Yes, he knew.
Up and out of the tent and across the clearing, all in darkness, with Mathias little more than a shadow, crouched above a second shadow, which was Amy. Jeff dropped to his knees beside them, reached for Amy's hand, her wrist, already cold to the touch. He couldn't make out either of their faces.
"I think it…" Mathias began, fumbling for the words, almost stuttering in his agitation. "I think it smothered her."
Jeff bent closer. The vine had grown across her mouth, her nose. He started to tug at it, the sap burning his hands. It had pushed its way inside her mouth, and he had to dig in with his fingers to pull it free, ignoring the rubbery feel of her lips, so cold-too cold.
From the tent, Eric had begun to shout again. "The knife! Get the knife!"
Not smothered, Jeff thought. Choked. Because he could smell the tequila, the bile, feel the dampness on the vine's leaves. He remembered Amy staggering to her feet, taking that half step toward him, her hand held to her mouth. He'd thought she'd been pressing it there to hold back her nausea, but he'd been wrong. She'd been pulling, he realized now, struggling to rip the plant from her face, to open a passage for her vomit, even as she suffocated upon it, falling to her knees, beckoning to him for help.
When he finished clearing her mouth, he tilted back her head, pinched shut her nostrils, bent his lips to hers-a tight seal, with no gaps. He could taste her vomit, feel the burn of the vine's sap on his tongue. He exhaled, filling her lungs, lifted his mouth free, moved to her chest, felt for her sternum, placed the heels of his hands against it, pressed downward with all his weight, counting in his head with each push-one…two…three…four…five-and then back to her mouth.
"Jeff," Mathias said.
There were stories Jeff could call upon here-false deaths-people pulled pulseless from deep water, blue-lipped, stiff-limbed. There were heart attacks and snakebites and lightning strikes. And choking victims, too-why not? People who ought never to have breathed again, and yet, through some miracle, some physiological quirk, were yanked back into life simply because someone who had no reason to believe, no reason to persist, did so nonetheless, breathing air into a corpse's lungs, pumping blood through a cadaver's heart, resurrecting them-somehow, some way-Lazarus-like, from the grip of their too-soon deaths.
"It's too late," Mathias said.
Jeff had learned CPR in a tenth-grade health class. Early spring in western Massachusetts, flies buzzing and bumping against the big windows, which looked out on the courtyard, with its flagpole, its tiny greenhouse. A short lecture, and then they practiced, the rubber dummy laid out on the linoleum, a female, oddly legless. She'd been given a name, Jeff remembered, but he couldn't recall what it was. Fifteen boys, taking turns with her-there'd been a few halfhearted sexual jokes, which Mr. Kocher frowned into silence. They were all embarrassed, anxious of failure, and trying not to show it. The dummy's lips had tasted of rubbing alcohol. Kneeling beside her head, Jeff had imagined the rescues that might lie in his future. He'd pictured his grandmother collapsed on the kitchen floor, his entire family-sister and parents and cousins and uncles and aunts-all of them frozen, helpless, watching her die; and then Jeff would calmly step forward, pushing his way through them, so that he could kneel beside her and breathe life back into her body, the simplest of gestures, yet God-like, too. A moment of grace-that was how he'd pictured it-full of serenity and self-assurance.
He exhaled, filling Amy's lungs.
Mathias reached, touched his shoulder. "She's not…"
Go to her, he'd thought-he remembered the words in his head. Sitting in the mud beside Pablo's lean-to, watching her stagger, drop to her knees, her hands at her mouth. Do it now. And why hadn't he?
There was movement from the tent, and Stacy appeared, came stumbling toward them. "It's inside him again," she said. "I-" She stopped, stood staring at them through the darkness. "What happened?"
Jeff shifted back to Amy's chest, felt for the sternum.
"Is she-"
My fault: There was no doubt of this, yet Jeff knew he couldn't afford to think on it now, had to resist its pull. Later, he'd have to confront those two words, bear their weight; later, there'd be no escape. But not now.
He began to push: one…two…three…four…five.
Then again, perhaps there wouldn't be a later. Because there was that possibility, too, wasn't there? No later, nothing beyond this place, Amy simply the first of them, with himself and the others soon to follow. And if that were the case, what did it matter, really? This way rather than another, now rather than in the coming days or weeks-couldn't it be a blessing, even, like any other abridgement of suffering?
"Jeff…" Mathias said.
He hadn't known. He hadn't been able to see. She'd been only fifteen feet away, but lost in darkness nonetheless. How could he have known?
Eric was yelling from the tent, calling for Stacy, for the knife, for help.
Not now, Jeff thought, struggling to discipline himself. Later.
"Mathias?" Stacy said, sounding scared. "Is she…"
"Yes."
Babies pulled from trash cans, old women found slumped in their nightgowns, hikers dug out of snowbanks-the main thing was not to give up, not to make assumptions, to act without hesitation, and pray for that miracle, that quirk, that sudden gasp of air.
Stacy took a single step forward. "You mean-"
"Dead."
Jeff ignored them. Back to her mouth: the cold lips, the taste of vomit, the burn of the sap as he forced the air into her chest. Eric kept yelling from the tent. Stacy and Mathias were silent, not moving, watching Jeff work at the body-the lungs, the heart-straining for that moment of grace, which resisted him, fought him, wouldn't come. He gave up long before he stopped, kept at it for an extra handful of minutes out of simple inertia, a terror of what it meant to lift his lips from her mouth, his hands from her chest, with no intention of returning. It was fatigue that finally forced him to a halt, a cramp in his right thigh, a growing sense of light-headedness; he sat back on his heels, struggled to catch his breath.
No one spoke.
She called my name, Jeff thought. He wiped at his mouth; the sap made his lips feel abraded. I heard her call it. He picked up Amy's hand, clasped it in his own, as if trying to warm it.
"Stacy…" Eric shouted.
Jeff lifted his head, peered toward the tent. "What's wrong with him?" he asked. The quietness of his voice astonished him; he'd expected something ragged, something desperate: a howl. He was waiting for tears-he could feel them, just beyond his reach-but they didn't come.
Wouldn't.
Later, he thought.
"It's inside him again," Stacy said, and she, too, spoke softly, almost inaudibly. It was the presence of death, Jeff knew, reducing them all to whispers.
He let go of Amy's hand, laid it carefully across her chest, thinking of that rubber dummy once more, those limp arms. He'd received a certificate for passing the test; his mother had framed it, hung it in his room. He could shut his eyes now and see all those certificates and ribbons and plaques hanging on the walls, the shelves full of trophies. "Someone should go help him," he said.
Mathias stood up without a word, started toward the tent. Jeff and Stacy watched him go, a shadow moving off across the clearing.
Ghostlike, Jeff thought, and then the tears arrived; he couldn't hold them back. No sobs, no gasps-no wailing or moaning or keening-just a half dozen drops of salty water rolling slowly down his cheeks, stinging where the vine's sap had burned his skin.