• 9:30 a.m., Wednesday, September 7 •
Chukchi Airport
Everything above him was gray and flowing, but Active was pretty sure he wasn’t underwater. Cold air brushed his face. He heard Grace talking. Her voice was higher than usual—he couldn’t make out the words. Then he was being hoisted through a rounded doorway, head first.
“Don’t worry, Grace,” somebody said in Cowboy’s voice. “I’ve done a hundred medevacs in worse shit than this.”
“Medevac?” Active thought the word, but wasn’t sure it came out. “Cowboy?”
Whatever he was strapped to jerked and stopped moving. Cowboy’s face swam into view above him.
“Hey, buddy, thanks for screwing up my morning,” Cowboy said. There’s an air ambulance standing by in Nome, but they can’t get in with this fog. So, you’ve got me instead. We’ll bust up through this soup and have you in Anchorage before lunch.”
“I got shot,” Active said, maybe to Cowboy, maybe to himself.
He blinked and forced his eyes into focus. He was inside a plane, that was it, and he was horizontal. Someone hovered over him and fiddled with an IV bag.
Somebody else was picking up his hand. He breathed in lavender and came out of it again, just a little.
“How you doing, baby?” Grace’s eyes swam into focus. No quicksilver there now.
“Can’t feel much.” He tried to smile and squeeze her hand but didn’t know if he succeeded.
“Of course not,” she said. “You’re full of major drugs.” She was kneeling beside him, leaning over him, hair brushing his cheeks. “Relax and enjoy, you’re gonna be fine.”
The door slammed shut and the air inside the plane became still. Cowboy settled into the pilot’s seat and barked out words Active couldn’t decipher.
The whine of an engine was building up. Another joined in. Two engines, this must be the Nava—Nava—what was it? Navigator? No, Navajo, that was it. He tried to hold his gaze on Grace’s eyes, but they wobbled in and out of focus. “I’m sorry, baby,” he said. “We need to talk about something, what is it?”
“It’s all right,” she said. “We can talk later.”
Appointment. They needed to talk about an appointment. He tried to say it, but he wasn’t sure it came out. His mouth didn’t seem to be working now. And his eyelids, how could they be this heavy, like they had weights on them?
“I canceled it,” she said.
Apparently he had said it, then, but what appointment?
“I want you to feel something.”
He could hear her, but he couldn’t see her now.
“The baby moved this morning. Here . . .”
His hand was being lifted again and then held against something soft and warm and curved.
“And then Danny called me, and I realized this is a piece of you. Maybe the only piece I’ll—” Her voice caught. “I’m keeping the baby.”
The plane was bouncing now. He was light and rising, like a balloon. Her voice faded to a distant and unintelligible buzzing.
He was flying on his back. Swaths of misty clouds buffeted him as he passed through them. Shouldn’t he have his arms out? They were pinned to his side—not very aerodynamic. But he was flying.
His eyes drifted up to a window. Still gray out there, but getting lighter now, and now blue, the perfect brilliant blue of endless sky that always waited above the clouds.
His breathing slowed to nothing, too much work now, and the throb of his heart faded away. Was this the big empty? Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. He was dancing through cloud canyons now, like that girl pilot. What was her name?
He shut his eyes. He stopped flying and floated. Five seconds might have passed, or five hours. He felt nothing inside, only a calmness.
She was keeping the baby?
A rapid beeping broke the quiet. Then a stream of tinny, agitated speech that sounded like “Bleeding again . . . nicked the femoral, but . . .” Then, “pressure . . .” The words were lost in the gentle air brushing over his face, and soon he was in the clouds again.
“Oh, Nathan, oh, baby . . .” Her voice was urgent and small and far away.
“Grace,” he whispered. He was pretty sure it came out. He should tell her it wouldn’t be so bad, the big empty, then she would stop crying. It was too late now, though. He was floating faster, down through the canyons into that beckoning emptiness.
Then he felt a tiny flutter, an impossibly delicate quiver, against his palm on that soft, warm curve.
There it was again.
And again.
He took a breath and smelled lavender.
His eyes flew open.
“Baby,” he said.
And he smiled.