I return to Charlene and Xavier and ask him if he can give us a ride back to the Lawson Center so we can get our car and our things from the cabin.
“What about your X-rays?” he asks.
“Only if they can get me in quickly. Our flight leaves from Portland in less than four hours, and with the drive back to the center, it’s going to be cutting it close.” I watch Xavier carefully to see how he responds to the next bit of information. “We’ll be meeting up with Fionna and her kids in Chicago on the way. They’re coming with us.”
“Fionna?”
“That’s right.”
“And her kids?”
“Uh-huh.”
He’s quiet for a moment. Despite his unwavering support for people living off the grid and his suspicion of the federal government’s role in just about every evil of modern society, he’s surprisingly never been a big fan of homeschooling and has made the mistake of mentioning to Fionna that he thought she should’ve sent her kids to a charter school or a private academy of some type.
Families who homeschool usually have pretty strong convictions for why they do it, and Fionna was no exception. I’d seen her and Xavier really get into it a few times.
All good-naturedly, of course.
I think.
I pat him on the shoulder. “Just don’t bring up the homeschooling thing and you guys will do fine.”
“Uh-huh,” he mutters. “As long as she doesn’t try out any of her similes on me, we’ll do even better.”
I’m tempted to tell him about the gerbils-on-the-floor analogy but hold back. “Let me get those X-rays, and then I want to check on Dr. Tanbyrn again before we leave.”
Malik’s Daughter
Two cracked ribs. Neither serious.
The ER doctor and the radiologist both interpret the X-rays the same way. It’s a welcome piece of good news in the sea of an otherwise dark and turbulent day.
Rest and time would help me heal. And that sounded a lot better to me than dealing with a pierced lung.
We proceed quickly to Tanbyrn’s room.
Even though Pine Lake is a small town, with the news of a Nobel laureate nearly dying in a purposely set fire, it’s no surprise that the national media is already camped outside the hospital doing live feeds. Thankfully, the sheriff’s department has kept them from getting through the doors.
At the room, Deputy Jacobs, the mustached cop who’d gone through Banner’s pockets when I led him and two of his fellow officers to Banner’s body, is standing sentry outside the door.
At first I’m a little surprised to see him stationed here, but considering the fact that this crime spree involved arson, at least one homicide, and possibly eleven others by the same person or team of people, the extra security made perfect sense.
Deputy Jacobs gives us a nod as we approach and anticipates what we came for. “He slipped into a coma.”
What? Charlene mouths.
A silent nod.
“Is it possible we could see him?” she asks.
“I’m afraid not. They don’t want him disturbed.”
“How would we disturb him if he’s in a coma?”
Jacobs has no answer for that.
“It’s possible that he’s aware of what’s going on, that he needs to have someone reassure him—”
“I’m sorry, that’s—”
Charlene folds her arms. “Can you imagine what it would be like if you were lying there and part of your brain was aware of how alone you were, how hopeless your situation was, and no one was there to comfort you? How do we know for sure that’s not the case?”
Deputy Jacobs isn’t up for a fight tonight. “I suppose it can’t hurt. I’ll go in with you. But just for a couple minutes; I don’t want the docs walking in on us.”
“I’ll stay here in the hall,” Xavier offers, “and knock if I see any doctors coming.”
Inside the room, we find Tanbyrn lying motionless on the bed, the blankets tucked neatly around him, leaving the outline of his slight frame sketched beneath the covers. Only his head and arms are visible. He’s on a ventilator and has tubes running into his arms, and all of this makes him look vulnerable, frail, and smaller than he really is. The subtle hum of hospital machinery and the lemony scent of antiseptic fill the air.
The room has only dimmed lights and the generic, nondescript feel of hospital rooms everywhere.
I think of how many people die in these generic rooms and how tragic that is. A whole life of uniqueness and individuality funneled down into a room that’s interchangeable with a hundred thousand others just like it all around the country.
Feel-good movies will tell you, “Pursue your dreams,” or “Follow your heart and everything will work out in the end,” or “Love conquers all,” or some other cliché that sounds good at first but doesn’t stand up to reality, to the way things really are.
Because dreams don’t always come true.
And following your heart sometimes only leads you deeper into despair.
And love doesn’t conquer all. Death does. Like it did with Rachel and the boys. Death won. Death always wins in the end.
We approach the bed.
I have no idea if Dr. Tanbyrn can hear me or not, but I tell him, “We got the man who started the fire.” I doubt that talking about anyone dying is the best thing to do at the moment, so I leave out the news about Banner’s death and Abina’s murder.
Charlene sits beside the bed and takes Dr. Tanbyrn’s hand. “You’re going to be okay.”
Considering his condition, I’m not sure she should be telling him that, but truthfully, when she does the words sound so heartfelt and confident that I almost believe they’ll come true.
Positive thoughts. Remember, they make a difference.
And prayers.
Thoughts and prayers.
Even though I wish we could ask him about Project Alpha, I’m at least reassured that we have a plan, that we’re on our way to—
A series of knuckle raps on the door from Xavier tells us that there’s a doctor on his way to the room.
“We should go,” Deputy Jacobs tells us quietly.
I assure Tanbyrn that we’re going to find out who was behind everything. Charlene gives him a light kiss on the forehead and tells him she’ll be praying for him, then we slip out of the room, meet up with Xavier, and leave to retrieve our things from the center so we can make it to Portland by the time our plane lands to pick us up.
Riah did not find herself sad that the three men in the video had been killed in the explosion, but she did find their deaths to be unfortunate and untimely in the sense that the men probably had more things they would’ve liked to accomplish before they died.
Possibly, but they were planning a suicide attack, after all.
In either case, other than acknowledging that a premature death might not have been on their agenda for the day, Riah felt no sorrow or pity or grief.
It was her condition, her curse.
Her reality.
However, she couldn’t help but remain curious about Malik’s wife, the woman who would now be forced to fend for herself in a male-dominated, patriarchal society, and Malik’s daughter, the fourteen-year-old girl who would now have to grow up without her father. Riah guessed that the girl had loved him and wondered what she was going through.
What would that be like? To grieve the death of a loved one?
Would the Afghan girl see her father as a hero who’d died for his beliefs, or as a coward who chose to escape a harsh life and slip into paradise, leaving his wife and daughter living on the hellish outskirts of a war zone?