C.E. Murphy - Thunderbird Falls

I woke all the way up inside of an instant, cold making an ugly burp of nervousness in my stomach. “Yeah. What’s wrong?”

“This is Dr. Wood at Northwest Hospital. We’d like you to come down right away. Mr. Muldoon has had a heart attack.”

Saturday, June 18, 6:33 a.m.

I didn’t know how I got to the hospital. I didn’t know if I even hung up the phone. All I could hear was my heartbeat and the memory of the day I’d met Gary, when a human banshee called Marie told us both that Gary wasn’t going to die any time soon. Soon. What was soon? Was six months soon? It seemed soon to me. How far in advance had her ability to see death coming worked? She hadn’t said, and it was much too late to ask her. I remembered her body, lying across her living room floor, the heart torn out, and I wondered if six months was soon.

The doctor I’d spoken to on the phone met me in the waiting room. She was short, with dark sympathetic eyes and a quick reassuring smile that I didn’t buy for a minute.

I felt like I was watching myself from a safe distance of several feet. From out there, the pain and fear couldn’t really get to me. All I could really feel from out there was the itch in my nose that made me want to sneeze, something that happened every time I went into a hospital.

In there, inside my body, everything was tunnel-visioned and I kept asking, “A heart attack? Not a stroke? A heart attack?” as if it were important, but I couldn’t figure out why it would be. In there, there wasn’t enough room to breathe, like someone’d sat on my lungs. I wanted to stay out here, distant, where it was easier to breathe. The doctor—I had to look at her name tag to remember it was Wood—sat me down and put her hands on my shoulders.

“A heart attack. He’s very weak right now,” she told me. “He’s weak, but he’s awake,” she said. “He wanted to see you, Ms. Walker. Can you do that?”

I snapped back into my body so hard it made me cry out loud, a sharp high whimper. Blood flow tingled through my fingertips, painfully, but the pain gave me something to focus on. “Yeah.” My voice was all rough again. “Yeah, of course. Is he gonna be okay, doctor?”

She nodded and gave me another reassuring smile. “He realized very quickly what the attack was and got to the hospital before significant damage had been done. That was a few hours ago. I called as soon as he was stabilized.”

“I’m sorry.” I had no idea why I was apologizing.

“It’s okay.” The doctor smiled at me. “You all right?”

“No.” My voice cracked, and I put on my best brave smile in return. “But I can pretend.”

She patted my shoulder. “Come on, then.”

“There’s my girl.” Gary’s voice was too thin, his gray eyes dulled, but he smiled as I put my hand into his. Power fluttered very gently inside me as we touched, and I nearly burst into tears at the realization that there might actually be something I could do. I held off for a minute, though, hanging on to Gary’s hand.

“Your girl, huh?” I sat down on a stool beside his bed, trying not to sniffle. “When’d I graduate from being a crazy dame to being your girl?”

“Right about the time my arm started tingling and aching,” Gary said. He looked like he’d lost thirty pounds in the eight hours since I’d seen him. His skin was ashy, the Hemingway wrinkles that I found so reassuring now deep and haggard around his mouth and eyes. “You look like hell, Jo.”

I gave a shaky laugh. “ I look like hell? Anybody shown you a mirror, Gary?”

“They don’t need to. I’m feelin’ like the old gray ghost.”

“Yeah, well.” I tightened my fingers around his. “No giving up that ghost, okay? Not for a while yet.”

Gary snorted. “You kidding? You’ve only just gotten started. I’m not plannin’ on checking out for a while yet. I want grandkids,” he said with a wink and a sudden grin. My heart lurched.

“That’s why you’re hanging around, huh? Nice to finally find out there’s a reason.” My attempt at levity fell flat, but Gary smiled anyway, then let his eyes close, which told me as much as anything how tired he was. I’d never met a more open-eyed kind of guy than Gary. We stayed like that for a few minutes, me trying to memorize him while he breathed, then I closed my own eyes, hoping I wouldn’t cry.

“Lissen, Jo.”

My eyes popped open again. Gary was wearing his serious face. His really serious face, so serious I’d never seen it before. Nerves twisted in my stomach. “Yeah?”

“The grandkids, y’know I’m joking. But—”

“God, Gary, don’t. Okay? Don’t get all maudlin on me.” I managed a feeble smile. “At least wait until you’re sitting up again, okay?” I made the smile brighter, even though tears stung my eyes, and I bent over his hand. “Anyway, I know, okay?” My voice squeaked. “I know. Me, too, huh? Okay? Me, too.” I blinked back tears, keeping my head lowered over his hand. Gary reached over himself with his left hand, clonking my head with the oxygen sensor on his middle finger as he ruffled my hair. “Ow.”

He chuckled. “Sorry. Okay. Arright, Jo. Now you gotta keep me up to date on what’s goin’ on out there, all right? I hate missin’ things.”

I sat up laughing and brushed my hand over my eyes. “I know. I will, I promise. Like, here, you’ll like this. I was talking to Virissong, the spirit guy the coven wants to bring across, when the hospital called.”

Gary’s eyebrows retained their bushiness even when the rest of him looked smaller. “What’s he like?”

“He seems okay. I guess I’m going to do this.”

“Man,” Gary said, “I gotta get out of here. I’m gonna miss all the good stuff.”

“Only you think it’s the good stuff.” I gave him a watery smile. “When’re they letting you out?”

“I donno. A cute blond nurse says I gotta go to physical therapy. Me, physical therapy. I’m seventy-three years old. What kinda crap is that?”

“The kind that’s going to make sure you live to see seventy-four,” I said sternly. Gary’s eyes brightened, as if chastisement was better for him than sympathy. It probably was.

“You’re gonna keep me in line, aren’t you,” he grumbled, without disguising the note of pleasure in his voice.

“Damn straight.” I took a deep breath. “And I’m going to do a little laying on of hands, and then I’m going to ask a power animal to keep an eye on you.”

If somebody’d said that to me, it would’ve made me even crabbier. Gary lit up again. “Yeah? What animal?”

“I’ll know when it comes. Tomorrow morning.” The part of me that knew I wouldn’t really turn my back on shamanism stung me with cold guilt. If I’d studied maybe I could’ve seen this coming and done something to prevent it. Preemptive healing.

“Stop it,” Gary said. I twitched and blinked at him. “You’re lookin’ all guilty,” he said. “Knock it off. I’m an old man, Jo. I ain’t gonna last forever, and there’s nothing you or anybody else can do about that. But I’m not checkin’ out just yet, so just stop it, you hear? You want to find this old dog a little spiritual support to shore him up, I’ll appreciate it, but don’t go thinkin’ you can stop nature in its tracks. You hear me?”

“I hear you.” I smiled a little. “I’m just not sure I’m ready to listen.”

He squeezed my hand. “Fair ‘nuff. Women always take their own sweet time makin’ up their minds to see sense.”

I nodded, then straightened my spine. “Hey!”

Gary cackled, breathier than usual, but still his own laugh. “There’s my girl,” he said again, and let himself slip back into resting. I waited until he slept, then dug down inside me for the power that lay behind my breastbone.