I could tell from the orange tag on its good wing that this bird was from the Vermillion Cliffs colony in northern Arizona, some three hundred miles away. That’s actually a short hop for a condor. They can coast for hours without once batting their wings and can make speeds of fifty-five miles per hour.
Of course, this particular marvel might never fly again. The hunter’s bullet had shattered its wing, maybe beyond repair.
As if it understood, the condor cracked its beak and hissed at me. “Okay, buddy,” I crooned to the bird. “Let’s cross our fingers, James,” I told the trooper. “It’s lost a lot of blood. All I can do is my best. Might not be good enough.”
James H. Blake sighed. “I’m going to take those two bad boys down to the barracks,” he said, “and see what I can slap them with.”
“Go for it. I’m hoping fifteen to life.”
He smiled. “You’re such a softie. I’ll check back with you, Frannie.”
“I am a softie,” I said. “I’ll be here.” But I’d already almost forgotten Trooper Blake.
I scrubbed my hands with antiseptic and went to work. Work was the only thing that had been saving me lately. It sure as heck beat rational thought.
24
MY FATIGUE had been replaced by an edgy kind of energy. And dread.
Operating on this rare bird was an awful responsibility, and I was going to have to do it unassisted. The dogs in ward two were still in full throat, so I flipped on the radio and found a good music station. Good for my nerves, and good for the bird’s nerves, too. I recognized a cut from the latest Moby album. Good deal—I liked his stuff a lot.
I shone a light into the condor’s eyes and hoped for a reflex. There was none. Its condition was deteriorating by the minute.
“Come on, big boy. Don’t give up on me. You’ve got a real big heart. Let’s show it.”
I strapped a gas mask over the condor’s beak, then cranked up the isofluorine mixture to five to knock him down fast.
The gas hissed through the tube. Only after the bird was out cold did I dare to entirely open the wraps and lay him out fully on the examination table.
I gently extended the shattered wing, and as I thought it would, it flapped open at a hideous and unnatural angle. I pushed the feathers away from the injured site and saw that the fractured bone had broken through the delicate, almost transparent skin. Worse, the wound was starting to turn green.
This big boy was a mess, all right.
I hoped I could keep it alive. But I also worried that if it lived but couldn’t fly, it’d be doomed to a life in a cage.
Macy Gray was singing as I rummaged around in the cabinet over the sink for materials I would need. I liked Macy a lot, too. The problem with pinning broken bird bones is that they’re hollow and metal pins can’t hold them together. I’d done a lot of work on hurt birds and had come up with my own MASH unit-type surgical procedure, and frankly, it worked beautifully most of the time.
I stretched out the wing bones, then began to tease a small number-five endotracheal tube into the break. It takes laserlike focus and a steady hand to do this just right. I held my breath and carefully threaded the tube through the broken bone, then back up to the proximal point of the fracture, where it held securely, and I could breathe again.
There’s not much soft tissue in a bird’s wing, but I cut away the damaged flesh, flushed out the wound with antiseptic solution, then closed the skin with a simple interrupted pattern of stitches.
I was satisfied. The surgery was pretty clean.
Brava, dottoressa!
I folded the condor’s wing and stabilized the fracture by securing the wing up against its body with a figure eight, splintlike wrapping that works like a Chinese finger trap. If the bird tried to flap its wing, the bandage would only tighten more firmly.
Then I carried the thirty-pound condor into the storage room that my part-time assistant, Janna, and I use for medical supplies. There was no bowwow chorus back there, but there was a large cage in the corner—a perfect Motel 6 for this fellow, who had certainly been hatched and raised in captivity.
I put the condor gently inside, covered the cage with a blanket, and turned off the light.
“Good night, big guy. Sleep well, you prince of Colorado.”
Finally, I went back into the operating room to clean up.
For the two hours that I’d been working on the condor, I’d been fighting off a feeling that I couldn’t identify. Now that the surgery was over, I was overtaken by exhaustion, and also sadness. It was the kids. Working on the condor had reminded me how much I missed each and every one of them.
I pictured their faces.
Counted their fingers and toes.
I threw the dead tuna on eight-grain into the trash, and stuffed the bloodied sleeping bag in after it. I swabbed down the stainless-steel table, washed out the sink, and went to bed.
25
“FRANNIE, IF YOU’RE THERE, pick up,” said a whispery voice. “C’mon, c’mon.”
I had been falling asleep, but suddenly I was awake. I reached out—and for at least the fourth time that month—knocked over an ashtray from the original Hotel Boulderado, circa 1909. Somebody was trying to tell me to stop smoking.
Max? I thought to myself.
“Max, oh, Max,” I said, grabbing the phone. It was her voice on the answering machine. “I was just thinking about you. Must be mental telepathy, kiddo. This is great. How are you?”
“Okay, I guess,” she said, but that “I guess” pierced my heart.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart? Talk to me. I don’t care if it’s late. What’s going on?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said in a false tone. Max can be such a twelve-year-old sometimes.
“Well, I guess you’re not going to talk about yourself tonight, huh? How’s Matthew?”
“Aw, Frannie,” Max said. “It’s real hard for him being so different from other kids.”
“Tell me all about it,” I said.
I managed to get my old flannel robe on without disconnecting the phone as Max told me about crimes of hate in Pine Bush, Colorado. Every day at school there was at least one incident of serious taunting, or much worse, Max told me.
I struggled to find the right words to tell Max, even as the accusatory voice of Catherine Fitzgibbons echoed in my mind: You’ve never been a mother, have you, Dr. O’Neill?
“Kids can be kind of mean sometimes, Max,” I told her. “I really think you handled everything right. You know human kids aren’t the only ones who try to hurt each other. Sometimes, in a nest of birds, the oldest chicks try to push the newly hatched ones out so that they can have more food. It happens.”
“Yeah, I suppose,” Max said, but she sounded unconvinced. It was hard to forget she has an IQ in the 180s. Plus a photographic mind.
“So, anyway. Moving to cheerier subjects,” Max started to say, then changed the subject, maybe a little too quickly. She told me about a cute, “sensitive” boy named Mickey whom she liked at school, “and he seems to like me, wings and all,” she added. Then she asked about the goings-on at the new and improved Inn-Patient. I told her all about the condor I’d just operated on.
“Wow, I’d love to see that patched-up bird,” she said. Some of her old spark was coming back. “I miss you, Frannie. All of us do. Matthew sends major hugs and kisses. So does Ozymandias. And Ic.”
“I miss all of you, too, honey,” I said gently.
I was careful not to make things harder for her by adding my own strong longing to hers. I expected Max to sigh and agree as she always does, but I heard something different. Max’s voice suddenly choked up. “I gotta go.”
“Max, what is it? What’s going on? There’s something else, isn’t there?”
“I can’t talk about it. Can’t,” she said. “But it hurts so much to keep it a secret. It’s bad, Frannie. Sorry, sorry, I’ve gotta go.”
“What are you talking about, Max? You’re rambling. Slow down, honey.”
<
br /> There was dead silence on her end of the line. So I asked again. I begged her, cajoled, reassured her. “C’mon, Max. You’re scared. I can hear it in your voice.”
“I can’t tell you,” she said. “It’s dangerous, and hopeless. Frannie, it’s worse than the School. The people there are worse, what they do is worse. Seriously. I even think somebody’s watching Matthew and me. I know they are. I saw them twice. Gotta go! Gotta! I love you.”
Then Max hung up on me.
26
MAX TRIED REAL HARD not to think about the troubles ahead, about whoever was spying on her and Matthew. Even though she’d seen them again—three times now. She put her mind elsewhere—into small-town life.
As clever and smart as she was about some things, Max found herself in a tricky situation a few days later. She was kind of on a “date,” and it was with one of the real “cuties” in her school—a tall, blond, athletic hunk named Mickey Bosco. She’d basically been anti-hunk—until Mickey asked her out.
She and the hunk didn’t talk much as they climbed the steep, rocky hill that rose along the west side of Schoolhouse Road. As she pushed her way through the overgrown scrub brush, though, she suspected this might be a bad idea.
She was going to show Mickey what it was like to fly. She’d promised him.
“We need to climb that rocky outcropping over there,” she said, pointing. She sounded confident, but there was this Darth Vader warning voice in her head that wouldn’t shut up. The voice said: This is really stupid, Max. Smartest girl in the classroom, dumbest girl out on the street.
“You’re kind of quiet, Max,” Mickey said as he rock climbed. “You usually like this?”
“I’m just trying not to lose my balance and fall to my death. You might try the same.”
“Oh sure,” said Mickey. “It’s no problem. I was just checking on you. Making sure you’re okay.”
“I’m fine. I am. Thanks for asking.”
Max’s Reeboks grabbed onto the grain of the next rock. Mickey was right behind her. So close. Far below them was a noisy, fast-flowing highway. And across the highway, a vast stretch of open pastureland that looked promising. And much safer.
Finally they were at the top. “Ready?” Max asked. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want.”
“Are you kidding? I’m totally psyched. This is gonna be the best adventure ever! Talk about extreme sports.”
Max groaned as she bent at the waist, placing both hands on her knees. “Climb on. Don’t worry, I’m strong.”
Mickey Bosco climbed onto her back, hooking his legs around her waist. He wrapped his arms around her chest, under her wings. And he was kind of heavy.
“This isn’t so bad,” he said, “for me. You sure you’re okay?”
“A one, and a two, and a three,” Max counted off. “I’m just ducky.”
Then she pushed off the rock and they were airborne.
“Holy shiiiittt!” Mickey yelled. “Awesome! Do the Dew! This is out-rageous! We’re flying! I’m really flying.”
Max didn’t think the adventure was quite so terrific. Actually, it went kind of wrong from the first second. Instead of gaining altitude, she dropped several feet toward the crowded lanes of speeding traffic. Mickey was a lot of extra weight to carry—even for her.
So Max beat her wings frantically. And suddenly she was scared! She’d only been aloft for a short time, and her lungs ached some. Her wing muscles burned like an engine about to catch on fire. Not good.
From the sound of Mickey’s insane chortling, Max could tell that he had no clue how bad it actually was, and how scared he ought to be. She reached forward into the heavy air and pulled at it with her powerful wings. She finally caught a mild updraft and her body lifted.
“Having fun?” she managed to say a couple of seconds later.
“This is the bomb!” Mickey shouted into her ear. “You are the bomb, baby. The best ever!”
Max guessed that was a good thing, and she finally smiled. Maybe this could work out after all. She beat her wings again. She wouldn’t feel totally safe until they had crossed the highway and were cruising over the pastureland.
Then she felt something shocking and totally unexpected. Mickey Bosco was moving his hands over her chest, exploring.
He was feeling her up!
27
“STOP IT!” MAX YELLED. “Right now. Take your hands off me!” She twisted her neck to look into the blond boy’s eyes. He kept right on rubbing her chest.
“You don’t have boobs,” he shrieked with laughter. “You’re flat.”
Max felt her emotions collide. A while ago she’d kind of liked Mickey Bosco. Now she was sick with shame, and more embarrassed than she’d ever been in her life. She hated him for being so crude and rude and totally thoughtless.
“I don’t need breasts,” she tried to explain.
“Well, I do,” Mickey Bosco said, and laughed again. He sounded as if he were playing macho man in a locker room filled with his pals, and Max knew that this story would wind up there.
Her eyes had started to tear up and she couldn’t see real well. Her heart felt incredibly heavy. She saw that there was a farm pond looming ahead. Canada geese flew up from the water’s edge in a honking flurry.
“I asked you to stop,” she pleaded. “Please?”
“What am I hurting?” the boy said, roaring with laughter. “Nothing to hurt, right?”
“Just somebody’s feelings,” she muttered. “Oh, screw you!”
Then Max swooped down toward the acre or so of muddy water. When she was just about at the center of the pond, she closed her wings and made a tight, spiraling dive.
“I call this little stunt ‘the bullet,’” she turned and said to Mickey Bosco. “Isn’t it the bomb? Do the Dew, right!”
She felt his grasp loosen, his hands and legs slide down her back. “He-e-e-e-e-e-y-y-y-y!” he shouted. “Cut it out. Jesus Christ, Max. Slow down! I’m gonna fall.”
Max didn’t answer. “I call this ‘the roller coaster’!” she yelled again. “Talk about extreme. Bon voyage, tricky Mickey!” She executed a sharp nose-down, then nose-up maneuver.
Mickey Bosco screeched as he lost his grip and began to slide off her body. Then he plunged—at least fifty feet into the murky brown water. He made a satisfying splash, like the one she’d seen a couple of nights before in the movie Shallow Hal with one of her all-time favorites, Gwyneth Paltrow.
Max watched Bosco sink, then resurface with a sputter. She made an unhurried circle to make sure that the stupid boy didn’t drown. When he finally paddled his way to shore through pond scum and stinkweeds, he gave her the finger. Max blew him a kiss.
“To first love,” she called.
Her emotions were jangled, though, and she needed to figure out some things. To the north of the pond was a thicket of evergreens. Max picked out the tallest lodgepole pine, dropped into the crown, and straddled a solid-looking branch.
She leaned her head against the rough bark of the tree. There were tears in her eyes, and she hated that. She hated to be weak. How could she let somebody like Mickey Bosco hurt her? Never again, she vowed. Not in this lifetime anyway.
Then she stopped and listened to the sounds around her: the constant creak of branches, the rustle of leaves, insects rubbing their wings. Her heartbeat began to slow to its resting rate: sixty beats a minute. Her breathing finally normalized.
Soon, the relevant issues became very clear in her mind.
She wanted to be accepted here in Pine Bush, Colorado, but she wasn’t going to be.
She wanted to be able to trust people, but she couldn’t. No! Not even close! She needed to accept that, to live with it.
The only ones she could count on were the bird kids from the original School. And Frannie and Kit. Seven people in the whole world, and she couldn’t even tell them the secret thing that scared her most. She had been warned not to.
You talk, you die.
No, she couldn’t tell a
nyone about the horrible things that were happening at a place called the Hospital.
She would never ever tell.
Not a word.
Besides, who would believe her?
28
IT WAS GETTING DARK and really nasty looking to the west and south. Black rain clouds were gathering as Max finally flew back to the Marshalls’ ranch house on Ames Road in Pine Bush. She was only a block away when she saw an old black Honda in the driveway and a tall, thin woman talking to her mother.
What is this all about?
She didn’t recognize the visitor at first.
Then it clicked.
Denver!
Max recognized the visitor’s face, even remembered the name of the woman who’d been at the custody trial. Linda Schein. A reporter with the Denver Post.
Why has she come here? What does she want in Pine Bush? Oh God, can’t they just leave us alone!
I won’t do any more freak-show stories. I just won’t! Forget about it!
Max pushed back on the air, effectively putting on the brakes. She dropped down to the front lawn and saw the reporter’s eyes go wide. She was probably pissed she hadn’t brought along a photographer.
Then Linda Schein smiled her very best smile. “Hi, Max. Nice of you to drop in,” she quipped.
“I live here,” Max said dryly. “What do you want?”
Terry Marshall stood in the doorway under the light. “Max, this is an important reporter from Denver. She drove all the way out here to see you.”
“Linda Schein,” the woman said, holding out her hand. She was about Frannie’s age, sort of attractive, but too made-up for Max’s taste. Max tried not to judge her because of her lipstick and mascara, though.
“I remember you, Ms. Schein. I think you’re the forty-seventh reporter to come to the house. Something like that. Rocky Mountain News? No, you’re with the Denver Post, right?”
“Not now. I’m writing a book. I know I should have called first, but I just took a chance that you’d have a few moments to talk. I’m really sorry, Maximum. Your mother said it would be okay. If you agreed.”