Claire Porter resolved to be good and follow orders. Another fall, the doctor warned, could make the injury far worse. Infection, necrosis of the skin. Ick. And though he hadn’t mentioned amputation, Google had. And once seated in her mind, that thought stuck like a leech and wouldn’t let go.
At least she could continue her online studies. Barista now, owner of a small restaurant consulting business in two years. She lifted the Mac onto her tummy, glanced at the crib. Thank you for snoozing, honey doll! Hell, she wanted to kiss the girl’s toffee-blond hair. But that would be a big project.
Bedridden.
She booted up and worked for a few minutes, then, goddamn it. The urge. She needed to use the bathroom.
It was funny how we can anticipate exactly where and how pain will get us. Porter went through the instinctive choreography of shifting one leg, the other, her torso and arms in a complicated pattern to let her sit up without bringing tears to her eyes.
Or puking.
She negotiated the sitting-up with relatively little discomfort. And she managed to snag the crutches pretty well.
Now the standing-up part.
A deep breath, everything coming into alignment. Okay, scoot forward.
Then…okay slow…then up.
Porter, who weighed in at about 110 pounds, felt the force of gravity tugging her down, down, down. The crutches did this, turned her into a load of bricks. But she managed. A few steps. She paused as her vision crinkled a bit. She was light-headed. Lowering her head, breathing deeply, she reminded herself to get up slowly next time. Fainting? She couldn’t even imagine what a fall would do to her fragile bones.
Then her head cleared and she moved toward the hall. She paused to look down at Erin, who slept the sleep of youthful oblivion, with dreams, if at all, simple and kind.
Claire Porter hobbled onward to the bathroom. Sam had modified it—he’d put a shower seat in the tub and replaced the wall-mounted head with a handheld unit. He’d added a high seat on the toilet so she didn’t need to put much weight on her foot.
One good thing about the accident. No fashion choices. It was sweats, sweats, sweats…Just tug the turquoise bottoms down with the panties and sit. Job done.
Getting up was a bit harder but she knew how to manage it.
Anticipation…
Up and pain-free. Damn, my right leg’s going to be solid wood by the time this is over.
As Claire Porter was washing her hands she felt a shudder throughout the apartment. Windows rattled and a glass sitting on the shelf leapt off the edge and died in a dozen shards on the tile floor.
Porter gasped.
My God. What was that? Another one of those earthquakes? She’d followed the news. Something about that drilling—the construction site they said was responsible was a half mile from here. There was a lot of protesting. Environmental folks versus big business. She couldn’t remember exactly.
Wow, a quake in New York! This was something. She’d have to tell her mother about it when they talked next. It had been a fairly minor tremor—no damage to the walls or windows.
But that was a problem.
And a serious one.
Bare feet. Broken glass.
Stupid, she thought. She had slippers (well, slipper; nothing was going on the bad foot) but hadn’t bothered to put it on. And now five feet of obstacle course to get to the hallway.
She looked down. When the glass hit, it hit hard.
Shit. It would be impossible for her to clean up the mess. Bending over was no option. She could use the crutch to push the bigger pieces out of the way but she couldn’t see the smaller ones on the white tile.
Towels. She would cover the floor with bath towels and place her good foot only where there were no lumps. The smaller ones wouldn’t penetrate—she hoped.
She pulled the thickest towels from the racks and strewed them on a path to the door.
One step. Good.
She paused to find a spot for the next one and froze.
What was that? She smelled natural gas.
“Jesus, Jesus…”
Porter recalled the terrible news story about what had happened after the first earthquake. The damage from the shaking hadn’t been bad at all. A few broken windows. But some gas lines had broken. The resulting explosions and fires had killed several people: a couple, trapped in their burning house.
Well, she and her daughter weren’t going to be victims.
They were on the first floor. She’d get Erin and clutch her tight and hobble outside, shouting her head off for the other tenants to get out too.
Move, move, move!
Another step.
One more. And then the glass splinter leveraged through the towel like a scorpion’s stinger and pierced her heel.
Porter screamed and fell backward. She released the crutch and got her hand behind her head just in time to keep her skull from cracking on the side of the porcelain bathtub. Pain careened through her body. Her vision crinkled again—from the agony. It then returned, though blurred by more tears.
The smell of gas was stronger here: Her face was beside the access panel to the bathroom pipes, which led down to the basement, where the cracked gas line would be.
Go! Somehow, she had to get to the room and save her baby.
Crawl over the fucking glass if you have to!
An image came to her: The news footage of the buildings burning following the most recent quakes—that horrifying tornado of orange flames and oily black smoke.
Save your daughter.
“Erin!” she cried involuntarily.
The girl must have heard—or perhaps she’d been woken by the foul smell of the gas—and she started screaming.
“No, honey, no! Mommy’s coming!” She struggled to roll onto her belly, so she could start her frantic crawl to her daughter.
But she hadn’t realized that her broken ankle had become wedged beneath the bathroom’s heavy wooden vanity. As she rolled over, she felt, and heard, the gritty snap of the delicate bone work giving way. Breathtaking pain exploded within her entire body.
Screaming in unison with her infant daughter, Claire Porter looked at her foot. The metal rods that the surgeon had implanted just the other day had ripped through the skin and, bloody, were poking out of the top of her foot. She gagged and felt her head thud hard against the tile floor as blackness embraced her like oily smoke.
Chapter 37
Vimal Lahori was back in his beloved bus station, the Port Authority.
Better this time. Less pain. The horror of the killing had diminished. And he had money.
At home last night, before he’d gone down to the studio to “have words” with his father, he’d walked upstairs on the pretext of getting a sweater. He’d done that…but he’d also taken the three thousand dollars—his three thousand—that Nouri had paid him, as well as his wallet. He had lifted another two hundred of his father’s because he was owed that, and much, much more, for the cutting jobs his father had rented him out for. He got his phone too. A razor, toothpaste and brush, the antiseptic Adeela had given him. Some bandages. And of course his Book, his most precious possession.
Vimal had been planning all along to escape last night as soon as his parents were busy with their game or had gone to sleep. He’d agreed to some ambiguous peace treaty with his father, which Vimal hadn’t meant a word of. But then it turned out that his father hadn’t meant a word of it either. He should have guessed that Papa was lying—and going to entrap him in the basement prison; the bottled water stacked up, the food in the fridge, the sleeping bag. Lite fucking beer?
Goddamn it.
He shivered with rage.
Vimal was now walking away from the Greyhound window. The one-way ticket cost him $317.50. The journey from New York to the station at 1716 7th Street, in Los Angeles, would take sixty-five hours.
Thinking about what was coming next, Vimal Lahori was sorrowful, he was terrified.