Cat’s whole body began to shake uncontrollably, like a young tree bending in a wind storm. She saw blood on the stage, saw blood where she was standing, and she realized it was coming from beneath Stride. From his body. Her hands tore at her hair, and she sank down to the ground in disbelief. She knelt in the blood and grabbed Stride’s shoulder, and with a fierce energy, she pushed him over, so that he lay on his back. His eyes were closed, his face pale.
His chest was covered in blood. Fresh, cherry-red blood, growing and spreading into a misshapen stain. A mass of blood, the kind of loss no one should survive. And amid all the blood, there was a scorched bullet hole in his chest, ripped through the fabric, right where his heart was.
“Stride? Stride? Oh, my God, no! No, no, no!”
Tears spilled from her eyes like a flood. Her fists squeezed open and closed. She cupped her hands under his head, shook him, and tried to wake him up, but he wouldn’t move. Her body twisted around, and her voice filled the room with her scream.
“Serena!”
39
“He’s in emergency surgery,” Serena told Maggie, her voice drained of all inflexion. “They said even if it goes well, it’s likely to be a while until we know anything. If it doesn’t go well, I guess we’ll know quickly.”
She stood by the hospital windows and stared with dead eyes at the blackness of the night, which was interrupted by lightning over the lake. The storm refused to move off, and heavy rain beat against the glass. The waiting room was warm and hushed.
Maggie slung an arm around Serena’s waist and held on tight. Serena hardly even felt it. She didn’t feel anything.
“Where was he hit?” Maggie asked softly.
“The heart.”
She heard Maggie suck in a long, ragged breath.
“They say it’s a single chamber injury, which apparently is a good thing,” Serena went on, mouthing the words and barely hearing them. “If multiple chambers were affected, he’d have almost no chance. They also said he wasn’t in cardiac arrest when they took him into surgery, and that’s a good thing, too.”
“Okay.”
Serena’s lower lip trembled. “I asked the surgeon to give me odds. She didn’t want to, but I pushed her.”
“What did she say?”
“One in four.”
“That he dies?”
“That he lives.”
Beside her, Maggie began to cry, and tears crept down Serena’s face, too, as if all the emotion she was keeping inside had to find a way to get out. The two of them stood like that for a long time, in silence, in tears. Serena had always heard about people in near-death experiences seeing their lives pass before their eyes, but she found that her own life passed in front of her now.
Instead of the Duluth night, she saw her past with Jonny go through her mind, one memory after another.
Getting off the plane at the Duluth airport, seeing Stride and Maggie for the first time, not realizing that her life had just changed permanently.
Making love with him on the cold beach of the Point in the darkness.
Jonny rescuing her from a burning shanty in the middle of a frozen lake, where she’d been held captive and tortured. The sight of his face, the love in his eyes, as he took her in his arms.
The awfulness of him confessing that he’d slept with Maggie, the bitter separation that followed, the reunion that finally came when Cat entered their lives.
And that moment at the green bench at the end of the Point — the sacred place where Stride confronted everything that was good and bad in his life — when he’d finally said goodbye to Cindy’s ghost and gone down on one knee to ask Serena to marry him.
All those memories came and went in an instant, and she was right back where she was, in the hospital, waiting to see whether her husband lived or died.
“Half the police force is in the lobby downstairs,” Maggie told her. In her own Maggie way, she added a joke. “Honestly, if you want to commit a crime in Duluth, this is a pretty good time.”
Serena tried to find a smile, but it wasn’t there.
“Everyone is praying for him,” Maggie went on. “He’s the toughest man I know, Serena. Not just physically tough, but soul tough. He’s determined. He never gives up. I don’t care what anyone says the odds are. He won’t leave you.”
“Except we both know that’s not how life works,” Serena murmured.
Maggie shook her head fiercely. “I don’t know that at all. Not tonight. I may be a cynical bitch most days of my life, and I may think the universe is mostly playing a big joke on us, but not tonight. I prayed, too. For both of you. I had to introduce myself to God, because it’s not like we’re best friends or anything, but I prayed.”
“Thank you, Maggie.”
Serena wanted to find comfort in the idea that the city was praying for Stride, but she didn’t know how to take any comfort in anything now. Her own soul was as alone and black as the night. The only glimmers she saw were the flashes of lightning on the other side of the rain-swept glass, and those bursts made her think of shocks of electricity trying and failing to start a heart.
“I told Guppo I’d give him an update,” Maggie said. “I should probably find him.”
Serena nodded. “Sure. Go.”
Maggie turned to leave, but then she stopped. “You know, Serena, for what it’s worth, I remember when you were shot in the graffiti graveyard and almost died. I don’t know if Stride ever told you, but he and Cat prayed for you. They held hands and prayed. He swears that’s what brought you back.”
“He told me,” Serena murmured, but she didn’t say anything more than that.
Maggie squeezed her shoulder and left the small waiting room. Serena stayed by the window. She wasn’t even sure how much time passed, standing there in a kind of suspended animation. The room was silent, and silence was good, because the only thing that could interrupt the silence now was a door opening, and a surgeon coming in to deliver bad news.
Right now, silence was keeping her alive. Silence meant Jonny hadn’t left her.
Except it was too quiet. She cast her gaze around the waiting room and realized that she was alone. Cat had disappeared. The girl had been sitting on the sofa, and now she was gone. Serena spotted the door to the bathroom and saw that it was closed but unlocked. She went over, knocked gently on the door, and called Cat’s name. When she got no answer, she slowly pushed open the door. The overhead lights of the bathroom were harsh and bright.
Cat sat on the tiled floor in the corner, her knees pulled up. Her cheeks were flushed beet red from crying, and strands of her chestnut hair fell across her face. She stared straight ahead with vacant, empty, horrified eyes. Serena went over and sat down next to her. She put an arm around the girl’s shoulder and stroked her fingers through Cat’s hair.
“This is my fault,” Cat murmured.
“It’s not. Not in any way.”
“If he dies, I’m going to kill myself,” the girl said.
Serena realized how selfish she’d been, thinking she was alone. Instead, she dug down into herself and summoned words. “No, you’re not going to do that. Neither am I. That’s not how this goes.”
“How can you be calm about this?”
“I’m not calm, Catalina. I’m terrified. But I’m not going to sit here and let you blame yourself. Whatever happens, we need to stay strong. I’m going to be there for you, and you need to be there for me, too. Got it?”
Cat didn’t answer, but she felt the girl’s shoulders quivering as she cried.
Serena waited a long time to say anything more. “It’s okay if you want to pray. You should.”
“It won’t do any good. It’s a waste of time.”
“Since when?”