The steps neared and the flashlight and then they were upon him.
“What the fuck?” Jerry asked as he saw the surreal living room, and the body. Jerry directed his flashlight at the man. Lyle got his first clear look. Midthirties, beard, baseball cap crooked and nearly fallen off, windpipe and jugular exposed by the backward tilt of his head.
“Jesus,” Eleanor whispered.
“It’s okay,” Lyle said.
“Who are you talking to?”
Lyle didn’t answer.
From behind the couch, there was that distinctive click.
The hammer of a rifle being pulled into position. Then a cough.
“Get down, Captain,” Jerry bellowed. He stepped in front of Eleanor and Alex.
“Come out with your hands up,” Jerry barked.
“Put down your gun,” Lyle said.
“Put down your gun,” Jerry repeated.
“No, I’m talking to you, Jerry,” Lyle said. “Lower your gun.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Then in the direction of the couch. “Get out here, right now! Put your hands up, and get out here. I’m not going to shoot you unless I have to. You need to get your ass out here right now.”
Lyle swung with the broom. He rocked Jerry’s gun hand, causing the weapon to fall onto the ground.
“Are you out of your mind?” Jerry dove for the weapon. On his knees, he swung the gun at Lyle, then in the direction of the couch, then Lyle again. “Stop!” Lyle said. “It’s a child.”
“What?”
“Young man. I’m a doctor. I can help you and I can help your father.”
“How do you…” Eleanor started.
From behind the couch stood a boy no more than ten, pointing a rifle square at Lyle’s head.
“Lower the gun, son,” Jerry said. He pulled the hammer back.
The boy held firm.
“Jerry,” Eleanor said. “Jerry, listen to me. I want you to put the gun on the ground.”
“Kid, I do not want to shoot you. I want you to stand down.”
“Jerry…” Eleanor said low.
“He’s been on a killing spree. This is no time to be soft. World’s gone mad.”
“He didn’t kill anyone,” Eleanor said.
The comment surprised Lyle. Of course, she was right.
“Son, is that your father?” Lyle said.
The kid didn’t answer, but it sounded like he emitted a whisper.
“I’m a doctor. I can try to help him. But I can’t do it if you shoot me or make me feel like you’re going to shoot me. I know you’re scared.” Another step forward. “I was on that airplane that landed. We’re here to try to help.” Lyle left it deliberately vague as to whether they’d landed with the express purpose of coming to help or whether they’d just coincidentally landed. “Can I help?” Another step forward, hands up. The boy held the rifle, less steadily now, shaking.
“Put the gun down,” Jerry said.
“Oh for goodness’ sake, Jerry,” Eleanor said. “Stop the cowboy stuff.”
Jerry gritted his teeth. “Okay, kid,” he said, “I’m lowering my weapon and I suggest you do the same.”
The boy lowered the rifle.
“Good man,” Jerry said, as if he’d saved face.
Lyle held up his hands, poised to walk forward amid a new threat: mounting tension within his own group. Jerry, Eleanor, the kid with the gun, a ticking clock they couldn’t identify. It felt like they just might kill one another before this syndrome did it for them. Lyle walked again, slowing, trying to set up his examination of father and son. The nearer he got, the more things came into focus. Matching upholstered chairs, worn and fading, framed each side of the table. An area rug beneath. Someone had gone to great lengths to make this feel like a home. On the couch next to the father a sleeping bag bunched around a pillow, and a heavy wool blanket. Tears streaked the face of the boy with the rifle held in both arms over his chest, just a motion away from aiming again. He had a bowl haircut and, Lyle noticed, supreme posture. His dad, Lyle guessed, was a military guy, teaching manners and self-sufficiency.
“Your dad’s the mechanic here?” Lyle asked.
The kid tried to suppress a sniffle, a whimper. Lyle took it as a yes.
From behind, Eleanor said: “Dr. Martin, may I have a word?”
Lyle forged ahead.
“What’s your name?”
“Tyler.”
“Okay, Tyler, I have some good news, first. Your dad is not dead.”
No answer.
“Okay?”
“You don’t know.”
“I know.” Now Lyle was at the edge of the scarred wooden coffee table and he winced; it reminded him of something and then he remembered the dream from the airplane, where a bat had risen from a bag of powder sitting on a wooden table. For a moment, Lyle swooned. Just a coincidence. “I need to examine your father. Is that okay?”
No answer.
“You were sleeping here on the couch and you got awakened by a sound.”
“How does he know that?” Alex said.
“Shhh,” Jerry responded. But all of that was in the background.
“Are you ten?” Lyle asked.
“Nine,” Tyler said.
“Did a noise wake you up?”
The boy let out a sob. He started to cry. The walls of bravery falling, boyhood trust and yearning returned. And he said: “Can you save my dad?”
“I’m going to try,” Lyle said. He clenched his teeth. The words sounded familiar—the kind of thing he used to say—but they were devoid of any emotion. Any true caring. Robotic.
“What’s your father’s name?”
The boy couldn’t answer for the sobs. During the eruption of tears, Eleanor neared Lyle and said, “I absolutely have to talk to you.”
Lyle didn’t hear her. He reached down to feel for a pulse on the man on the couch. Abandoned the idea and looked instead at the pupils. Moving so quickly as to look still. Something very strange going on in there. He thought, None of us is going to survive the night; I have no idea what’s going on but I suspect the human body has met its match.
Twenty
“I’d urge you to keep a distance,” Lyle said over his shoulder. He couldn’t feel a pulse, but it didn’t matter. He looked at the pupils again. He could imagine a first-year medical student saying Brain-dead.
“Tyler,” Lyle said, “your dad is going to be okay.”
Tears ran down the boy’s face. Talk about fixed, paralyzed; this was all just too much for him. Lyle tried to study his face without giving too much away. Was he feverish? In pain?
“Tyler, what’s your dad’s name?” he repeated.
“Rex.”
“Okay, Tyler, I’m going to do a medical test on your dad and I don’t want it to scare you. I’m going to put my fingers in his mouth and I’m going to make sure there’s nothing blocking his airway.” It wasn’t true; he was feeling for mucus and looking for a gag response, like with the baggage handler. But he couldn’t think of a good reason to explain that to the kid. “Okay, Tyler?”
A whimper of approval.
Lyle stuck his fingers in and produced the same response he’d gotten before with the baggage handler.
Behind him, the trio watched with fascination and horror. Alex looked absolutely stricken, eyes wet. Eleanor held back her own particular anguish; the incident reminded her of the story she’d been told about the death of Frank, her great love, near the peak of Annapurna. The sherpa said he’d gotten altitude sickness at a particularly treacherous spot and fallen and the sherpa revived him, or so it seemed. Then Frank had stood up, seeming fine, and walked right into a crevasse. His oxygen-starved mind had betrayed him. Eleanor took a step backward. Jerry, feeling her need, put a hand on her back and she angrily swatted it away. She hated him, the anti-Frank. Their tension notched up.