to tear herself from his embrace before that mortal tide filled her.
But when she looked desperately around for someone who might help her,
she saw that Joey was not the only dead dancer. Sally Ontkeen, who in
eight years would succumb to cocaine poisoning, glided by in an advanced
stage of decomposition, in the arms of her boyfriend who smiled down on
her as if una ware of the corruption of her flesh. Jack Winslow, the
school football star who would be killed in a drunken driving accident
in less than a year, spun his date past them; his face was swollen,
purple tinged with green, and his skull was crushed along the left side
as it would be after the wreck. He spoke to Lindsey and Joey in a raspy
voice that didn’t belong to Jack Winslow but to a creature on holiday
from a graveyard vocal cords withered into dry strings: “What a night!
Man, what a night!”
Lindsey shuddered, but not solely because of the frigid wind that howled
through the partly open chopper doors.
The medic, his face still in shadows, was taking her blood pressure.
Her left arm was no longer under the blanket. The sleeves of her
sweater and blouse had been cut away, exposing her bare skin. The cuff
of the sphygmomanometer was wound tightly around her biceps and secured
by Velcro straps. Her shudders were so pronounced that they evidently
looked, to the paramedic, as if they might be the muscle spasms that
accompanied convulsions. He plucked a small rubber wedge from a nearby
supply tray and started to insert it in her mouth to prevent her from
biting or swallowing her tongue.
She pushed his hand away. “I’m going to die.”
Relieved that she was not having convulsions, he said, “No, you’re not
that bad, you’re okay, you’re going to be fine.”
He didn’t understand what she meant. Impatiently, she said, “We’re all
going to die.”
That was the meaning of her dream-distorted memories. Death had been
with her from the day she’d been born, always at her side, constant
companion, which she had not understood until Jimmy’s death five years
ago, and which she had not accepted until tonight when death took Hatch
from her.
Her heart seemed to clutch up like a fist within her breast. A new pain
filled her, separate from all the other agonies and more profound.
In spite of terror and delirium and exhaustion, all of which she had
used as shields against the awful insistence of reality, truth came to
her at last, and she was helpless to do anything but accept it.
Hatch had drowned.
Hatch was dead. CPR had not worked.
Hatch was gone forever.
she was twenty-five years old, propped against bed pillows in the
maternity ward at St. Joseph’s Hospital. The nurse was bringing her a
small blanket-wrapped bundle, her baby, her son, James Eugene Harrison,
whom she had carried for nine months but had not met, whom she loved
with all her heart but had not seen. The smiling nurse gently conveyed
the bundle into Lindsey’s arms, and Lindsey tenderly lifted aside the
satin-trimmed edge of the blue cotton blanket. She saw that she cradled
a tiny skeleton with hollow eye sockets, the small bones of its fingers
curled in the wanting-needing gesture of an infant. Jimmy had been born
with death in him, as everyone was, and in less than five years cancer
would claim him. The small, bony mouth of the skeleton-child eased open
in a long, slow, silent cry 5
Lindsey could hear the chopper blades carving the night air, but she was
no longer inside the craft. She was being wheeled across a parking lot
toward a large building with many lighted windows. She thought she
ought to know what it was, but she couldn’t think clearly, and in fact
she didn’t care what it was or where she was going or why.
Ahead, a pair of double doors flew open, revealing a space warmed by
yellow light, peopled by several silhouettes of men and women. Then
Lindsey was rushed into the light and among the silhouettes … a long
hallway … a room that smelled of alcohol and other disinfectants…