We’re so close to town. If I can just hold on...
We curve around the next bend, and I feel the tires hydroplane a bit. But then they catch and I exhale in relief.
But my relief is short-lived.
It happens in a blur...fragments.
Our car is in control, and then it isn’t.
It spins and tumbles, and the water engulfs it in the ditch. The tires spin and spin in the air, the water flecking off them, as the roof of the car sinks into the mud.
Steam rises.
Zoe gasps.
I scream, I think.
We skid and skid.
I’m half in and half out of the car, and I’m conscious and I’m wet.
The rain is pelting me.
I pull myself out and I stand, and I’m wobbly. I slip and slide down the soaked grass and through the ditch and the smell. The smell of burned oil and wet rubber, and hot water is in my eyes and I can’t see.
I hear Jude calling for help, and then I hear her. A gurgle. A whimper.
I drop to my knees and she’s halfway out of the car, the glass is shattered and blood runs down her arms, streaming into the ground, and her eyes are open.
They cut me, into my heart.
“You.” Her voice is raspy. “You did this.”
Blood bubbles from her nose and her words are so short, so jagged, like broken bits of glass.
“I didn’t,” I tell her. “You did this. Breathe deep, Zoe. Hang on. Help is coming.”
“You don’t care,” she whispers, “if I live or die. It’s nothing to you.” Her bottom half is crumpled in the car seat, and she wasn’t wearing a seat belt. Her pelvis is smashed to bits, and I know, that if she’d actually been pregnant, that there’s no way her child could still be living. There’s no way it could’ve survived. Jude’s child.
Anger swells in me, and I see red, and the pain the pain the pain grows bigger than my logic, bigger than my compassion, and that’s all I see. White-hot pain and it’s mine and I own it.
“It’s nothing to him,” I tell her coldly, steeling my heart. “You’re nothing to him.”
She smiles, and her teeth are red and grotesque and broken.
“But I’m a nothing who took your husband. Just like you took everything that mattered to me.”
My heart pounds and twists, because she did take my husband.
She was young and lovely, and I thought she held so much power over me, and I thought she was my friend, but here she is on the ground, and she’s bleeding and broken and she’s nothing to me.
“You’re dying,” I tell her.
“You’re a bitch,” she manages to say, her last words with her last breaths. All of my instincts and experiences feel it. She gurgles now, and she can’t talk anymore, and her chest heaves up and down raggedly.
“It didn’t have to be this way,” I say quietly, and the wind steals my words and carries them away. Zoe watches me, her eyes already beginning to cloud.
I hear the sirens, I see the red lights flashing around us in circles, and when the EMTs shove their way through the rain, I step to the side, and her eyes still follow me, dark as night.
They pull her out, sliding her easily onto the wet ground. I can see her weaken, and her breathing slow. She’s going. She’s slipping away and I don’t feel anything.
And then Jude is here, wet in the rain.
And he’s all I’ve ever wanted, and he’s broken my heart.
58
Jude
“Corinne!” I yell through the rain. I’m desperate and terrified, and if something has happened to her, I’ll never forgive myself.
I scramble down the wet hill to the crumpled car, and she is standing, and I can’t believe it. She’s soaking wet, her blond hair plastered to her head, but she doesn’t appear to have a scratch on her.
Her eyes meet mine, and there is so much pain in hers that I can’t stand it.
“Corinne,” I whisper. Red and blue lights flash against everything eerily in the night, and chaos is everywhere.
And then I hear the EMTs.
“Her pulse is thready. We’re gonna need epinephrine,” one calls out, talking about Zoe, and I startle because I know they shouldn’t.
I’m allergic to epinephrine and bee stings, she’d told me once, and it seems like so long ago.
She’s allergic.
She’s allergic.
Zoe hears him, too, and her eyes widen and she tries to say something, she tries to call out, but she can’t because her lungs are collapsing, and blood is streaming from her mouth. Her eyes connect with mine, and she knows that I remember.
She wants me to help, I can see it, I can see it. But I don’t. My heart is cold and steel and in shock, and I don’t say a word. Because if I say nothing, this all ends. It will end now.
She killed my brother.
She tried to kill my wife.
She tried to kill my baby.
She’s insane. She’ll never stop. I know it. I know it.
Our gaze is still connected when her eyelids freeze. She can no longer move and her heart is slowing slowing slowing. I see it, and deep down, in the hidden part of my heart, in the place where I feel such dark things, I know she’s still there. Her eyes still have life, and she still sees me.
I bend next to her head. “I know you killed my brother.”
Blood bubbles from her nose. “Had to,” she manages to say, her mouth filling with blood.
“And I have to do this. For my brother.”
Her eyes widen.
“Good night,” I whisper.
I step away and I don’t stop them as they jam a needle of epi into her chest and the plunger goes down and it’s done.
Years ago, when my wife took her Hippocratic oath, I vowed to do the same, to never do harm, but in this case...in this case...it was necessary, wasn’t it? I could’ve stopped them. I could’ve.
But I didn’t.
I see the moment the life drains from her, the moment her eyes go empty.
She’s gone and she can never hurt me or my wife again.
A human being is dead, and I didn’t intervene, and I don’t care.
I stand limply in the dark, and then...out of the chaos, I hear Corinne’s voice, calling for me, pushing through the bodies standing in the rain.
She reaches me, and she doesn’t look at Zoe, not even for a second.
It doesn’t matter what comes next. In this horrific moment, we’re together. I’m all she has, and she’s mine and I’m hers. My arms fold around her, and her head rests against my chest.
“God, Corinne, are you all right?” My voice is cracked and terrified, and she nods against my shirt.
I don’t speak the unspeakable. I don’t tell her that I could’ve helped Zoe and I didn’t. I don’t say any of those words, and I never will.
I close my eyes.
59
Jude
I wait for hours in the ER waiting room as Corinne is checked out.
The fluorescent lights shine on me, turning my skin a pale green, and I’m numb.
I’m numb.
My brother is dead and my wife is traumatized and I’m alone.
When she finally emerges from the swinging double doors, Brock walks her out and hands her off to me.
“She’s okay,” he tells me, his voice low. “She’s in shock, and obviously, she’s upset. But physically, she’s okay. And the baby is okay.”
I feel like hugging him, but I shake his hand instead.
“Thanks, man,” I tell him, and my voice cracks. He nods, sympathy in his eyes, compassion in his voice.
“No problem. Take care of her.”
Corinne won’t even look at me, and the ride home is quiet as she sobs in the passenger seat, her forehead pressed to the glass.
I’ve never seen her so broken, not even after mass deaths in the ER, and I don’t know what to do. So I stay silent.
Everything is broken. My marriage, my wife. My brother is dead. I don’t even know which way is up anymore.
I help Corinne into the house, and she yanks away from me and stalks to the shower. She’s in there a long time, and when I finally feel like it’s safe to check on her, she’s curled up in bed on her side.
“Corinne?”
She blinks but doesn’t answer.
I sit on the end of the bed, hesitant to speak, hesitant to breathe. I know I’ve wronged her, I’ve devastated her. What I don’t know...is how to fix it.