Aftershock & Others (26 page)

I stand alone on
a rotted wharf, engulfed in fog. The stagnant pond before me carries a vaguely septic stench. No sound, no movement. I wait. Soon I hear the creak of wood, the gentle lap of a polished hull gliding through still water. A dark shape appears, with the distinctive curved bow of a gondola. It noses toward me through the fog, but as it nears I notice something unusual about the hull. It’s classic glossy black, like all gondolas, but the seating area is closed over. I realize with a start that the hull is a coffin…a child’s coffin…and bright red blood is oozing from under the lid. I shout to the gondolier. He’s gaunt, the traditional striped shirt hanging loose on his bony frame. His face is hidden by his broad straw hat until he lifts his head and stares at me. I scream when I see the scar running across his left eye. He grins and begins poling his floating sarcophagus away, back into the fog. I jump into the foul water and swim after him, stroking frantically as I try to catch up. But the gondola is too fast and the fog swallows it again, leaving me alone and lost in the water. I swim in circles, my arms growing weaker and weaker…finally they refuse to respond, dangling limply at my sides as I slip beneath the surface…water rushes into my nose and throat, choking me…

I awoke gagging and shaking, dangling half on, half off my bed. It took me a long time to shake off the aftereffects of the nightmare. I hadn’t had one like that in years. I knew why it had returned tonight: my afternoon with Kim McCormick.

Over the next few
days I realized that Kim had invaded my life. I kept thinking of her alone in that motel room, eating fast food, her eyes glued to the Weather Channel as she tracked the next storm, planned her next brush with death. The image haunted me at night, followed me through the day. I found myself keeping the Weather Channel on at home, and ducking off to check it out on the doctors lounge TV whenever I had a spare moment.

I guess my preoccupation became noticeable because Jay Ravener, head of the emergency department, pulled me aside and asked me if anything was wrong. Jay could never understand why a board-certified cardiologist like myself wanted to work as an emergency room doc. He was delighted to have access to someone with my training, but he was always telling me how much more money I could make as a staff cardiologist. Today, though, he was talking about enthusiasm, giving me a pep talk about how we were a team, and we all had to be players. He went on about how I hardly speak to anyone on good days, and lately I’d barely been here.

Probably true. No, undoubtedly true. I don’t particularly care for anyone on the staff, or in the whole damn state, for that matter. I don’t care to make chitchat. I come in, do my job—damn efficiently, too—and then I go home. I live alone. I read, watch TV, videos, go to the movies—all alone. I prefer it that way.

I know I’m depressed. But imagine what I’d be like without the forty milligrams of Prozac I take every day. I wasn’t always this way, but it’s my current reality, and that’s how I choose to deal with it.

Fuck you, Jay.

I said none of this, however. I merely nodded and made concurring noises, then let Jay move on, satisfied that he’d done his duty.

But the episode made me realize that Kim McCormick had upset the delicate equilibrium I’d established, and I’d have to do something about her.

Just as she had researched lightning, I decided to research Kim McCormick.

Her driver’s license had listed a Princeton address. I began calling the New Jersey medical centers in her area, looking for a patient named Timothy McCormick. When I struck out there, I moved to Philadelphia. I hit pay dirt at CHOP—Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Being a doctor made it possible. Physicians and medical records departments are pretty tight-lipped about patient information when it comes to lawyers, insurance companies, even relatives. But when it’s one doctor to another…

I asked Timothy McCormick’s attending to call me about him. After having me paged through the hospital switchboard, Richard Andrews, M.D., pediatric oncologist, knew he was talking to a fellow physician, and was ready to open up. I told him I was treating Kim McCormick for depression that I knew stemmed from the death of her child, but she would give me no details. Could he help?

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” he told me in a staccato rattle. “Sad case. Osteosarcoma, started in his right femur. Pretty well advanced, mets to the lung and beyond by the time it was diagnosed. He deteriorated rapidly but we managed to stabilize him. Even though he was on respiratory assist, his mother wanted him home, in his own room. She was loaded and equipped a mini-intensive care unit at home with around-the-clock skilled nursing. What could we say? We let her take him.”

“And he died there, I gather?”

“Yeah. We thought we had all the bases covered. One thing we didn’t foresee was a power failure. Hospitals have backup generators, her house didn’t.”

I closed my eyes and suppressed a groan. I didn’t have to imagine what awful moments those must have been, the horror of utter helplessness, of watching her child die before her eyes and not being able to do a thing about it. And the guilt afterward…oh, lord, the crushing weight of self-doubt and self-damnation would be enough to make anyone delusional.

I thanked Dr. Andrews, told him what a great help he’d been, and struggled through the late shift. Usually I can grab a nap after two a.m. Not this time. I sat up, staring at the Weather Channel, watching with growing unease as the radar tracked a violent storm moving this way from Tampa.

I called Kim McCormick’s motel room but she didn’t answer. Did she guess it was me and knew I’d try to convince her to stay in? Or was she already out?

As the clock crawled toward six a.m. I stood with keys in hand inside the glass door to the doctor’s parking lot and watched the western sky come alive with lightning, felt the door shiver in resonance with the growing thunder. So
much
lightning, and it was still miles off. If Kim was out there…

If
? Who was I kidding? Of course she was out there. And I couldn’t leave until my relief arrived. I prayed he’d show up early, but if anything, the storm would delay him.

Jerry Ross arrived at 6:05, just ahead of a pair of ambulances, and I dashed for my car. The storm was hitting its stride as I raced along 98. I turned onto what I thought was the right road, fishtailing as I gunned along, searching for that Nelson pine. I almost missed it in the downpour, and damn near ditched the car as I slammed on the brakes when I spotted it. I reversed to the access road and kicked up wet gravel as I headed for the tree.

The sight of her Mercedes offered some relief, and I let out a deep breath when I spotted the pale form huddled against the trunk. I barely knew this strange, troubled woman, and yet somehow she’d become very important to me.

I skidded to a stop and ran up the rise to where she sat, looking like a drowned rat. Halfway there the air around me flashed noon bright and the immediate crash of thunder nearly knocked me off my feet, but Kim remained unscathed.

“Not again!” she cried, not bothering to cover her breasts this time. She waved me off. “Get out of here!”

“You can’t keep doing this!”

I dropped to my knees beside her and tried not to stare. I couldn’t help but notice that they were very nice breasts, not too big, not too little, just right, with deep brown nipples, jutting in the chill rain.

“I can do anything I damn well please! Now
go away!
”

I’d been here only seconds but already my clothes were soaked through. I leaned closer, shouting over the deafening thunder.

“I know what happened—about Timmy, bringing him home, the power failure. But you can’t go on punishing yourself.”

She gave me a cold blue stare. “How do you—?”

“Doesn’t matter. I just know. Tell me—was there a storm when the power went off?”

She nodded, still staring. The red blinker on her lightning detector was going berserk.

“Don’t you see how it’s all tied together? It’s guilt and obsession. You need medication, Kim. I can help.”

“I’ve
been
on medication. Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor, Tofranil, you name it. Nothing worked. I’m not imagining this,
Doctor
. Timmy is there. I can feel him.”

“Because you
want
him there!”

More lightning—so close I heard it sizzle.

“Damn you!” she gritted through clenched teeth during the ensuing thunderclap. I didn’t hear those words, but I could read her lips. She closed her eyes a second, as if counting to ten, then looked at me again. “Do you have any children?”

I didn’t hesitate. “No.”

“Well, if you did, you’d understand when I say you
know
them. I
know
Timmy, and I know he’s
there
. And since you’ve never had a child, then you can’t understand what it’s like to lose one.” Her eyes were filling, her voice trembling. “How you’ll do anything—risk everything—to have them back, even for an instant. So don’t tell me I need medication. I need my little
boy!
”

“But I do understand,” I said softly, feeling my own pain grow, wanting to stop myself before I went further but sensing it was already too late. “I—”

I stopped as my skin burst to life with a tingling, crawling sensation, and my body became a burning beehive with all its panicked residents trying to flee at once through the top of my head. I had a flash of Kim with strands of her wet hair standing out from her head and undulating like live snakes, and then I was at ground zero at Hiroshima…

…an instant whiteout and then the staticky blizzard wanes, leaving me kneeling by the tree, with Kim sprawled prone before me, flaming pine needles floating around like lazy fireflies, and a man tumbling ever so slowly down the slope to my right. With a start I realize he’s me, but the whole scene is translucent—I can see through the tree trunk. Everything is pale, drained of color, almost as if etched in glass, except…

…except for the tiny figure standing far across the marsh, a blotch of bright spring color in this polar landscape. A little girl, her dark brown hair divided into two ponytails tied with bright green ribbon, and she’s wearing a yellow dress, her favorite yellow dress…

…it’s Beth…oh, Christ, it can only be Beth…but she’s so far away.

A desperate cry of longing leaps to my lips as I reach for her, but I can make no sound, and the world fades to black, my Beth with it…

I sat up groggy and confused, my right shoulder alive with pain. I looked around. Lightning still flashed, thunder still bellowed, rain still gushed in torrents, but somehow the whole world seemed changed. What had happened just now? Could that have been my little Beth? Really Beth?

No. Not possible. And yet…

Kim’s still white form caught my eye. She lay by the trunk. I tried to stand but my legs wouldn’t go for it, so I crawled to her. She was still breathing. Thank God. Then she moaned and moved her legs. I tried to lift her but my muscles were jelly. So I cradled her in my arms, shielding her as best I could from the rain, and waited for my strength to return, my mind filled with wonder at what I had seen.

Could I believe it had been real? Did I dare?

Still somewhat dazed, I
sat on Kim’s motel bed, a towel around my waist, my clothes draped over the lampshades to dry. When she’d come to, we staggered to my car and I drove us here.

The room looked exactly as before, except a Hardy’s bag had replaced the Wendy’s. Kim emerged from the bathroom wearing a flowered sundress, drying her hair with a towel. She was bouncing back faster than I was—practice, maybe. She looked pale but elated. I knew she must have seen her boy again.

I felt numb.

“Oh, God,” she said and leaned closer. “Look at that burn!”

I glanced at the large blister atop my left shoulder. “It doesn’t hurt as much as before.”

“Oh, Joe, I’m so sorry you caught that flash too. I feel terrible.”

“Don’t. Not as if you didn’t warn me.”

“Still…let me get some of the cream they gave me for my heel. I’ll make you—”