Emmy Laybourne - Savage Drift

“Please!” I beg Cutlass. “These two are family to us!”

“That girl is Astrid Heyman. She’s the girlfriend of my son’s best friend,” Dr. Cutlass says. “You’re from Monument?”

“Brayden Cutlass,” Niko says, remembering. “Brayden’s last name was Cutlass.”

Dr. Cutlass grabs Niko by both arms.

“You knew my son?!”

Josie and Niko come maybe five minutes later. A short Asian nurse is with them. She is smiling so widely her face is all teeth.

They have taken Astrid into the OR.

“They said I had to wait,” I tell Niko and Josie as they sit down beside me on either side. “They told me to wait out here. Astrid’s having the baby.”

“We know,” Josie says. “You told us.”

Had I? I couldn’t seem to remember from one minute to the next.

My thoughts are muddled again. Worse than before. I know that much.

“There’s something wrong with my head.”

“Looks of it, you have a concussion,” the nurse says, peering into my pupils.

Josie picks up one of my hands and squeezes it.

“I never thought I’d get to see you again, Dean.”

“Astrid’s having the baby now,” I tell her.

“We know, sweetie. It’s gonna be okay.”

“Everything is going to be okay,” Niko says. He takes my other hand in his. “We’re together now.”

“That dressing needs to be changed,” says the nurse, peering into my eyes. She goes off for supplies.

“I can’t believe he let me out of the testing,” Josie says, across me, to Niko.

“He let you out of the spinal tap. He still wants blood and spit and God knows what else.”

“Yes, but none of those will kill me.”

“Who wants your spit?” I ask.

“Brayden’s dad.”

“He works at NORAD,” I say, remembering.

“He was going to do a procedure on me, but we told him all about Brayden. About how we all were together, and about how we tried to get his son to safety.”

“Josie?” I say.

“Yes, Dean.”

“Astrid’s having the baby. And I’m scared she’s going to die. I tried so hard to keep her safe.”

“Of course you did,” Josie says. She rubs my shoulder. It is so good to be with her. She always feels like home.

“Astrid’s having the baby,” I tell her.

The nurse comes back with some gauze and stuff. I lean my head forward and rest it on Josie’s lap.

The nurse puts something on that stings. Then she wraps up my head again.

She also hands me a little cup with two pills in it and a big cup of ice water.

We wait.

Josie and Niko keep stealing grins at each other, saying, “I just can’t believe he let us go.”

I know I should ask them how they got there to the military hospital, but I don’t want to. I just want to sit and be quiet and think about Astrid.

We sit there that way for a long time.

Then the lady Binwa comes out.

She has on an orange suit. At first I don’t recognize her. But then I remember her and the ambulance ride. I remember feeling so angry at her, but now I am glad to see her.

“Dean,” she says. “Dean. You’re a father.”

Josie laughs aloud. Niko claps me on the shoulder.

“They’re working on Astrid now, fixing her up. Baby’s fine. Premature, of course, but lungs are good. They’re both going to be fine.”

“Astrid’s okay?” I ask. “She’s all right?”

“She did beautifully, Dean. They stopped the seizures. Did a caesarian—had to be done. But she looks great.”

“She’s okay?”

“She’s fine,” Binwa says, pushing a piece of hair out of my eyes.

She turns to go back through the double doors.

“Wait!” I say. There is something I should ask.

Binwa turns back to us. “Astrid’s just fine, Dean. And you’ll be feeling better soon, too.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s the baby. What is it? A girl or a boy?” I ask.

“It’s a little boy,” Binwa says. “Four pounds, eight ounces.”

Our room is over the kitchen because the room over the kitchen is the warmest in the house.

All that worry about Niko’s uncle—would he take us in? would he be willing to sponsor us?—disappeared the moment we rolled up to the farmhouse in Sandy’s Ford Focus.

The tension had been building on the drive. Sandy, who took the day off to drive us here, filled the ride with her sunny chatter. Astrid sat in the back, next to the baby’s car seat (which Sandy had some how procured). I sat in the front and worried.

I worried when I saw the sign, “Pfeiffer Family Farm—Pick Your Own!” It sat in a field studded with old apple trees, barren now. There was also trash in the field, lots of it. It looked like refugees had been camping out there—there were burnt-out circles where campfires had been lit and pits dug, littered with bits of toilet paper.

Not very promising.

I turned back to Astrid, who was gazing at little Charlie in his seat.

Charles Everett Grieder Heyman. Charles for Astrid’s father. Everett for Jake’s. Grieder for me.

I still couldn’t get over it. After all my worry about Astrid and her feelings for me—she put Grieder in her son’s name. She had named me into his life permanently.

She loved me back.

“You okay?” I asked.

She nodded.

Charlie’s tiny wise-man face was the only part of him you could see. His completely bald head was covered by a knit cap they’d given him at the USAMRIID.

As we continued up the long gravel driveway, which was pitted in parts, there were signs posted on the trees. “No room!” “All full up.” “No food.” “Stay out.”

How many refugees had passed this way?

But as we drove on—and the road was long—the signs disappeared and the scenery changed. The fields of trees ambled up and down the hills. A wooden bridge spanned a cheerful brook. It was a big, rambling farm, that was for sure.

The doctors at USAMRIID had insisted on doing some testing on Josie, Astrid, and Charlie, as well as on me. Blood work, MRIs, CAT scans, more blood work. We set limits on what they could do, especially on Charlie, and Dr. Cutlass made sure everyone respected our limits.

Dr. Cutlass actually attended every test himself, even when they just took our blood pressure. He was hanging around, I suspect, more for the details we could give him about Brayden’s last days on the earth than to make sure the tests were run right, but I didn’t fault him for that. I told him everything. Well, not exactly everything. I didn’t see any reason to tell him about how Brayden had bullied me. But I remembered stuff like how Brayden had built the Train, and how he’d been a good friend to Jake, when Jake was campaigning to be the leader of the group.

Dr. Cutlass seemed to change into a nice guy, right before our eyes.

They released Josie before us. Astrid needed more time to heal from the caesarian and I was still a bit scrambled from the concussion. We stayed another week.

They taught us how to take care of the baby and we also learned that he was, in fact, extraordinary. Because Astrid had been exposed to the compounds, he had been growing at an accelerated rate. The average weight for babies born at twenty-eight weeks is around two and a quarter pounds. Charlie was double that. His lungs were fully developed. His ears were fine, eyes were fine. They were studying the accelerated rate of growth.

They wanted to continue to study Charlie.