Blood Men

chapter four

Keep her alive, Clive.

I have no idea why I keep thinking of the song Jodie sang this morning, perhaps the last song she’ll ever get to sing, steam from the shower thick in the air, the penguin radio launching out classic songs from a classic hits station. The words are in my head but they don’t even feel like mine, as though somebody put them there, an English teacher or a bad comedian having reached out somehow and implanted them.

She’s dead, Fred-and don’t worry, you’ll be hearing from me soon.

I scream for help but the only thing people are brave enough to do is step out from whatever hole they hid in and point cell phone cameras at me while others make calls. I try to hold the blood inside her, but it keeps flowing.

“Jodie, oh God, Jodie, it’s going to be okay,” I say, and I roll her onto her side so I can see her face while keeping pressure on her back. There is so much blood. Way too much blood. It’s seeping between my fingers. It’s like water. I need more hands. More help.

I need a miracle.

Jodie’s eyes are open and she turns them toward me but focuses beyond me, somewhere a thousand miles away.

“It’s going to be okay,” I say. “I promise.”

“My shoes hurt,” she says, and she smiles, and she keeps staring past me and a moment later I realize she’s no longer seeing anything at all.

“Jodie. .”

There are too many holes in her, I can’t stem them all. Her face is pale, except around her nose which has been broken and flattened when she fell. Blood is smeared there, there’s a deep cut in her upper lip where it’s been sliced by her teeth.

“Please, please, Jodie, don’t do this, don’t do this,” I say. “Don’t leave me alone.”

But Jodie is doing this.

“Jodie, please,” I say, but my words are only whispers now.

People move closer to get a better look, to get a better angle, a clearer photo. Nobody offers to help. Maybe they can see there is no point. Nobody has come out of the bank-either they’re in too much shock or maybe they’re trying to save the manager and the security guard. Sirens appear in the distance and get louder, and soon they appear, police cars and ambulances, all of them too late. The safety they bring with them allows more bystanders to come forward and watch and point and revel in the drama. Two paramedics rush over to Jodie, each of them carrying a case of lifesaving tools.

“Out of the way,” one of them says.

“She’s. .”

“Move,” he repeats.

I move aside. The two men crouch down over her. One of them slides a pair of scissors up her shirt and exposes the wounds. His expression doesn’t change. He’s seen it all before.

“No pulse,” the other one says. “It doesn’t look. .”

“I know, I know,” the first one says.

He pulls padding out from his case and jams it against the wound as if trying to pack the hole. They roll her onto her back and while one begins CPR, the other fires up a defibrillator. They hold off on using it, pursuing the CPR which-for the moment-couldn’t be any more useless.

“Shock her,” the first one says.

For a moment the two men stare at each other, the words unspoken, but I can see what they’re saying. They both know there’s no point. Both think it’s too late. One of them figures it’s best to at least put on a show because I’m watching.

They attach large pads to her chest, but they work slowly, methodically, their body language admitting defeat. Jodie’s body arches upward as the volts go through her, putting tension on her spine. The pool of blood on the ground beneath her grows as the holes in her back widen and close like small apertures.

“Again.”

They try it again. Then a third time. Then they go about packing everything away.

“I’m sorry,” one of them says.

“Do something else,” I say.

“There is nothing else.”

“There has to be.”

“There’s too much damage. She’s too far gone. Even if we’d been here sooner there’s nothing we could have done. The gunshot-I’m sorry, mate,” he says, slowly shaking his head.

“She can’t die like this.”

“She’s already dead. She’s been dead from the moment she got hit.”

“No, no, you’re wrong. She’s supposed to die in another fifty years. We’re going to grow old together.”

“Sorry, mate, I truly wish there was something we could do.”

I take a step toward him. He steps back. “You can do something,” I say. “You can save her.”

His partner comes over. They’ve been in this situation before.

“I said help her.”

“I’m sorry, mate. We’ve done all we can.”

Armed police officers are filling the street. One of them heads toward us.

“Please,” I say. “There has to be something.”

“I wish there was, I truly do,” he says, and then they walk away and head toward the bank, where two other paramedics are coming out, wheeling a gurney with the security guard on it who at the moment is still alive. The armed officer stops coming over and decides to give another officer a hand to string yellow police tape all over the place, making the street a lot more colorful, blending the crime scene into the Christmas atmosphere of town-tinsel, fake Santas, candy canes, fake snow, and real blood.

I sit on the ground and hold my wife. I cradle her head in my lap and stroke her hair. I close her eyes but they keep opening up about halfway. The ground is blotted in blood and bandaging, there’s a bloody latex glove lying on her leg. A man in a suit comes up to me and crouches down. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he says, and I doubt he really understands the word “sorry” or the word “loss.” Nobody can. “The van, did you see a license plate? Did you see anything?”

“They killed her.”

“Please, sir, this is important. If you. .”

“They wanted a volunteer. Got to be twenty-five people in that bank. They could have taken anybody but they took Jodie. That’s a four percent chance. Calculate in that one person who was already dead, and that’s what? What?” I look up at him. “What the hell does that make it? Tell me!” I shout. “Tell me!”

“The van. Did you see it?”

“All I could see was Jodie. I wish I saw more. I wish we’d never come here today. I wish. .” I run out of words.

“Okay, okay, sir. You should step away from her now, you have to let us do our job.”

“Get away from me,” I say, and the words come out evenly and forcefully and he doesn’t argue. He steps away and I don’t watch where he goes. For a while nobody else approaches me. They see my dead wife and they know I didn’t shoot her so they leave me be. Somewhere else in the city they’re chasing the van, maybe they’ve caught it already. There’s been a shoot-out and all six bank robbers are dead. They’re all dying slowly from horrible, horrible gunshot wounds.

I want these people to be dead. I need them to be dead. Media vans speed into the street and brake heavily behind the barriers that have been set up. They jump out of their vans as if they’re on fire. Dozens of lenses and hundreds of eyes all staring at me, I’m sure some of them are making the connection, their synapses firing, thinking, we know that guy, we know that guy, their hunger for the story evident in the way their eyes almost bug out of their skulls as they stare in excitement, evident in the way they try to push past the officers forming a perimeter. I want to walk among them, wipe my wife’s blood on their faces, over their hands, I want to make them part of the story and ask them how it feels, ask how they can thrive on such suffering.

I don’t have the strength, and if I did, it would only add to their frenzy, offer up sound bites and make them more money. All I can do is cradle my wife and watch her become blurry as the anger and despair take their toll and the tears fall freely, dripping onto Jodie’s face.

Police push the barriers further back. They try clearing the street but the show is too good for these people to miss. Arguments turn into shouting matches. Some of the reporters yell questions at me. In the end the police are outnumbered. The police are always outnumbered. Reporters appear at the windows of neighboring buildings, filming us from the floors above.

A woman comes over and touches my shoulder and tells me it’s time to let Jodie go. I don’t want to, but I know I have to.

“Get me something,” I say, “to put over her.”

“Sir. .”

“Please.”

She comes back with a thick white sheet. I bunch up a corner of it into as good a pillow as I can make and prop it under Jodie’s head. I spread the rest over her. I step back and can’t pull myself away from the shape beneath it. I can still taste the lunch in my mouth, can still feel her hand in my hand as we walked to the bank.

“We’ll take care of her,” the woman says, and she puts her hands on my arm. “Please, it’s time to come inside,” she says, and I let her lead me, my wife left outside, my wife an item now, a piece of evidence, and I crouch over and throw up before stepping back into the bank.