Chapter Twenty-two #2
I’m down at the shore, both hands gripping the deck plate of a canoe, hauling it into the water before I have a whisper of a plan in place.
I climb in, crouching low. “Brent!” I bark.
“Push me toward Babe, as hard as you can.” I don’t trust him, but he’s the strongest person here, and I need all the muscle I can get.
Actually, I need Lyle, but I don’t have him. I only have me.
“But you have no—”
“Now, guy! Do it now.”
Brent scrambles to obey, counting to three before launching me out into the dark water. Aiming a rudderless watercraft at a drowning dog is not much of a plan, but I don’t know what else to do.
It’s a chance. It’s me, working the problem.
I drag my hand in the water, trying to steer without losing too much momentum. Babe spots me, gurgle-barking in my direction. She’s in full panic mode, but working hard. She didn’t give up and let herself sink. I won’t give up either.
“Here, girl! Babe, come!” I tap the side of the canoe the way I’ve seen Lyle slap his thighs when he calls her. God, she’s going to make it.
I reach down as far as I can without tipping, grab Babe by her front quarters, and haul with every muscle fiber I can command.
She kicks and scrabbles for purchase, and I yelp as bright stripes of pain zip down my cheek, my neck, my arm.
She’s all bone and muscle, way heavier than she looks.
I can’t get her more than halfway out of the water.
I’m too small. Not strong enough. I can’t hold on.
“Stellar. I’ve got her.”
Petra’s in the water, dark hair slicked to her head, a determined set to her mouth. She’s got one hand on the gunwale, the other shoulder under Babe’s hindquarters. There’s no time to decide whether I trust her—there’s only time to save the dog, or not.
Together we boost Babe inelegantly into the boat.
Petra grabs a paddle drifting nearby, tosses it into the boat, then climbs in as I stabilize the canoe. Babe plasters herself to my side, coughing hoarsely.
I reach for the paddle, but Petra grabs it first. “I’ll get us to shore. You rest.” She nods at a long jagged gash decorating my left arm from shoulder to elbow, my humanity showing beneath my cyborg-inked surface. Ribbons of red flutter across the circuits and servos, rusting the ink of my gears.
“Oh,” I say, my voice distant and echoing in my ears.
I plonk my butt on the bottom of the boat and stick my head between my knees, trying to force the dizziness away.
Thoughts tumble through my brain on a spin cycle: I need to dress my injury.
Get the dog to a vet. Get back on my feet. Protect myself.
The bow nudges soft sand. “Her arm. Watch her arm,” Petra says.
Before I can quite figure out what she means, I’m lifted from the boat, my legs unfolding weakly beneath me until Lyle scoops them over one forearm.
He strides up the beach with me across his chest like he’s carrying me over the threshold.
The tea-and-sunscreen smell of his skin makes me want to cry the way I did when I was a kid, and I’d held in a hurt all day, waiting until I got home safe to let it out.
So I let the tears come, let a broken sob make its way past the gates of my self-restraint. Lyle cradles me even more gently, like I’m fragile. I know everyone will be frightened and upset to see my pain, but I can’t hold it in like a doctor would. Not anymore.
“You’re back,” I sniffle into Lyle’s chest. As far as conversation goes, it’s not my best work.
“I wasn’t far. I heard you…” The working of his throat tugs at my cheek. He’s moving fast, a little out of breath. “I heard you scream. Christ, Stellar.”
“Is that what it takes to make you s-swear?” I hiccup, dazed and lightheaded. He doesn’t laugh.
Brent and Willow pass us, each of them holding two corners of a beach towel with the dog slung across it. Sloane walks alongside, cooing at Babe.
“I never screamed. It must have been Petra.”
“No,” he says, flat and definitive. “It was you.”
“I’m fine.” I close my eyes again. “I’m young and healthy. No way I’ve lost more than 15 percent of my blood volume. I just need a minute for my intravascular volume to compensate, and then I can take over the crisis response.”
“You’re not taking over. You’re in shock.”
“Class one shock. Mini shock,” I argue, but he’s loading me into the Mystery Machine, sliding me across the nearest bench seat, then arranging my head in his lap before buckling a seat belt across my midsection.
Willow drops into the driver’s seat, flipping the visor down and catching the keys with a flourish. Sloane takes shotgun.
“Look in the glove compartment,” Lyle tells Sloane. “Hand me the first aid kit. The instructions for the radio are on a laminated card. See if you can radio the Mounties on the way. Hospital first, then vet.” He unzips the kit and pulls out disinfectant, gauze, tape.
“Vet first, then hospital,” I correct him. “Drowning is more serious than bleeding.” Gingerly, I palpate my arm. It’s reasonably dry, as I would have said when I was in the ER—although maybe it’s time to drop the medical doublespeak and just acknowledge that the bleeding has stopped. I’ll live.
Willow turns onto the near-empty highway, tires humming as we edge up to the speed limit. Sloane fiddles with the two-way radio. Behind me, Brent tells the dog she’s a good girl between Babe’s occasional bouts of deep, wet coughing. Lori and Mitch must be in the back row of seats.
I haven’t been this tired since residency. It would take hardly any energy to turn my face toward Lyle’s stomach and rest there while he strokes my hair. But there are too many problems left to work.
I pitch my voice low enough that the others won’t hear me. “Go with Babe to the emergency vet. She needs you. Sloane can take me to the hospital, then you can meet us there to get your eyebrow glued. Crap, where’s everyone going to stay tonight? I didn’t think of that; does anyone have a pho—”
A warm droplet splashes on my forehead.
“Your eyebrow,” I say, opening my eyes. “It’s still bleeding?” When I look up, a tear falls from his jaw to my neck.
“You screamed,” he says dully. “I’ve never even heard you say ouch . Nothing hurts you, and you were in pain. You cannot fucking imagine—” His voice tightens to a whisper, then stops.
“I’m okay, Lyle. Nobody died. It’s a low bar, but—”
“I left you alone .” His voice shakes with self-loathing. “Everyone was so afraid of me. You were afraid of me. And I had to do something to stop chasing Trevor. If I’d gone after him in a boat… I could have. I wanted to.”
“But you didn’t.”
“But I wanted to,” he repeats fiercely. “So I just… ran. I took off when the one thing you asked me to do was stay. If I’d only stayed, none of this would have happened. And now you’re sending me away, to the vet. You give me what I gave you. Right?”
I’ve never seen him miserable like this, filled with what-ifs instead of calm certainty. My heart aches for the distance between us, though his body is literally cradling mine. My throat stings like it was me, not Lyle, who screamed the scream that broke the world.
But my brain is a mess, full of chaos and fear and problems without solutions.
And if I don’t work those problems, I have to confront what everyone knows: Lyle and I were never engaged, not really.
Even if I asked, and he said yes. And I’m no kind of doctor.
And our “impartial” celebrity endorsement is coming from my sister, who’s hip deep in this mess now, too, about to be publicly tied to the father she’s spent years trying to evade.
And I’d have to think about how Lyle and I let each other down tonight in the worst possible ways. How maybe we’re not people whose strengths complement each other’s weaknesses. Maybe we’re just opposites who shouldn’t have let ourselves attract.
“Can we talk about this later, once we know everyone’s okay?”
“Sure,” he agrees, not meeting my eyes. “Tomorrow.”
“I wasn’t afraid of you, Lyle. I never wanted you to think I was.” I reach my good arm up to his chin to dash away more drops.
“I know you weren’t. Of course I know that.”
I thought he’d given me everything, but I was wrong.
Tonight, for the first time, Lyle McHugh has given me a lie.