Hell and Gone

4

I don’t know if I’m alive and dreaming or dead and remembering.

—Timothy Bottoms, Johnny Got His Gun

KENDRA HARDIE NEVER liked it when her husband got sick.

Which wasn’t often. A cold in the summer, usually, sometimes a minor bout with the flu in winter. But when it hit, Kendra pretty much left him to die. For the longest time he couldn’t figure it out. Weren’t wives supposed to be all mothering and shit when their spouses were ill? Was she just keeping her distance, afraid she’d fall ill, too? No, it was more than that with Kendra. She’d seem actively mad at him, as if he’d done this to himself, going out and licking subway seats or running naked through the streets of the Philadelphia badlands during subzero season.

So three years ago, when Hardie been nearly shot to death and was clinging to life in an ICU, Hardie half expected the reaction he received: the cold shoulder. Didn’t mean it hurt any less. Here he was, going through the most traumatic moment of his life—the senseless slaughter of his closest friend and his family—and still, Kendra kept her distance. As if he had nothing more than a bad cold.

The day he arrived home from the hospital Hardie wanted to shout at her, Please, put me out of my misery. What’s going on? Why aren’t you speaking to me? Isn’t this what you wanted? Me, not working with Nate? Me, home more often? Was she furious because the Albanian hit men had shot up their house—and it was a stroke of luck that she and the boy weren’t home? If so, fine, let’s have it out, yell at me, do something…don’t ignore me.

But at the time, Hardie believed himself too weak for an argument. He merely asked if she’d call his doctor to find out whether he would up his pain meds a little. She did, and the doctor said no, he should try to cycle down, in fact. Kendra Hardie didn’t like her men sick.

The next time Hardie woke up he was staring at a bright light, listening to the murmured conversations around him. For a moment he thought it was three years ago, that he was at Jenkintown Hospital, fighting for his miserable life, and that his recent limbo-style existence was just a fever dream. He blinked. The light was fiercely bright, ridiculously bright. Like the shining gleam off a tooth in God’s own pearly smile. The voices kept murmuring, which was rude. Didn’t they know he was dying over here?

“…seen anything like this, have you?”

“Hmm.”

“Don’t you wonder?”

“Wonder what?”

“Where he’ll end up.”

“Does it matter?”

“I’ve been hearing stories.”

“Oh, boy.”

“No, seriously, I hear that these near-death cases we get, we end up patching them up just good enough so they can be transported to, like, Kosovo or Thailand, only to be pulled apart again a piece at a time, packed in ice, and—”

“Hand me a suture, will you? Anyway, I recognize him. We’ve got a minor celebrity here.”

“So who is he?”

“If you don’t know, you don’t want to know.”

“Give me a hint.”

“I did, actually, and no, I will not give you another.”

“Dick.”

“What time is it?” Hardie asked, his voice dry and weak and cracked.

“The hell?”

“Was that…?”

Hardie tried to blink, as if that would help his eyes adjust.

“Christ on a cracker. Our guy’s awake.”

“You’re the anesthesiologist. What did you give him?”

“Not enough, apparently.”

“What time is it?” Hardie asked.

“Take care of it. He’s fucking open, man!”

Hardie’s eyes rolled around in his head. He couldn’t feel his body, not really, but he had the sense that it was still there, that he wasn’t some disembodied spirit rushing up toward the immaculate light. No. That would be too easy. He’d been given something. The guy in the ambulance was going on about cc’s.

A man’s face appeared in Hardie’s vision. A white mask covered its lower half. Fuzzy caterpillars clung to the man’s brow line.

“Shh,” he said. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

Hardie was not put at ease. He knew “everything’s going to be all right” was code for “everything’s fucked up beyond all recognition, and it’s not going to get any better.”

“What time is it?”

“Let me give you something.”

Really, he wanted to know what time it was. Was that such a hard question to answer? Not knowing where he was, or what condition he was in—Hardie could deal with that. But time meant everything, and it bugged him to the point of insanity that he couldn’t connect the dots on the time line in his brain. Had an hour passed since he was in the Hunters’ living room, getting blown away? Two hours? Or had it been a day? Hardie didn’t know which answer he’d prefer, to be honest. A day would imply he was out of the woods, that he was stubbornly clinging to life. An hour could mean he was on his way out, and it just seemed like this whole death thing was taking forever.

“Just relax,” the masked man said.

No.

Hardie would not relax.

In fact—fuck this shit.

He needed to move his hands. Where were his hands?

But before he could find them the man was pumping something else into his veins and he felt the horrible cool rush all over his body, not a reassuring peaceful rush, but the rush of icy death, your body’s way of saying “fatal system error,” warning you that this shit was real, you may not come back from this…

And as he went under he thought of his wife and his son and Deke, praying once again that Deke had doubled up the protection like he’d promised and that he’d follow the bread crumbs and figure this shit out.

Because Hardie was okay with death; he probably deserved as much. But not his wife. Not his boy…