THE RED CROSS CLINIC (La Clínica de la Cruz Roja) was where they wound up, the whole tour group, as if this were part of the package. The driver had retraced their route at the same breakneck speed he’d employed on the way out—or no, he’d seen this as an excuse to go even faster, pedal to the metal all the way, as if the bus had been scaled down and transformed into an ambulance, though as far as Sten could see there was no need for hurry, not on the gunman’s account. He hoped he was wrong. Hoped the guy was only unconscious, in a coma maybe, deep sleep, dreaming. They’d give him oxygen at the hospital, defibrillation, adrenaline, something to kick-start his heart and wake him up . . . but what if he didn’t wake up? Was that manslaughter? A term came to him then: justifiable homicide. That was what this was. He’d acted instinctively, in self-defense, in defense of his wife and all the others too—he’d neutralized a threat, that was all, and who could blame him? But what if the man was paralyzed, alive still, but dead from the neck down, what then? Who’d pay for the nurse to spoon-feed him and change his diapers? There was no health care down here, no insurance, no nothing. Would there be a lawsuit? They had lawsuits everywhere. And jails. They had jails everywhere too.
He tried not to think about it, tried to wipe his mind clean. The whole way back he’d held tight to Carolee’s hand, his eyes locked straight ahead, the bus rattling till every nut and bolt down the length of it began to sing. Time compressed. The jungle slashed by on either side and the potholes exploded under the wheels. He felt sick. There was a kind of buzzing in his skull, as if a swarm of insects had got trapped inside. His knees were cramped. He felt thirsty all over again. Three rows up, laid out in the middle of the aisle, was the foreshortened form of the gunman, the paramedic hovering over him, but all he could make out were the soles of the man’s feet, jutting up like parentheses enclosing a phrase he didn’t want to decipher.
At first, there’d been some question about where to put the man. No one wanted him inside the bus, but what were they going to do, strap him to the roof? Leave him there in the mud for the police? The buzzards? The dogs? He was a human being, no matter what he’d done, or tried to do, and there wasn’t much debate about it—he was going with them. That was the consensus, at any rate, people wringing their hands, their voices shaky still. Bill’s wife—processed hair, low-cut blouse—held out, her teeth clamped as if she’d bitten into something gone bad. “I don’t want him near me,” she insisted. “I don’t want—” and she’d broken off, fighting back a sob.
It turned out they couldn’t fit the man lengthwise across any of the seats, so Bill and the paramedic, who’d hauled him up the steps by his shoulders and feet, laid him out in the aisle, the back of his head bisected by the scuffed white line on the floor, the one you were advised to stay behind. Most people were already on the bus at that point, their faces blanched and reduced, eyes staring straight ahead, but the final few, Sten and Carolee amongst them, had to step over him to make their way down the aisle. Sten took his wife by the arm and tried not to look down at the glazed eyes and the teeth glinting in the open mouth, and if he missed his step and one foot wound up coming down on the man’s sprawled wrist, so much the worse. The guy was feeling no pain, and besides, he’d asked for it, hadn’t he?