Chapter 7 Caro
CARO
THERE ISN’T A CLOUD in the sky or in the forecast. It’s an early, pearly blue above, the kind that often deepens to brilliant azure as the day goes on. They’re standing at the top of a cliff, getting ready to descend into the slot canyon of the Underground.
Caro smiles to herself as she hooks the rope through the anchor bolt screwed into the stone.
She’s been looking forward to this part of the trip.
For the past few years, hiking the Underground has required a permit, which you have to enter an online lottery to get.
Caro hasn’t been lucky enough to be chosen since the permit system started.
But Hope got one somehow. Hope Hanover magic, Caro and Ash call it behind her back, and sometimes to her face.
Caro wants, needs, physically aches to get away.
She’s seen patients die before—it’s an occupational hazard, being an anesthesiologist—but the most recent loss has sent her reeling.
It was a woman about her own age who died in childbirth from a uterine rupture.
Caro had known her by sight. They lived in the same neighborhood, the cozy area called Sugar House with its bungalows and pocket yards.
“Oh, hello,” they’d said to each other in the operating room, the way they’d said it to one another in passing on the sidewalks.
Caro had learned that the woman’s name was Esther Nelson.
Her husband was called Owen, and he’d been excited and nervous.
It was their first baby. Caro had administered the epidural and was still in the room, as per procedure, when everything went to hell.
They had saved the baby—a relief, a wonder—but Esther had hemorrhaged to death despite everyone’s best efforts.
There were no words for how fast it happened, how bloody it was, how bewildered and shocked the husband had looked, how quickly all color and life had drained from Esther’s body, how alone the baby had looked even as it was surrounded by a team to whisk it away to the NICU.
It’s been six weeks and Caro still hasn’t returned to work.
She knows she needs to get back on the horse, back to the job.
She doesn’t know if she can.
Caro glances at the others. “Who wants to go first?” The sight of Ash and Hope makes her want to laugh—her wonderful friends, together in the flesh for the first time, wearing candy-colored canyoneering helmets with chin straps that make all three of them—even Hope—look like befuddled Easter eggs.
“Don’t laugh,” Hope says severely. “We have to be safe. Looking like M he’s laughed out loud as she’s read him texts they’ve sent.
But he doesn’t know that Hope is Hope Hanover.
Caro feels bad about that, but Dan tells people things.
He can’t help himself. He is zero percent malicious about it and always feels terrible later.
Caro wouldn’t mind him knowing, but he’d let it slip.
Not telling him feels like protecting Hope.
And Hope trusts Caro. They all trust each other, which is why they’re here, doing this.