“Julia. The ambulance is coming. Just stay alive a few more minutes, then they can do it for you. Stay alive.”
Everything under my hands was red.
fifteen
She stayed alive until the ambulance arrived. I had to help the EMTs keep her still so they could get shunts in both arms. When one suggested I ride in the second ambulance that was pulling up, spilling red light over Hjørdis’s street—red the exact colour of the bunad—I took him by the throat and shook him a little.
She stayed alive until we got to the hospital. She was still alive as they wheeled her into surgery.
“She’s strong,” I told the three nurses and one doctor in surgical greens who stood with me by the swinging doors. One of the nurses held a hypodermic. “Shouldn’t you be in there, helping her?”
“We’re here to help you.”
“Oh, no,” I said gently. “I’m fine,” and I plucked the needle from the nurse’s hand and squirted the drug onto the floor, but then something bit through my pants and three of them were nodding in satisfaction as the fourth stepped out from behind me and capped her own syringe.
“We need to take a look at you,” one of them said. I backed up against the wall.
“Julia.”
“There’s nothing you can do to help her now.”
The wall was cool and solid against my skin. It also seemed to be moving upwards. All I could see were four pairs of green-clad legs and white scrub shoes.
“Go get a gurney.”
One of the pairs of green trousers walked away down the corridor, then all I could see was the floor.
The room smelled of clean sheets and the lemons Hjørdis had left.
“The police are accepting the story that those two American men were fighting over a woman and you got hit in the cross-fire,” said Sampo.
“Not easily.”
“No. But what other explanation is there? Especially as your prints were on neither weapon and you are such a respectable citizen. The wound helps, of course.”
“Yes.”
We measured each other. If it wasn’t for my letter insurance, I would never have woken from that sedative.
“What’s your real name?”
“Harald.”
“Like the king.”
“Just like the king.”
We didn’t shake hands before he left.
A nurse came in with a tray full of needles and scissors and bandages. She worked quickly, with that lack of tenderness endemic to the profession. “You have another visitor waiting to see you. I told her you had already talked to too many people today.”
“Who is it?”
“I didn’t get her name. She’s American.”
“Tell her she can come in when you’ve finished.”
It was Annie. No longer laughing, eyes circled with jet lag and worry. She took a chair by the bed but did not seem to know what to say.
“When did you get here?”
“Two hours ago.”
“Are her brother and sister coming?”
I thought for a moment she didn’t understand me. “Oh. No. Drew…well, Drew can’t come. And Carmel is at the U.S. Research Station in McMurdo Sound. In the Antarctic. I haven’t been able to get through to her.” She sat there helplessly.
“You’ve talked to the doctors?”
“Yes. They tell me she’s critical but stable. A lot of internal damage. Her liver—” She stopped abruptly. “I was going to say it’s shot to pieces. A figure of speech. But it really is. It really is shot to pieces. They had to take out four inches of colon, too. And one of her kidneys. It was the bullet, they said. A special bullet that bounced around inside.”
“The only irreparable damage is to her liver.”
“She…she’s strong, isn’t she?”
“Very strong.”
“And a liver transplant would make her as good as new again, wouldn’t it?”
“Almost.”
“Why won’t she wake up? She just lies there and there’s no sound but that beep beep beep of the machines.”
“It’s her body’s way of focusing its attention on what’s necessary. She’s fighting to stay alive the best way she knows how. When she regains strength, she’ll wake up.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely. You know Julia, she can’t bear to miss anything that’s going on.”
She started to smile, but the stretch turned into a quiver. “I can’t do this.”
“You’re tired. I bet you didn’t sleep on the plane. Julia doesn’t sleep on the plane, either. A few hours’ rest will work wonders.”
“But I have to see to her things. Insurance. Her clothes. Make arrangements.”
“Hjørdis, my aunt, is already dealing with getting our things from the seter—the farm where we’ve been staying. Everything is being taken care of. And Julia is safe now. She’s in good hands. Get some sleep, Mrs. Miclasz.”
“Annie.” A ghost of the former roguish smile, gone in a moment. “You saved her life.” I should never have let her go. “You love her, don’t you?”
My hawk with broken wings and matted feathers. “Yes.”
“So do I. If we join forces, she’ll have to live.”
“She’ll live.” She had to.
“The doctors tell me you were hurt, too.”
Cracked scapula, chipped elbow, nerve damage. Infections had meant they had snipped away bits of skin and muscle; I had had a blood transfusion; and there were enough stitches to make my arm look like that of a child’s clumsily sewn-up teddy bear.
“Nothing that won’t mend.”
She stood. “When I come back tomorrow I’ll bring some vitamins. I want you to get well quickly. Julia is going to need us both.”
A nurse brought in a phone. It was my mother.
“Hjørdis has told me what you told her happened.” A diplomat’s nicety of language. “I take it your trip to England will be postponed?”
“Yes. I’ve chartered an air ambulance and will accompany Julia and her mother to Atlanta tomorrow. They’ve found a donor they can keep alive until we get there.”
“Will she survive the operation?”
“The odds are about even.”
“Keep me informed. And if you need anything, anything at all, call.”
I held Julia’s hand all the way across the North Sea, across the Irish Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, even though this was one flight during which she would not be afraid. When I had to release a hand to let the nurse be about his business, I rested my palm against her thigh. Somewhere deep down in her crocodile brain I wanted to register the fact that she was not alone, that she never would be.
Annie sat on the other side of the bed. Sometimes she held her hand, too; mostly, she just looked.
Over the Irish Sea, the plane lurched a little.
“I hate turbulence,” she said.
“It must be genetic.”
“You should be resting that shoulder.”
“I’m fine.”
The plane droned through the arid reaches of the afternoon sky.
“She’s lovely, isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“She’s too young, too beautiful to die.”
“I won’t let her die.”
“I saw it from the beginning, you know.”
“Saw what?”
“That you two were right for each other. She was so upset about Jim’s death, all to pieces. It was quite unlike her. I haven’t seen her like that before, well, not since…”
“She told me about her brother.”
“Oh. Well, I couldn’t understand it, why she fell apart like that. Almost as if she was blaming herself. And then you came along, out of the blue, and suddenly she wasn’t in pieces anymore.” She smiled. “Did she ever tell you she thought you’d done it at first?”
“The police told me.”
“She went to the police about you?” She shot Julia a startled glance.