Chapter 80
Chapter 80
M y heart stopped. I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t hope. What was real? What was not? Life was coming at me faster than I could process, so I looked at her, and she nodded and smiled. So I turned back to him and rested my face on his cheek and wept like a baby while Gunner licked the left side of his face off.
When I’d been shot with my own crossbow, I rolled down a cliff, crashed into the water, and then floated downriver several miles, eventually spending several days dying in a cave. I had to seal up my own wound, so I heated my knife and did just that. Starting the clock ticking. The clock of infection. Several days later, when the infection was raging and I was more dead than alive, I’d read the letter from Marie. The one Bones had given me. And there in that mostly dead place, I came partially alive. Hours later, or a day, maybe two, I’m not really sure, I passed from here to there. In and out of consciousness. In and out of life. My hope that they’d find me had waned. I had resolved myself to passing out of this life and into eternity. I remembered being thirsty, so thirsty I would have given anything for a sip of water, and then I wasn’t thirsty. Then shivering. And being so cold. I couldn’t remember thoughts so much as perceptions. Cold. Dark. Hot. Fever. It was a thin place.
Just before I closed my eyes for the last time, a hazy fog seemed to cover my eyes. Blurring what I had been able to see before. That was when I knew. When I knew I was much more dead than alive. So I closed my eyes and waited. Waited for my turn.
But my turn didn’t come. Instead, a man dressed in white appeared at the foot of my bed. Or whatever you might call the thin thing upon which I was reclining. Then he inched closer. Finally, his breath on my face, he came into view. I saw him. I saw Bones. He’d found me. I didn’t know how but he had, and in that moment I came back. I passed from there to here. He brought me back.
I stared at the man before me. The frame and face I knew well. Together, we’d traveled a million miles. Was this the last one, or just one among the many? But then he breathed. The man inhaled. And exhaled. Both. One following the other. Followed by another. And dead people didn’t breathe.
Somehow, despite being shot seven times, bleeding out, and falling more than a hundred feet down a well with his arms latched around his dead brother, Ezekiel Walker had not died. Was not dead.
Bones was alive.
An inconceivable, incomprehensible thought. How could that possibly be true?
I shook my head. Cleared the tears. Then stared again, and he was still here. The vision had not lifted. I stayed there a long time. Crying my face off some more. Shaking my head. A place with no words. What words could I say? Where could I start? How could I begin? So I didn’t. We didn’t. Some things were just too much.
But in that moment, one thing became clear. Ezekiel Walker had not died on that island. He was a little bit alive. And a little bit alive was not dead, for dead people were all the way dead, and even 1 percent alive was still not dead.
We sat there. Me holding his hand. Him holding mine. Still no words. I couldn’t find them. He couldn’t speak them. But his muscled hand, the hand that had caught me, saved me, lifted me when I couldn’t, felt warm. Even strong.
She stayed with us. Sitting alongside. Not intruding, but monitoring. He’d been touch and go. She wasn’t about to lose him now. After an hour, Sister Catalonia, who went by Lonnie or Lon for short, tapped my arm. “Is there someone you need to call?”
I palmed my face. “Yes, but how do I . . . ?”
Bones lay propped up, resting, his eyes closed, Gunner tucked up along one side. He cracked a smile, a hoarse whisper as his vocal cords had spent more than eight weeks making no or little sound. “You’d better make the call. He’ll only mess it up. He’s no good with words.”
She smiled.
Just before I dialed the number, he spoke with his eyes closed. “Murph.”
There it was. Crashing back in out of the stratosphere. My name and the one who’d named me. I nodded, trying to control my uncontrollable emotions.
He spoke slowly. “Outside of family, tell no one.” A pause. “Not a soul.”
Even now, one foot still in the grave, Bones was calculating. Barely able to stand, and my teacher was still taking me to school, standing seven steps ahead.
Summer picked up after half a ring. “Hey, you. You in-flight?”
I cleared my throat and tried to force out “He’s...” but didn’t get very far. I tried again. “He’s...” This time the whisper sounded.
Summer said, “Hey, honey, you’re breaking up. Say again.”
I was trying. But it was too much. “Summer, he’s...”
Bones chuckled and managed a whisper. “Told you.”
Sister Catalonia smiled and waited patiently. Evidence of her training.
Summer again. “Bish, you good?”
Bones smiled. He was enjoying listening to the sound of Summer’s voice.
“Summ . . . He’s . . .”
Summer paused. She knew something wasn’t right. Her tone changed. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m here. Just take your time.”
This time the whisper broke, and I managed two words as one. Hearing myself say the words cracked me even further down the middle. “Heeee’s-uuuuh-liiiive.”
“What, baby? It’s hard to hear you.”
I cleared my throat, inhaled, and said, “He’s alive.”
“Baby, you’re talking nonsense. Who’s alive?”
I stared at him. Shook my head. And the tears flowed again. He smiled, raised an eyebrow, and rubbed Gunner’s muzzle. This time when I spoke, I was crystal. “Bones is alive.”
“Did you say, ‘Bones is alive’?”
I held the phone inches from his mouth and nodded.
“Hey,” he said. “How’s my girl?”
The next few minutes were the most fun I’d ever had in my life.