Chapter 28
Gwen had a view of some maples and the birds springing about in the red-tipped branches: little birds with soft white breasts
and dove-gray backs. She wasn’t sure what sort. Arthur might’ve known. Birds belonged to his half of the crossword. She was
studying them intently when there was a light rap at the door.
She glanced around as Robin opened the door and Donna took a step into the room. Robin stood in the doorway, frowning in a
worried sort of way—ready to grab Donna by the arm and haul her back out at a word, and never mind that Gwen had asked for
this meeting herself.
“Robin,” Gwen said, “would you give Donna and me a moment? We’ve got to say some things, and it might be easier if it’s just
us.”
Robin didn’t look happy about it. But she nodded and said, “I won’t be far,” and eased the door shut behind Donna.
Donna stood on the far side of the room.
“Well?”
“Sit down. Rest your foot.”
“My foot is fine. I ran two miles this morning.”
“What are you going to tell your audience about your miracle recovery? You going to tell ’em it was mint oil? Colloidal minerals?”
“I’m going to tell ’em nothing. The podcast is done. Speaking of miracles, Allie says you have a whole team of doctors now.
Some of them are from Europe. They’re saying you’ve done three months of healing in, what? Two weeks? She says when they walk
by the door of your room, they look like little kids walking past a haunted house.”
“I’m doing so well, I’m kinda getting the itch to jump out of bed, wander down to the geriatric ward, and smother a couple old ladies.”
“Shut up,” Donna said.
For a moment neither of them spoke.
“So Allie filled you in on my medical situation? You two are on speaking terms?”
“No. She was talking to Robin. I was just standing there. Allie has perfected the art of pretending she can’t see me.”
“Are those grackles?” Gwen asked, watching the birds hop on the other side of the glass.
“How the fuck would I know? Who cares?”
Gwen nodded at the chair next to the bed. “Sit down. I get tired easily. I want to say what I got to say and then you can
go.”
Donna looked pasty and tired herself. She looked, for the first time in her life, middle-aged. She settled into the black
metal chair with her oversize purse in her lap.
“How are you doing about Colin?” Gwen asked.
Donna turned her head to regard the maybe-grackles out the window.
“I liked the money. I liked the attention. He was so in control all the time, so calm. Van got killed and Colin was there. He had people to make sure I always had whatever I needed, whenever I needed it. Plane tickets. Quality coke. A PR team to book me on news shows. He took the weight of King Sorrow off my back so I could breathe. Colin could make it feel like the dragon didn’t have anything to do with me.
Bad people die every year, you know. Yeah, okay.
We got together on the first day of every year and we went through the Enemies List. We’d say maybe this guy.
This one self-appointed general in Southeast Asia stopped a bus full of Christian missionaries.
His soldiers raped the teenage girls and a few of the boys, then his creeps shot them all and threw ’em in a shallow pit.
A guy like that, you’re only sorry he didn’t die sooner.
When you hear about him getting blown off the face of the earth on Easter morning, it’s halfway around the world from you and he had it coming, and if he didn’t get wiped out by King Sorrow, a counterrevolutionary would’ve got him, or a rival gang of thugs.
Colin was like . . . like . . . noise-canceling headphones for all the terrible shit in my life.
” She sagged. “Only I guess some of the people we wiped out never killed anyone. Some of the people I wiped out. Like at Black Cricket. And some of the others weren’t guilty of crimes against humanity, only crimes against Colin’s
interests.”
“People like Arthur.”
Donna lifted her gaze. Her eyes were watery and reddened. “Don’t try to stick Arthur on me. I got enough to feel bad about.
Arthur’s on you. He loved you, and you kicked him to the curb.”
Gwen said, “I didn’t get you here so we can fight about who has the most to regret. That’d be a long conversation, and I only
have the energy for a short one. So don’t make me say this twice. Allie’s right—there’s a whole bunch of doctors in this building
who can’t figure out why my hip and my lung have healed so rapidly. The tracheostomy incision in my throat looks six months
old, not three weeks. The Czech doctor said he’s seen something like this only once before, ten years ago. A kid with bone
cancer who washed himself in the waters at Lourdes and had a complete remission in four weeks.”
“You said the hip and the lung are better. I thought you were hit three times.”
“I was. I was shot through the abdomen and the bullet tore up some of my girl parts. There’s an infection in a vestigial pouch
next to the uterus. After you guys used the blood on me, that infection retreated, even seemed to go away. Now it’s back.
The bullet broke up inside of me, and there are pieces they couldn’t find, still in there, still doing damage. They’re draining
the wound again right this instant.” Gwen nodded to a length of tubing by the bed, filled with fluid the color of mashed eggplant.
“And irrigating me with antibiotics. If they can get on top of it, they’ll operate again, try and find the shards of bullet
they missed. But it might take weeks to force the infection into retreat, and I don’t have weeks.”
Donna shook her head. “Robin dabbed all your wounds. You ought to be better. Goddamn it. Colin said it could fix anything.”
“I’m sure Robin did a good job. I’m sure no one could’ve done better.
I’m told the rectouterine pouch—sexy name, right?
—has an elastic quality, and much like the placenta, medicines tend to bounce off it.
St. Helen’s Feelgood Juice did what it was supposed to on the outer wound.
But the pouch probably shriveled up around the entry wound, sealing itself up . . . and sealing the infection in.
The saint has been repelled by the female reproductive system.”
“So what do we do? Are we all going to try and, I don’t know, fight King Sorrow here? In the hospital?”
Upstairs, a baby made a mewling sound, and Donna’s head snapped up to stare at the ceiling. When she looked back down, Gwen
was smiling almost fondly.
“Newborn. Delivered last night. He’s got a lusty pair of lungs, doesn’t he? Kept me up past my bedtime. Kept me up thinking.
No. We can’t fight King Sorrow here in a hospital. Not unless we want a lot of babies and pregnant mamas and sick old men
and tired overworked nurses to die. I won’t allow that. We’re still going to use my plan to try and cut down King Sorrow—I
just don’t think I’ll be around to help. It’ll have to be you, Donna.”
“Fuck does that mean?”
“It’s nine days until Easter Sunday. I’m going to check out of here the day before. They can’t stop me. And I’ll meet King
Sorrow out behind The Briars . . . just like Colin planned. He can have me. Listen, though: He’s at his weakest right after Easter. His weakest, his sleepiest, his smallest, and his most lethargic. You know the rest. Draw a loving spirit through
in the form of a sword. Pull King Sorrow over from the Long Dark and strike off his head.”
“Arthur won’t come for me. Arthur didn’t love me, Gwen.”
“But Van did. And there was plenty of steel in him too, deep down. All the steel you need.”
Donna opened her hands on her knees and spread her fingers and closed them into fists again.
“You fucking quitter,” she hissed.
Gwen shut her eyes.
“I don’t care if you quit on me. But you’re going to quit on Allie? You’re going to quit on Tana? Fuck you. Guess what? I won’t do it. I brought you that
bottle of holy bullshit so you could do it. You just want to die so you can be with Arthur again, and I think that’s fucked. I could’ve saved Colin instead of you. I could’ve picked Colin.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because he didn’t deserve it and you did,” Donna said. “Because you rode around in that stupid ambulance for thirty years bringing dopers back to life, giving fat
fucks mouth-to-mouth. Because I was going to let Colin wipe you out and then you jumped on top of me so I wouldn’t get shot,
which is the kind of cheap manipulative shit you’re always doing. Because I thought I’d get to save your life for once. This is why I don’t do good things! You give money to a hobo and he buys drugs with it! You make Thanksgiving
dinner for your family and everyone fights. You douse the only really good person you’ve ever known in holy superblood and
they say thanks but no thanks, I’d rather just die anyway, and by the way, here’s an impossible job for you to do after I’m
gone. Let me tell you something, Gwen. If you choose to die instead of fight? Then when next Easter comes around, I’m going
to ask King Sorrow to eat someone really nice. Like Tom Hanks. Or Dolly Parton.”
“Donna,” Gwen said, and touched her hand, and Donna stood up so quickly her chair fell over with a crash.
“Don’t touch me. You want to be dead? Don’t wait for Easter. You’re strong enough to get up, and the window is right there.
It worked for Van.”
Donna tried to slam the door, but it was on a pneumatic hinge and only sighed shut. Robin peeked cautiously in, and Gwen smiled
weakly and turned away.