I leaned in. “Zaul, you may die tonight if we don’t get you to medical care.”
He nodded. Then he shook his head again. “Not going home.” He laid his head back, but his hand remained on the cell phone.
While I sat thinking how to circumvent Zaul and get him home, Leena spoke. “If we can get to a pharmacy, I can get enough medicine to inject him and get us to León, where he will need some time to recuperate.”
“How about here?”
“His injuries are serious. Even if you could get the plane here, I’m not even sure he should fly. His blood pressure is dangerously low. He needs an IV. Antibiotics. Fluids. Morphine. X-rays. A check for internal injuries. A lot of stitches. And I can’t get that in Costa Rica because they don’t know me, but I can get it in León. And by the time we wait through the crowded emergency room anywhere close to here, we could get in through the back door in the clinic at León and then, if needed, right into the hospital. The doctors know me there.” Her intensity grew. “He needs care right now. And the only way I know to do that for certain starts in León.”
Zaul’s eyes were closed and his breathing shallow. “Get Isabella. I’ll get him to the truck.”
I carried Zaul to the truck while Paulina woke Isabella and Paulo and then brought me some blankets and several pillows as well as an armful of towels. Ten minutes later, Paulo backed us out of the drive and was headed north up the highway to León. The highway was dark, and there wasn’t another car in sight. Isabella stared through the back glass while Paulina huddled in the back with me. While I cradled Zaul and kept him from bouncing around, she did what she could with what little first aid we had to pack the gash on his side and wash his wounds. The look on her face told me she was worried. I held the flashlight and helped her as best I knew how. For his part, Zaul was mostly unconscious, which was good. If he were awake, he’d feel the pain, so unconscious was better. The last hour, she checked his pulse every few minutes and grew increasingly worried. “His fever has spiked.” She was right; Zaul was on fire and his skin was hot to the touch and his lips were blue. Paulo stopped at a gas station and bought a bag of ice, which we packed behind Zaul’s neck, in his armpits, on his stomach, and around his groin.
Driving in the dark, staring back and forth between Zaul and Paulina’s eyes, the occasional house light passing in the trees off the side of the road, clarity settled on me.
But the clarity did not bring me peace. How I got where I am in life was not the result of much thought or planning on my part. Nor can I tell you it was always the path of least resistance, although that was sometimes the case. More like the path of “that looks interesting” or “why not” or “wonder where that goes.” I’ve checked no moral compass and until recently never considered myself evil. Sitting in the back of that truck, Zaul bleeding in my arms, his life draining out of him, the whole of me pressed down on me and my reaction to the timeline and consequences of my life—and my choices—was one of disdain. Of bitterness. Of an acrid taste in my mouth. My sin had not been outright murder. I’d not defrauded millions. Not caused a holocaust. Not shot a dozen kids in a school. Not raped. Pillaged. But as I looked across my history, I wondered for the first time if my actions might be even worse.
I didn’t need to ask the question. I knew the answer.
I might not be in league with other evil men, but over my life, I’d looked away, gone on my merry way, done nothing to prevent or hinder—or rescue. While not an active instigator, I’d been passive. An accomplice even. That passivity had only served to multiply. Maybe that was the toughest thought to swallow. The effect of my life had been to multiply evil, not fight it. Not eradicate it.
If my life had been spent sifting through a fog that did not allow me to see, there in the back of that truck, it lifted and daylight cracked the skyline. I could define me in one word.
I was “indifferent.”
Staring at Zaul, at the crimson stain of my decisions, I knew I could no longer claim ignorance and manifest indifference. My sins were many. I glanced at my watch to check the time, but the face was smeared and the time covered over.
As I looked at Leena and felt in my heart an ache for something more than what I’d known and maybe what I hoped for what remained of my life, I was left with only one question and I had no answer to it.
When we reached the cathedral in León, Leena ran inside, leaving me alone with Zaul. With no movement, his eyes popped open and he stared at his hands. He shook his head. “What a mess I’ve made.”
My words were an attempt to take his mind off the pain. Anything to divert his mind from the moment. I said, “You really went out of your way to follow in your dad’s footsteps.”
His head swayed, and eyes rolled around. Forcing himself to return, he focused on me and tugged on my shirt, pulling me toward him. Through gritted teeth and a growing gurgle, he spoke, “Wasn’t trying to be my dad.” A single shake. He tapped me on the chest. “Was trying to be you.” He laid back, exhausted from the effort of pulling himself up. He whispered through closed eyes, “Like you.”
I did not bother to palm away the tears as Leena returned with two priests in flowing brown robes tied with white rope. I lifted Zaul from the back of the truck, carried him inside and down a tile-covered walkway into the medical clinic full of stainless implements where a bed had been prepared. Leena immediately prepped Zaul’s left arm, inserted a needle, and handed me the bag of fluids. “Squeeze this. Force them in.” As she began cutting off his clothes, she said, “The doctor will be here shortly. They have an outdated X-ray machine, but it works well enough. He’s bringing some film. Between now and then, we need to get him clean and start stitching him up.”
An hour later, she and I had bathed and scrubbed most every square inch of Zaul—who was sleeping peacefully under a haze of morphine. Once clean and disinfected, she began stitching, starting with his side. Doing so required her to stitch both internally and externally. Her hand was steady and her stitches near perfect. She worked like an experienced surgeon. “Your husband teach you that?” I asked.
She shook her head but kept her eyes on her work. “No. Necessity.”
From there she worked her way up to his face, eye, and his arm. She set his broken finger and worked his dislocated shoulder back into its socket. When it popped back in, I said, “Necessity teach you that?”
She almost smiled. “No.” She massaged his shoulder to manipulate the bloodflow. “My husband did.”
When the doctor showed with the unexposed film, the priests rolled in the X-ray machine, flipped the camera head horizontally, and I helped position Zaul to get the best pictures, of which they took several. Once developed, she and the doctor examined them and determined he had four broken ribs, but they had cracked along the line of the rib and not across, which meant that while painful, they weren’t poking into his lungs and demanded no treatment other than rest. The doctor also felt rather certain that Zaul did not appear to have multiple internal injuries other than severe contusions, but time would be a better indicator. At first, given the sight of his torso, he feared a burst spleen but that did not materialize. For the next hour, she and the doctor gave Zaul a rather thorough exam from head to toe, which was made all the more difficult by his being asleep, preventing him from answering the “Does this hurt?” line of questioning.
By 10:00 a.m., Leena and the doctor had done what they could. Zaul needed rest, fluids, antibiotics, and freedom from the fear of further harm. “And make no mistake,” the doctor said, holding a finger in the air. “Someone has caused him great bodily harm.” The doctor lifted the sheet off Zaul’s stomach, exposing deep blue-and-purple contusions. He waved his hand across Zaul. “Grey Turner’s and Cullen’s sign.”
“I’m not familiar with either of—”
“Intra-abdominal bleeding caused from blunt trauma. May indicate hemorrhage.” He turned to Leena. “Monitor carefully.”
Leena nodded as if she understood. The doctor returned to the hospital, promising to check on Zaul later that evening. Walking out, he turned and cautioned us that Zaul would be laid up a while. And that we should make plans for an extended recuperation.