Night Road(49)

Officer Avery stepped forward, his hat in his hand.

She saw everything in pieces, out of focus, as if she were looking through binoculars set for someone else’s eyes; staccato bursts of color, a macabre night, rain that looked like bits of ash falling from the sky.

I’m sorry. There’s been an accident.

Words. Sounds. Lips that moved and the sound of heavy breathing. Falling rain.

Mia … Zach … Alexa Baill …

She couldn’t process it, couldn’t make sense of it. My babies … you’re talking about my children.

“They’ve been airlifted to Harborview, all three of them.”

“They’re okay?” she heard her husband ask, and it shocked her so badly she almost pulled away from him. How could he find a voice now? Ask anything?

Did the policeman answer? What had he said? Jude couldn’t hear anything over the rain, or the beating of her heart. Was she crying? Is that why she couldn’t see?

Miles looked at her, and in his eyes she saw how breakable they both were, how fragile. It had happened in an instant, this new frailty; in the time it took them to walk from their bedroom to the front door, they had been pared down, their bones weakened. She thought his touch would bruise her now, leave a mark.

“Let’s get dressed,” he said, taking her by the arm. “We need to go.”

*

The drive to the hospital seemed to take forever. There were no ferries running at this hour, so they had to take the bridge to Kitsap County and drive around to Seattle.

In the car, they didn’t speak. Silence felt manageable; words did not. It took concentration just to draw in each breath and exhale without crying.

She wished she were a religious woman. All that spirituality she’d cultivated didn’t help her now; she needed faith, an antidote to this escalating fear. When they parked, Jude turned to her husband. He looked drawn and gaunt and the look in his eyes was harrowing.

She wanted to comfort him, as she did so often when he came home from work still mired in loss. She wanted to tell him not to think of the worst, but she was too brittle to even offer an arm.

Inside the bright white hospital, Jude straightened her shoulders and forged ahead, trying to manage her fear by controlling everything around her. But her questions went unanswered, her calls for help unheeded.

“Stop,” Miles finally said, taking her aside in the crowded hallway. “Just let them do their jobs. All we can do is wait.”

She didn’t want to do nothing, but she had no choice. So she stood there, overwhelmed by helplessness, trying not to cry. Waiting.

Finally, at just past six in the morning, they got an answer. It felt as if they’d been here for decades, but in truth, it had been less than an hour.

“Mia is in surgery,” the man in front of her said. He was a big black man with tattooed biceps and the kindest, molasses-colored eyes she’d ever seen. His orange scrubs looked more like prison clothes than hospital wear. “She suffered some pretty severe internal injuries. That’s all I know,” he added when Miles began to question him.

“She’ll be okay, though,” Jude said. Everything felt scrambled in her head, sounds seemed to be muffled. Why could she hear her own heartbeat in all this noise?

“The surgeon will come out to talk to you when he’s done, but it will be a while. They just went in,” the nurse said.

“And Zach?” Miles asked.

“I’ll take you to see him,” the nurse said. “He sustained some chemical burns to his face and eyes, so he’s bandaged. Before you ask, Dr. Farraday, that’s all I know. He also cracked a couple of ribs. The girl, Alexa, is in with a doctor right now, but I think her injuries are less severe. A broken arm, a forehead laceration.”

“Burns?” Jude said. “How bad is it? Has he seen a specialist? There’s that doctor from the UW—what’s his name, Miles?”

Miles took her hand. “Later, Jude,” he said firmly, and she felt that helplessness rise up in her again.

They followed the nurse into a private room, where her son, the boy she’d thought only last week was looking so much like a man, lay in a metal-railed bed all alone, surrounded by machines. The right side of his face was bruised and swollen, misshapen somehow. Bandages wrapped his head, mushrooming out above his ears. A rectangular gauze pad covered the lower part of his right cheek and jawline.

Miles squeezed her hand, and this time she clung to him.

“We’re here,” Miles said.

“I’m holding your hand, Zach,” Jude said, trying not to cry as she stared down at her son’s bruised, burned face and bandaged eyes. His other hand was bandaged up past his wrist. “Just like I used to, remember? I used to hold your hand all the way into the classroom in kindergarten. You got cool in eighth grade—after that, I could only hold your hand in the car, and only for a few minutes. I used to reach back into the backseat, remember? And you’d hold my hand for a few minutes, just so—”

“Mom?”

For a moment she thought she’d imagined his voice. “Thank God,” she whispered, squeezing his hand.

Zach tried to sit up. “Where am I?”

“Lie still, son. You’re in a hospital,” Miles said.

“I … can’t see … What happened?”