He gazes up and now his face is waxy pale except for the sooty smudges forming beneath his hazel eyes and the fat string of blood which has begun to flow from the right side of his mouth and down along his jaw. "Lisey!" That thin, whooping highaltitude-chamber voice. "Did that guy really shoot me?"
"Don't try to talk." She puts a hand on his chest. His shirt, oh dear God, is soaked with blood, and beneath it she can feel his heart running along so fast and light; it is not the heartbeat of a human being but of a bird. Pigeon-pulse, she thinks, and that's when the girl with the floppy bows tied on her shoulders falls on top of her. She would land on Scott but Lisey instinctively shields him, taking the brunt of the girl's weight ("Hey! Shit! FUCK!" the startled girl cries out) with her back; that weight is there for only a second, and then gone. Lisey sees the girl shoot her hands out to break her fall - oh, the divine reflexes of the young, she thinks, as though she herself were ancient instead of just thirty-one - and the girl is successful, but then she is yipping "Ow, ow, OW!" as the asphalt heats her skin.
"Lisey," Scott whispers, and oh Christ how his breath screams when he pulls it in, like wind in a chimney.
"Who pushed me?" the girl with the bows on her shoulders is demanding. She's a-hunker, hair from a busted ponytail in her eyes, crying in shock, pain, and embarrassment.
Lisey leans close to Scott. The heat of him terrifies her and fills her with pity deeper than any she thought it was possible to feel. He is actually shivering in the heat. Awkwardly, using only one arm, she strips off her jacket. "Yes, you've been shot. So just be quiet and don't try to - "
"I'm so hot," he says, and begins to shiver harder. What comes next, convulsions? His hazel eyes stare up into her blue ones. Blood runs from the corner of his mouth. She can smell it.
Even the collar of his shirt is soaking in red. His tea-cure wouldn't be any good here, she thinks, not even sure what it is she's thinking about. Too much blood this time. Too smucking much. "I'm so hot, Lisey, please give me ice."
"I will," she says, and puts her jacket under his head. "I will, Scott." Thank God he's wearing his sportcoat, she thinks, and then has an idea. She grabs the hunkering, crying girl by the arm. "What's your name?"
The girl stares as if she were mad, but answers the question.
"Lisa Lemke." Another Lisa, small world, Lisey thinks but does not say. What she says is, "My husband's been shot, Lisa. Can you go over there to..." She cannot remember the name of the building, only its function. "...to the English Department and call an ambulance? Dial 911 - "
"Ma'am? Mrs. Landon?" This is the campus security cop with the puffickly huh-yooge batch, making his way through the crowd with a lot of help from his meaty elbows. He squats beside her and his knees pop. Louder than Blondie's pistol, Lisey thinks. He's got a walkie-talkie in one hand. He speaks slowly and carefully, as though to a distressed child. "I've called the campus infirmary, Mrs. Landon. They are rolling their ambulance, which will take your husband to Nashville Memorial.
Do you understand me?"
She does, and her gratitude (the cop has made up the dollar short he owed and a few more, in Lisey's opinion) is almost as deep as the pity she feels for her husband, lying on the simmering pavement and trembling like a distempered dog. She nods, weeping the first of what will be many tears before she gets Scott back to Maine - not on a Delta flight but in a private plane and with a private nurse on board, and with another ambulance and another private nurse to meet them at the Portland Jetport's Civil Aviation terminal. Now she turns back to the Lemke girl and says, "He's burning up - is there ice, honey? Can you think of anywhere that there might be ice? Anywhere at all?"
She says this without much hope, and is therefore amazed when Lisa Lemke nods at once. "There's a snack center with a Coke machine right over there." She points in the direction of Nelson Hall, which Lisey can't see. All she can see is a crowding forest of bare legs, some hairy, some smooth, some tanned, some sunburned. She realizes they're completely hemmed in, that she's tending her fallen husband in a slot the shape of a large vitamin pill or cold capsule, and feels a touch of crowd-panic. Is the word for that agoraphobia? Scott would know.
"If you can get him some ice, please do," Lisey says. "And hurry." She turns to the campus security cop, who appears to be taking Scott's pulse - a completely useless activity, in Lisey's opinion. Right now it's down to either alive or dead. "Can you make them move back?" she asks. Almost pleads. "It's so hot, and - "