Monument 14: Savage Drift (Monument 14 Series) (27 page)

Niko releases me and I step back.

There’s a moment where no one knows what to do.

“We’ll see you in the morning, Josie. Niko can stay here until then and I’ve given the order for you two to be left alone,” Cutlass tells me.

*   *   *

“Come in,” I say. It seems like a weird thing to say but the whole thing is weird.

He comes in and shuts the door behind him.

Niko is carrying a gray backpack. He looks … he looks the same. Same serious expression. He seems maybe a bit younger than I remember him.

Now that he’s here I have no idea what to do.

I fiddle with my bed, tucking the sheets in at the foot and making it smooth.

“I’ve been so worried about you,” Niko says.

I can’t quite look at him. I don’t know. I’m antsy. I’m nervous.

“When I saw those men beating you up … No one was helping you! And then the drift. It was … was gruesome, Josie. I’ve never seen anything like it. The ground was running blood.”

He says all this and the energy in me won’t settle down. I sort of don’t want him to get a good look at me. I know I’ve aged. I probably look like a dried-up hag to him. Or some stranger.

“Josie,” he says. “Josie?”

I glance up.

“Are you okay?”

I put my hands up to my face. Get yourself together, a part of me shouts to myself. This is ridiculous. You haven’t seen him in weeks and now you’re blubbering like a baby. He’ll want nothing to do with you.

But another part of me is somehow softening. Letting down my guard.

Niko is here. And he comes over to my side of the bed.

He takes me in his arms and holds me.

*   *   *

For a long time, I just cry.

Being in his arms is my heaven.

Being in his arms can be my last meal and I’ll be happy for it.

*   *   *

“You know you can tell me anything, right?” he says when I stop crying.

We’re lying on the bed. He has his muddy boots up on it. Who cares? This will probably be the last night I spend in this room, one way or the other.

“I’m sorry I got your shirt all wet,” I say.

“That? You did me a favor. I haven’t had a shower in almost a week.”

“There’s a shower here. In the bathroom. Do you want to take one?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Maybe later.”

I can tell he wants me to talk, to tell him about what happened to me since we lost each other, but I don’t want to talk.

When I tell him my story, he’s going to find out that I’ve agreed to the testing, and he’ll get upset.

“Tell me about the kids. How are they? What’s Canada like?” I say.

*   *   *

He tells me everything. About how they got to DIA. Saw Mrs. Wooly! How he sent Sahalia ahead on the plane to Canada while he and Alex found someone who would take them back to the Greenway for Dean, Astrid, Chloe, and the twins. And then about Quilchena, which sounds like a beautiful place.

Chloe sent me a message: “Quack, quack.”

It’s an old, dumb private joke. It make’s me laugh. She’s such a rascal.

Niko tells me about Captain McKinley flying him, Jake, Dean, and Astrid to Fort Lewis-McChord. Imagine it—Caroline and Henry’s dad in the Air Force—pretty lucky. He tells me about the second flight to Texas and the trucker and the first drift they saw, in Vinita, and about the toddler in the trunk of the car.

I wish I had a clock or a phone—I don’t know what time it is.

He tells me he hitched a ride with a bunch of Lutherans from Oklahoma City heading to the East Coast to volunteer rebuilding homes. Then he stole a minivan to get the rest of the way to Mizzou.

And that after he saw me there, he drove his stolen minivan until the gas ran out near Indianapolis.

Then he got a ride from another trucker. He had to give the man his protective suit in barter.

But Niko says, who cares—he’s never going to the Midwest again. He won’t need it.

We lie there on the bed and he strokes my fuzzy head.

He tells me he loves my hair like this. He says I have a beautiful skull. It’s a one-hundred-percent Niko compliment and I love it.

“When we leave here,” he says to me, “we’re going to go straight to the farm. Look.” He gets up and takes a paper map out of his backpack. It’s the kind you can buy at gas stations.

“It’s less than three hours from here! We’ll be there tomorrow, no question.”

He sits next to me and traces the little red lines running over the paper with his pointer finger. I-83 to 222 to 322.

I watch his finger. The nail is short, bitten down. I never knew he bites his nails. Maybe he didn’t before.

I close my eyes and lie back on the bed.

“What?” he asks. “Don’t you want to go there? We don’t have to. We can go wherever you want. I just thought—”

“It’s not that,” I say.

I sit up, taking the map away from him and holding his hands in mine.

“I need to tell you something. No, two things, okay?”

“I told you, Josie. You can tell me anything.”

I swallow.

“I want to say that it means everything to me that you came here to find me.”

He nods. The dim light twinkles in his eyes and I love him so much.

“It is the most beautiful thing that anyone has ever done for me. And you should know that I felt broken before, before you walked in that door. I had pretty much given up hope that I’d ever feel good again, but when you came in I felt so happy. You have to remember how much that means to me—”

“Josie, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“To see you,” I say. “To get to see you and have this time together, I had to sign a form.”

He looks puzzled. I hate what I’m about to tell him.

“Tomorrow, they’re going to do a test on me. They’re going to take a sample of spinal fluid. And it’s possible—I was told the chances of me surviving—”

Niko is as white as a sheet.

“No,” he says. “That’s not going to happen.”

His jaw is tight, his teeth clamped together.

“I’m not going to let that happen.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

DEAN

DAY 36

“Sir, I understand the objective, but surely a low dose of magnesium sulfate wouldn’t affect the fetus—”

A woman is on the phone.

I’m in a car. No, bigger than a car. Couldn’t remember what it was called.

We are driving fast.

“This is one of the worst cases of preeclampsia I have ever seen—” She gets cut off.

“The protein levels—this girl is in danger—” She’s cut off again.

“Well, sir, that’s not the problem. The fetal heartbeat is very strong.”

We are moving fast and I hear a siren.

Oh. My head. It hurts.

“Yes sir,” she says and she hangs up.

I open my eyes again.

I am looking up at a ceiling. In my field of vision there is the underside of a metal cabinet and a black square on the ceiling with lights flashing in it. Red, white, red, yellow. Red, white, red, yellow.

“Those friggin’ jackholes,” the woman curses.

“I know, I know,” says a man’s voice.

“Under no circumstances are we to administer any drugs to that poor girl! Not even a little magnesium sulfate for the convulsions! I mean, really?”

I feel warm and relaxed, like I am swimming in soup.

It is a skylight, I realize slowly. It is nighttime and I am seeing the sky and the red, white, red, yellow pattern is the reflection of lights. They are pretty.

“What if she dies?”

“We save the baby.”

The man I can’t see curses.

Astrid. Astrid. Where is she?

I turn my head and I moan.

The pain cuts through the warmth. Slices right through. God, what happened to my head?

I see Astrid there across from me, an IV in her arm and her belly exposed with some kind of belt with electrode cords running this way and that and machines monitoring and beeping. I remember her.

“Astrid,” I say.

I hear movement and then there is a face above me, an Indian lady with a lined face and gray hair cut short.

“Hey,” she says. “Can you hear me? Do you know what year it is?”

“Two thousand…,” I say, my voice raspy. “Two thousand and…”

I should know this.

“Do you know where you are?”

“In a car … A big medicine car.” What is the stupid word for it?

“How many weeks is she?” the woman asks. “I need to know about her pregnancy. Anything you can tell me will help.”

Her face bobs and stretches.

“He’s passing out again,” she calls up front.

Not passing out, I want to tell her, just swimming.

I hear her rummaging in the cabinet above my head.

“Don’t,” says the voice from up front.

“I need the info. It won’t hurt him. He’s been out for such a long time. It will be good for him to be awake.”

She pats my face.

“Hello,” she says. “Open wide.”

I open my mouth a little. She puts a little pill on my tongue. I close my lips.

“This will pep you up a bit.”

Then
BOOMBOOMBOOM
my heart is going like a bass drum and I want to sit up but now I realize I am tied down to the cot.

“Whoa,” I say “Wow!”

“Easy there,” she tells me.

“That stuff’s not for kids, Binwa,” the guy up front says. “He’s gonna feel worse when it wears off.”

The warm, relaxed feeling evaporates and I see everything very clearly.

The woman leans over me and I can see into her pores and each of her eyelashes is distinct.

Ambulance, I remember. We are in an ambulance. And we were in a drift. And I nearly crashed into an Army truck.

“Tell me about your girlfriend,” she says. And I do.

*   *   *

Binwa takes off the restraints that were holding me to the padded stretcher.

My head is bandaged. When I sit up, I have to hold it to keep my brain from exploding—that’s what it feels like. But all that matters is Astrid.

“Dean,” Astrid says. I kneel next to her. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” I tell her. I start kissing her hand. I know that is a weird thing to do, but I am so glad to see her awake. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

“This is good,” Binwa says. She comes over. “Astrid, we’re less than an hour out. The doctors are waiting for you at USAMRIID.”

Astrid closes her eyes and I think she is going out again. but she whispers, “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you saying that?” I ask.

“I can’t do it,” Astrid says. Her eyes, still closed, are leaking tears. There is a crust of dried skin on her lips. I can see a vein pulsing at her temple.

“Shhh,” I tell her and I kiss her forehead. “We’re almost there.”

“I want you to know something.”

“What?”

“I love you,” she says. Her eyes close and tears leak out of the corners. “I just want you to know that.”

“I do know it. I do, Astrid.”

She opens her eyes and looks at me one last time and then her eyes rolls up in her head and she start to shake violently.

“No!” Binwa shouts. “Gus, hit the siren. You’ve got to get us there, now!”

The siren blares. Gus drives faster. The night road is streaming behind us and my girl is dying.

“You give her that stuff!” I shout at Binwa. I looked around for a weapon. Something to make her do whatever it would take to save Astrid.

“Calm down!” Binwa roars at me. “Look! Look! She’s coming out of it now.”

I turn and see that Astrid
is
coming out of it. She is sitting straight up. She is arching her back and she is screaming.

Then we see that her legs are wet.

“Gus!” Binwa shouts. “Her water broke!”

CHAPTER FORTY

JOSIE

DAY 36

He stands up and paces back and forth until I tell him, in strong words, that I don’t want to spend our night together planning some futile escape.

He won’t hear it.

He’s sure there’s a way out.

But I take him by the hand.

And this is what I say:

“Niko. I gave the doctor my word. I signed the release forms. And I did that knowing the risks. Just like you came to find me, knowing the risks. And maybe I will die tomorrow or maybe you will die tomorrow. That was always the risk. Every day we have lived, that’s been the risk, we just didn’t know it.”

I sit on the bed and make him sit next to me.

He is crying, and that is fine.

“I love you, Josie,” he tells me.

“I love you, too, Niko.” And I mean it. I drink in his perfect silhouette. The colors of his skin and hair.

“Niko,” I say. “Hold me. Be with me and somehow we will never leave this moment. Can’t we do that? Can’t we love each other enough that nothing else can touch us? Can you love me that much?”

“I already do,” he says. And he kisses me.

He kisses me hard and we lie back on the bed. We are kissing and crying and I am learning that bodies can express what words cannot. I see his hands are shaking as he lifts his shirt over his head. Mine are, too, as I unsnap my thin blue gown. The air makes my skin prickle in goose bumps, then Niko lies down on me and our bodies warm each other. We melt together.

His hands are tentative at first, but we find our way.

*   *   *

Then there is a knock at the door.

It seems too early to me.

“Are you decent?” comes a woman’s voice.

“Not really,” I say, and it is true. We are both naked. Niko sits up, his thin back straight and tall. He pulls on his filthy clothes at the edge of the bed. We have showered, but there is no way to get those clothes clean.

He will always be the same, Niko, and that makes me happy. I know he’ll sit on the edge of the bed at ninety and pull on his pants in the same dignified way. He will always hold himself straight and tall. He is unchangeable and that is something I now understand that I love about him.

I discover I am shaking.

Niko has his T-shirt on by the time Sandy comes in.

“Sandy,” I say. “You came back.”

“Mmm-hmmm. Had to meet your friend. And wanted to be here for you. It’s good for you to be as calm as possible for the procedure,” she says, but she won’t meet my eyes.