The police gave them no details but escorted them to the hospital about half an hour north of Hannah Lake with sirens flashing, hastening the journey. It was still the longest half hour of Fern's life. The three of them didn't speak. Speculation was too terrifying, so they sat in silence, Mike Sheen behind the wheel, Angie clutching his right hand, Fern trembling in the single back seat that was positioned behind the empty space designed for Bailey's chair. Fern didn't tell them she'd seen the wheelchair. She didn't tell them that it had been in the ditch. She didn't tell them that she thought it was too late. She just told herself, over and over, that she was wrong.
When they rushed into the ER and identified themselves, the two police officers on their heels, they were led to an empty partition. A thirty-something man in green scrubs with Dr. Norwood written on his nametag, dark circles under his eyes, and a subdued expression on his face, informed them that Bailey was gone.
Bailey was dead. He'd been declared dead on arrival.
Fern was the first to break down. She'd had longer to process the possibility, and she'd known. Deep down she had known the instant she saw the chair. Angie was in a state of shock and Mike angrily demanded to be taken to him. The doctor acquiesced and pulled the curtain aside.
Bailey's face and hair were wet and matted with mud, the area around his nose and mouth wiped partially clean during attempts to resuscitate. He looked different away from his chair, like someone Fern had never met. One of Bailey's fingers was bent at an odd angle and someone had placed his thin arms by his sides, making him look even more foreign. Bailey called his arms T-rex arms–completely useless and disproportionate to this rest of his body. His legs were equally thin and the shoe on his right foot was missing. The sock was soaked with mud like the rest of him and his headlamp lay beside him on the gurney. The light was still on. Fern couldn't take her eyes from it, as if the lamp was to blame. She reached for it and tried to turn it off, but the button was flat, permanently pressed down, and it wouldn't release.
“It was the light that helped us find him so quickly,” Landon Knudsen offered. But it hadn't been quickly enough.
“He was wearing his light! He was wearing his headlamp, Mike!” Angie collapsed into the chair by Bailey's side and clutched his lifeless hand. “How could this happen?”
Mike Sheen turned on the officers, on Landon Knudsen whom he'd coached and taught, on the senior officer who had a son who had attended his youth camp last summer. With tears in his eyes and with a voice that had made his wrestlers sit up and listen for three decades, he demanded, “I want to know what happened to my son.”
And with very little resistance, knowing full well that it was against protocol, they told him what little they knew.
911 Dispatch had gotten a call from Bailey. They had an idea of his general location and the fact that he was in duress. Dispatch sent all available units to that location, and within a few minutes, someone saw the light from his headlamp.
Interestingly enough, the band was twisted so the actual light was on the back of Bailey's head, the way a kid sometimes wears his hat with the brim in back. If the light had been on the front of his head, it would have been submerged in water and mud. Bailey had been found in the ditch with his headlamp shining up into the heavens, marking the spot where he lay. The officers would not confirm that Bailey had drowned. Nor would the doctor. Both simply said that an autopsy would be performed to determine cause of death, and with an expression of sorrow for their loss, Bailey's parents and Fern were left alone behind the thin partition, faced with death as life moved on around them.
Sarah Marsden didn't sleep well. She hadn't slept well in years. After her husband Danny had passed away she was sure she would sleep like she too had died, delivered from the strain and hard labor of caring for someone who couldn't do much for himself and who was angry and abusive toward anyone who tried to help him.
Danny Marsden had been paralyzed from the chest down in a car accident when their daughter Rita was six years old. For five long years, Sarah had done her best to take care of him and her young daughter, and for five long years she'd wondered each day how she could go on. Danny's neediness and his misery took a toll on them all, and when he passed away the day before Rita's eleventh birthday, it was hard to feel anything but relief. Relief for him and relief for herself, relief for her daughter who had only seen her father at his very worst, though if Sarah was being honest, Danny Marsden wasn't a nice man before his accident.
Yet Sarah still didn't sleep well. Not then, and not now, more than ten years later. Maybe it was worry over her daughter and young grandson, because Rita had chosen a man just like her father. The difference was, Becker was able to inflict physical pain as well as emotional pain. It was the bodily harm Sarah worried about most. So when the phone rang at midnight she was immediately alert and reaching for the phone.
“Hello,” she answered, hoping Rita just needed to talk.
“She won't wake up!” Becker's voice blared out, making her wince even as she pressed the phone more firmly to her ear.
“Becker?”
“She won't wake up! I went in to get a couple of beers at Jerry's and when I came back out to the truck she was just laying there like she had passed out. But she wasn't drunk!”
Fear slapped Sarah across the face and left her reeling from the blow. Staggering, she braced herself against her nightstand and kept her voice steady, “Becker? Where are you?”
“I'm at home! Ty's screaming, and I don't know what to do. She won't wake up!” Becker sounded like he'd had more than a beer at Jerry's, and Sarah's fear swung on her again, catching her in the stomach and doubling her over.
“Becker, I'm on my way!” Sarah was shoving her feet into flip flops and grabbing her purse as she ran for the door. “Call 911, okay? Hang up the phone and call 911!”
“She's tried to off herself! I know it! She wants to leave me!” Becker was howling into the phone. “I won't let her leave me! Rita–”
The phone went dead and Sarah trembled and prayed as she threw herself into her car and squealed out of her driveway. She punched at the keypad on her phone and tried to keep herself together as she gave the 911 operator Rita's address and repeated Becker's words: “Her husband says she won't wake up.”
Ambrose arrived a few minutes behind Fern's parents, and all three were ushered into the ER at the same time the gurney with Rita Garth was pushed through the emergency room doors, an EMT calling out her vitals and giving an update on what measures had been taken en route. A doctor shouted for an MRI, and medical personnel descended on their new patient as Pastor Taylor and his wife stood dumbfounded by the arrival of a second loved one, still unaware of the condition of the first. And then Sarah Marsden was rushing through the doors, little Tyler, wearing a pair of mud-streaked pajamas, in her arms. Becker lurked behind her, seeming distraught and ill-at-ease. When he saw Ambrose he fell back, fear and loathing curling his lip. He shoved his hands into his pockets and looked away disdainfully as Ambrose focused in on the conversation that was taking place.
“Sarah! What's happened?” Joshua and Rachel swarmed her, Rachel taking the filthy toddler from her arms, Joshua putting his arm around Sarah's shaking shoulders.
Sarah had very little to tell them, but Rachel sat with her and Becker in the waiting area, while Joshua and Ambrose went to check on Bailey's status. Pastor Joshua missed the fear that stole across Becker's face and the way his eyes slid to the exit upon the mention of Bailey's name. He also missed the two policemen that were positioned just inside the emergency room door and the cruiser that had just pulled up at the curb beyond the glass doors of the waiting room. But Ambrose didn't.
When Joshua and Ambrose were led to the little room where Bailey lay, they saw Bailey's parents gathered at his bedside, Fern huddled in the corner, and Bailey lying with his eyes closed on the hospital gurney. Someone had brought Angie Sheen a small plastic tub filled with soapy water, and with loving care, Bailey's mother was washing the mu
d and grime from his face and hair, gently administering to her son for the last time. It was obvious from the grieving of those gathered that Bailey was not simply resting.
Ambrose had never seen a dead body before. The man was just lying in a heap outside the south entrance to the compound. Ambrose's unit had patrol duty that morning and Paulie and Ambrose came upon him first. His face was a swollen mass of black and blue, blood was dried at the corners of his mouth and beneath his nostrils. He wouldn't have been recognizable if not for his hair. When they realized who it was, Paulie had walked away from the dead man they all knew and thrown up the breakfast he'd consumed only an hour before.
They called him Cosmo–the a mass of frizzy, curly hair that stuck up and out from his head identical to Cosmo Kramer on the popular American sitcom, Seinfeld. He'd been working with the Americans, feeding them tips here and there, giving them information on the comings and goings of certain people of interest. He was quick to smile and hard to scare, and his daughter, Nagar, was the same age as Paulie's sister, Kylie. Kylie had even written Nagar a couple of letters and Nagar had responded with pictures and a few basic words in English that her father had taught her.
They had found his bike first. It had been tossed outside the base too, its wheels spinning, handle bars buried in the sand. They checked for a flat and looked around for Cosmo, surprised that he had just abandoned it in the middle of the road that circled the perimeter beyond the Concertina wire. And then they found Cosmo. His dead fingers had been wrapped around an American flag. It was one of those little cheap ones on a wooden stick, the kind you wave at parades on the fourth of July. The message was clear. Someone had discovered Cosmo's willingness to assist the Americans. And they’d killed him.
Paulie was the most shaken of all of them. He didn't understand the hate. The Sunnis hated the Shiites. The Shiites hated the Sunnis. They both hated the Kurds. And they all hated Americans, though the Kurds were slightly more tolerant and recognized that America might be their only hope.
“Remember when that church burned down in Hannah Lake? Remember how Pastor Taylor helped organize a fundraiser and everybody kind of pitched in and the church got rebuilt? It wasn't even Pastor Taylor's church. It was a Methodist church. Half of the people who gave money or helped rebuild weren't Methodist. Heck, more than half had never set foot in any church,” Paulie had said, incredulous. “But everybody helped anyway.”
“There are scumbags in America, too,” Beans reminded gently. “We may not have seen it in Hannah Lake. But don't for one second believe there isn't evil everywhere.”
“Not like this,” Paulie whispered, his innocence making him resistant to the truth.
Ambrose never saw his friends after the blast that killed them. He never saw them laid out peacefully in death like Bailey was. They wouldn't have been laid out. No open caskets for soldiers returning from war, for soldiers who had died from an improvised explosive device that blew a two-ton Humvee into the air and sent another one careening. They wouldn't have looked like Bailey either, as if they were sleeping. Judging from the damage to his own face, they would have been ravaged, unrecognizable.
At Walter Reed, Ambrose saw soldiers who were missing limbs. He saw burn patients and soldiers with facial injuries much worse than his own. And his dreams were filled with limbs and gore and soldiers who had no faces and no arms, stumbling around in a storm of black smoke and carnage on the streets of Baghdad. He'd been haunted by the faces of his friends, wondering what had happened to them after the blast. Had they died immediately? Or had they known what was happening? Had Paulie, with his sensitivity to things of the spirit, felt death take him? Had Bailey?
Such needless death, so unnecessary, so tragic. Grief clogged Ambrose's throat as he stared at Bailey Sheen, at the dirt that matted his hair and the dried mud that Angie Sheen gently wiped from his round face. The toddler Rachel Taylor had taken from Rita's mother was smeared in the same black mud. Bailey was dead, Rita was unconscious, and the bottoms of Becker Garth's pant legs were still damp and caked in dirt. He had done something to his wife. And he had done something to Bailey, Ambrose realized in dawning horror. There was evil everywhere, Ambrose thought to himself. And he was seeing it right here in Hannah Lake.
He strode from the room, fury pounding in his temples, surging through his veins. He crossed the emergency lobby, pushing the swinging doors wide that separated the waiting room from the trauma center, causing the few people who huddled miserably on the metal chairs, waiting for admittance or word on the condition of loved ones, to look up in alarm at the angry, scarred giant who flew through the doors.
But Becker wasn't there. Rachel Taylor still waited by Sarah Marsden's side, but Ty had surrendered to exhaustion across her chest. Rachel still hadn't seen Bailey, still didn't know her nephew had been killed. She looked at him in question, her eyes wide in a face that reminded him of her daughter, reminded him that Fern sat devastated in the room where Bailey lay and he needed to go to her. Ambrose turned around and went back through the trauma doors. Landon Knudsen and another police officer Ambrose didn't know stood just outside the emergency room entrance.
“Knudsen!” Ambrose called out as he pushed through the entrance doors.
Landon Knudsen took a step back and his partner stepped forward and put a hand on his holster.
“Where's Becker Garth?” Ambrose demanded.
Knudsen's shoulders slumped as his partner's back stiffened, their opposing reactions almost comical. Landon Knudsen couldn't take his eyes off of Ambrose's face. It was the first time in three years he had laid eyes on the wrestler he had idolized in high school.
“We don't know,” Landon admitted, shaking his head and trying to hide his reaction to the change in Ambrose's appearance. “We're just trying to get a handle on what the hell is going on. We had another cruiser here, but we didn't have every entrance and exit covered. He's slipped out.”
Ambrose didn't miss the slide of Landon's eyes, the discomfort and pity that colored his gaze, but he was too upset to care. The fact that they had been watching Becker Garth confirmed his suspicions. In very few words, he laid out the mud he'd seen on the toddler and on Bailey's clothing, as well as the “coincidence” that Bailey and Rita had been brought to the emergency room within a half hour of each other. The officers didn't seem surprised by his synopsis, though they were both vibrating with adrenaline. This type of thing didn't happen in Hannah Lake.
But it had happened, and Bailey Sheen was dead.
Rita regained consciousness within hours of her surgery. She was confused and teary with a headache for the record books, but with the pressure on her brain relieved and the swelling under control, she was able to communicate and wanted to know what had happened to her. Her mother told her what she knew, reliving Becker's 911 call and the trip to the ER with little Ty almost inconsolable in his father's arms. She told Rita that Becker had not been able to rouse her.
“I was sick,” Rita said weakly. “My head hurt and I was so dizzy. I didn't want to go to Jerry's. I had bathed Ty and put him in his pajamas, and I just wanted to go to bed. But Becker wouldn't let me out of his sight. He found my stash, Mom. He knows I was planning to leave. He's convinced I have something going on with Ambrose Young.” Rita's voice became more measured as the pain killers began to pull her under. “But Fern loves Ambrose . . . and I think he loves her too.”
“Did you hit your head?” Sarah pulled Rita back on track. “The doctors said you sustained an injury on the back of your head that caused a slow bleed on the inside . . . a subdural hematoma, the doctor called it. They drilled a little hole in your skull to relieve the pressure.”
“I told Becker I wanted a divorce. I told him, Mom. He just looked at me like he wanted to kill me. It scared me, so I ran. He came after me swinging, and I hit the floor pretty hard where the tile meets the carpet. It hurt so bad. I think I passed out because Becker got off me real quick. I had a big bump there . . . but it didn't bleed.”
“
When was that?”
“Tuesday, I think.” It was Friday night when Rita was brought into the ER, late Saturday morning now. Rita was lucky to be alive.
“I dreamed about Bailey,” Rita's voice was slurred and Sarah didn't interrupt, knowing she was fading fast. “I dreamed Ty was crying and Bailey came and got him and took him for a ride in his wheelchair. He said 'Let Mommy sleep.' I was so glad because I was so tired. I couldn't even lift my head. Funny dream, huh?”
Sarah just patted Rita's hand and tried not to cry. She would have to tell Rita about Bailey. But not yet. Now she had something more important to do. When she was sure her daughter was fast asleep and wouldn't miss her, she called the police.
The window was open. Just like it always was. The wind made the curtains flutter slightly and the blinds banged against the sill every now and again when an impudent gust would make an attempt to come inside. It wasn't that late, just after dark. But Fern had been up for thirty-six hours and she fell into her bed, needing the sleep that would come in fits and starts, interspersed with crying that hurt her head and made breathing impossible.
After they left the hospital, left Bailey in the hands of those who would carry out an autopsy and then transfer him to the mortuary, Fern and her parents spent the day with Angie and Mike at their home, acting as a buffer between the well-wishers and the grieving parents, accepting food and condolences with gratitude and making sure they offered comfort in return. Ambrose went back to the store to help his father and she and Rachel kept Ty with them so Sarah could stay with Rita. Becker had run off and no one knew where he was.