The Altar Girl (5 page)

CHAPTER 6

N
ADIA STOOD IN
front of her lean-to staring down the barrel of the gun fearing her heart might stop beating any second. She hadn’t been this scared since she forgot the Ukrainian words to Hail Mary while saying morning prayers in her parents’ bedroom. Her father had been shaving at the time, and when her voice stopped he bounded out of the bathroom, face foaming with lather, and slapped her in the head so hard she fell over and broke her nose.

She’d seen guns before. Some of the counselors for the boys—ROTC types that didn’t party with the girl counselors—brought their hunting rifles with them to summer camp. But this gun was different. It was shiny and beautiful. This one looked more like something a private eye on TV would carry to look cool. Whatever it was, it sure didn’t belong in the forest. Neither did its owner or his girlfriend.

“Sorry, kid,” the Kangaroo said, as he lowered the barrel of the gun toward the ground. “I have a bad back. This thing weighs so much I took it out of the knapsack and stuck it in my belt. But that’s no good either. I didn’t mean to pull it out and scare you.”

Nadia breathed easier. Only then did she realize her teeth were chattering.

“I told you not to bring it,” the Giraffe said. “But you had to be such a man, didn’t you? As if the entire camping thing wasn’t stupid enough, you had to go bring that gun with you. What you should have brought was something for all these damn mosquitoes.” She slapped her neck. “I hate insects. I hate the outdoors. I hate this place, and I fucking hate you.”

Nadia’s mouth fell open. A woman giving her man the f-word? That was unbelievable. If her mother had ever said that to her father? Oh, man. That would have been ugly.

“Let’s make the best of it,” the Kangaroo said, “and focus on the task at hand.”

The Giraffe swatted at her ears again. “This is ridiculous. They’re eating me alive here. You’re a banker,” she said, spitting the words at her boyfriend. “You belong in the city. I’m a law student. I belong in the city. What possessed you to drag me out here to this godforsaken, living hell? And what possessed me to say yes? This is the stupidest decision I’ve ever made in my life.”

The Kangaroo shook his head in frustration. He knelt down by the fire so he was eye to eye with Nadia and smiled.

“Honey, is there an adult with you nearby?”

His choice of words dropped him a notch right away. Nadia hated to be called “honey.” It was thick, sweet, and came in a jar. None of those descriptions applied to her.

“Nope,” Nadia said. “I’m alone.”

The Kangaroo laughed in disbelief. “No way. You’re alone? You can’t be alone.”

Nadia explained that she was alone on a Ukrainian girl scout survival test, and that her father or brother were camping somewhere on the trail, probably half a mile or so away. At least that was her best guess.

The Giraffe was smiling at her now, too. It was a heckuva smile. Nadia imagined being half as pretty as this woman. She’d have friends and no one would pick on her. What a life that would have been.

The Giraffe said, “Do you have a walkie-talkie from RadioShack or something like that, to talk to your father or brother? If there’s an emergency?”

“Nope,” Nadia said. “All I have is a whistle. I’m only supposed to use it if I’m in serious trouble. Like, really serious. But I do know the way back to the trail if you’re lost.”

“It’s a bit more complicated,” the Kangaroo said. “We’re with another couple. My brother and his wife. And my brother’s hurt. He tripped and rolled down a hill. His forehead is bleeding and we think he broke his leg. We need to get him some help.”

“Do you have a first aid kit?” Nadia said.

“Yeah,” the Giraffe said. “We put a bandage on his forehead, but there’s nothing we can do for his leg. There’s no way he can walk.”

“Was there an Ace bandage in the first aid kit?”

“I think I remember seeing one,” the Giraffe said.

Nadia knew what needed to be done. She was trained in first aid. She could help these people and it was her duty to do so.

Nadia said, “Do either of you have a poncho in your knapsack?”

“No,” the Kangaroo said. “But I have an umbrella.”

“Yeah,” the Giraffe said, rolling her eyes. “A Burberry umbrella. Number one on the list of essential camping equipment. No, I don’t have a poncho either. It wasn’t supposed to rain. We’re hiking for the day. We got lost because Magellan here forgot the compass in the car. He couldn’t read the map when we took a detour off the trail.”

“It’s hard to read a map without a compass,” Nadia said.

The Kangaroo sighed as though he’d had enough of people making fun of him, but the Giraffe rewarded Nadia with a belly laugh and a smile. Nadia savored an adrenaline rush. They were pals, she and the beautiful Giraffe. This made her a cool girl for the day, didn’t it?

Now that they were buddies, Nadia would do anything for the Giraffe. Even sacrifice her poncho, which truly was essential survival equipment.

Nadia removed the poncho from her lean-to and folded it into a square. Threaded her belt through the sheath of her Bowie knife so that the giant blade hung down her left leg, and attached her canteen along her left side. Then she stood before the strangers with her hands at her sides, like a gunfighter from her brother’s favorite spaghetti westerns.

“We’re good to go,” Nadia said. “I know first aid. Lead the way.”

They laughed at her. At first Nadia felt her face start to burn. But then she realized they weren’t making fun of her. They were laughing in a nice way. They appreciated that she was trying to help, but they doubted she could help the Kangaroo’s injured brother. Nadia understood that they probably thought she was too young to know what she was doing.

To ease their minds, she told them exactly what she was going to do, step-by-step. When Nadia was done, the couple glanced at each other with shocked expressions and didn’t say another word.

Nadia added two logs to her fire to make sure it had plenty of fuel and followed the couple deep into the woods, leaving the knapsack and camp behind her.

CHAPTER 7

D
ONNIE LIFTED MY
hand, the one that held the mouth
guard, and guided it toward my face. I opened my mouth and he stuffed it inside. I could have resisted, but there was no upside to that. Only downside. He pressed my nose and my chin together with his right hand to make sure my jaw was shut. Then he lifted my leg and placed it on the support brackets. His motions were firm but gentle, like those of a doctor. He touched my cheek with an open palm once the mouth guard was secure between my teeth. He held my leg with two hands and lifted it slowly so as not to strain any muscles before placing it onto the support.

All the while he kept babbling, also like a doctor, presumably to distract me from the sight of the mallet at his feet, and my immediate fate.

“You should be on your knees thanking me,” he said. He pursed his lips and shook his head. “Okay, obviously you can’t be on your knees right now, but you know what I mean. That is how grateful you should be to me. I was told to handle this. Any way I sees fit. Anyone else, you would be dead. But not me. Why? Because that’s not how I want to live my life. And you and me, we understand each other. We’re both old-school. Our parents kept their mouths shut about all the shit that went down in World War II, all the shit they suffered, some of the lies some of them had to tell to get in this country. We know how to keep our mouths zip-locked. It’s in our genes, and because I’m a good guy and you’re a respectable woman—have I told you I have the highest respect for you?—I’m playing it this way. Giving you a chance to live. Yeah, you should be grateful. Just plain grateful.”

He finished adjusting the brackets. One held my ankle; the other gripped my leg below the knee. He was going to strike between the knee and the ankle. I could tell by the structure of the machine. My upper leg was supported, my lower leg wasn’t. The bone would cave right in.

I knew I had only seconds left. I could sense my panic. It was like an amorphous cloud hovering over me, waiting to wrap me up and render me incapable of thought. But it wasn’t upon me yet, and I knew to keep it at bay by insisting I didn’t care if it seized me, and focusing on a specific thing. In this case it was a specific task. The task was to buy some more time.

Donnie reached down for the mallet.

I pulled the mouth guard from between my teeth. He snapped to attention, mallet in hand, as soon as he saw what I’d done. The veins in his hand protruded as he tightened his grip on the hammer. He looked angry. Really angry.

“I changed my mind,” I said.

His eyes narrowed. “About what?”

“The Champagne. It might help me with my nerves. If not right now, then in a few minutes when I’m going to need the help. At least the alcohol will be in my bloodstream, you know what I mean?”

His expression turned stern and he shook his head.

My pulse quickened. The amorphous cloud of panic moved in and engulfed me like fog.

You’re a fraud
, I thought.
You’ve been lying to yourself to make the time pass. To keep from passing out from sheer fear, like the pathetic little girl you are and always have been. This is going to happen. A man is going to break your leg and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, you can do about it because you’re not that tough, and not as smart as you like to think you are.

There is no hope. There is no hope. There is no hope.

And then Donnie stopped shaking his head. Maybe he saw the terror in my eyes at that very moment. Maybe he just liked the idea of me having a glass of his Champagne before he clubbed me.

Whatever the reason, he loosened my brackets and told me to sit up. Then he walked over to the refrigerator and started babbling again. I didn’t pay any attention to what he was saying because by this time I’d remembered my brother telling me that he and I could put up with anything for three days. I recalled him asking what my name was on the Appalachian Trail, moments before leaving me to fend for myself.

As Donnie poured me a flute of bubbly, my mind unlocked the box where I kept the memory of that survival test stowed away to prevent myself from thinking about it. The locks were many and intricate, for this was not a memory that I wanted floating around my head. It loved to torture me so I’d had to design my own personal Fort Knox. Keys clicked in place and turned. Bolts slid open.

The memory escaped.

It overwhelmed my thoughts. Scene after scene flashed vividly before me.

One scene in particular resonated. A bolt of adrenaline rushed through me.

Donnie handed me the glass. He was still yapping about something.

I knocked back the entire flute. Exhaled loudly and with satisfaction.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” I said.

My lips and chin were dripping with liquid. I wiped them with the back of my hand, trying to make it look like as carnal an act as possible. I made my eyes go wild as though I was preparing myself for something that was going to hurt but feel good. I let out a guttural laugh to go with it.

“Do me again, Donnie,” I said, pushing the glass toward him. “One more glass and I’m ready for this.”

He took my glass, his expression a mix of shock and curiosity, and turned back to the refrigerator.

I took a deep breath and prepared myself for the brutality I was about to endure. The difference between my thoughts now and before was that this time I wasn’t preparing to suffer the pain.

I was preparing to inflict it.

CHAPTER 8

T
HE
K
ANGAROO AND
the Giraffe led the way. Nadia followed. She hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon so she tired quickly.

They found the second couple at the bottom of a small ravine, twenty minutes away from Nadia’s camp. The other woman was the opposite of the Giraffe, with short brown hair and the face of a ferret. The injured guy had curly black hair and resembled an angry rodent. He didn’t look very tough. He moaned and complained as soon as they arrived.

The Kangaroo and the two women stood in front of the Rodent and blocked Nadia’s way so she couldn’t see his lower body. Nadia was curious to study the man’s injury. She’d never seen a broken leg. When she’d learned how to make a splint, someone pretended to be the patient. Now she would get to work with a real, live, injured person. She was psyched.

When the Rodent saw whom they’d brought with them to help, he went ballistic and called the Kangaroo his “moron brother from hell.” The Ferret yelled at the Giraffe for coming back with some “pathetic little girl scout,” and for a moment Nadia considered not helping the Rodent after all.

But she was an altar girl who took her Ukrainian Catholic religion seriously, so she forgave the stranger and stepped closer to take a look.

The Giraffe touched her shoulder. “Just to warn you. It’s a bit gruesome.”

Nadia felt an injection of willpower from the Giraffe’s touch. It was as though beautiful people had a special power, and with their mere touch could turn a social castoff into a more confident person.

Duly emboldened, Nadia peeked around the Giraffe’s waist. The Rodent lay with his arms and legs at odd angles, like the outline of a dead person on the floor on a TV show. It was the left leg. The skin was turning black and blue around the front shin, and the tip of the bone was protruding.

Nadia looked away. Stifled a desire to puke. It wasn’t neat at all. It was disgusting and scary. If the man weren’t such a rodent, she would have felt sorry for him. Nadia closed her eyes and replayed scenes from Mrs. Chimchak’s lectures on lower-body anatomy and first aid.

She could do this. Yeah, she could.

She was a soldier.

Nadia walked up to the Rodent, knelt down, and put her hand on his shoulder. It was a calming thing Mrs. Chimchak had taught her. This man needed the comfort of the human touch, but his wife the Ferret was too busy bitching at the Giraffe, probably because she was jealous of her, and the brother probably didn’t want to touch him because they were always fighting. Not like her and Marko. They never fought.

Everyone stopped talking the second her hand touched his shoulder. The Rodent stopped moaning, too.

Nadia looked into the Rodent’s beady eyes as his mouth dropped open in surprise. His forehead dripped with sweat. The man was hurting bad. Nadia could tell. She knew pain from breaking her nose and this was worse.

“How are you feeling?” Nadia said.

The Rodent exploded with mean laughter, the kind that’s usually a prelude to swears and insults, but Nadia smiled and stopped him cold. Actually made him smile.

“I’m doing great, kid. A-plus, mother. Best day of my life. Who are you?”

“My name is Nadia. In five hours or less, you’re going to be in a hospital, and they’re going to take good care of you. I’m going to help you get there. Rehab is going to be like . . . like no fun at all, but that’s not something you need to worry about now. Right? Positive thinking, positive thinking. It’s so important. So tell me, before I start, how did this happen?”

The other three exchanged quiet looks of amazement. The Rodent’s jaw hung open for an extra second.

“We were fooling around,” he said. “I was chasing my wife downhill. I had to turn to avoid a rock and my foot just got stuck. The rest of my body moved but it didn’t. I fell over. And then this.”

A spasm of pain hit him so badly he screamed loud enough for anyone within a mile radius to hear. Problem was, the only people within a mile radius were probably at his feet. Unless her father and Marko were nearby. But if they were close, Nadia was surprised one of them hadn’t helped the strangers. Maybe they were far away, just as her father had told her. It didn’t matter now, she thought. She had the situation under control.

Nadia squeezed his shoulder the way Mrs. Chimchak had taught her. The squeeze provided extra comfort, reassurance that the original touch had true feeling behind it.

“You’re going to be okay,” Nadia said.

The Rodent gritted his teeth as a spasm of pain racked him. “You think so, kid?”

“I know so. There’s a name for what happened to you. It’s a common break for athletes and hikers and people like that. People like you.”

That made him chuckle through the pain. He probably wasn’t much of an athlete or hiker but Nadia thought it might cheer him up to hear her say it.

“Oh, yeah?” he said. “What’s it called, kid?”

“Spiral tibial fracture. It happens when you plant one leg, twist it, and then fall. Yup. It’s called a spiral tibial fracture.”