Fire Will Fall (21 page)

"If it's any consolation to you," I said, mustering all my pride until it buzzed around in my ears, "I have no plans of dying a victim, of withering away in a bed, at least not unless I do something halfway cool with my life. If I just withered, I would feel like I never lived."

"Well, then, you better start thinking about the future a little more. And I don't mean with me. Thanks for the wake-up call."

"Rain, you've got a lot of years to adventure-ize before you think about settling down."

"Yeah, I know. Just take it under advisement: I got my pride, and if you snooze, you lose. You just snoozed."

She always thought about things faster than I did. And between aftershocks and the goat—

"Will you shut up?" I demanded, turning and facing Sheep, but she just got louder.

"Maybe there's something wrong with her," Rain suggested. She moved toward Sheep, who started back toward the pond, and she followed. I really needed to crash on that comfy couch in front of the TV. But maybe the Professor had gotten tangled up somewhere and this was a call for help. I followed them.

"It's gonna thunder ... why are we following a goat?" Rain asked after fifty paces.

Only because Sheep seemed to know where she was going. She took us down the path on the other side of the pond and stopped and turned to us,
baa
-ing her fool head off.

Rain grabbed my hand and stood, looking all around. "This is the place where Cora thought she saw eyes this morning."

"Whose eyes?" I had missed something.

"Well, if we knew, I wouldn't be pissing myself right now. Daddy swore it was only a journalist. But it could have been some local drunk. I didn't see anything—"

"So, maybe it was nobody. And a local drunk wouldn't upset a goat," I told her, and moved to where Sheep had planted herself. There was something in the underbrush that looked like bramble, only with white stripes in it. I realized it was a skeleton.

"What is that smell?" Rain whispered.

It smelled scorchy. I wasn't sure it was coming off the pile of bones. That could have been here for days. In fact, I was sure it wasn't coming from the bones. It smelled electrical.

I shook my head as Rain moved ahead of me. I said, "Dead animal. Champ used to get all excited about dead animals. He liked to roll on them."

"
Ew.
"

"But I didn't think goats were like that. And the smell—"

Rain reached down toward the bramble. "It's gooey," she muttered nervously and added, "What the hell..."

She picked something up out of the pile of goo and held it up. It was a red ribbon with a bell on it. She had picked the ribbon up by scooping inside the loop with her pinkie finger. The ribbon broke apart, and when the bell hit the ground it made the
ding, ding
we had heard on the Professor that morning.

I stood rooted in confusion. Could there have been a third goat that died a month ago? I didn't have time to think, because Rain screeched at the top of her lungs, "Sco-ooooooo-ttt!" She wanted my brother on some terrified instinctive level.

"What's wrong?" I demanded.

"It's burning my finger! It hurts, it hurts..."

The last thing in the world I felt like doing was running, but I ran and pulled her along to get ice on what looked to me, by stray glances, like a third-degree burn in the making.

CORA HOLMAN
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2002
4:15
P.M.
HER BEDROOM

I
SPENT A FEW MINUTES LYING ON MY BED
trying again to think of what I could write in my blog. I finally opened my laptop and watched while Windows loaded. Hard footsteps resounded on the stairs. The familiar sound of Rain's crying followed, and Scott's door went flying open. I quickly cast the laptop aside to run and get her out of his room. He had an HH brewing that probably wouldn't peak for a while, but she was the last thing he needed.

I didn't make it in time. Before I even passed through the doorway, I heard his objections. "Shut
up
and back
out—
"

"I'm sorry ... I am, but," Rain babbled, and she hiccupped when I tried to pull her out gently by the shoulder.

"Whatever it is, find Marg," Scott groaned. "I'm not the staff of St. Ann's—"

"Marg isn't down there. My dad's car is gone," Rain said, planting her feet and shaking my hand off. "I think I got bit by a snake."

After taking a couple of seconds for it to sink in, Scott shot up so he was sitting. He groaned, holding his head. "
Shhh.
Whisper. Don't panic." He moved the palms of his hands from his temples to in front of his eyes. "Hit the light switch."

I lit the small lamp by his bed, which illuminated the room with a dull orange glow, but he kept his hands over his eyes for a minute while he questioned her.

"Where?"

"Out by the other side of the pond. We saw this pile of glurpy stuff and I think a snake must have jumped out of it before I—"

"
Shhh!
" He shook his head and continued after a few moments of silence. "
Where?
Toe? Heel? Your face?"

"My pinkie."

He swallowed. "D'you remember to keep the wound lower than your heart?"

"Yeah."

"D'you remember not to run?"

She only hiccupped in response, and Owen was out of breath.

Scott took his hands from his face, and he flinched with pain. Our headaches peaked slowly. In another two hours, he could not have done this. He gestured with his fingers and she put her hand in his palm. He blinked at it.

"I don't see any fang punctures," he noted as I crept up and looked over her shoulder. Owen eased himself down on the bed, still huffing.

"It was in an animal carcass," Owen said. "It was a dead goat, some other goat—"

"Well, carcasses can attract snakes," Scott said. "Where's Marg? She's got that triage drawer in the kitchen—"

I kept my voice at a whisper as I said, "She wanted to go jogging before the rain started. She's a runner. She should be back in half an—"

"Great timing. Where's Alan?"

"Car's gone," Rain said.

Scott let out a weak laugh and forced himself to his feet and out into the corridor. We all followed him down the stairs as he grumbled the whole way. "What good is having a nurse if she's dumb enough to take off while nobody else is here? She's done, she's fired. Jesus Christ. And USIC is so busy creaming itself over its goddamn important secrets that it can't say when it's coming and going ... You know what? Fine. Let Alan find out via the Easter Bunny his daughter got bit by a snake. We're not calling him."

We got down into the kitchen and Scott pointed to the stool, which Rain sat on, and he opened Marg's triage drawer, which we were introduced to on the house tour.

He blinked at the wound again, looking genuinely confused at her red pinkie, swollen right where her fingerprint would be. "I don't see a puncture. Looks like a burn."

"It was in some sort of dead animal," Rain said, her face red and streaky, but she seemed more in control now. "If I didn't know better, I'd swear it was the Professor. I felt this searing pain when I pulled up a bell by the red ribbon."

"Obviously, it's not
that
goat." Scott rubbed the bridge of his nose and forced his eyes open wider. "Well. Could be a baby water moccasin got in there. Wounds would be like pinheads, and it would swell." He searched the drawer and came out with what looked like a pencil with a sloped razor on the end. He pulled wrapping off it with his teeth and blew the paper toward the sink. He talked with the blunt end between his teeth while donning two sets of gloves, one on top of the other. "Problem: If we can't see a puncture wound, I gotta create one. Then we'll pump whatever the hell it is out with the snake kit."

"Will it hurt?" Rain asked.

"Just the razor. Everything hurts less when you remain calm."

I backed toward the kitchen door on instinct. A nurse I would never be. Scott pulled her finger over the sink and said to me, "Call Dr. Godfrey and see if I can give her antivenin. Tell him I said Marg's fired."

I went into the parlor and dialed the number on the house phone from the speed dial. I got Dr. Godfrey's pager, and while waiting for him to call back, I stood at the window watching for our nurse. It was drizzling, though no downpour had struck. I tried not to let my mind wander to the portrait of Mrs. Kellerton, but somehow she consumed the room with her dark eyes. I felt her energy combine with my mother's when I was in here, in some way that was disturbing. I could have used some feelings of comfort, but they were not forthcoming in the silences that bulged in here.

From the kitchen Rain made threatening blasts, though it wasn't supposed to be painful. "I'm gonna hurl ... I'm gonna kill that nurse..." and Scott kept telling Rain to pipe down before he smacked her, until I wanted to dive under the couch. USIC agents had been here all day, and I wondered why she hadn't jogged then.

Dr. Godfrey called back after five minutes, and I gave him the news quickly. He spoke without too much alarm. "She kept the wound low, and Scott's using an extraction kit."

"Correct," I said. "He wants to know if he can give her antivenin."

"Just one unit for now," he said. "It won't compromise your protocol, but there are side effects, and she doesn't need any more of those. He probably knows this, but tell him St. Ann's treats fifty water moccasin bites a year. Nobody's keeled over from one in half a century. Tell him to draw some blood and to give her the antivenin right away. Where's Marg?"

I didn't feel comfortable repeating Scott's edicts about having her fired. I was about to say she was jogging when I caught sight of her out the window. She was far off, pacing back and forth between two trees over by the path that led to the pond, and appeared to be talking on a cell phone in spite of the drizzle. Feeling doubly annoyed now, I went toward the front door to hail her but decided to give Scott the news first. I shouted in Dr. Godfrey's instructions rather than see the procedure in progress.

"
Shhh!
" Scott said back. "Stop yelling."

His headache. This was a fiasco, but we were managing, working together.

"I'll be there in twenty minutes," the doctor said. "Get her lying down as soon as you can."

I watched in confusion as Marg started jogging again in the middle of the lawn, and when she came in the front door, she was out of breath.

Somehow, I told her what happened. She moved quickly into the kitchen. I followed to see Rain with her cheek on Owen's chest, her eyelids drooping while she huffed. Marg threw off her jacket, tossed it on the counter, and whipped a pair of surgery gloves out of the drawer, but she was a little late.

The look Scott gave her as he pulled his gloves off and dropped them in the wastebasket could have frozen God. His eyes flew to each of us, then back to her.

"Are you stupid?" he asked. "Alan was here most of the day. Couldn't you do your jogging then?"

She muttered an apology and moved toward Rain, looking with concern at the butterfly bandage already applied. She never mentioned taking a cell phone call that delayed her return and, watching water drip from her hair, I couldn't help it—I moved over to Scott, cupped my hand to his ear, and whispered that she'd been outside jabbering on the phone. He watched her, not too pleased.

"Tell me again how this happened," Marg asked Rain.

Rain told her about the dead animal, the bell, the searing pain, and something went slightly wrong on Marg's face, though I wouldn't have noticed if I weren't fixated on her already. I'd say it was not enough emotion, not enough surprise. You'd almost believe she knew half the story already. Something definitely was "off" here, as Scott used to say about times when his gut instincts didn't match the facts. I supposed I was being too paranoid, my episode in the ICU making me look at people critically. Anyone could get a call on a cell phone while jogging.

Scott didn't feel that merciful. He held up a tube of blood and stuck it right in her eyes, like maybe she was too stupid to know what it was.

"Here's a blood sample. She's had antivenin..."

"You gave her
antivenin?
" Marg asked, her eyes suddenly going wide.

"Um,
yeah
." He spoke slowly with exaggerated patience. "It won't interfere with our protocol. Godfrey just said to. Is there something wrong with that?"

"I just ... am wondering if it was a snakebite."

I flinched and jumped back as he suddenly flung her backwards by the arm and held her against the refrigerator. Her shoulders striking created a
bang
as things toppled inside. He looked crazed.

"Listen to me, if you want to keep this job more than five minutes. We see terrorists in our
sleep.
And I don't know you from Adam, it suddenly occurs to me. Who hired you? USIC or the State of New Jersey? You picked a strange time to be among the missing. What were you doing outside on a cell phone? What's the big secret? Were you talking to some buddies staying in Griffith's Landing?"

I thought perhaps he was going overboard, until I watched her jaw bob before she replied. "I ... was talking to my mother."

"Oh, really? Call her back. I want to talk to her."

Marg swallowed. She was lying. I knew it. Scott did, too.

He breathed, "You're surrounded by kids with dead mothers. You lie about your mother to us, you can burn in hell—"

"Scott, get ahold of yourself." Her voice was soothing, and she raised her hands in the air but didn't try to touch him. "I'm ... fine. USIC hired me. You can ask Alan."

"Alan and I are not exactly speaking right now." He gripped her arm tighter. "Why are you questioning a stupid shot of antivenin? Would you be happy if one of us died of a snakebite?"

"Look..." She reached slowly toward her jacket. "I'm getting out my cell phone. I left you the number on a big note beside your bed. But here it is again."

He didn't move. None of us had been on the lookout for notes, with Rain's finger frightening us. I felt confused. Scott didn't look confused. "Phone number? That's great. Fine, fat, fucking lot of good that's going to do if you're two miles up the road, Alan's gone, and somebody keels over here!"