Hardbingers

1

"New York Hospital on East Sixty-eighth. Fast."

Jack slouched in the cab's backseat and closed his eyes. He felt like hell.

The storm had blown out to sea around two a.m., heading for Nova Scotia, leaving behind a flawless winter sky for sunrise.

He'd paced the tiny Nantucket airport terminal all morning waiting for the plows to clear the runways. The Ashe brothers were snowed in, but the plowing in Nantucket proved to be less of a job than expected. The airport sat right on the beach, and the wind off the Atlantic had scoured the main runway—there were only two—while piling drifts along the tree-lined perimeter.

The real problem had been finding a flight. The commercials were either canceled or way behind. By noon LaGuardia had a few runways open and he found a charter pilot willing to take him.

All through the night and morning he'd made repeated calls to the unit. No change. Still hanging on by their fingernails.

Waiting for him?

I'm coming. Don't let go till I get there.

Fast didn't appear to be an option. The city had taken eight inches and was only partially plowed out. Good thing it was a Saturday. Anyone with a brain who didn't have to go out was staying home.

As soon as the cab neared the hospital, Jack felt a growing sense of urgency; by the time he stepped out at the entrance it had become an icy fist squeezing his heart.

Was he too late?

He ran inside and passed through the security check. The elevator ride seemed an eternity. When he stepped out on the trauma unit's floor he found a funereal silence. Three glum people sat in the patient lounge, staring either at the TV or into space.

Jack went directly to the unit's doors and stepped through—

—into a chaos of frantic activity as nurses and aides ran back and forth, shouting orders to each other.

Was this it? Had Gia and Vicky sensed his arrival and given up just as he'd arrived?

But the expressions on the staff—no grief, no concerned urgency, more like…joy and wonder.

Dr. Stokely spotted him just as he spotted her. She fairly ran up to him.

"Mister Westphalen—Jack—it's a miracle! A fucking miracle. I almost never use the f-word but that's all that fits: fucking miraculous!"

Jack's tongue turned to sand. "Gia? Vicky?"

Stokely nodded, her expression gleeful. "They came out of it—simultaneously! It's impossible, but a few moments ago they began moving their limbs and turning their heads. Their EEGs show increased and increasing brainwave activity. Vicky's seizures have stopped, Gia's cerebral edema has vanished, and her cardiac rhythm is normal sinus. And just before you walked in they simultaneously pulled out their endotracheal tubes—they're breathing on their own! I've never seen—I've never even heard of anything like it. It's un—"

Jack dodged around her and fairly leaped to the bedsides. He pushed the nurses and aides aside and stared down at Gia first, then Vicky. They looked peacefully asleep. Their color was good, and yes, they were breathing on their own.

Jack grabbed their hands and dropped to his knees, not in prayer, not in thanks, but because for a second there they wouldn't support him. When they regained their strength he was on his feet again, leaning over Gia.

"Gia? Can you hear me? Gia?"

Stokely laid a gentle hand on his back and said, "She may very well be able to hear every word we say, but she's not yet capable of response."

Jack straightened and looked at her. "But she will be?"

"I hate to make predictions, as you know, but I'll go out on a limb and say yes. She'll have some neurological deficits—that's unavoidable—"

"Twenty-four hours ago you were telling me death was unavoidable."

"Yes, that's true, but no brain can undergo an ordeal like theirs and come away unscathed."

We'll see about that, Jack thought as he turned back toward the beds.

Obviously the Ally had accepted the deal, but why had it waited so long to do its part?

"When did you say they started coming around?"

"About half an hour ago, right after Gia's mother left."

Jack swung back on her. "Her mother?"

How had Gia's mother found out?

"Yes. Why, is something wrong?"

"I don't know."

"She said she was her mother. An elderly blind woman—looked old enough to be her grandmother, really."

Jack had never met Gia's mother but was pretty damn sure she wasn't blind.

And then he knew.

"Did she have a dog with her?"

"Yes. A big, beautiful, seeing-eye German shepherd. She wanted to bring him in with her but we couldn't allow that."

That was it. The Ally had withdrawn, allowing one of the Ladies to come in and work her healing.

"What did she do?"

"Just spoke to them. I wasn't close enough to hear myself, but one of the aides said she overheard her telling each of them that it was time to wake up and—" She broke off, frowning as she looked past Jack. "What on Earth are those?"

Jack turned and saw what she meant. Leaning against the head of each bed was a three-foot tree branch with a tin can painted with odd red-and-yellow squiggles resting atop it.

Jack had seen one of those before—behind his father's hospital headboard in Florida.

Stokely grabbed the arm of a passing nurse and pointed to them.

"Where did they come from?"

The nurse looked and shrugged. "I don't know. Never saw them before. Maybe the old lady—"

"Well, get them out of here."

"Don't touch them," Jack said.

Stokely and the nurse must have sensed something in his tone because they both stopped and stared at him.

Jack thought fast, looking for a way to keep those talismans or charms or fetishes or whatever they were in the room. He didn't know what they did but he knew that one of them had been nearby when his father had come out of his coma.

"They're religious—part of my wife's religion."

Stokely said, "What religion is that?"

Good question. He picked something she'd mostly likely know nothing about.

"Wicca."

"She's a witch? Well, whatever, those things have to go. God knows what kind of bacteria they're carrying."

"They stay," Jack said, letting an edge creep into his tone. "Does this hospital make accommodations for orthodox Jews and Muslims and vegans? You'd let a Roman Catholic keep rosary beads and a Virgin Mary statue at bedside, wouldn't you?"

"Yes, but—"

"No buts. Unless you want to be responsible for the hospital being slammed with a religious discrimination suit, they stay."

Stokely stared at him. "I thought you were a different sort of person."

"I am. I'm a very different sort of person. You'll never know how different. But the religious objects stay, right?"

Stokely sighed. "Okay, okay."

Jack smiled. "Great. Now, do you have any idea where I can find the La—Gia's mother?"

"As she was leaving I heard her mention something about a baby but—"

Good Christ! Emma! Could she…?

Jack pushed past Stokely and hurried for the doors.

"Wait? Where are you—?"

And then he was out and running for the closing elevator doors. He caught them and pushed them open with such force that he frightened the old couple inside.

"Sorry."

The morgue was in another wing. One of those can't-get-there-from-here situations where he had to go down to the main floor and switch to another elevator bank.

He watched the descending numbers as they stopped on every goddamn floor.

Come on, come on, come on!

Finally the main level, a dash to the other elevators, another excruciatingly slow ride, and then he was on the morgue floor, running down the hall. He burst through the doors and headed straight for the coolers.

"Hey!" said the attendant—younger and stockier than the guy he'd met before. "Where's your pass?"

Jack ignored him. He beelined for the drawer where they were keeping Emma and pulled it open. The black bag was still zipped, the lump still settled in its center. But something new had been added: a stick with a decorated tin can at its end lay beside the bag.

Back to the lump: Was it—was that movement he just saw?

A hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back.

"Hey, buddy. You can't just walk in here. You gotta have a pass."

Jack turned on him, ready to rip his heart out and feed it to him.

"This is my baby!" he gritted through his clenched teeth. He gave him a shove. "Get out of here!"

The guy staggered back, his belligerent expression morphing to fear.

"I-I'm calling security."

"Knock yourself out."

Jack turned back to the body bag and reached for the zipper.

Emma, alive. Thank you, Lady, whoever, whatever, and wherever you are.

He pulled the zipper, spread the edges, ready to take her in his arms and wrap her in the warmth of his shirt.

He froze.

Emma lay exactly as he'd left her: stiff… white… lifeless.

"No… oh, no…"

He lifted her, held her against him. This couldn't be. He'd made a deal. All three of them back… as alive and as well as before. What had happened? The Lady had been here—the stick and the can were proof of that. Why wasn't Emma alive? Why hadn't she come back?

"Sir," said a gruff voice behind him. "You're going to have to leave."

Jack ignored him and held on to Emma.

"We're sorry for your loss, sir," said another, softer voice. "But we have to escort you out of here."

Jack realized he didn't have any fight left in him. Not trusting himself to speak, he nodded. He kissed Emma's cold, fuzzy scalp, then laid her back in the bag and zipped it closed. He let his hand linger on the lump that was his baby, then turned to let them kick him out.