Noah Hawley - Before the Fall

The doctor does a surface exam, checking for obvious cuts or bruises.

“Did you really swim all that way in the dark?”

Scott nods.

“Do you remember anything?”

“I’m a little fuzzy on details,” Scott tells him.

The doctor checks his eyes.

“Hit your head?”

“I think so. On the plane before we crashed…”

The penlight blinds him for a moment. The doctor clucks.

“Eye response looks good. I don’t think you have a concussion.”

Scott exhales.

“I don’t think I could have done that — swim all night — with a concussion.”

The doctor considers this.

“You’re probably right.”

As he warms up and his fluids are replaced, things start to come back to Scott, the world at large, the concept of countries and citizens, of daily life, the Internet, television. He thinks of his three-legged dog, staying with a neighbor, how close she came to never eating another under-the-table meatball again. Scott’s eyes fill with tears. He shakes them off.

“What’s the news saying?” he asks.

“Not much. They say the plane took off around ten o’clock last night. Air traffic control had it on their radar for maybe fifteen minutes, then it just disappeared. No mayday. Nothing. They were hoping the radio was broken and you made an emergency landing someplace. But then a fishing boat spotted a piece of the wing.”

For a moment Scott is back in the ocean, treading water in the inky deep, surrounded by orange flames.

“Any other…survivors?” he asks.

The doctor shakes his head. He is focused on Scott’s shoulder.

“Does this hurt,” he says, gently lifting Scott’s arm.

The pain is instantaneous. Scott yells.

“Let’s get an X-ray and a CAT scan,” the doctor tells the nurse.

He turns to Scott.

“I ordered a CAT scan for the boy too,” he says. “I want to make sure there’s no internal bleeding.”

He lays a hand on Scott’s arm.

“You saved his life,” he says. “You know that, right?”

For the second time, Scott fights back tears. He is unable, for a long moment, to say anything.

“I’m going to call the police,” the doctor tells him. “Let them know you’re here. If you need anything, anything, tell the nurse. I’ll be back to check on you in a few.”

Scott nods.

“Thanks,” he says.

The doctor stares at Scott for a moment longer, then shakes his head.

“Goddamn,” he says, smiling.

* * *

The next hour is filled with tests. Flush with warm fluids, Scott’s body temperature returns to normal. They give him Vicodin for the pain, and he floats for a while in twilight oblivion. It turns out his shoulder is dislocated, not broken. The procedure to pop it back into place is an epic lightning strike of violence followed immediately by a cessation of pain so intense it’s as if the damage has been erased from his body retroactively.

At Scott’s insistence, they put him in the boy’s room. Normally, children stay in a separate wing, but an exception is made given the circumstances. The boy is awake now, eating Jell-O, when they wheel Scott inside.

“Any good?” Scott wants to know.

“Green,” the boy says, frowning.

Scott’s bed is by the window. He has never felt anything as comfortable as these scratchy hospital sheets. Across the street there are trees and houses. Cars drive past, windshields flashing. In the bike lane, a woman jogs against traffic. In a nearby yard, a man in a blue ball cap push-mows his lawn.

It seems impossible, but life goes on.

“You slept, huh?” says Scott.

The boy shrugs.

“Is my mommy here yet?” he says.

Scott tries to keep his face neutral.

“No,” Scott tells him. “They’ve called your — I guess you have an aunt and uncle in Westchester. They’re on their way.”

The boy smiles.

“Ellie,” he says.

“You like her?”

“She’s funny,” the boy says.

“Funny is good,” says Scott, his eyelids fluttering. Exhausted doesn’t describe the kind of heavy-metal gravity pulling at his bones right now. “I’m going to sleep for a bit, if that’s okay.”

If the boy thinks otherwise, Scott never hears it. He is asleep before the kid can answer.

* * *

He sleeps for a while, a dreamless slumber, like a castle dungeon. When he wakes the boy’s bed is empty. Scott panics. He is half out of bed when the bathroom door opens and the boy comes out wheeling his IV stand.

“I had to tinkle,” he says.

A nurse comes in to check Scott’s blood pressure. She’s brought a stuffed animal for the boy, a brown bear with a red heart in its paws. He takes it with a happy sound and immediately starts to play.

“Kids,” the nurse says, shaking her head.

Scott nods. Now that he’s slept he is anxious to get more details about the crash. He asks the nurse if he can get out of bed. She nods, but tells him not to go far.

“I’ll be back, buddy, okay?”

The boy nods, playing with his bear.

Scott puts a thin cotton robe over his hospital gown and walks his IV stand down the hall to the empty patient lounge. It’s a narrow interior room with particleboard chairs. Scott finds a news channel on TV, turns up the volume.

“…the plane was an OSPRY, manufactured in Kansas. On board were David Bateman, president of ALC News, and his family. Also confirmed now as passengers are Ben Kipling and his wife, Sarah. Kipling was a senior partner at Wyatt, Hathoway, the financial giant. Again, the plane is believed to have gone down in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New York sometime after ten p.m. last night.”

Scott stares at the footage, helicopter shots of gray ocean swells. Coast Guard boats and rubbernecking weekend sailors. Even though he knows the wreckage would have drifted, maybe even a hundred miles by now, he can’t help but think that he was down there not that long ago, an abandoned buoy bobbing in the dark.

“Reports are coming in now,” says the anchor, “that Ben Kipling may have been under investigation by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, and that charges were forthcoming. The scope and source of the investigation aren’t yet clear. More on this story as it develops.”

A photo of Ben Kipling appears on the screen, younger and with more hair. Scott remembers the eyebrows. He realizes that everyone else on that plane except he and the boy exist now only in the past tense. The thought makes the hair on his neck flutter and stand, and for a moment he thinks he may pass out. Then there is a knock on the door. Scott looks up. He sees a group of men in suits hovering in the hallway.

“Mr. Burroughs,” says the knocker. He is in his early fifties, an African American man with graying hair.

“I’m Gus Franklin with the National Transportation Safety Board.”

Scott starts to stand. A reflex of social protocol.

“No, please,” says Gus. “You’ve been through a lot.”

Scott settles back onto the sofa, pulling the cotton robe closed over his legs.

“I was just — watching it on TV,” he says. “The rescue. Salvage? I’m not sure what to call it. I think I’m still in shock.”

“Of course,” says Gus. He looks around the small room.

“Let’s — I’m gonna say four people max in this room,” he tells his cohorts. “Otherwise, it’s gonna get a little claustrophobic.”

There is a quick conference. Ultimately, they agree on six, Gus and two others (one man and one woman) in the room; two more in the doorway. Gus sits beside Scott on the sofa. The woman is to the left of the television. A trim, bearded man to her right. They are, for want of a better word, nerds. The woman has a ponytail and glasses. The man sports an eight-dollar haircut and a JCPenney suit. The two men in the doorway are more serious, well dressed, military haircuts.