The Last Hour Read online

  I couldn’t leave Jessica alone to deal with that on her own.

  I turned towards the social worker. “I’m sorry ... I forgot your name.”

  She gave me a sympathetic look. “Michelle. Perfectly understandable.”

  “Would it be all right if I checked in on Sarah and Jessica?”

  “Of course ... come with me.”

  At that moment the door slid open, and a man strode into the room. He wore surgical garb and had the arrogant look I’d learned to associate with the heads of academic departments. He marched over to the table and basically pushed his way in, starting at Ray’s feet, then working his way up to his head. Clearly he was someone in authority. The doctors and nurses went quiet on his entry, continuing their work. He leaned close, shining a light at the top of Ray’s skull, peering in close.

  “CT scan,” he ordered. “Then prep him for surgery, immediately. Head, and his left arm and leg.”

  I swallowed. The man stood, then walked away from Ray toward the door. His examination had lasted maybe sixty seconds.

  He paused as I stepped closer to the door, my arms crossed over my stomach.

  “Are you the wife?” he asked, tonelessly.

  I blinked. His tone was imperious, utterly sure of himself, and his wording was brusque. Any other time, I might have cared, but right now, I just wanted him to help Ray. He could be as rude as he wanted.

  “Yes. I’m Carrie Sherman.”

  He glanced over his shoulder, then back at me. “Your husband is in serious condition. If we don’t operate now, he’ll die. Do you understand?”

  It was as if he’d walked up and punched me in the gut. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even think really, so I just nodded, trying to keep from crying.

  “All right ... I want you to stay out of the way, let them prep him for surgery. Ms. Bilmes here will brief you in more detail about what’s going on, and you’ll need to sign some consent forms. Your husband is stabilized now, but he’s not out of danger, and we don’t know yet if he has any intracranial bleeding. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Hang in there. We’ll do our best for your husband.”

  I nodded, trying to keep myself sane, and whispered, “Thank you.”

  A dream? (Ray)

  I watched Carrie as she talked to the surgeon, as the other doctors labored over my wasted body, and I’ve never felt so helpless in my life.

  That’s not true. There were other times.

  I felt this helpless the day Carrie walked out of the National Institute of Health, rage and shock and grief mixed on her face because of the accusations which had been laid against her, accusations which threatened everything she’d worked for. The rage had won out, her knuckles white against the steering wheel as she drove us home, her entire body shaking.

  I felt that way about a year and a half ago, February of 2012. We’d been out on patrol all night, a nightmare patrol. Not because the insurgents were shooting at us, but because they weren’t. Is that crazy? Yeah, it’s crazy. But it was scary, too. Because the rule, in our little corner of hell, was that if you went outside the wire, the bad guys were going to hit us. Every time. Sometimes it was just a single sniper shot, or a roadside bomb. Sometimes it was hideous, like the grenade that killed Kowalski. But I couldn’t remember a single night we’d gone on patrol when we didn’t get hit. Not once.

  But that night, we’d gone unnoticed, unchallenged. We were on our way back to the forward operating base when it happened. The irony is that we were only a quarter of a mile from the base, which meant someone hadn’t been paying attention, because the hajis were able to bury a big ass bomb in the dirt road without interference or observation. We didn’t even realize it, because the first three Hummers rolled right over the bomb. Then the fourth Hummer, with Dylan and Roberts ... that was the one that got hit.

  The explosion hit under the driver’s side. We were right behind them, and I saw the vehicle bounce into the air. Voices exploded over the radio, calling in the contact, and then I heard a loud crack, then another. Bullets hitting the side of my Hummer, on the driver’s side.

  This was normal routine. We all piled out of the Hummers, took cover, and shot back. Once the heavy machine guns got trained on the bad guys, the fire was suppressed, the bad guys tried to move out, and our air assets went after them. I don’t know what happened after that with the insurgents because I saw Dylan then, next to what was left of Roberts’ body, and his leg was ... destroyed, blood leaking out everywhere. I yelled for a medic and started to wrap his leg with bandages, which were inadequate for the job, so I broke out the tourniquet and tied it off at his thigh. Dylan wasn’t screaming, but he was awake, staring at the sky.

  “You’re gonna be all right,” I said, over and over again. He didn’t respond. And there we were, stuck, waiting for the medevac, which took forever. There was nothing I could do to help him other than stick him with morphine and hope the damn chopper got there.

  It was weeks before I heard from him again. We got word that he lived, but that was it ... everybody knew he was likely to lose the leg, if he even survived. So it was kind of a minor miracle when I got an email out of the blue from Dylan later that spring.

  Dylan didn’t know it, but his emails had been a lifeline for me. I guess nobody knew it. I’d isolated myself, intentionally, after losing friends to injuries and death, and then losing even more friends to pure savagery. By that time I was taking note, and keeping pictures, and documenting. Just in case.

  I was grateful he was able to leave before things got bad.

  Before that, I’d never felt so helpless, but since then, I’d had it in spades. When I got called back into the Army, during the trial, and especially now, I hated it that I was helpless to do anything for Carrie.

  I wanted to reach out, I wanted to fold her in my arms and protect her. I wanted to tell her it was going to be fine, even if it was a lie. But it was obvious I couldn’t do anything. No one responded when I spoke, and it was clear enough my body was just lying there on the table wired and tubed up. The nurses were preparing to shave my head. Brain surgery? Christ, I hoped not.

  The accident happened so quickly I still can’t get my mind around it. Why didn’t he stop? He looked to have been driving about ninety as he blew through the light. Was he on the phone having an argument? Drunk? Just not paying attention? Are his kids at home wondering where GR8 DAD went?

  I walked toward Carrie, looked her in the eye. She looked ... lost ... as if her feet had been yanked out from underneath her. With my left hand, I reached out, touched her arm gently.

  She jerked a little, her eyes searching around the room.

  “Don’t torture yourself.”

  I jerked at the voice, and spun around.

  My sister-in-law, Sarah, stood next to the door. Oddly, she wasn’t wearing her usual black. Instead, she had on a red dress with white polka dots, with a chain belt. The belt was fastened with a glittery heart. Very unlike her. Sarah leaned toward black, leather and spikes under normal circumstances.

  “Sarah? I didn’t hear the door.”

  “Of course you didn’t. I walked right through it.”

  Somehow I found this very distressing.

  “I guess it would be silly to ask how you are?”

  She shrugged. “They’re prepping me for surgery too. I was trying to comfort Jessica, though that would be pointless even if this wasn’t a dream. But she couldn’t hear me.”

  “A dream?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “What else could it be?”

  She had a good point. But this didn’t feel like any dream I’d ever had. This had all the sharp edges of reality. “Yeah, I guess. Seems real, though. I just wish I could do something for Carrie.”

  Sarah walked over and stood next to me, scrutinizing Carrie. “Me, too. She looks awful. I’ve never seen her like this.”

  One of the doctors walked over to Carrie. “Mrs. Sherman ... we’re going to take him
up to the OR now.”

  Sarah said, “He should call her Doctor Sherman, not Mrs.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at Sarah. On the one hand, I agreed. On the other, it didn’t really seem like a time to quibble over titles.

  The social worker, whatever her name was, spoke in a calming voice, “Carrie, we’ll have to go out to the waiting room. We need to take care of some paperwork, and then I’ll take you and Jessica up to the surgery waiting area. Okay?”

  Carrie looked like she was in her own world, as if she couldn’t hear them. As if she were more of a ghost than I was. After a noticeable delay, she said, “Okay.”

  I wanted to take her my arms and comfort her. Anything.

  A moment later, I watched as they wheeled my body out of the trauma unit. I’d catch up with it later. For now I was staying with Carrie.

  Nothing to play with (Carrie)

  Jessica was starting to fall apart.

  I could see it in her eyes. She sat next to me as I finished the insurance paperwork, her hands shifting and twisting in her lap, her eyes looking glazed. The triage nurse spoke with the woman at the desk who was taking our paperwork, then looked up at us.

  “We need to do a full exam of both of you as well.”

  I froze and glanced over at Jessica.

  “Can it wait? Our sister and my husband, they’re going into surgery.”

  The nurse sighed. “You can wait, though I don’t recommend it. But your sister here isn’t eighteen, and unless you get her parents to insist otherwise, she needs to be examined now. I understand your worry. But neither of them will be out of surgery for ... probably many hours. You need to take care of yourselves as well.”

  I took a breath then nodded. “All right.”

  “Come this way then.”

  I stood, taking Jessica’s arm and steering her toward the exam room. She complied, but with little energy. I think the accident was starting to sink in.

  Oddly, it reminded me of an incident that happened a lifetime ago. Dad had finished off his year as Ambassador to Russia, and the whole family moved to the townhouse in San Francisco. Except for Julia, who was at college in Boston. We’d spent very little time in the San Francisco house over the years, just the occasional holiday, and the house needed a lot of work. For weeks, contractors were around the place, repairing plumbing and walls and who knows what else. Besides the disruption to our lives, having the workers in and out of the house was stressing our mother out to no end. And the one place we didn’t want to be when my mother was stressed was anywhere near her.

  I was seventeen, getting ready to start my senior year in high school, which made me sometimes the protector of my little sisters ... and sometimes the ringleader. That day I wanted to get away from the constant hammering and nailing and banging, so I took Alexandra and the twins for a drive to the children’s playground in Golden Gate Park. It was August, but fairly cool, and the fog had been heavy earlier that morning, so we were all bundled up in sweaters. The twins had cute matching plum jackets. Back then they were inseparable, holding hands everywhere they went.

  I parked next to Bowling Green Drive, and we spent the next hour goofing off in the park, riding the carousel, and enjoying a well-deserved ice cream. It happened on the way back to the car. Sarah tripped and fell, hands out in front of her. Onto a broken bottle.

  She let out a piercing scream, and I ran back to her, putting my arms around her and lifting her up, then I winced. A nasty, curved shard of glass had embedded itself in her right palm. Her face had gone paler than usual, her pale blue eyes wide, staring at her hand. She calmed down instantly, just looking at it.

  I met her eyes. “You’ll be fine, bee.”

  Sarah held her hand close to her eyes, studying it. “Carrie, can you get it out?”

  “No problem. It’s gonna bleed, all right? Probably a lot. You ready?”

  She nodded. I held her hand in my right hand, and then reached out with my left hand. Standing a couple feet away, Alexandra held Jessica’s hand. Jessica was pale, her eyes were wet, and she was shaking. Almost as if she were the one feeling the pain.

  I looked back at Sarah and said, “Ok, close your eyes?”

  She shook her head. “I wanna watch.”

  “All right, then.” So, without hesitation, I grasped the chunk of glass in my left hand and tugged. Jessica winced. It came out clean, and blood, a great deal of blood, welled up in her palm.

  “That’s done then. Let’s get you home, all right? You’re going to need a jumbo Band-Aid for that.”

  “And peroxide?” she asked, hopefully.

  “Yes, peroxide too.”

  “Ow,” Jessica said.

  Sarah turned to her sister and said, “It’s okay. It doesn’t hurt.”

  I reached in my purse and found some napkins left over from lunch and passed them to her. “Keep these pressed against the cut.”

  She nodded, took the wad of napkins in her hand and squeezed her fist shut with the napkins pressed against the cut. Then she reached out with her unhurt hand and took Jessica’s. Jessica immediately calmed down.

  I ended up with a nasty tongue lashing from my mom, but managed to keep Alexandra and the twins from getting it too. I was irresponsible; I put my sisters in a dangerous situation and I couldn’t be trusted. I’d heard it all before, and I let it roll off my back, knowing that the most important thing was keeping her from going after my sisters.

  That wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last, when it seemed almost as if Jessica was the one hurt whenever something happened to Sarah, which had me worried now. Because I didn’t know how she was going to react to Sarah going into surgery. Or ... no. The thought was unspeakable. I wasn’t going to lose anyone today. Ray and Sarah were going to go into surgery, and they were going to come out just fine.

  By the time I got her to the exam room, she was shaking and pale. She sat down on the edge of the bed. I looked her in the eyes and put my hands on her shoulders.

  “Sarah’s going to be fine, Jessica. Okay? She’s going to be fine. Just breathe, all right?”

  She closed her eyes and seemed to calm a little.

  The nurse smiled at me and said, “Mrs. Sherman? If you can come next door, the doctor will be in to examine both of you in just a few moments.”

  “Jessica? I’ll be next door, just let me know if you need anything, okay? Sarah will be all right.”

  I said it with some confidence. As if I knew she was going to be all right. That Ray would be all right. That anything in the world would be all right. I didn’t have that confidence. I might say it, I might look Jessica dead in the eye and tell her not to worry, but the fact was, I was consumed with worry.

  I followed the nurse into the small exam room.

  “Have a seat, it shouldn’t be more than a few minutes.”

  And so I waited. And worried more. Somewhere not far away, Sarah and Ray were both going into emergency surgery. I should be up there, not sitting on this exam bed, twiddling my thumbs. I’ve never been someone to sit and do nothing. I’ve always needed to be doing something, reading, studying, writing, some activity, anything. And now, when someone needed help? Not being able to do anything was making me crazy.

  I jerked in my seat when the door opened. A young doctor came in carrying a chart. “Carrie? I’m Doctor Chavez. How are we doing?”

  I grimaced. “As well as can be expected. I just need to get over to the surgery waiting area.”

  He nodded. “Your husband and sister are in good hands, Carrie. In the meantime, we need to make sure you’re in good shape. This won’t take long.”

  I nodded. “All right.”

  He rolled a tall stool over and sat on it, then leaned close. “Let me get a look at your head.” He reached out and positioned my head.

  “Looks like you’re going to have a nasty knot there. You hit it on the glass?”

  “Yes. Not that bad.”

  “Lose consciousness at all?”

  I swallowed. Then
told a direct lie, “No. I was a little dazed.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yes.”

  He continued with the exam, listening to my chest, checking for bruises. I had plenty. “Any headaches? Nausea?”

  “A little.” In fact, my headache was nearly blinding.

  “Any pain when you move your head or neck?” He reached out and gently pushed my head back and forth, side to side.

  “I’m a little stiff, that’s it.”

  The doctor looked doubtful. “I’m concerned about possible head injuries. I’m going to order a CT scan.”

  My stomach clenched, and I said, “I want to go up to the surgery waiting room. Can I do the scan later?”

  He frowned. “All right. But if you start to feel nauseous again, or the headache gets worse, you need to let us know. Head injuries are nothing to play with.”

  A thousand times worse (Ray)

  Sarah and I sat next to each other on plastic chairs a few feet away from the exam rooms where Jessica and Carrie were. Sarah looked irritated and bored, and toyed with a lock of her hair.

  “When did you meet Carrie, anyway?” Sarah asked.

  I didn’t really want to talk, especially about the past. But then I thought about Sarah … seventeen years old. She didn’t know what was happening any more than I did. And maybe chatting, about anything, would be better than sitting here brooding and worrying.

  So I decided to talk. Keep her occupied, and not thinking about what we were going through. She’d been in San Francisco when I met Carrie, and except for a concert at New Year’s and a few minutes here and there at Dylan and Alex’s wedding, I’d not spent any time with Sarah at all. All the same, it surprised me they hadn’t talked about this. I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about it though, so I changed the subject.

  “What’s up with the dress?” I asked. “I’ve never seen you in anything but black.”

  She shrugged. “I asked you first.”