CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
A steady beeping sound came to my ears. The bird, I thought. The road. An unfamiliar smell floated in the air—bleach and soap and food smells. And the air, too, was wrong. Heated, heavy, dry.
I opened my eyes on a white room, venetian blinds at a window, a blue sky outside it. It took a few moments to realize I was in a hospital room. A tube stuck into my arm was attached to a machine that drip-dripped clear liquid.
My mouth was so dry. I pushed myself up and saw a pitcher of water on a table beside my bed. With my free arm, I reached for it and poured myself a glass of water. Ice cubes tumbled into the glass. It was so sweet and cool. I poured myself another, then another. A nurse stood beside a counter outside my room. The tube was long enough to let me stand up. But when I tried, my legs gave out under me like plastic straws. I stumbled against the machine beside the bed and the clatter made the nurse turn.
“You’re up!” she said, smiling. “Look at you! I bet you’d like some breakfast.”
“Where are my mom and dad?”
“Your Aunt Cecilia is here. She just went for coffee. She didn’t want to wake you up.”
“But my mom and dad?”
“I’ll find your aunt. She’ll be so excited to see you’re up.”
Aunt Sissy, when she saw me sitting on the side of the bed, took me in her arms and squeezed me so long and so hard I could barely breathe.
“Your mom is here,” she said. “Someone found her by the side of the road. She’s not awake yet.”
“Is she okay?”
“Yes, she will be. She’s not hurt. The sheriff is here. He wants to ask you some questions. They didn’t even know you and your mom were related until I got here. I got the call a girl and her father had found you walking along some remote road. You gave them my name and number.”
“I don’t remember that. I remember getting on a dirt bike.”
“They brought you straight here. They couldn’t tell me much more. They brought your backpack.” She gestured to where it leaned against the wall. “All I knew to tell them was that you were on your way home from a trip to the Grand Canyon.”
“No,” I said.
“What do you mean no?”
“We never got to the Grand Canyon. We were on our way down. The truck broke down on that road.”
“What road?”
“The road the fox-girl and Buddy found me on.”
Aunt Sissy lifted my legs back up into the bed and pulled the covers up.
“Maybe we shouldn’t rush things. You need to get more rest.”
“No, Aunt Sissy, I’m fine. I mean, I feel okay. We never got to the Grand Canyon. We took a shortcut and then the truck broke down. Where’s Dad? Have they found Dad?”
“But Francie, that can’t be right. You left home two weeks ago.”
“Have they found Dad?”
“No, not yet. Like I said, the sheriff needs to ask you questions. They’ll do everything they can.”
“I want to see Mom.”
“The sheriff wants to see you first. He’ll be up right away. He’s getting coffee.”
“I want to see her.”
“It’s just the way they do it, Francie. He’ll talk to you and then we’ll go see her.”
She squeezed me again. “I’m so, so glad to see you.”
“Can they take this thing out of my arm?”
The sheriff said the Canada Post toque was a good clue. He sat in a chair by my hospital bed with his Stetson hat in his lap. He wore the star badge like I’d seen on TV.
I showed him my map, which had been stuffed in my jacket pocket and was creased and smudged with grime. I had marked in Hat Creek and drawn the little toque in the spot where I’d found it.
“That’s smart,” the sheriff said. “This’ll give the searchers a much better idea of where to look.”
“I don’t know if he dropped it on his way to find the highway or on his way back to us,” I said.
“Good thinking. This map is really helpful. I’ve got a map to show you, too.”
He pulled it from inside his jacket and unfolded it on his knees. “This is a topographic map. The lines show the elevation. Here it’s higher, see? The lines are closer together.” He put his finger on a line that ended in an expanse of milky green.
“Here’s where we found your truck. I want you to show me where your dad was walking to. And tell me everything he said.”
I looked at the map. The milky green was spidered with brown elevation lines and the blue of the creek running like a vein through it. But there was no road. A sick feeling rose in my stomach.
“I don’t see it. He walked this way. There was supposed to be a road. Fifteen miles, he said.”
“Okay,” said the sheriff. He folded up the map and put it away. “Tell me about the weather the day he left.”
I explained to him what the weather had been like over the days we waited for him. I watched his face, his slow nod. He wrote down the dates and times. Then he asked about the equipment he was carrying and I told him about the tent. The tent but no sleeping bag.
“If he set up the tent, that’ll make him easier to spot,” the sheriff said.
“Will you use a helicopter?”
“Yes. We have a helicopter. We’ll use all the resources we have.”
The room Mom lay in was hushed and dim, the blinds half-closed against the bright day outside. Aunt Sissy opened them and sunlight poured in.
Mom’s hair spread like a wild halo around her head on the pillow. A machine beside her beeped as steadily and rhythmically as the bird in the woods. I took her hand. It felt soft and warm, the very best thing I’d ever touched.
“Mom,” I whispered.
“She’s sleeping, sweetie,” Aunt Sissy said gently. “I didn’t even know she was here until I got here last night. Someone found her on the side of the highway. She was unconscious. The sheriff couldn’t figure out who she was or where she’d come from.”
“Mom, I’m here,” I whispered again. “We made it.”
I thought her eyelids flickered; I thought I saw a smile start on her lips.
Her lips moved. She was trying to say something. Aunt Sissy and I watched her. Her head turned one way and then the other. Then she whispered, “I came back for you.”
“She’s a little confused,” Aunt Sissy said.
“You waited. And I came back for you,” she said again.
“She’s confused,” Aunt Sissy said again, patting me on the back.
“I know,” I said.
That night I tried to sleep. A hospital is not as quiet as you’d think. Aunt Sissy was snoring lightly in a chair near my bed. Some machine was clanging on a floor above me. I heard sirens outside. Beeps and clacking wheels and unfamiliar rushes of noise filled the dark. I put my mind back in the forest, with moonlight streaming through the trees.
I knew that Dad would not have set up the tent. I knew he would have kept walking. Walking was what he did best. He may have sat and rested, or he may have fallen asleep as he rested. But I knew he would not stop walking until he couldn’t walk anymore.
I pictured him walking through the rain, whistling. He stops for a drink beside Hat Creek, tempted by the clear, cold water. He’s sweating a bit, so he takes off his toque, lays it down on a rock. Then he feels the clouds break. He lifts his head and looks up at the sky. The sun beams down on his face, and on the forest, making everything steam and shine. He stands and smiles, takes another step and keeps walking.
Mom had not come back for me. Not really. But she had tried.
And that, I decided, was just as good.