It felt strange to be treating him in his cabin, seeing his clothes strewn around on the floor, smelling his morning breath, and feeling the cool smoothness of his skin as she took his vitals. No, that was an understatement. As she studied him now, pale and weak, lying back against the pillows, she wondered how she could have ever been intimidated by him. He was so thin and white that he was almost transparent.
“I’ve got a question for you,” she said.
He glanced up at her a bit fuzzily and reached for his glasses on the side table. “Shoot.”
“Where have you been for the past . . . what is it? A month? Where did you and Karina go?”
“Karina?”
“You both left the same night. Where did you go?”
“I didn’t leave with Karina. I left with Siriporn.”
“Really?”
“Yes, Siriporn. He wanted to go to Bangkok. For the protests, you know? Karina wanted to go home, so we gave her a ride to the airport.” He adjusted his glasses, then fell back against the pillows. “Must admit I was curious. We had lots of, you know, conversations, Siriporn and I. Yes, conversations,” he said, addressing the surprise on her face. “Political conversations. He told me about all his beliefs. I wanted to know more, so we went to Bangkok together. We protested. Actually, got arrested.” He laughed a bit. A wheezy laugh. It was still hard for him to breathe.
“Arrested?”
“Yes, didn’t Mali tell you?”
“No, I’ve been preoccupied with other things.” She slapped the blood pressure cuff onto the table and turned away. “Is he home?”
“No, he stayed. Said something about continuing . . . I don’t know.” He wheezed again.
A long pause. Natalie looked out the window. Her work was done here. She needed to be heading for Apsara’s enclosure.
“So the day of the cobra . . . you had just come home.”
“Yes. In fact, I wasn’t here for more than an hour when one of the kids ran up to the office looking for help. I had no clue what was going on, so I went out there.”
Another pause. The warm breeze rustled through the windows and flipped the pages of a book on his bedside table.
“When Sophie came, you yelled for Danny. Who’s that?” Peter closed his eyes and groaned a little.
She had never been so grateful that someone’s eyes were closed.
“Danny. That’s my son.”
“Your son? Didn’t know you had a son.”
If you hadn’t been so intent on destroying me, maybe you would have found that out, she thought. She rose from the chair and made for the door. “I have a few things to do. Talk to you later, okay?”
“No, wait, wait. Come back here.” He patted the chair.
Natalie shook her head and forced a shaky smile. She didn’t want to go back, didn’t want to sit on the chair. Didn’t want to talk. Couldn’t. Not to Peter. Not to anyone. If she was going to talk to anyone, it would have been Seth. But he wasn’t here, and part of her was glad he wasn’t, though she thought about him late at night. Missed him in a way that didn’t give her any heartache. She was glad she’d spoken to him, but she still didn’t know what the final film would be like. She’d come to the conclusion that it would be whatever Seth needed it to be, and she had to be okay with that.
“You know, Natalie, we haven’t exactly had a friendship, but I feel like I can say something to you.” Hatcher pulled the sheet up to his chin and pointed at her. “You’re a very sad woman, Natalie DeAngelo, and I think it’s because of your Danny. Tell me about him.”
It was a command. She didn’t do well with commands. She reached for the door again.
“Sit, Natalie. Come, come. Sit. Tell me the story of your son. Tell me about Danny.”
She shook her head. “I really don’t want to. Not now, Peter.” She’d repeated the story to Seth. She wasn’t ready to do it again, especially to a man she’d spent the better part of this year despising, the man responsible for Sophie’s death.
He peered at her over the rims of his eyeglasses, then glanced away, smoothed his sheet, thought for a moment and turned back. “I understand, believe me. I know what it’s like to lose a child.”
That caught her off guard. How could he know? He’d never had a child.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he continued, a slight rasp in his words. “You’re thinking I could not understand since I have not had a child myself. Well, you’re wrong. You’ve not heard me speak about my daughter, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have one.” He stopped and took a deep breath. “Twelve years ago. A horrendous auto accident. My wife. My daughter.” He stopped again, searching for another breath, but this pause wasn’t because he couldn’t breathe. This appeared to be an emotional pause, not a physical thirst for air.
“Yes, I was married when you read my dissertation. Happy. But when I had to rewrite it, I became angry. I threw myself into it. Was horrible to live with.” He took a deep breath and let it out shakily. “They went to a birthday party that night. I was too busy to go with them.” He polished his glasses with the corner of the sheet, gave himself a moment to compose his thoughts.
“For years, I couldn’t talk about them. I sunk myself into work. I performed more emergency operations as the vet on call in North Yorkshire than anyone since World War II. Worked twenty-four hours a day sometimes. Surprisingly, it didn’t take away the memories to work that much.” He laughed, a hoarse and painful sound. “Even now, I can still see the flames that engulfed their car.”
She let out a short, involuntary moan.
“Yes, I saw the accident. That’s always been the worst part. Wish I hadn’t, but I did.”
Natalie studied her fingertips instead of staring at Peter. Suddenly, he wasn’t the man she knew a month ago, and she didn’t know how to handle that. “You blamed me for the accident, didn’t you?”
“I did. I could never point the finger at myself. I guess because it’s easier to blame someone else for something that . . . that . . . horrible. But now I know. It was an accident. No one’s fault.”
She let his confession sink in, and when it did, she wordlessly reached for his hand.
“Now, tell me,” he said softly. His tone kinder, gentler than it had ever been when he spoke to her.
She watched his face as he listened to a shortened version of her story. She found it easier to tell this time, easier than telling Seth, and thought that maybe this is what Dr. Littlefield meant when she said, “You have to be the sailor, Natalie. You have to tell the albatross story over and over again. Lessen its power over you. Get used to the emotions. Dig deep into them. Expose them. Eventually, you’ll see the story no longer has control over you, is no longer something you fear.”
When she finished, Hatcher placed his dry hand atop hers. Something in that cold, dry touch awakened her anger and lit another candle under her grief. Sophie’s life for his. Natalie’s story of grief would not include her best friend. Because of this man.
Swallowing back a sob, she pointed at him, the man she’d just treated. “There was no one—no one, no human, no other animal—who was more humane than the elephant who saved your life. Sophie saved your life. And you wanted to take hers. You wanted to kill her! Do you remember that? Do you?”
He hung his head. When he looked up again more than a minute later, tears ran down his pale cheeks. “I remember. I know, believe me.”
“I fucking hope that you never forget that, Peter Hatcher. I hope you live the rest of your life thinking about how Sophie gave up her life for you. I hope you never forget it. Because I won’t.”
He turned his head against the pillow and shut his eyes. “I won’t. Believe me, I won’t.”
“Enough. We need to stop this. Nothing will come of two people hurting each other.” Andrew voice came from behind. “You both have been through enough pain. You strike out, thinking that others don’t understand. But you do. You both do. It’s time for you both to stop.”
Natalie turned to look at him as he spoke and felt as though she’d had the life drained from her. She had no fight left.
“I’m sorry, Natalie,” Peter said quietly. “I’m so sorry.”
She shook her head slowly and didn’t respond.
Beyond the cabin, an elephant trumpeted, then a very small one answered, reminding the three of them that there were many important lives to protect.
Andrew stood, facing Peter and Natalie with a wry smile on his face. “You know, one of the reasons I started this sanctuary is because the best way to treat broken animals is with broken people. Each fixes the other.”
He placed one hand on Peter’s arm and the other on Natalie’s shoulder. “The dogs here would be lost without you, Peter, and you, Natalie. Don’t you think your life has changed—and so had Sophie’s—as a result of coming into each other’s lives?”
Natalie knew he was right. She rose and hugged him, then glanced at Peter and nodded. There was nothing more to say.