An’ maybe, most likely, it was that the kid had a good heart, an’ that he was just so damned tired of fighting that he’d taken the chance he was given, but he couldn’t live with what it meant. Nothing evil could stay rooted in somebody who wasn’t willing to have it there. That was something I had to believe, and the kid had lost the willingness.
Hes stepped forward one more time an’ caught the boy in her arms as he fell. Black magic ran outta him like oil, seeping into the landscape, disappearing as fast as it had come, an’ the next breath we took was back at home in the Middle World. Annie scrambled to her feet and ran for the kid, shouting at me to call an ambulance. I ran for the house, wishing for the first time in my life I had a cell phone, an’ called 911 while standing at the window watching the women working on the kid. I guessed he wasn’t dead from how Annie kept shooting panicked looks at me, and I had a hell of a time explaining to the lady on the phone what exactly the emergency was. She got an ambulance on the way, though, and I ran back out to the yard.
Hester was giving the kid everything she had, power flaring over him in waves. Nothing about it looked or felt as strong as what Jo commanded. I wished again I could call her up and get her over here, but it was still three years too early, and nothing was gonna change that either. Annie, talkin’ over Hester’s head, said, “His whole system is shutting down. He’ll be lucky to live until the paramedics arrive.”
Hes snarled something, not even really words, just denying the truth we all saw. She kept him alive, anyway, or something did, and Annie got into the ambulance and drove away with the kid. Me and Hester sat in the grass, staring after the fading lights, until she finally said, “Your wife could have been a shaman herself.”
“I reckon she coulda been. Thought you said you didn’t have the chops to fight that thing.”
“I didn’t. Mrs. Muldoon is the one who kept him off-balance enough to let me in.”
“An’ all I did was sit on my duff an’ watch.”
“What are you, Mr. Muldoon?”
“Outta time, doll. I’m outta time.” I didn’t reckon she’d hear it quite the way I meant, but either way it didn’t matter. Best I could hope for right then was they’d somehow saved the kid, that maybe his life was gonna turn out a little better, for as long as it lasted. I didn’t see much in the way of a happier ending coming outta any of this. Annie’d done what she had ta do, but it meant I was left counting the days, and then the hours, right down to the minute she’d left me, and I was gonna hafta go through it all over again.
Hester, not knowing more than that Annie was dying, got up, put her hand on my shoulder, an’ stood there a minute without tryin’ ta find the right thing to say. Then she walked away, an’ I never saw her again, alive or dead.
Annie came home ‘round midnight, and only shook her head, telling me not to say anything, when I mighta asked about the kid. We slept late, an’ when she woke up she stayed nestled beside me, taking careful breaths and listening to her own chest rattle with a clinical ear. “I’m breathing more clearly. It’s easier than it was yesterday, before the spirit quests. But I can still feel the weight of it in me, Gary. I’m not going to beat this, not in the long term. You have to promise me something.”
“Anything, darlin’.”
“Help Myles out, if you can.”
“What? He ain’t dead? I thought—”
Annie shook her head. “I was too tired to talk about it last night, but Miss Jones…well, I suppose she healed him. I hope it was she, and not that…thing.”
Feelin’ pretty confident, I said, “If it was that thing riding him he wouldn’t have come outta this alive. Pretty sure being possessed burns a fella out. I don’t think he woulda recovered from it, or anything else, if Hes hadn’t been there. So what’d she do, put his guts back together? Ain’t Crohn’s genetic?” I’d been underestimating Hester’s power, if she could do that. I wasn’t sure Jo could.
Annie shook her head again. “If there’s a genetic component, no one has found it yet. No, the surgical procedures are still in place, but by time I left the hospital last night none of his system was inflamed any longer. He hadn’t been that healthy when he left the hospital. He’d only been in remission, but Crohn’s does that. It flares and fades, so while it had been a remarkable recovery, there were still signs of it in his body. Last night the doctors couldn’t find any evidence that there had ever been a reason to give the poor boy an ileostomy. So whatever’s happened with him, whatever happens with me, Gary, if you can, help Myles out. This is going to be very hard for him.”
“An’ you think it ain’t gonna be for us?” I had just enough smarts to say us and not me, but Annie saw through it anyway an’ tucked herself closer to me.
“I know it will be.” That was all she said. It was all either of us said about what was coming at us fast, ‘cause there wasn’t much else to say. She got weaker as the days went on, until I realized for the second time that she was holding on, waitin’ for our wedding anniversary. I’d been slow figuring it out the first time, and was just as slow the second time around, ‘cause I was trying hard not to think about anything but the last hours I had with her. We had strawberries on waffles in a room full of roses, same way we’d had ‘em every morning of our anniversary since the first one, an’ then, finally, she said, “I think I should go to the hospital now.”
“No reason to, darlin’. Nothin’ wrong with home.”
“What did we do last time?”
“We went to the hospital three days ag—” I snapped my teeth together, tryin’ ta eat the words I’d already said, but Annie only smiled like she wasn’t surprised.
“So we’ve already changed it. Do you think the changes are enough? Is it going to make a difference, somehow? Will we win, Gary? Tell me what happens,” she said, real soft. “Please tell me what happens, Gary. I won’t be there to see it, so I want to know. We’ll stay home,” she promised, like promising would be the thing that would make me tell her. “We’ll stay home, we won’t go to the hospital, and you can tell me the future.”
An’ I did. It took all day, sittin’ in the bed with her, holding her like I couldn’t the last time through, and I told her about the next three or four years. Told her about picking up a mouthy fare one January morning, just a couple days after I turned seventy-three, an’ she got a notepad outta her nightstand and wrote that down, the time and date and SeaTac terminal, and she made me put it in my wallet. “Just to make sure you’ll be there,” she told me, an’ I smiled a bit.
“Like I could forget, sweetheart. I’d been kinda living on auto pilot up ‘til then, just kinda waitin’ to catch up with you. Jo…you gotta forgive me, darlin’. Jo gave me something else to live for, made me not wanna hurry dying up too much. I wish you coulda known her, Annie. She’s just a kid, and she was a real mess when I met her, but you wouldn’t believe the woman she’s growing up into. She’s our girl, Annie. She’s the girl we shoulda had. So brave she’s stupid sometimes, but her heart’s in the right place.”
“If we’d had a girl of our own all of this would be different, and you might never have met her. I don’t know if things happen for a reason, but I think perhaps all of it comes around to where it’s supposed to be, in the end. Tell me more. Tell me how you got the tortoise spirit animal. I can still feel this ridiculous cat in my mind, you know. It’s getting ready to run. Gathering itself. I can’t see its prey, but I suppose something must be out there for it to hunt. I don’t think cheetahs run just for fun…”