I swallowed and leaned forward, closing my eyes. “I press the light switch. And I’m staring down at my wife, Chrissy, flat out on the floor.” When I drew in my breath, it shuddered. “Blood soaking the carpet around her. She’s—” I swallowed again. “Cold.”
Beckett’s arms slid around my shoulders and she pressed her cheek to my shoulder. She was taking tiny, soft, scared little breaths, terrified for me then and for me now.
“Now I get myself moving, I run through the house, switching all the lights on, yelling Rachel’s name. I check her bedroom, even check in the closet in case she’s hiding there. Nothing. And I start to think, maybe she escaped, or maybe she was at a friend’s house when it happened….” I trailed off.
This part was the hardest.
“I’m standing in the kitchen,” I tell her. “I’m just about to call the cops when...I see my own reflection in the window. Outside, we had this little back yard and it’s pitch black out there. And I realize I haven’t checked there yet. And….” The pain had me, now: I was beneath its surface and it was consuming me. “And I...I prayed. I hadn’t prayed since I was a kid, but I just stood there thinking please. Please God, not her too. I can’t live without them.” I had to work hard to swallow. “And I hit the switch for the outside light and—she’s lying there. In her pajamas. I run outside but she’s cold, too. I gather her up in my arms and kneel there, crying, her blood soaking my shirt, until I finally manage to call the cops.”
My shoulder felt hot and wet. I realized Beckett had her face pressed up against me there and that her silent tears were soaking through my scrubs. My eyes had gone wet, too.
“Two guys,” I managed. “After jewelry and cash. You see—” I had to fight down the nausea and self-hate. “Chrissy opened the door for them because she thought they were me. They got there right when I should have got home.”
Beckett lifted her head from my shoulder. I could feel her looking at me but couldn’t bear to look at her: I felt too wretched. “Chrissy fought them,” I said mechanically. “They killed her. Rachel ran downstairs when she heard her mother scream. Tried to escape out of the back door, but they caught her in the yard. Didn’t want to leave any witnesses.” I rubbed a hand across my face. “The cops caught them three blocks away. They did it all for a few hundred dollars in cash and a fifty dollar necklace.”
I finally looked across at her. She knew, now. She understood why I was how I was.
“If I’d come home—” I started.
Her hand grabbed my chin, a mirror of what I always did to her. She stared up at me, so small next to me, but so fiercely determined. “It was them,” she told me. “Those two guys. It was no one but them.”
I glared at her. I’d been holding on too tightly, for too long, to let go of the guilt now.
But she glared right back at me and gave a little shake of her head. She wasn’t giving up on me. And for the first time, I dared to believe that maybe, maybe she might be right. Maybe it wasn’t my fault. The pain receded a little—it didn’t disappear, but it shrank back until it wasn’t drowning me. I inhaled... and it felt like the first full breath I’d taken since it happened.
I stared at Beckett. This incredible woman had conquered so much. Now, together, we’d conquered this. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her into my chest. And then I kissed her, losing myself in her warm sweetness. I wasn’t kidding myself that I was fixed. But for the first time, there was hope. A future for both of us: I had no idea where but as long as it involved her body pressed against mine in a big, warm bed. “Amy,” I said softly—
The lights went out. The air conditioning whirred to a stop. Both of us blinked in surprise. “Are the power lines down again?” I asked.
“The power lines never got fixed,” said Beckett, her voice rising in panic. “We’ve been on the emergency generator this whole time. That must have failed.” She looked up at me, her face deathly pale in the moonlight. “Oh Jesus, the ventilators! Rebecca! There’s no power!”
Both of us scrambled for the door.
48
Amy
IT WAS BLACK. The moon kept going behind clouds and sometimes all we could see was the distant glow of a fire exit sign. It didn’t help that the floor underfoot was slick with water from the firefighters’ hoses. We each slipped and fell as we raced through the dark hallways, grabbing onto the other’s hand to hold us up. I don’t think we’d have found our way at all if the layout of the hospital hadn’t been burned into my mind through years of working there.