Healing Stones (49 page)

He got to another barrier and leaned against it, supporting himself with the heels of his hands. With his head hanging he gulped in air and fought back nausea.

“Found a body,” a male voice called out. “Could be the perp's— it was handcuffed to a stair railing.”

Another deep, smoke-raspy voice swore, attaching an obscenity to “psycho.”

Sully strained to listen.

“One of those weird things—his briefcase was barely charred.”

“Anything they can ID him with?”

“Initials on it. ZDA.”

Sully let his arms go limp, head to the barrier. Something this grisly could not possibly be.

“Hey, you all right?”

Sully turned his head. The silhouette of an Afro took shape beside him in the smoke.

“I'm fine,” Sully lied.

“I don't think anybody could be fine in this mess. You sure you don't need a little oxygen?”

Sully peered more closely at him. He wasn't wearing a uniform— nor did he have an Afro. His face was in fact pale around a pair of small intense eyes and extended far up his forehead into a Brillo pad of hair. It rang a faint chime in Sully's mind.

“I'm Fletcher Bassett with the
Port Orchard Independent.
Aren't you Sullivan Crisp?”

Sully straightened. “Was anybody hurt—besides that body they just found?”

Bassett nodded. “One old guy evidently had a heart attack in there—probably died before the smoke got him. Only one other injury that they know of—a fireman. Everybody else that was in the building has pretty much been accounted for, except for one girl they think ran out.”

Sully nodded and scanned the scene, heart drumming.

“Too bad about the fireman too,” Bassett said. “He was off duty— wasn't even wearing his equipment. He ran in there to save his wife.”

Before Sullivan could register, Bassett put a hand on his shoulder. “Oh, man, I'm sorry. I think you know her.”

Sully knocked his hand away and tore for the hill, half-running, half falling as he went.

“Richard Costanas!” he heard Fletcher shout after him. “They airlifted him to Seattle.”

CHAPTER FORTY

T
he hall in the Burn ICU at Harborview Medical Center was dim with an after-hours ghostly light as Sully hurried through it toward the two figures the nurse directed him to.

“Mrs. Costanas is down there,” she told
him at the nurses' station. “We don't usually let anyone in after visiting hours except the family, but since you're her doctor . . .”

As he strode closer, Sully saw that Demi's hair was uncharacteristically plastered to her head and she was wrapped in a man's tweed sport coat that hung off her shoulders and over her hands like a big brother's. It looked like one of Ethan's.

He slowed down when he took in the young man who faced her, his chin thrust at her, finger stabbing the air beside her ear. Everything about him lurched toward her in shapeless anger, and Sully's antennae went up.

He had almost reached them when he realized that the kid—who had to be Christopher Costanas—stood in the middle of a doorway that Demi clearly wanted to pass through.

“Get out of my way, Christopher,” Sully heard her say.

“What part of this don't you get? You don't have any right to go in there.”

Sully stopped and backed against the opposite wall. Demi could need him. From the sound of his voice, this kid stood on a thin place.

“He doesn't want to see you. He said that.”

“He hasn't said anything to anybody, son. He isn't even conscious.”

“I know him—you don't. He never wants to see you again.” His voice teetered.

Sully saw Demi plant her hands on her son's shoulders and hold on in spite of his furious, adolescent attempt to twist himself free. Even from where he stood, Sully could tell from the startled look in the boy's eyes that her face, not her hands, held him there.

“I'm not going to leave you out this time, Christopher,” she said. “You and I can walk your father through this together. You will know everything that's going on—you'll be a part of it.”

The boy jerked his head back and glared down his nose at her, and Sully could hear him breathing—but he didn't pull away.

“You may think you know him,” Demi said, “and maybe you do—but you don't know me. I take my share of the responsibility for that—but now is not the time for me to go into it.”

Christopher jerked his head to the side this time, and a halfhearted hiss came out of his mouth.

“I love that man, and I am going to go in there as often as they will let me, and I am going to sit by his side until he himself tells me he doesn't want me there.” Demi let her hands slide down to Christopher's elbows. “You can either come with me or not, that's up to you. Jayne will have the same choice when she gets here. Jayne will, not you for her. Am I clear?”

The boy's shaggy head made its final move, forward, as if he couldn't hold it up any longer. Demi pulled her hands away. He stepped aside and turned his back to her.

As Demi turned with him, her eyes met Sully's. “Sullivan,” she said.

For the first time since he'd arrived, her voice broke. He went to her, hands extended to envelope hers. Her eyes were a mass of painfully red lines, and her face was gray with soot except for the space around her mouth and nose where an oxygen mask had obviously rested. But despite her rush to grab onto his hands, there was nothing fragile about Demitria Costanas at that moment.

“Thank you so much for coming,” she said. “I didn't want to ask you—”

“You didn't have to. I came as a friend.”

She nodded. “It's bad, Sullivan. They were afraid of internal burns to his lungs—there are none. But he has third degree burns on his back, his neck, the back of his head—40 percent of his body.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“He crawled me out with no protection on, no gear at all.” She trailed a hand down the side of her face. “He covered me with his body so I wouldn't be burned.”

“Demi,” Sully said. “No guilt. He did what he had to do.”

“You know something—I get that.” She looked at her fingers and seemed to realize for the first time that she was wearing a mask of ashes. “He did it because that's who he is. And you know—being here with him—this isn't guilt, Sullivan. It's who I am.”

“Mrs. Costanas?”

Sully motioned over Demi's shoulder at a towheaded male nurse in a gown and mask who poked his head out the door.

“I have to go,” she said. “You want to come?”

Sully shook his head. “No—no, I think you're going to be fine.”

Demi nodded and reached out to touch his arm. “Don't leave for good without saying good-bye.”

And then she walked toward the nurse, with the stride of a wife who knew exactly what her husband needed.

Christopher finally dozed off in the recliner in the ICU family waiting room around 2:00 AM. I waited until he was breathing with little-boy evenness before I took the nurse up on his offer to let me sit with Rich for five minutes.

Dressed in full regalia—long paper gown, mask, gloves, and covers for my shoes—I sat back from the rocking bed that cradled Rich facedown and moved him constantly so fluid wouldn't collect anywhere. Rearranging him physically would be so excruciating it made
me
want to throw up at the mere thought of it.

We'd both known burned firefighters before, visited them in acute care wards and in rehab centers, listened to the stories of their agonizing recoveries . . . but to smell my own husband's scalded flesh . . .

He actually could have been anyone in that tangle of tubes and bags and wires and bandages. But I knew who he was, just as I always had. He was my hero—my burping, channel flipping, obstinate hero who had suffered so much and didn't have any more idea how to deal with that than I did. That was how he'd ended up here in a room where the inner workings of his heart were registered in stubborn beeps.

I stared at the screen and wished it could tell me how strong his pride was—whether it was going to forever keep us apart, even after I stayed with him and nursed him through the predicted months-long hospital stay and the myriad of corrective surgeries and the physical therapy I'd already been told he'd have to endure.

I was going to do that—feed him and bathe him and apply the pressure garments and listen to him curse through gritted teeth. I couldn't think beyond that—beyond Rich's pain. It wasn't only what he had to bear, it was what I had to suffer with him because I was the woman who loved him.

What I'd told Sullivan was true, though I hadn't known that until it crossed my lips. Ding-ding-ding, Dr. Costanas. It
was
me—the real me—who loved so deep and so hard that she would do all of that and more, with no hope that there would ever be anything else.

I bent my head, chin to my chest, and listened to the whisper.

You had to, Demi. Well done.

Sometime before dawn I fell into an exhausted sleep in the recliner next to Christopher's. When I woke to the sound of voices, I saw someone had covered me with a blanket.

“They said they were in here,” somebody said in the hall.

My Jayne, voice fragile as lace. I scrambled out of the chair without lowering the footrest and stumbled across the room with the blanket trailing after me. She flung herself into my arms and clung to me.

“Mom, is he—”

“He's not going to die, sweetie,” I said. “He's hurt really badly, but he's not going to die.”

“Audrey—what are you doing here?”

Christopher's voice wrapped incongruently around a name he shouldn't have known.
I pulled away from Jayne and looked at him. His face was bloodless down to his lips, which parted, shock-stiff, as if a gun were being held to his back.

“You know Audrey?” Jayne said.

I looked over my shoulder. Audrey stood in the doorway, in front of Mickey, whose brow was furrowed like a plowed field. Audrey's cheeks had no more color than Christopher's. I thought I had seen all the terror in that face the girl could possibly feel—until now.

Jayne looked from her brother to her “adopted sister” and back again. “I don't get it,” she said.

I shifted back to Christopher, who looked like my son at twelve, ready to cave to a hidden misdeed.

And then from behind me I heard Audrey whisper, “C.J.”

Five people attempted to restart their brains in silence.

Audrey's voice screamed in my head:
He goes, “So if it looks like a
tramp and it acts like a tramp, it must be a tramp.”

Christopher was C.J.? He was Boy? The elusive, using, wretched Boy who had said that to Audrey was my son? The father of her baby?

“You?”
Jayne said. “You're the jerk?”

I folded my arm around Jayne's neck and pulled her back before she could launch herself into Christopher's unnerved face.

“Who is this, Audrey?” Mickey said. I could hear her winding up. “Is this the kid that got you pregnant?”

Audrey gave a slow nod.

“This is apparently the kid,” I said. I turned to Mickey. “I know I'm taking my life in my hands telling you this—but he's also my son.”

All eyes went to Christopher, who shriveled like a raisin. I waited for the anger to rise in me. I was due, heaven knew. All the insults my son had hissed at me should have been more than ready to turn themselves around into the tirade the little hypocrite so richly deserved.

But then there was Mickey, watching me, expecting with her unblinking eyes what she herself had done to her child. What I had done to Zach, and to Christopher. What Rich had done to me.

When all any of us wanted was forgiveness.

I pushed my hands through my hair and shook it out with my fingers. Then I held out both arms, one to Christopher, one to Audrey.

“Well,” I said, “it looks like there's some sorting out to be done.”

“You think?” Mickey said.

I looked at Christopher. “And you will do it, son—you'll take responsibility for what you've done.”

He blinked at me from beneath the shag of blonde hair that hung down over his eyebrows like shame-covering fingers.

“None of us can throw stones.” I looked at Mickey. “None of us.”

Jayne tapped me timidly on the arm. “Uh, you know what? I'm gonna go get a Coke or something.” She started for the door, but she stopped when she got to Audrey. “Oh, my gosh,” she whispered. “We really are like sisters.”

With a hand clapped over the happiness only she was feeling at the moment, she scampered out, brushing past a still-stunned Mickey.

“What do you two need right now?” I glanced back and forth between the ashen-faced kids who had just collided with their future. “Alone time, or a couple of mediators?”

“Alone time,” Audrey said quickly.

Christopher looked as if he would have leaped from the window if any of us had asked him to. Mickey followed me out into the hall, and I steeled myself for the verbal onslaught.

“I'm sure you haven't eaten since you've been here.”

I turned and stared.

She held out an insulated bag. “I know how you get when you're stressed out. There's split pea soup in a thermos, sprouted bread— bunch of stuff. You need carbs and fat, and I know your electrolytes are a mess.”

“Mick,” I said. “I apologize for my son.”

“Like we have any control over our kids.” She lowered the bag and her eyes. “You handled it a whole lot better than I did—you handle everything better than I do.”

“No. I don't.”

“How's your—how is he?”

“I'm about to find out.” I held out my arm. “Walk with me to the nurses' station. I could use the support.”

She fell into step beside me, eyes still shifting from the floor to the side of my face. “Have you cried yet?” she said. “You know you're going to have to cry sooner or later.”