Chapter 23
The three of them permitted Donna to enter the room with them, but she did not join them at Gwen’s bedside. Donna stayed by
the door, her back against it, to keep anyone from coming in at a bad moment.
The other three women gathered around the dying patient. Robin lowered the sheets. Allie stripped off Gwen’s johnny. Donna
was not prepared for the sight of Gwen’s bandaged torso and sweat-slicked, collapsed stomach. She had lost enough weight to
look childlike . . . no longer a woman of forty-five but the skinny kid she had been as a teenager. It pained her to see Gwen
so frail, so weak that she could be moved this way and that like a doll. Robin turned her on her side. Tana hunted in a cabinet
and returned with Q-tips as long as chopsticks. She handed the Q-tips and the dusty bottle to Robin.
Allie looked faint and Tana put a hand on her back, between Allie’s shoulder blades, and stroked in small circles. Good, Donna thought again. This was followed by another idea. Whatever they had done wrong—all the blood they had spread around,
all the sorrow—they had at least saved Tana Nighswander for this moment. They had saved her so she could be here now to care
for Allie. Donna had taken hundreds of lives and never saved a single one, but this was the next best thing, she thought.
She could save what was left of Allie’s life by letting her go.
Robin brought a dripping Q-tip out of the bottle.
Tana and Allie held Gwen on her right side while Robin worked the Q-tip under the bandage to find the bullet hole that had perforated the lung.
She dipped and painted, dipped and painted, three times in all, before moving on to the bullet wound in the lower abdomen with a fresh Q-tip.
They were fifteen minutes slathering the bullet wounds in ancient and sanctified liquid, finishing with the one that had struck Gwen in the hip.
“There’s no way,” Robin said. “No way in hell this works.”
“You saw a hobo turn into a rock,” Allie said, “but you draw the line at holy superblood?”
“When you put it that way, love.” The Q-tip dipped under the bandage over Gwen’s throat to touch her tracheostomy. Robin shook
the bottle. An eighth of an inch splashed in the bottom.
“Now she drinks it,” Donna said. “All of it. That’s what Colin was going to do.” She didn’t add that Colin had not anticipated
a full recovery until June. “Don’t skimp.”
“Right,” Robin said. “Bottoms up, darling.”
She tipped the bottle to Gwen’s lips and blood gurgled out in a thick syrup. Gwen made a little sound—a kind of grunt—and
her throat worked as she drank reflexively. A single sticky drop plopped onto her chin.
Allie choked and ran to the bathroom.
Donna was hardly aware she herself was moving, had crossed the room before she realized her own intentions. Tana glanced around
and saw Donna approach and looked briefly alarmed. Donna had an idea she was ready to get an arm up between her and Gwen,
ready to tackle her if she tried anything. In the end, though, she didn’t block Donna when she reached for Gwen’s hand. Donna
held Gwen’s fingers in hers. Colin’s hand had been damp and hot, but Gwen’s fingers were so cold and stiff, it was as if she
was already dead.
“When this is over,” Donna said, “everyone is going to remember I saved you. You didn’t save me—I saved you. How do you like that, Saint Underfoot?”
She let go and turned away. When Donna McBride walked out the door, it was three weeks until Easter.