Jaden Baker (67 page)

Jaden jumped through the water, and watched, in slow motion, with no power to stop it, a car driving at city speed, striking Libby as she was pulled across its path.

The car hit the brakes. Libby was hit, propelled by momentum, rolling on the asphalt before finally stopping fifteen feet from the original impact.

There was screaming.

Jaden ran to her, begging, praying that she was still alive.

As soon as he got to her and could see her face cut and bloody, the sun was blocked out by a darkening, widening shadow cast over them.

Jaden jumped over her, arms and legs on both sides of Libby, protecting her, and watched an armored truck falling, coming for them. He reached out his hand to stop it, and it slowed. The truck pressed down on him.

His body shook, shivered, buckled under the intense physical force.

He grimaced as he tried to stop it from crushing them, but it came closer, the hood denting, the glass windshield cracking under the supernatural pressure bubble he created to keep Libby safe.

In his periphery, Jaden saw Christine’s legs coming toward them, a calm gait.

She was pushing it, she would kill them both.

He had to be fast. With all her focus bent on destroying them, sure she would win, she let down her own defenses. Her sin was pride.

A boot lay on the street some twenty feet from them. It was light, it was small. It was perfect. Taking a deep breath, Jaden slackened his grip on the truck, picked up the boot, and chucked it at Christine’s temple.

She grunted and collapsed. Jaden stopped the truck and heaved it over them; it crashed with an earsplitting scream of metal on pavement.

Jaden ignored the pandemonium of the streets, with people shrieking and yelling. He examined Libby.

She was bleeding from the back of her head. Her eyes were swollen and shut, and her face was puffy.

He had to focus, stay calm. Stay calm.

He felt along her chest and abdomen, trying to sense a heartbeat. He put his ear to her chest, listened, knowing he didn’t need his ears to know if she was alive.

Not Libby. She couldn’t be gone.

He heard the faint beat.

This was no time to panic. He couldn’t worry if he was going to save her. She’d been damaged, her internal organs were twisted, she bled inside. She wasn’t going to make it unless she got help soon.

He had studied anatomy. She was a separate entity from him, outside of him. If he could stop or slow the bleeding until a doctor could see her, he might be able to save her.

Jaden closed off everything except for Libby, trying to sense inside her. Where was the bleeding coming from, and could he stop it? She had a punctured lung, broken ribs, she needed help. Panic invaded his focus.

Sirens in the distance.

Jaden picked her up and ran toward the coming ambulance. He focused on the idea of stopping the bleeding, like freezing water, slowing the molecules from spreading, slowing the flow of blood inside her. He hoped that would be enough to keep her alive.

Ambulances and fire trucks, police cars and news vans rushed toward the bizarre scene as Jaden abandoned it. An ambulance screeched to a stop when the drivers saw Libby, limp in his arms. Jaden ran her to the back of the van and the doors came open. He leapt inside and lay her on the gurney as the two medics came to the back.

“What happened?” one of them asked as she got to work on Libby, feeling for her vitals.

“She was thrown in front of a car,” he said, listening to the beat of her heart growing fainter. “She’s got internal bleeding, some of her ribs are broken, and I think she’s got a collapsed lung.” Jaden searched for a needle, something to puncture her lung to re-inflate it.

The second medic, a young man, beat Jaden to it.

“Her breathing’s easier, but we’ve got to go,” said the female, a stethoscope to Libby’s chest. She slammed the van doors as the ambulance took off. Neither of them asked Jaden to leave.

It was a long ride to the hospital, though the minutes on a dash clock changed little. Jaden wouldn’t let go of her. He held her hand, whispered instructions for her to live, wishing he could stay more focused on helping her.

At the hospital, the medics wheeled Libby out of the ambulance, and Jaden jumped down with her, holding her hand. The world would not make sense, wouldn’t have a purpose without her. She had to live and make it through this so she could laugh about it later, making jokes.

Men and women in scrubs ran toward them, discussing her vitals, what had happened, getting her into an emergency room. Jaden heard himself answer their questions, aware of the words only after they’d left his mouth. She was bleeding internally, they had to find and stop the bleeding. He didn’t tell them he had slowed it down. Try as he might, Jaden didn’t know where the bleeding was coming from.

“Okay, we’ll take her from here,” they said, and wheeled her down a hall. Jaden held her hand and went with them, but the doctors and nurses pushed him away.

“I have to go with her,” he said. Libby couldn’t get out of range, he had to be close to her to make sure she was okay. If the bleeding didn’t stop she’d die. He couldn’t be sure they would get to it in time, he had to go.

“Sir, we have to take her into surgery now. You have to wait,” said a nurse with dark hair in braids. She pushed him away, but Jaden pushed back.

“I have to go with her!” he yelled, and two men came to her aid.

“We’re going to help her, but we can’t have you in the operating room. We’ll need to know more about her medical history, so let’s go to the lobby.” Jaden felt Libby slip out of range as he was pulled away. She was at the hospital now, and though he wasn’t the biggest fan of doctors, he hoped they could help her, make her okay. Continuing to fight the staff would only delay her care, and he didn’t want that.

“Is she allergic to any medications?” a nurse behind a desk asked him.

“I don’t know.”

“What’s her name?”

“Elizabeth James,” he replied, then remembered it wasn’t her original, given name. “But that’s her new name. She was born Margaret Dalton.”

The nurse nodded, typed in the information. “Her date of birth?”

“I don’t know.”

“Social security number?”

Jaden shrugged.

“Do you know her family?” the nurse asked.

“Yes,” Jaden said, thankful he knew of someone who could help. “Her father, Chad Dalton. He’s a doctor. But I don’t have his phone number.”

Moments later, as if sent by beatific messenger, a nurse jogged into the lobby and found Jaden, handing him Libby’s cell phone, which she had taken from Libby’s pocket.

Jaden pressed a button, slid the unlock command across the bottom of the phone, then was confounded by several icons. He tapped the one that looked like a phone, his heart hammering fast. It pulled up all the recent phone calls. Krystal, Patrick Adams, a local number, then Dad’s cell-EMERGENCY ONLY! which had been dialed on Thursday.

He tapped it immediately then put the phone to his ear.

The phone rang.

The nurse behind the desk looked at him expectantly. Jaden said nothing to her. It would be no use if Dalton didn’t answer his phone.

After the third ring: “This is Chad Dalton.”

At first Jaden thought it was an answering machine and didn’t say anything.

“Hello?” Dalton asked.

Jaden stuttered. “Yes, hello,” he stammered, unsure of what to say next. Then the nurse tried grabbing the phone from him, but Jaden turned away from her. “I’m calling for Libby,” he said, and his voice shook.

“Who’s Libby?” Dalton asked.

“Molly,” Jaden said, and his voice was cracking harder now, the shakes moving to his hands and knees, a burning pressure building behind his eyes, this time threatening to break. “I’m calling for Molly.”

There was silence on the other end.

“There was an accident.” Jaden grabbed the counter to keep from falling, his stomach churning, tossing him around like a small ship in a violent storm at sea. “She’s at the hospital. She’s really hurt.”

“Okay,” Dalton said, and there was solemnity. “Try to stay calm,” he said, though he may have been saying it to himself. “Is there a nurse or doctor there I can talk to?”

Jaden nodded into the phone and handed it to the nurse behind the desk, who put it to her ear, holding it there with her shoulder, and started typing in information as she got it. “Date of birth and social?”

Tap, tap, tap on the keyboard. From the information she’d put into the system, the nurse got a list of medications Libby was allergic to, and a brief medical history. Dalton apparently confirmed. Then the nurse told him what hospital, including the address and phone number, and the surgeon who was caring for Libby.

“I’ll let you talk to him now,” said the nurse, handing the phone back.

“Yes?” Jaden asked, his voice weaker now. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold.

“What happened?” Dalton asked.

“She was thrown in front of a car. It hit her, but I didn’t see where. She’s got internal bleeding, one of her lungs collapsed after she broke a few ribs. They fixed that in the ambulance and she’s in surgery.”

“Okay,” Dalton said, and it sounded like there was rustling noises in the background. “I’m in Colorado right now and I’ll be on the first flight to Seattle. She’s got a good team looking after her. I think she’ll be okay,” he said.

Dalton spoke every word confidently, he always did. The familiarity of his voice did not comfort Jaden as he had hoped it would. Dalton only
thought
she’d be all right, he did not say she would be. Always honest, even when he had something unpleasant to say. The fact that Dalton didn’t know for sure heightened Jaden’s sense of panic, and the floor he stood upon liquefied.

“She hit her head,” Jaden whimpered, remembering the blood coming from the back of her skull. “Come quickly.”

“There’s always a lot of blood with head trauma. I’ll get there as soon as I can. I’m glad she’s got someone there who cares so much about her,” Dalton said, and Jaden thought he detected a sense of dread in Dalton’s voice.

Without a goodbye, Jaden hit the End Call button, then stuffed the phone in his pocket. The pressure behind his eyes was ready to break. Jaden left the nurse’s desk and staggered to the closest bathroom he could find, jogging clumsily.

The stall door to the disabled bathroom burst open and slammed on the tiled wall, Jaden stumbled inside, then fumbled with the lock.

He vomited into the toilet, the sick splashing onto the rim. Jaden retched until his stomach was empty, then dry heaved when it was. Collapsing to the floor, flushing the toilet, Jaden put his trembling hands to his face.

The ravaging, emotional build up behind his eyes broke through. A solitary tear dripped from the corner of his right eye and slid down his cheek. With his index finger, Jaden wiped the tear and examined the moisture on his finger, rubbing it with his thumb.

It was the crack in the dam. After one came another, and then more, until there was no wall holding them back. Twelve years of pain and despair had been released with this new, urgent, and cataclysmic drama that could possibly end with Libby’s death.

Jaden sat in a ball on the floor, trying to make himself smaller to fit in the corner, not bothering to hold in the wailing grief ripping through him, echoing off the tile walls. He was a wounded animal, the lion Libby said was somewhere within him, roared, but not in bravery or from a desire to fight. The one person he trusted, the one person who had not failed or betrayed him, was possibly dying. And it was his fault.

Christine, whoever she was, had come after Libby. If Jaden had not slackened his hold of her, if he’d just held her to him like he had before, Christine wouldn’t have wrenched her from him and hit her with a car.

The event played in his mind over and over, each time ending with the sound of impact, organs twisting, blood bursting forth. Skull cracking on the pavement.

He pressed his palms into his eyes, trying to push the images and sounds from his brain.

Time didn’t tick by, it pounded. His sinuses throbbed, his puffy eyes were sore, and his empty stomach constricted. After an hour of undiluted, wretched crying, Jaden gripped the wall and made himself stand, though his legs were unsteady.

He would wait in the lobby for news, he owed it to Libby. She needed him to be strong and focused. It was too early to mourn.

Two children played with blocks on the floor, while a third child, this one older, made faces at an aquarium full of tropical fish, set in a wall that separated two waiting rooms. Jaden sat in a chair that stopped half-way up his back. Other waiters read books or magazines. Some were praying, holding beads in their hands. He couldn’t imagine reading now, he was deeply worried.

Libby’s phone was still in his back pocket. He worked it out and powered it awake, then slid the button to unlock it. There were many icons, but he tapped the one for photos. He scrolled through countless photos of Trinity and Tucker, then some of Adama and Monty, her horses. There were sunset views of Liberty Bay, photos of people Jaden hadn’t met, her friends. There were no photos of her on this phone, but then again, why would there be?