She said, “I love you, Ben. Please, for me, don’t do it.”
He didn’t move.
She kept pleading. “Ben, don’t do it. I love you. I need you—”
“No you don’t,” Ben interrupted. The gun was still down Barnes’s throat. “If I went away to prison tomorrow, I’m sure you’d be sad. And you’d write me letters. And maybe you’d even visit me. But then you’d move on. And that would be fine with me. Even if I can’t move on, you should, Dorothy. The world doesn’t stop just because I checked out a long time ago.”
Again the room went quiet. Ro blinked several times. Her voice was one step above a whisper. “Ben, Lilly’s still alive. She needs you.”
With the mention of the young teen’s name, Ben’s brain returned to earth. “Oh shit!” He shoved the body onto the floor and charged forward. “Oh my God. Lilly!”
Immediately he was pounced upon, bodies of men shoving him onto his stomach, whipping his hands behind his back, holding down his legs as he struggled, screaming for them to let him go. Someone took his gun away. He heard Sam telling him to shut up and stop moving. Over and over and over.
Eventually, Ben got the message and went limp. Pressure eased off his back and he was hoisted to his feet, cuffed and surrounded. A gorilla was on either side of him, but Ben was looking into Sam’s eyes. “You gotta let me go to her.” Tears down his cheeks. “She needs me. I need to see her.”
“What you need to do is calm down. You’re not in your right mind at this moment.”
“I’m okay, I swear. Please take the cuffs off.” He was begging. “I need to see her.” No response. “Sam, she’s dying!”
Sam sighed, but said nothing.
“I’m not going anywhere. Just let me go to her.”
“I’ll take you to her, but the cuffs stay on—” Shanks stared at him and his eyes went dark. “Oh shit.” He lifted up the kid’s shirt. “You’ve been stabbed. You need medical attention.”
“Tell them to let me go and I’ll get attention.”
“Let him go,” Sam said.
As soon as he was freed, Ben bolted to Lilly, hands still manacled behind his back. A huddle of EMTs was working on her. He bent down, his eyes fixed on hers. Her body was shaking even though she had a blanket over her. There was a pool of blood by her side and blood-soaked gauze around her neck. Tubes were down her nose. Monitors and needles were on and in her arms. An oxygen mask was over her nose. Her complexion was gray.
“You’re okay, Lilly, you’re okay.” Saying it just as much to himself as to her. “Just hang in there, baby. I’m not leaving, okay. You’re gonna be okay.”
Wide dark eyes focused in on his face. He knew she had heard him. Her jeans and underwear had been ripped off and her panties were soaked with blood. Ben felt like his head was about to explode.
I should have fucking shot him.
Shanks was at his side. “You’re a fucking idiot, Vicks, you know that? A stupid, fucking moron!”
“Please just take off the cuffs.”
“I have to take the cuffs off because you need medical attention. If you bolt, I will haul your ass into jail now and that will be that.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Shanks took off the cuffs and whispered in the boy’s ear. “The stab wound. You got it immediately, the second he jumped on you. You were in fear of your life. You understand what I’m saying, Ben?”
“Yes, I got it.” One of the EMTs had lifted his shirt. Sam was still holding his shirt. Ben said, “Just let me go to her.”
Shanks finally let Ben go. He said, “I’ll be right back.”
A gaggle of people was talking all at once, mostly medical conversations. Someone told Ben to get the hell away from Lilly, but then someone countermanded the order and said to leave him alone, that he was calming down the girl and her blood pressure was going up. Her body was still shaking, but when Ben took her hand, her fingers weakly tightened around his.
He whispered to her, “Just hold on. Lilly, you’re gonna be fine. You’re gonna be okay. I’m here for you. I’m not going anywhere.”
His T-shirt sported a big wet blob, and blood was dripping onto the floor. He knew he should be hurting, but he was so jacked up he felt numb. The EMTs were talking to some kind of doctor over the radio. Words were being bandied back and forth: “blood loss,” “shock,” “possible severed vocal cords.” Lilly’s violent shakes had subsided but she was still trembling. Ben could feel his brain working even if he wasn’t at his best. His phone was still in his back pocket. He reached for it and began to look up doctors. The nearest specialist was someone in Dallas.
He pulled his hand from Lilly’s. “I’m not going anywhere, honey. Just making a phone call.” He stood up from his kneeling position and immediately felt woozy, the room spinning around him. He knelt back down—about a foot away from Lilly so she couldn’t hear—deciding he could call from a sitting position. Anything was better than passing out. His breathing was shallow and his ribs began to hurt. The adrenaline was wearing off and pain was replacing the high. He was shaking as he punched in the numbers.
“C’mon . . . answer you motherfu—yes, ma’am, my name is Benjamin Vicksburg. I need to talk to Dr. Jacob Winslow. It’s a dire emergency! My friend’s neck was slashed . . . no, it isn’t a joke. I’d let you talk to the EMTs but they’re pretty busy saving her life . . . yes, I will hold, thank you.”
The wait seemed interminable. A male voice came on the line. “Who is this?”
“My name is Benjamin Vicksburg. My friend was just viciously attacked and her throat was cut. The EMTs working on her said something about her vocal cords being cut. We need a specialist and you’re the nearest one to where we are.”
“Where are you?”
“Los Alamos, New Mexico.”
“Is this a joke?”
“No, sir, I guarantee you that this is not a joke. I guarantee you this will be in the papers tomorrow morning. She’s not even fifteen years old. You’ve got to help. Can you get a chopper from Dallas and meet us here in New Mexico?”
A pause.
“Hello?”
“I’m still here. If she’s with EMTs, put one of them on the line.”
“Sir—”
“Put an EMT on the goddamn line or I’m going to hang up.”
Ben crawled back to one of the EMTs and put his phone on speaker and up against the medic’s ear. He said, “You gotta talk to him. He’s a throat doctor that specializes in vocal-cord surgery. Please tell him what’s going on!”
The woman looked at him, paused, but then complied. The conversation was brief. The doctor asked questions, the EMT answered. Words were exchanged: Lilly’s condition, her neck, her vocal cords, her blood pressure, her core temperature, other technical things. Finally, the doctor asked to speak “to the kid.” The EMT pulled back from the phone and Ben turned off the speakerphone.
Dr. Winslow said, “They’re trying to stabilize her enough to take her to the medical center in Albuquerque. I have a few colleagues there. I’ll make some calls. It’ll take me at least three hours to get there.”
“Thank you, thank you—”
“What is your relationship to her?” he asked.