide within the rundown shed behind the motel.
He returns and locks the door, setting the alarms which will inform us of anyone coming near the premises. He closes the metal shades that will hide the light from the outside world.
“Stacy,” he says, turning to Niahm’s friend who holds her hand tightly across from me. “If Niahm... well, if Niahm wakes, I think it would be better if...” I’m surprised at how Shane stumbles over his words. He’s always calm in an emergency. He moves to the closet and pulls out a sweatshirt and sweatpants. “There are washcloths and towels in the bathroom.”
Stacy understands his intention. “Yes, okay, but you two leave.”
I consider arguing. I don’t want to leave her, not for one second.
“Go, Sam,” she says. “Give her this dignity.”
I can’t argue with those words, so I follow Shane to the connecting door between this room and the next. Shane forces me to shower, arguing that it won’t do Niahm any good to see me covered in blood either. It seems pointless to me. She isn’t going to wake. Not now. Not ever.
The shower gives me a place to fall apart, though, without the eyes of Shane and Stacy on me. This is my fault, all of it. If I had never come into Niahm’s life, she wouldn’t be in this predicament now. She wouldn’t have been locked in a room with what she thought was my corpse, she wouldn’t have known that her every secret had been exposed to someone. She wouldn’t now be lying in the next room, dead.
When the water runs cold for long enough to penetrate my numbness, I step out and dry off. Shane has placed a clean pair of jean and a t-shirt for me on the counter. I quickly dress and walk out.
“Left me a cold shower?” Shane asks. I don’t answer. He walks past me and lays a hand on my shoulder. “Samuel, don’t give up. Just try to retain some hope, because there is hope yet.”
I nod though I completely disagree with him. He disappears into the bathroom. I look at the door connecting the rooms, wanting to go over, hold her hand, search more. I stand and grasp the handle between the rooms, but don’t turn the knob. I simply stand with my hand on the knob. When it turns beneath my hand, I step back. Stacy opens the door and waves me in.
Niahm is as motionless as before, though now she is clean, dressed, and her hair has been brushed. It feels far too much like preparing a body for a wake—something I’ve done many times in my life. I lay down on the bed next to her, pulling her hand into mine. Nothing.
Stacy lays down on the other side and takes Niahm’s other hand. She’s staring at Niahm face as I am, but her eyes lift to me.
“Is she going to live, Sam?” she whispers.
“I don’t think so,” I tell her honestly. Tear well up in Stacy’s eyes, but she blinks them back. “I’m so sorry for this.”
“For what?” she asks.
“It’s my fault she’s here,” I admit wretchedly.
She props herself on one elbow. “How do you figure?”
“If I had never come into her life...”
“If you had never come into her life, she’d still have gone to the city with her grandma.”
“She only went because she was so angry with me.”
“No, Sam. Niahm made that decision based on a desire to get closer to Jean. She would have gone anyway, but she wouldn’t have had you and Shane there.”
“They shot at me,” I argue.
“You got her out of that warehouse, right? While Jean distracted them. She would never have gotten out otherwise. And if they had found her, they would have made sure she was dead.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “How do you know all this?”
“Shane gave me a rundown while you were in the shower.”
I close my eyes. Whatever she says, I know it’s my fault.
“The sun’s coming up,” she says. I open my eyes and see that she’s right, the room is beginning to lighten. I enclose Niahm’s hand with both of mine.
Please.
I send the single word into her mind. I see nothing in response. So I send it again, and again. Stacy closes her own eyes across from me and slips into a fitful slumber. I keep sending the word, the plea, over and over into Niahm’s mind, hoping that somewhere in there she still resides, but knowing the desire is moot.
Sam
r /> I open my eyes and look at Niahm. Her eyes are still closed and she doesn’t breathe. Guilt over having fallen asleep while watching over her consumes me.
Sam.
“What?” I whisper, lifting my head to look over at Stacy. She’s still sleeping. I watch her for a moment, wondering if she’s really awake or if she’s said my name in her sleep.
Sam.
My gaze flies to Niahm. Did she...? I squeeze her hand tighter.
Niahm, please, tell me that was you, I send into her mind as forcefully as I can.
Sam. The word comes again, clearer. I roll toward her, letting go with one hand to touch her cheek.
“Niahm?”
Stacy sits up at the sound of my voice. “Sam? Is she...?”
“I don’t know,” I say, unable to keep the smile from my face. “But I think I heard her.”
Shane moves to the end of the bed. “What did you see?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “Just my name. I thought it was Stacy.”
“It wasn’t me. At least, I don’t think so. But I didn’t hear anything.”
“You wouldn’t,” Shane says. “Samuel can hear thoughts by touching someone, particularly their hand.”
“What?” Stacy looks at me as if I’ve sprouted two heads. She shakes her head, then looks at Niahm’s hand in mine. “Wait, so you’re saying you heard her? She’s... alive?”
I sit up, place both hands around Niahm’s once again. Once again, I get nothing, not matter how much I plead with her.
“I can’t hear her now. Maybe it was just wishful...” I can’t finish, the thought of her never coming back after imagining her there is too much. Suddenly, Stacy thrusts her hand at me.
“What am I thinking?”
I just stare at her, not sure where this is going. Why now? I take one hand from Niahm’s and grasp Stacy’s.
“You’re thinking you don’t believe I can read minds,” I say. Stacy gasps. “You also don’t believe we are immortal. And yet, you somehow believe Niahm will live again.” She simply stares at me, mouth agape.
Finally, she says, “What else?”
I look again, then shake my head sadly at her. “You don’t think any of this is my fault. And you think Niahm would agree.”