The Wonder of All Things (25 page)

Wash hated the man driving just then. He hated whoever it was the man was talking to. He hated all of the people who had been there when they had emerged from the forest, watching them pull away and start down the mountain. He hated everyone who had come to Stone Temple looking for some kind of salvation, and everyone sitting at home watching television and surfing the internet, waiting to hear that Ava had been found. He hated the world.

“I wish we could have done it,” he whispered. “I wish we could have gotten away.”

“We weren’t supposed to,” Ava whispered back, low and soft, her head rocking back and forth gently on the stretcher. Her thick dark hair formed a crown and framed her dark skin. She looked like a painting.

Wash flinched. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I was,” Ava said, “but I heard your voice.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Ava replied. “That wasn’t how I meant it.” She coughed, and it was a wet, hacking cough. “I heard your voice the way I heard it that day in the hospital. You’ve got a good voice.”

Ava shivered. Wash asked the paramedic for another blanket. Behind the ambulance there were the bright lights of others driving down the mountain, following the Miracle Child.

“Don’t worry about it,” Ava said softly.

“Are you doing any better?” Wash asked.

“No,” Ava said. Then: “You smell like pine needles.” She laughed softly.

Wash looked out the window. The mountain fell away and, up ahead, he could see the lights of the town rising up from the darkness. Now and again they passed people parked along the edge of the road. Already the news that Ava was being brought back to town had spread and everyone was preparing. Some of the people held up signs. Others cheered and clapped as the police car passed. “I’m sorry,” Wash said.

“For what?” Ava replied.

“For being excited about all of this when it first started. For, I don’t know, for everything.”

“Do you want to know something?” Ava asked.

“Sure,” Wash replied.

“I actually don’t mind
Moby Dick.
It’s not as bad as I always say it is.”

Wash smiled, but with his face turned away, Ava could not see it. “That’s good to know,” he said. “It’s one of the best books in the world, you know.”

“That’s what I keep hearing,” she replied. “Thank you for coming with me tonight. Thank you for making that fire.”

“We had to stay warm,” Wash said.

“I wasn’t asleep when you were making it,” Ava answered. “Not completely. I saw you. I could see your face in the light of the fire. You looked scared, but you kept going.”

“You could have helped out,” Wash joked.

“I liked watching you,” Ava said. “I liked the way your face looked.”

Wash giggled. “First I smell like pine needles. And now you’re all obsessed with how my face looked. What happened to the Ava who told me I reminded her of the marshmallow man from
Ghostbusters?
”

“They’re the same person,” Ava replied.

Then there was a moment of silence in which Wash’s mind began to ponder the nature of their conversation. In all of his life, he had never heard Ava speak in the tone she had now. There was a quiet reservation in it, a type of “giving up.” As though, finally, she had stopped resisting something that she had been fighting against for a very long time. All of the talk of smells and how he had looked, as though she had been trying to capture images of him.

It was then that the thought came into his mind. “Ava,” he said sharply. “Ava, open your eyes.”

She hesitated. She grinned, but her expression was full of fear.

“Please, Ava,” he said. He squeezed her hand and, slowly, she opened her eyes. Then, in the passing glare of the streetlights as they entered Asheville, he saw it: her eyes were filled with gray. It was as if she had captured the winter sky within them.

“Ava,” Wash said slowly, “you can’t see, can you?”

* * *

When they reached the hospital Ava had vomited in the back of the ambulance. Hordes of people had gathered and were there to see it all when the doors were opened. But even the sight of it was not enough to quiet them. They still called her name, still yelled for her to turn and look at them so that they could better frame their photographs.

The nurses raced her down the hall and into an examination room. Wash chased after, and when they told him he could not come with her, Macon told them simply, “He’s coming.”

Then the onlookers became nothing more than a wall of flashing light and sound. The cameras flashed in brightness and everyone clamored. It took a line of policemen standing with arms interlinked to keep them all back.

Though Ava could not see the lights and the people, she could feel their fervor. It was like the crashing of the ocean against the shore. But through it all, there was the sound of Wash’s voice—constant and familiar as a cone of light reaching out from a lighthouse—just as it had been that day in the hospital.

“We’ll get you fixed,” Macon said.

“Okay,” Ava said.

The darkness in which Ava existed was not as terrifying as she had expected it to be. She was thankful that neither Wash nor her father could see the pain she felt. It was the same pain that she had felt every day since the beginning of all this: a constant type of hollowness, an emptiness in her bones and blood, as though certain parts of her did not exist anymore. The pain was rising, slowly. Filling her up like sand. She was better at controlling it than before. She was finally understanding how to navigate it, how to take it in small doses rather than to have it wash over her all at once.

“Here we go,” Macon said as they finally placed her on the mattress. He stroked her head.

Macon looked around for a doctor but there was none nearby. There were too many other patients with serious injuries that had been arriving from Stone Temple. The explosion and the fire that followed had injured more people than Macon expected. So the doctors did what they could, helping who they could. People were shouting for nurses and being rushed into surgery. The room was a maelstrom of people.

Macon needed help for his daughter, and he also needed to find his wife.

“Damned doctors,” he said in frustration.

“Where’s Carmen?” Ava asked.

“I’m going to find out,” Macon asked. “I just need you to stay here for a minute. I’ll be back,” he said, and he kissed Ava’s brow. “Just...just let me see that they’re okay.” A nurse came over and began checking Ava’s vitals. Macon said something to the woman, then raced off to find Carmen. In that one moment, he felt like a horrible father and husband. Nothing was going the way it should have gone. He did not want to leave Ava, but he had left Carmen for too long already. If things turned a certain way, he could lose a wife and two children tonight.

There were no right decisions anymore. There were only the consequences of the decisions he made.

“Where’s Carmen?” Ava asked after Macon was gone.

“I don’t know,” Wash replied. He looked around, just as Macon had done, but he saw nothing.

“I wasn’t asking you,” Ava said softly. “I was asking the nurse.”

The woman had been checking Ava’s blood pressure. She stopped. “Excuse me?”

“Do you know who I am?” Ava asked. Though she could not see the nurse, she imagined her with a kind face, not unlike her mother’s and, at the same time, not unlike Carmen’s.

“Of course I know who you are,” the woman replied. There was a small degree of reverence in her voice. To be sure, she knew who the Miracle Child was.

“I need to find my stepmom,” Ava said. “Can you help me?”

“You’re in no condition to go anywhere,” the woman said. The awe in her tone was lessened as her training as a nurse began finding its footing again. She was used to people trying to get up in the middle of an examination. People were stubborn when they were hurt, no matter if you were simply trying to help them.

“Please,” Ava said. “I’m worried about her. Please.”

Ava heard the clicking of camera shutters. “Get out of here!” the woman shouted. Then there came the sound of people shouting Ava’s name followed by more camera shutters. The reporters had made their way into the hospital. But still the nurse would not allow Ava off the examination table.

It was Wash who ended the standoff.

“She just wants to see her mother,” Wash said in a loud, pleading voice. Ava could only imagine the reaction on the woman’s face. Suddenly the sound of the cameras was louder than before. “She wants to see her mother and father and this woman won’t take her to them!” he shouted. Since the start of all this, the boy had learned, like Macon, that being the center of attention could be turned to one’s benefit when they needed it.

The nurse protested, but Wash repeated it over and over again until it became an accusation that, with all of the cameras watching and recording it, the nurse could not ignore.

“Okay,” the woman said finally.

Ava was helped into a wheelchair and rolled down the corridors of the hospital. Wash walked beside her. She was tired and cold and hurting and there were people shouting her name, asking for help, asking for healing. But all she thought of was Carmen.

* * *

“What are you doing here?” Macon asked when they entered the room. “What are you doing bringing her here?” he asked the nurse. His voice was bitter and hard. “Has she seen a doctor?”

“It’s not her fault,” Wash said. “I made her bring us. Ava wanted to come.”

“I’m sorry,” the nurse said. “I just didn’t know what else to do. She kept demanding to be brought in to see her stepmother. I tried to stop her, but the two of them...they—”

“Get out,” Macon snapped. “Go get a doctor.”

The woman left without a word.

“Where’s the baby?” Ava asked. She was still in the wheelchair, with her arms folded across her stomach. Because of her blindness, Ava could not see the incubator in front of which Macon was standing. She could not see the way his face was streaked with tears. And she could not see the small, fragile child inside the incubator—attached to hoses and tubes, struggling to breathe each breath.

“She’s here,” Macon replied. The hardness was gone from his voice, replaced by the weakness of a frightened father. “You’ve got a sister now. Her name’s Elizabeth. She’s beautiful—just like you, just like Carmen.” He paused. “But the baby’s struggling. She’s got blood in her lungs.”

“Let me help her,” Ava said.

The statement floated in the air. It expanded until it filled the entire room and pushed into Macon’s chest and made his lungs tighten. “No,” he said. Ava could not see the way he trembled when he said the word. “You’ll die,” he continued. “I’ve already lost your mother. I won’t lose you, too.” He looked at the baby. “I won’t lose anyone else. I won’t.”

“Dad,” Ava called. She sat up straight and tried to look as strong and confident as she could. She needed to convince her father to let her do the thing that he was afraid to. She needed him to believe that she could survive helping the child, that everything would be okay, that the entire family would survive the night.

She needed him to hold to that truth, even if she was not certain of it herself.

“Dad,” Ava repeated when Macon did not answer. “I’ll be okay. You won’t lose me. Let me help my sister. Let me help Elizabeth.” Then, with Wash’s help, she stood and followed as the boy led her across the room to where Elizabeth lay.

Macon made a move to stop her, but he did not follow it through. A part of him knew that she would not be okay, no matter how much his daughter wanted him to believe it. But what about his other daughter? What about Elizabeth? If Ava could help the child, shouldn’t she be allowed to try? He could no more bear the thought of losing one of them than he could bear the thought of losing them both.

He was trapped between two horrors, and they paralyzed him into inaction.

“She’s right in front of you,” Wash whispered into Ava’s ear when they reached the incubator. There were latches that sealed it, and the boy released them. “Here,” he said, and guided Ava’s hand.

Ava reached forward into the darkness until her hand touched the edge of the bassinet. It was cool to the touch. Then her hand felt the softness of a blanket. She slid her hand forward slowly, afraid that she could hurt the baby, but knowing that her intentions were just the opposite. The baby was impossibly soft when she finally touched her. With skin like cloth itself. And her mind marveled at how small she was, how tender. Anything in the world could break her, she thought.

“Ava...” Wash said.

“It’s okay, Wash,” Ava replied. Then she placed her hand atop the child’s.

What came next was like falling—a lifting off and a pulling down all at once. Memory upon memory rose up in her mind. Everything that she had lost of her mother after the woman’s death came back to her, as though a door had been unlocked in her mind. She remembered the night a bear came to their house. She remembered the clanging pots and pans, all the ways the family hoped to keep the outside world at bay. She remembered going to the fair, being carried on her father’s shoulders, the way her mother smiled that night. She also remembered the way the smile faded at the end of the evening, and how that change was the beginning of her understanding of her mother. The day the two of them spent digging in the backyard, the day they went off and found a puzzle box at a yard sale...all of it came back to her and, for the first time ever, she saw the entirety of her mother—all of her mother’s grandness, all of her terror, the ebb and flow of her mother’s emotions, the shifts between happiness and joy. All of it Ava could see and understand suddenly.

An entire lifetime came and went and, in the scope of understanding its entirety, Ava could finally see the long, winding road that led her mother to the rafters of the barn that day. And she could see that, upon that road, there was no guilt. She had loved her mother. And her mother had loved her. And, sometimes in life, love and loving can still lead to an ending that we would otherwise choose. A fate with no blame to be taken. She understood that, in this world, there are unexplained wonders and faultless horrors both.