A yellow beam lit the ground as she struggled to her feet and lurched toward Tommy. Julieta's voice called from the infirmary door. Cree fell before she got to the boy, but she managed to crawl the rest of the way on her hands and knees. Tommy's chest continued its writhing, his mouth gaped for air but none came. When she dared to touch his skin, it was ice-cold.
Not knowing what else to do, she put her mouth over his and blew into it. The convulsing chest changed its rhythm but didn't seem to receive any air. She took her mouth away, shoved hard on his breastbone with both hands, put her lips over his and exhaled again.
The flashlight beam panned wildly, and she heard Lynn Pierce's voice as well and knew that the nurse and Julieta were running toward them, that's why the light gyred and came and went so jaggedly. She felt herself go distant and confused, but pulled her mouth away from Tommy again. This time she saw blood on Tommy's cheeks and realized it was her own, she was bleeding from her forehead and raining drops of red onto him. And it didn't matter, what mattered was getting air into the fish-gaping black mouth. She put her hands against his chest and brought her weight down hard once more. Before she could lean to his face, a wave of dizziness broke over her, rocked her back so that she lost her balance. But as she fell away, she heard a gasp at the back of Tommy's throat, and immediately another. And then Julieta was there, and light, and Lynn's hands holding her shoulders so she wouldn't topple.
11
Asynchronous breathing," Cree said. "One lung is inhaling while the other is exhaling."
"That's not possible," the nurse said. "It's not anatomically possible!"
But of course it was, because they were looking at it. Tommy lay on the table beneath the bright, faltering lights of the examining room, eyes closed, arms at his sides. Once you understood what was going on, it was easy to see: The left side of his ribs rose and fell rapidly, while the right side drew slower, deeper breaths.
Ashen faced, speechless, Julieta stroked his forehead and gazed at him intensely, as if passion alone would allow her to see inside his skull.
Cree shut her eyes against the pounding pain and held the ice pack back against her forehead. "As long as the two sides don't get into regular opposition, he draws in enough air. But if one side inhales at the same time the other exhales, if they get into rhythm that way, the air just passes from lung to lung. That's what was happening when he came through the fence. He blacked out because he was suffocating. He was just rebreathing his own used-up air."
It was hard to think straight, but Cree realized they were talking about him as if he wasn't there. He acted like he was asleep, but she wasn't so sure. Through the pulsing haze in her head, she thought she felt him in there, disoriented but conscious.
Felt them in there.
"Tommy," she said softly. "Hey, Tommy."
Tommy stirred, hitching one shoulder. Julieta's eyes caught Cree's, terrified.
"You awake?" Cree persisted.
Tommy's eyes opened, rolled, stabilized. "Yeah."
"What's going on with you? What do you feel?"
"Nothing. I don't know." His speech was punctuated with wheezes, one lung laboring out of sync.
Cree gave him a moment to elaborate, but he didn't. "Up for Mrs. Pierce poking at you? We want to make sure you're not hurt."
He didn't answer but acquiesced by sitting up awkwardly, pushing himself up off the table with his left arm. He looked around him, blinking in the light, waiting. His breath steadied.
Lynn Pierce took over. "I need to ask you things, and I want you to answer even if they seem stupid to you. Is that okay?"
"Like we did the other times?"
"Yep, same thing." Lynn tried to smile. "You're a great patient, Tommy."
She looked into his eyes and ears, checked his reflexes with a rubber mallet, listened to his chest, and tried to conceal the alarm she obviously felt. "What's your name?" she asked. "I told you this would be stupid."
"Tom Keeday."
A tiny expression of relief on Lynn's face. "Where are you from?"
"East of Sheep Springs."
"What day is this?"
"Friday. September twenty-seventh."
"Who's the president?"
"Begaye. But there's an election coming up, he'll probably lose."
"Tribal president," Lynn explained to Cree. "Very good, Tommy. Can you stand up for me, good and straight?"
Tommy pushed aside the blankets and stepped off the table. His left leg wrongly anticipated the ground and he lurched, but after his right had tried twice to gauge the distance to the tile floor he managed to steady himself.
"Are you as straight as you can be?"
"Yeah."
Arms at his sides, he was bent sideways, the middle of his spine bowed noticeably to the left, his head cocked to the right. Cree shot a glance at Julieta, standing behind Tommy, and found that her eyes had filled and overflowed.
"Tommy, I want you to shut your eyes now. I'm going to touch you, and I want you to tell me where I'm touching you. Just like before."
He nodded and shut his eyes. When she gently prodded his left arm, he said, "Arm."
"You have to say left or right."
"Left."
"Great! Now this. And this." She touched his left pectoral muscle, his forehead, his left thigh, his stomach, and he named them all correctly.
Lynn prodded him on his spine in the middle of his back.
"Arm," he said. "Right arm."
Julieta's face folded in agony.
"This?" Another touch, this time on his neck, just below his buzz-cut hairline.
"Right shoulder."
The nurse bit her lips so hard Cree could have sworn her teeth would come through, but she went on. "Tommy, open your eyes now. What's this?" She had lifted his limp right arm, bending it at the elbow and so she could hold the limb right in front of him.
He opened his eyes and looked at it as if surprised and dismayed by the object's sudden appearance. "I don't know."
Holding the arm out in her right hand, Lynn used her left to stroke the bare skin, elbow to shoulder. "Keep your eyes open. What's this I'm touching?"
"I don't like it!"
"Don't like what?"
"That thing. The thing you're holding." He craned away, afraid of it.
"Where's your right arm?"
"I already told you!"
Lynn put the arm down and ran her fingers over the knobs of his side-bowed spine again. "Here?"
"Yes! I told you!"
"I'm sorry to keep at you. You're doing great. One more thing, and then we'll move on. We're almost done. Okay?"
"Yeah." He was getting sullen now. He mumbled something in what Cree assumed was Navajo.
"Shut your eyes again, please. I want you to tell me when you feel something."
When Tommy had winced his eyes shut, she placed his right hand, palm up, on the tabletop. Lynn dabbed alcohol on his fingertips, opened a sterilized lancet, and held his hand against the table as she isolated his ring finger. With one sharp stab, she drove the lancet into the pad of the immobilized finger.
Tommy didn't say anything. Didn't move, didn't even flinch. A fat bead of blood appeared when Lynn pulled the needle away.
She gripped his middle finger and stabbed deep again. "Feel anything?"
"No."
Lynn Pierce's chin was quivering as she tossed away the lancet and bandaged the fingers. Tommy stood obediently, shoulders squared but spine as bent as a hitchhiker's thumb. Julieta looked at him with heartbreak in her eyes.