Tess Gerritsen - Bloodstream

“I’m giving the calcium chloride now,” said the nurse. Everyone watched. The prolonged silence was broken only by the intermittent whoosh of oxygen being bagged through the mask. The patient’s eyelids responded first. Slowly they fluttered open, and he looked up, struggling to focus on Claire’s face.

“He’s moving air!” said the respiratory tech.

Seconds later, the patient coughed, took a noisy breath, and coughed again. He reached up and tried to push away the mask.

“I think he wants to talk,” said Claire. “Let him speak.”

The patient responded with a look of profound relief as the mask was removed from his face.

“Sir, did you want to say something?” Claire asked.

The man nodded. Everyone leaned forward, eager to hear his first words.

“Please,” he whispered.

“Yes?” prompted Claire.

“Let’s not… do that… again.”

As laughter broke out all around her, Claire patted the man on the shoulder.

Then she looked at the nurses. “I think we can cancel the tracheotomy.”

“I’m glad someone around here still has a sense of humor,” McNally said as he and Claire walked out of the cubicle a few minutes later. “It’s been pretty grim recently.” He paused in the nurses’ station and looked at the bank of monitors.

“I don’t know where we’re going to put anyone else.”

Claire was startled to see eight cardiac rhythms tracing across the screens. She swung around, her gaze sweeping the ICU in disbelief.

Every bed was filled.

“What on earth has been going on?” said Claire. “When I made rounds this morning, there was only my one patient in here.”

“It started on my shift. First a little girl with a skull fracture. Then a wreck up on Barnstown Road. Then some nutty kid sets his house on fire.” McNally shook his head. “It’s been going nonstop in the ER all day, and the patients still keep coming in.”

Over the hospital address system, they heard the page: “Dr. McNally to the ER.

Dr. McNally to the ER.”

He sighed and turned to leave. “It must be the full moon.”

Noah shed his jacket and lay it across the boulder. The granite felt warm, a day’s worth of sunshine radiating back from the stone. Turning, he squinted across the lake. The afternoon was windless, the water a glassy, brilliant mirror reflecting sky and leafless trees.

“I wish it was summer again, said Amelia.

He looked up at her. She was perched on the highest rock, chin resting on her blue-jeaned knees. Her blond hair was tucked behind one ear, revealing the streak of healing flesh on her temple. He wondered if she’d have a scar, and almost wished there would be one-just a small scar, so she would never forget him. Every morning, looking in her mirror, she’d see that faint trace of the bullet and would remember Noah Elliot.

Amelia tilted her face toward the sun. “I wish we could skip winter. Just one winter.”

He clambered up onto her rock and sat down beside her. Not too close, not too far. Almost, but not quite, touching. “I don’t know, I’m kind of looking forward to it.”

“You haven’t seen what it’s like here.”

“So what is it like?”

She stared across the lake with what was almost an expression of dread. “In a few weeks, it’ll start to freeze over. First there’ll be patches of ice along the shore. By December, it’ll be frozen all the way across, thick enough to walk on. That’s when it starts to make these sounds at night.”

“What sounds?”

“Like someone moaning. Like someone in pain.”

He started to laugh, but then she looked at him, and he fell silent.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” she said. “Sometimes I wake up at night and I think I’m having a nightmare. But it’s just the lake. Making those horrible sounds.”

“How can it?”

“Mrs. Horatio says She stopped, remembering that Mrs. Horatio was dead. She looked back at the water. “It’s because of the ice. The water freezes and expands. It’s always pushing, pushing against the banks, trying to escape, but it can’t because it’s trapped. That’s when you hear the moaning. It’s the pressure building up, building until it can’t take any more. Until it finally crushes itself.” She murmured: “No wonder it makes such terrible sounds.”

He tried to imagine what the lake would look like in January. The snow drifting against the banks, the water turned to a glaring sheet of ice. But today the sun was bright in his eyes, and with the warmth radiating off the stone, the only images that came to mind were of summer.

“Where do the frogs go?” he asked.

She turned to him. “What?”

“The frogs. And the fish and things. I mean, the ducks all migrate, they get away from here. But what do the frogs do? Do you think they just freeze up like green Popsicles?”

He’d meant to make her laugh, and he was glad to see a smile appear on her face.

“No, they don’t become Popsicles, silly. They bury themselves in the mud, way at the bottom.” She picked up a pebble and tossed it into the water. “We used to have lots and lots of frogs around here. I remember catching bucketfuls of them when I was little.”

“Used to?”

“There aren’t so many now. Mrs. Horatio says Again, that pause of remembered loss. Again, that sad sigh before she continued. “She said that it could be acid rain.”

“But I heard plenty of frogs this summer. I used to sit here and listen to them.”

“I wish I’d known about you then,” she said wistfully.

“I knew about you.”

She looked at him in puzzlement. Reddening, he averted his gaze. “I used to watch you in school,” he said. “Every lunchtime in the cafeteria, I’d be looking at you. I guess you didn’t notice.”

He felt his face flush hotter, and he stood up, his gaze on the water, avoiding hers. “You ever go swimming? I used to come here every day.”

“This is where all the kids hang out.”

“So where were you last summer?”

She gave a shrug. “Ear infection. The doctor wouldn’t let me swim.”

“Bummer.”

There was a silence. “Noah?” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Do you ever feel like… not going home?”

“You mean like running away?”

“No, it’s more like staying away.”

“Staying away from what?”

She didn’t answer his question. When he turned to look at her, she had already risen to her feet and was hugging her arms to her chest. “It’s getting cold.”

Suddenly he too noticed the chill. Only the rock retained any warmth, and he could feel it quickly dissipating as the sun dropped behind the trees.

The surface of the water rippled, then flattened to black glass. The lake seemed alive at that moment, a single fluid organism. He wondered if everything she’d said about the lake was true, if it really did moan on winter nights. He supposed it could happen. Water expands as it freezes-a scientific fact. The ice would solidify at the surface first, a fine crust that slowly thickens through the dark months of winter, layer building upon layer. And far below, deep in the bottom mud, the frogs would burrow with nowhere else to go. They would be trapped beneath the ice. Entombed.

Sweat filmed Claire’s face as she strained at the oars. She felt them drag evenly through the water, felt the satisfying lurch of the rowboat as it cut across the surface of the lake. Over the months her rowing had grown smoothly efficient. Back in May, when she’d first dipped oars into water, it had been a humbling experience. One or both oars would whip wildly across the water, throwing up spray, or she’d favor one oar over the other and would end up rowing in circles. Control was the key. Power, perfectly balanced. Fluid movements, gliding, not splashing.