Amanda Leduc - The Centaur's Wife

“It’s all right,” the woman murmurs. “I understand.”

When Moira finally gets herself under control, Darby is shifting from one foot to the other, and JJ stands silent, staring at the ground.

“Where are we?” Moira asks.

In answer, the women step back from the truck and point. Moira turns and there it is—the remnants of a city and beyond them, a mountain that rises into the sky.

She’s never seen a mountain before, but right now she’s more interested in the women. “Who are you?” she asks. “Does JJ know you? Is that why we’re here?”

“JJ?” the blonde woman says. “If by JJ you mean Joseph, then yes.”

JJ shrugs. “JJ is what my mother used to call me,” he says. “My wife called me Joseph.” He lifts a hand in the direction of the tall woman. “Moira, this is Annie. And this”—his voice is strained here—“is Elyse.” Another blonde, small and gaunt, breathing with difficulty. “And this is Tasha,” he says, motioning to the woman beside him. The smallest of the three, dark and silent. He clears his throat. “Moira, she’s a doctor. Annie’s a nurse.”

“Help,” Moira says, instantly. “Brian needs help.” She scrambles into the truck, the small woman right behind her, to where Brian lies.

The doctor—Tasha—drops to her knees. Her hands move over his leg—fingers that know what to do. “What happened?” she asks.

Moira swallows. “He was—trampled.” She motions to the makeshift splint. “I tried to stabilize his leg, but we were in a hurry and all I had were branches…” She’s weeping again.

Tasha puts a hand on Moira’s arm. “You did the best you could. You did an excellent job.” She calls to the people gathered at the edge of the truck. “Annie, we need to get him to the clinic. Can you”—nodding to Darby and JJ—“help me lift him?” Then she reaches down and grasps Brian’s hand. “This is going to hurt,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”

The boy passes out again on the way to the clinic, but his screams linger in Moira’s head like an alarm. She turns to face the doctor. “Is it infected? Is he going to lose the leg?”

“I don’t know yet.” The doctor is walking briskly after the others. “I need to see.”

“Here,” Moira says, running to keep up with her. She fumbles in her pocket. “I found this. If you need it.” She hands Tasha the scalpel.

Tasha takes it gingerly and holds it up to the light, an odd expression on her face. “Where did you get this?”

Moira waves a hand back in the direction they’ve come from. “Back—there. Far away. It was just on the ground.” She wills herself not to cry. “I took it—for Brian. In case I needed to use it.”

Tasha stares at the scalpel in her palm for so long Moira starts to feel uneasy.

“What?” she finally asks. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” Tasha shakes herself. “It’s just that my mother told me stories about a scalpel like this. It’s part of why I wanted to be a doctor.” She puts the blade back in Moira’s hand and folds her fingers over it. “Keep it. I have more. And you might need a weapon.”

You might need a weapon. Moira suppresses a shudder. When they reach the clinic, Joseph is waiting for them.

“Did you ask her?” he says. “Have they seen it?”

“Ask me what?” Tasha says.

JJ is silent for so long Moira wants to scream. “We saw something,” he says, finally. “Farther south, close to the water. I don’t know what it was. Half man, half horse. We had it with us for a night, and then it… escaped.” He sounds sheepish, and suddenly Moira feels it too.

But the small blonde has overheard them. She doesn’t look surprised. “Centaur,” she says, and the word slices into Moira, inevitable and perfect. “You saw the centaur.”

Brian doesn’t lose the leg—at least not that night. As Tasha and Annie work over him, Moira watches from her perch near the front door, the night wind cutting softly through the broken front window.

She’d offered to help, but it’s clear that these women have worked together for a very long time—they move in sync, the tools that Tasha asks for already waiting in Annie’s outstretched hand. Her other hand holds a flashlight, illuminating the mess. Brian is delirious with pain and drifts in and out of consciousness. When he moans, Moira stirs at her perch.

“You can come closer,” Tasha says, softly. “It would be nice for him to have someone he knows nearby.”

She sits by Brian’s head and takes his hand like she did in the truck. It’s clammy, his forehead warm and damp.

“He has a fever,” she whispers. “That’s not a good sign, is it?”

The other women, intent on the leg, don’t answer. Tasha is using a sponge to clean the wound and a pair of tweezers to remove tiny fragments of bone.

The leg is broken in several places.

“Anterior and posterior tibial arteries intact,” Tasha says. She nods to Moira. “You did well to staunch the bleeding.”

Moira squeezes Brian’s hand and fixes her gaze on the collection of bone fragments that Tasha is amassing.

“Here,” Annie says, after some time. “Hold this.”

Moira takes the flashlight that Annie offers, then trains it back on Brian’s leg. Tasha positions and grasps the broken bottom part of the shin bone, then slowly pulls as Annie braces the leg. Sweat stands out in beads on Tasha’s forehead and for several long, impossible moments no one makes a sound. The bone slides into place.

“There,” Tasha says, a note of quiet triumph in her voice. “Next one.”

Moira holds the flashlight steady. The light doesn’t waver. The light doesn’t go out.

When they are done, Moira leaves Brian bandaged and sleeping on the mattress at the back, his leg splinted and immobile as Annie and Tasha clean up.

JJ and Darby and the blonde girl, Elyse, sit in the clinic waiting room, half-asleep.

“He’s all right,” Moira says, and she watches Darby and JJ relax. “At least for now. Tasha says we have to watch for signs of infection but they still have some antibiotics, so hopefully he’ll be okay.” She plops down into an empty seat beside Elyse, then leans forward and puts her head in her hands.

“Here,” Elyse says, softly, and when Moira looks up, the girl is offering her an apple and a potato in her outstretched hands. “When did you last eat?”

Moira can’t remember. She takes the apple and bites into it as she rolls the potato around in her hand.

Tasha comes out of the back room and sits in a chair on the other side of Moira. “Joseph,” she says, “what did you do after you left?”

“I biked as far away as I could get,” he says. “Left the others almost right away—scrounged food where I could, slept in ditches. I made it almost as far as the water before—before anything else happened.”

“And when the—scream—came?”

Joseph looks at his hands. “I was in bed,” he says. “Some of the places I passed through were doing better than others. Ramshackle hotels, places where people were surviving without power. When I heard people screaming outside—” he clears his throat—“I saw my wife burning, and my boys, after the meteors came. Over and over in my head. I stood up, and reached out for the window, ready to break the glass”—he reaches a hand out now—“and there was a tree there, so close I could almost touch it. I counted a leaf, and then another, and another. I just kept counting. And the memories went away, eventually.” He clears his throat again. “When the meteors came, that’s what saved me then too, in a way. We’d gone on a road trip, and I was outside packing the van when the meteor took the hotel and the van with it. It missed me by inches. It was so hot I couldn’t stay there, so I just started walking away, counting my footsteps as I went. I got to ten thousand before I came to.”