JUNE
I dream of castles and war. Curtain walls and keeps. Moats, dragons, drawbridges. Portcullises lowering. Arrows launched. Catapults flung. Armies without faces who want me dead and afraid.
The keep wall explodes and crumbles, and as it does, I dance in a cobblestone courtyard that’s covered in ivy and purple flowers and fire.
Arrows pierce my skin as I stand atop the tower and swing on the bell rope like a child leaping over a lake, back and forth, back and forth.
Nick’s there, sword drawn, calling, “Ring the bell.”
I am the bell. The bell is me.
We are ringing, ringing, ringing.
I am spiked with dozens of arrows.
But I am music. I am hope.
“Ring the bell, ring the bell,” I scream into the air.
Aulus and Tank appear in a cloud and fly to Nick and me. The four of us ring the bell until the battlefield is quiet and all the fires are out.
There’s a cadence to the quiet. A beeping. Like maybe the car door’s ajar with keys in the ignition. I’m not driving. I’m not even in a car. My body’s heavy; my eyelids obese. I let the beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep lull me back to dreams.
The beeping returns. Ring the bell, ring the bell, I mouth.
I am in Gladys’s bed, no, can’t be, her bed doesn’t have rails, her comforter’s orange—no, that was last year—her comforter’s blue-and-green paisley and her sheets aren’t starchy. I don’t like starchy sheets. They’re too white. I close my eyes.
I miss the bell. I wish I were a bell.
I am beeping. My lashes tickle the skin beneath my eyes as they flutter.
“Hey, you!” Dad’s warmth floods me. He calls over me, “Nurse!”
I can’t make sense of anything. You’re not in prison, I think first. Then, Why are you holding my hand like I’m dying?
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth and I can’t ask.
A cup and straw appear beside my lips. Constance.
There’s such deep relief that she’s here. I don’t know why but I need the anchor of her warmth as I sip the water she offers.
Dad slides toward the corner so a man in blue scrubs with a massive Santa-length beard can lean over me and adjust the machine. The badge hanging from his neck reads Matt. Saint Matt of beards. No amount of reddish-brown hair hides his Happy Meal–wide smile. He adjusts the pillows behind my head, fusses with my IV, and swabs my lips with a little green sponge on a lollipop stick. The water feels marvelous.
“Welcome back, sleeping beauty,” he says, staring at my pupils. “Do you know your name?”
I do. We walk through details that let him know I’m cognizant before he explains that he’s Nurse Matt and “These are the very best accommodations Vanderbilt Hospital has to offer. If you see a tiny lady running around with red braids, that’s Ruth, and she’s the tech on duty today.”
I attempt more words.
Matt swabs my lips again and nods to Constance when she asks if I can have another small sip of water.
Vanderbilt. Heart patient. Looking at my father, I telegraph the question, How did I end up here?
He understands. “Let’s get you fully awake first.”
That’s when I remember Nick. I cough-whisper his name.
“Shhh,” Nurse Matt tells me. “You’ll be able to talk soon enough, but we just took out the tube this morning and you’re going to be sore.”
I sputter again. This time my eyes are full of tears.
“Nick’s fine,” Dad says.
I raise my IV hand half a foot off the bed and make a pistol. Ruby shot him. Oh, God, Ruby shot him. Ruby. The Gemini Thief.
“Nick’s fine,” Dad repeats.
I check with Constance, positive she won’t lie to me.
“Honey, Nick was here an hour ago. His whole family was with him. It took longer for you to wake up than the doctor estimated. Trust me, he’ll be back in the morning.”
“Whether we want him to or not, right, Stancy?” Dad jokes, and I understand I’ve missed so many conversations.
Nick’s okay. Matt dabs my cheek with a Kleenex. “You, my dear, have been through an ordeal, so you cry all you want. Crying heals soul wounds that medicine can’t touch.”
Even if this was bad advice, I couldn’t keep the tears away. They’re making it to the curve of my chin, rolling along my neck into the gown. Into bandages.
Thankfulness. Fear. Confusion. I have questions my body won’t let me ask—What happened at the WCC? Did Ruby give us the boys’ location? Are Tank and Aulus alive? Is Ruby?
Not knowing hurts more than the pinch in my chest. I wonder if I have broken ribs. My gown’s open in the front. I wave my father away and Nurse Matt reads the situation perfectly. He draws the curtain around my bed and asks, “Should I stay and help?” The weight of Constance’s palm disappears from my head as she turns to follow Dad. I wave that she and Matt should stay.
“You want to see?” Matt clarifies.
I nod that I do and Constance takes my hand.
Matt parts my gown and shows me my naked, injured body. Round half-dollar-size stickers attach wires to my chest and stomach in multiples places. Cords run from the stickers to the machine beside the bed. I feel ridiculous that I didn’t realize the beeping was my heart before now. One hundred and twenty beats per minute. Matt taps the screen as I’m reading it and says, “Fairly normal. There’s always some stress waking up.”
A long, narrow, clear bandage zips up my chest. Two gauzes, tinted pink from blood, are attached to my right breast.
Matt hovers over one gauze. “You were shot here,” he says and the second, “and here.” “No exit wounds.” He reels off paragraphs of procedures performed. He doesn’t say You almost died but he explains that I was airlifted and had multiple surgeries, plus, I hear my father breathing deeply on the other side of the curtain and I understand I’m lucky.
Matt steps out of the room and Constance closes my gown, then pulls Dad toward her. He Velcros to her side. His eyes are sad but Constance smiles encouragement at me.
I want to know if there’s permanent damage to my body, if I’m safe, but before we get to those questions, I can’t wait any longer to find out about Tank and Aulus. I can’t get any volume behind their names. “Au-lus? Tank?”
Dad is too large to hide himself in Constance’s embrace, but he tries. I tap the side of the bed and mouth their names again.
My father offers me a terrible sadness and shakes his head. “We didn’t find them,” he says.
My eyes kick over to Constance. I need more. What does We didn’t find them mean? Why are they here at the hospital when they could be out looking? I make a circular motion with my wrist to indicate searching and not being here.
Constance shakes her head and takes my hand in hers. “Honey, they stopped searching four days ago.”
My throat cries like a dying bird.
Nurse Matt pokes his head in the room, notes my escalating heart rate, and says to Dad, “I’m adding some pain medicine to her IV soon. Should calm her down. I’ll be right back.”
Why would they stop the search? That doesn’t make sense. The FBI should be increasing their efforts. I can’t believe Dana gave up. I manage a single word from the barrage of questions.
“Why?” My eyes are heavy but I force myself to see this through.
Dad checks with Constance, who gives a weary, tear-filled nod. “Ruby didn’t tell us where she hid the boys.” So? Double down, you idiots. He continues, “Dana, well, she asked Ruby a question before she died. If the boys had water and . . . and they didn’t.”
So? I think again. Can’t the body go three or four days without water?
“Honey.” Dad rests on the side of my bed, his hip pressed against my gown, his hand on my wrist. When the mattress settles and everything in the room is quiet except the monitor, he says, “It’s been ten days. We held a memorial for Aulus and Tank yesterday.”