In the Shadow of Blackbirds(89)
“Go back, Shell.” Stephen stroked my hair with soothing fingers. “You’ll be all right.”
“What if the world never gets any better?”
“It’ll have a far better chance if you’re in it. Go on. The only way I can rest is if you survive.”
I met his brown eyes. The same sense of urgency that had gripped us in his family’s sitting room overcame me.
“Send me off as a happy young woman,” I said.
“What?”
“I want to go off to my battles the same way you went to yours. Send me off as a happy woman.”
Gravity gave me a sharp tug that threatened to pull me away from him. We clasped hands before I could slide too far.
He leaned down and kissed me, and his touch no longer summoned images of bloodstained skies, battlefields, and murderous blackbirds. Instead of smoke and fire, his mouth tasted of the divine sweetness of icing on a cake when the sugar isn’t overdone. The taste of love before any pain gets in the way.
Our lips stayed together until gravity proved too strong.
He held tight to my hand. “Go live a full and amazing life, Shell. Come back when you’re an old woman and tell me what you did with the world.”
I nodded and clung to his fingers. “Swear to me you’ll rest.”
“I swear.”
My body down below appeared closer than before. At any second I’d plunge into an excruciating pool of ice. Our arms stretched farther apart, and our hands shook against each other. Every precious second we had spent together during our shared lives—from the day he brought his little Brownie camera to school to the morning I spied him through my goggles at the bottom of his Coronado staircase—warmed my soul and killed the darkness. I was ready.
A silent count to three.
A plea that the end wouldn’t hurt—for either of us.
I closed my eyes and let him go.
IN THE MINUTES FOLLOWING MY DROP INTO THAT frozen, leaden body, I somehow found the strength to reach inside Stephen’s satchel and hand the wooden plate holder to the Emberses’ neighbor, who was shouting to his wife that I wasn’t dead.
“Here.” I forced the smooth wood into the man’s hand. “Here’s evidence that the people you found me with are monsters.”
Before my eyelids drooped closed again, a flood of yellow warmth brightened the far corner of the ceiling—and disappeared.
MY MEMORIES OF THE MOMENTS AFTER MY BRIEF DEATH in Stephen’s bedroom were a muddled assortment. Chills that penetrated down to my bones. Pain boring into my skull. Salty broth forced between my lips. Muscle aches. Wheezing. Flooded lungs. Gasps for air. Delirium. Drowning.
Somewhere toward the end of my suffering, I dreamed about the anagram Stephen had written at the bottom of his lightning bolt photograph.
I DO LOSE INK
In the dream, the words stared at me from behind the glass of his battered and splintered picture frame that had fallen to my floor too many times. I tried with all my might to unscramble his hidden meaning, but the letters slid around in the sepia waves and repositioned themselves into dozens of nonsensical phrases.
Oiled oinks. Kid loonies. Doe oilskin. Die ski loon. Ski on oldie.
My brain hurt. I massaged my exhausted eyes and tried to make the real title come into focus.
Sink. Die. Soil. Ink. Look. Slide. Side.
Before the dream ended, I saw it, sharp and clear:
LOOK INSIDE
I AWOKE IN AN UNLIT CORNER OF THE HOSPITAL WITH sweat-soaked bandages wrapped around my head and something stringy tied to my right foot’s big toe. Perspiration drenched the hospital gown sticking to my body. My mouth tasted pickled. I strained to lift my head to get a look at the end of my cot and found a toe tag tied around my flesh, awaiting my death.
“Lord, have mercy! She’s still fighting to live.” The stocky nurse I remembered from my lightning injury waddled toward me with cobalt-blue eyes shining above her mask. “You’ve been struck down by lightning, given a concussion that knocked you dead, and spent a week getting clobbered by the flu—but here you are, blinking at me like a confused newborn. I wish all my patients possessed your mighty will to live.”
I stared at the woman with my lips hanging open. “I had the flu?”
“Yes, you most certainly did.” She set her clipboard beside me on the cot and placed her cold hand against my forehead. “Your temperature was one hundred and five degrees when they hauled you in here with that head injury, and you developed a bad case of pneumonia. Some detectives have been asking to speak with you, but I told them they’d need to find a spirit medium if they intended to chat with you anytime soon.”
I wiggled my itchy foot. “Is that a toe tag on me?”
“It is. I half wondered if tying it there would make you mad enough to prove me wrong about dying again.” She went to the foot of the bed and untied the string. “I guess it worked.”
“How long have I been here?”
“Well, it’s Sunday, November tenth …” She flipped through her clipboard. “You came in November fourth, just about a week ago. Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated the throne and escaped to Holland since then.”
“He did? Is the war over?”
“Not yet, but soon, we hope. Very soon.” She pulled a thermometer out of her white pocket and gave it a good shake.