Race Across The Sky Part 33

"Home," she repeated.

"Food, a change of clothes, refuel. Caleb will call there. It's the best place for us to be."

June's face seemed to freeze. He watched her walk to the bathroom and shut the thin plastic door, heard the shower start. He closed his eyes, exhaling loudly. There was no right answer, that was the thing. Outside in the dusty morning sun the sight of his car filled him with dread. What he needed, he thought, were those beads that cab drivers sit on.

"I can drive," June told him.

He looked at her. Standing in a damp towel she seemed frailer than he had yet seen.

He smiled. "I got it. No worries."

He started down the same side roads, but they both understood that he was driving west. After two hours of silent motion, Shane saw his city rising up from the bay. The first mariners had built the initial houses by the docks, and the next wave had built theirs on top of those. The following settlers had wanted to live here so badly that they built even farther up the hills, creating this magic sweep of houses piled on houses like schoolchildren in a cla.s.s picture.

Rain came as they crawled over the Bay Bridge. His wipers squeaked sadly against the gla.s.s, but they did not seem to cleanse anything. He drove around the Embarcadero into the Marina, parked on the corner of Bay, and led June up the front steps of their narrow blue house. Janelle was waiting in the doorway with some rice noodles and jasmine tea.

As she hugged June tightly, Shane watched her face. He could see she was repulsed by June's smell, and the feel of her body, and yet he watched her pull this woman in even closer.

"I've got clothes for you, honey, and a bath."

A flood of emotion washed over June's face. Janelle led her up to their bedroom, sat her on their bed, and stroked her hair.

"You guys are so nice," June told her in a voice like parchment.

Her voice sounded, Janelle thought, as if she had fractured both of her legs.

"Are you in pain?"

She nodded.

"Where?"

June began shaking wildly. Her teeth were chattering. Her eyes filled with tears. "I want my daughter."

Janelle watched helplessly. If she had lost Nicholas, she knew, she would have cracked much sooner than this. Outside the fog pushed past their front windows like a family of ghosts.

Shane and June slept through the afternoon. Janelle phoned her long list of local hospitals again, but none had seen Caleb and Lily. When Shane woke, she decided firmly, police were going to be called. She had given Caleb two days, and it sickened her that they had not enacted a full-force and professional search by now. She had picked up her phone to do this herself but hesitated. She felt the need of June's support; there were repercussions that she had not had the right to set off without warning. In the meantime, she took Nicholas for a walk down to Fort Mason, inhaling the damp air, until she felt ready to return home to whatever would happen next.

When Nicholas was asleep she sat on the couch, listening to the still sounds of the house. She must have fallen asleep somewhere around one. When she opened her eyes, Shane was sitting next to her, staring at the bay window. She smelled coffee, and him, and wrapped her arms around his neck.

"What time is it?" she asked.

Shane checked his phone. "Five." He leaned in and kissed her cheek. "I love you."

They stayed like that, arms around each other. When Nicholas cried, Shane was stunned to learn that a full hour had pa.s.sed.

"I got him," he said, kissing her forehead.

Upstairs Shane glanced at their bedroom door. It was still shut. He changed the baby and brought him down to Janelle.

"I'll go get some m.u.f.fins on the corner. Then I'm going to head back out."

"By yourself?"

"This is the first time June's slept more than four hours in a year. And when she wakes up, you can get out and do some stuff with Nicholas today instead of sitting by the house phone waiting for Caleb to call."

Janelle swallowed. "Listen, I almost called the police."

Shane nodded.

"It's time, for sure."

"Okay, I'll call now."

"I'll do it from the car."

"Take some water with you, some . . ."

They heard footsteps on the stairs and turned around. June was standing on the bottom step, thin and spectral, looking confused. He saw her lip tremble.

"I'm coming."

"I think . . ." And then Shane noticed a shadow upon their step.

Frowning, he set his coffee down and walked to the door, and opened it, and his brother fell into his arms.

7.

For a moment Shane felt himself sinking. A dull roar filled his ears like a swimmer being pulled underwater.

Then he emerged, his head clear of the sea, and he realized that the baby was in the pack on his brother's shoulders.

He held Caleb with all of his might. His smell was unfathomable. His legs spasmed as if alive apart from him. June ran over, screaming, reaching upward for Lily.

The baby was crying loudly and pushed her arms out to her, her face bright red. June unbuckled her, pulled her out, and Caleb slipped down to the floor.

Shane was frozen. His wife was waiting for him to move, but it was stomach turning, the way Caleb's muscles were shaking inside his body. June knelt beside him, kissing his cheeks, Lily in her arms.

"Get them in the car," Janelle said.

But June clasped Lily to her chest, shaking her head.

"We're going to the ER."

"They'll take her."

"No one's going to take her away."

Shane caught his wife's eye. It was not, he shook his head subtly, out of the realm of possibility.

June explained, "Caley needs an ice bath. He needs one right now."

Janelle said clearly, "We'll take two cars."

Shane moved quickly. He took Caleb and Nicholas, and Janelle drove June and Lily. They moved up the steep hill of Van Ness. In the mirror, he saw Caleb's eyes closed. This did not seem good.

"Hey," he called.

His brother's brown eyes fluttered. His body shook immeasurably. Shane met Nicholas's happy eyes in the rearview mirror.

"Your uncle," Shane told him, "is out of his f.u.c.king mind."

At the hospital he was blindsided by melancholy; he had last visited here the day of Nicholas's birth, perhaps the happiest day of his life. He carried Caleb to the emergency room as Janelle took Nicholas, June, and Lily to the Children's Hospital across the street.

Inside, they sat in the crowded waiting area between a large Chinese family and an old ponytailed man who stank of something he placed as gin. Janelle texted a constant feed of updates: her mother was coming to take Nicholas home. Lily was being registered.

"Ice bath," Caleb repeated.

"Please be okay," Shane muttered. "Please don't go anywhere." This was the finest hospital in San Francisco, Shane told himself. There was no need to feel any panic. Still, he returned to the triage nurse, and explained Caleb's request.

"We have a gunshot victim," the nurse told him flatly.

Over the next hour, Caleb seemed to worsen. His muscles stiffened and his breathing grew shallow. Finally, he was admitted to a bed. It was a small s.p.a.ce, separated by stained green curtains from its neighbor, filled with cl.u.s.ters of wires, machines, the smell of pain and antiseptic. A new nurse brought in a thin faded hospital gown.

"Everything off. Tie this in the back."

Shane removed Caleb's disgusting rags. Underneath was a h.e.l.l of welts around his waist from the pack's belt, sunburns along his arms and ribs, blisters and open sores all over his shoulders. He looked as if he had been tortured. Shane pulled off his shorts and saw Caleb's thighs, swollen and grotesque. Then he moved to his feet.

Shane jumped back.

They were all wrong. Gnarled, discolored, toes facing the wrong directions, absent of nails. The skin was black and scarlet. They were not even identifiable as feet. They were inhuman. He retched.

"Ice," Caleb slurred through cracked lips.

Shane sat him onto the bed and began to pull the gown around him. Jesus, he kept thinking, this body. What it was capable of. What it had been through.

"Hey, Caleb"-he tried to smile-"what do the losers of these races look like?"

The short nurse attached a heart monitor to his chest and began inserting IV lines into his forearms. When the needle touched his skin Caleb sat up and attempted to push himself off of the bed.

The nurse shot Shane a look of concern. "Please have him stop fighting."

"He needs an ice bath."

The nurse frowned. "He doesn't have a fever."

"That will stop his muscles from . . . look." He gestured to the convulsions in Caleb's body.

"You can ask the doctor," she informed him, opening and loudly closing the curtain behind her. After some time, a small physician swept them aside. He struck Shane as tired; in his eyes were long shifts of service.

"I'm Doctor Ong."

He began a cursory examination, pressing into Caleb's abdomen, listening to his chest.

"What happened here?"

"He ran an ultramarathon. Two hundred miles."

"Ice bath. Reiki," Caleb whispered weakly.

"We don't do reiki here. This is emergency medicine."

"He runs these all the time," Shane suggested. "He always does this ice bath."

"You can do that at home." Doctor Ong spoke seriously to Caleb. "Your heart rate's over one-forty. You're dehydrated. It's putting a strain on all of your organs. I'm going to order a CT and some blood work to check your heart, kidney, and liver function."

Caleb shook his head back and forth. He looked to Shane like an animal under threat. "No radiation."

Doctor Ong turned to Shane with a sudden force. "He needs to let us do our job."

"He will."

Abruptly, he left.

"Let them check you out," Shane said.

"I want to go home."

"What's one CAT scan, to make sure you're okay?"

"I have the right to leave here."

The nurse returned shortly, carrying a pill.

Shane squinted at it. "What's that?"

"It's to calm him down. Doctor Ong wants him to have it. I can put it into his IV," she whispered.

"It's up to him."