"Very funny. I'll need to bring my nurse to assist me."
"Is she worth all this trouble" The second man was standing somewhere beyond Jane's head, where she couldn't see him.
"What do you mean"
"Is she even going to live"
The doctor's voice became contemptuous. "The bullet passed through her leg and exited the other side, which is why there are two holes. She didn't die of shock, or of blood loss, and the femur wasn't broken, all of which I attribute to luck. The care she gets will determine whether she lives or not. You could take her to a hospital and her chances would be very good."
"I don't think so. I want to hold on to her."
"Then we'll have to do our best here. I'll clean and dress the wound now, and then set up the rest tomorrow morning. Let me give her a painkiller so we can move her to the table." He took a very small bottle of clear liquid from his bag, unwrapped a hypodermic needle, filled it, and swabbed Jane's leg with a cotton ball. She smelled the strong, almost nauseating odor of alcohol, and then felt the needle.
EVERY TIME JANE AWOKE SHE tried to sit up, but there was something tied across her under her arms that prevented her. She was aware, as in a dream, that if she could simply overcome her confusion and gather her thoughts, she would be capable of escaping the restraints. But each time, she exhausted herself and fell back to sleep.
In her dream it was a winter night somewhere in the north. She could feel the clear, freezing air and see the light dusting of snow on the ground, indented with many footprints. She was in a big enclosure of straight tree trunks with the bark still on them, sharpened at the top, and in the middle there was a single fire that gave no warmth but illuminated the space with a flickering light. There were other people-women and children mostly, with just a few men here and there. She knew they were all captives. They wore dark, dirty, torn clothes she couldn't even tie to one period or style, and they stayed in the shadows. Some of them limped or crouched or tried to bind up their wounds.
Jane walked, wandering among the people, listening to the things they said to each other. She tried to be unobtrusive, slouching and lowering her eyes to look at the ground as she passed. "Do you think they'll just keep us here until we die" There was no attempt to answer. "Who are they" "Strangers. Enemies."
She looked up, and she could see his eyes looking at her long before she could make her way through the crowd to reach him. He stood alone, even though there were people on all sides of him. He wore the same gray polyester sport coat with a faint greenish tinge. He had worn it when she had met him, and even though the elbows were faded on that day, probably from countless hours of leaning on poker tables, he wore the coat later when she was taking him into hiding. He must have had it on when he died. As always, he had on brown dress pants that were shiny in the seat and knees, and scuffed shoes.
Harry Kemple was her only mistake, a gambler who had heard murderers burst into his poker game while he was in the bathroom and kill all of the men at the table. He had opened the door a crack and seen them leaving. They had hunted him, so she had saved his life, taken him away, and given him a new name. Years later she had been fooled into leading one of the hunters to the forger who had made the documents for Harry's new identity, and in two days he was dead. Since then Harry sometimes visited her in dreams.
"I was coming to find you," he said.
She came closer. "Where are we"
"Just one of those places between life and death. It's a convenient place for people from both sides to meet."
"Sleep"
"You're not asleep. You're closer to death than sleep."
She looked down at her wounded leg, and at her feet there was blood in the snow.
"Your blood is leaking out of you. Those stitches the doctor put in your leg and the bandages are only slowing it down." He lifted his face to look upward and pointed at his throat, where the medical examiner had put some crude stitches to close the gaping wound where the knife blade had passed. "Nobody knows more about bleeding out than I do."
"I'm so sorry, Harry," she said. "I thought he was a runner who needed my help. It never occurred to me that he was using me to find his way to you."
Harry raised an eyebrow and stared at her for a couple of seconds. Then he said, "Every time we meet I have to listen to the same apology. Forget it. If he hadn't collected on the contract on me, there would have been a car crash or a microbe or a blood clot. When you're dead, the way death got you is just one thing that happened among thousands. You don't care more about that day than any of the others, just because it was the last day. You'll see."
"Are you telling me I'm dying"
He frowned. "At the moment you are. You're losing blood, and you're in the hands of enemies."
"Is there any way I can save myself"
Harry held up his hands and shrugged. "How do I know what you can do or can't do You're the only one who has any way to guess. These things aren't determined ahead of time. The grandsons of Sky Woman fight. That's all we know. The left-handed twin Hanegoategeh raises his arm to strike, but the right-handed twin Hawenneyu reaches up with his right, like the image in a mirror, to block it. Creator and Destroyer, life giver and killer, they struggle, and their constant fighting is what makes the world we pass through into a battlefield. Sooner or later, everyone is a casualty. Every-body sheds his blood, like me. And like you."
She followed his eyes downward, and looked at her leg. The big white bandage that was wrapped around the wound was bright scarlet, and the blood in the snow was pooling. She raised her eyes again. "I've lost blood before," she said. "I want to do better than to lie on that couch waiting to die so the pain will end. What can I do"
Harry sighed. "You know I love you, but you made your choice a long time ago-day over night, life over death. You think you're on the side of the good twin, the Creator twin. If he made you, then he must have made you what you are for his own purposes. We can't know the scheme, because he's trying to fool his brother, and the left-handed twin might read our minds."
"But that doesn't tell me what to do."
"If you're Hawenneyu's creature, be exactly what he made you, because you have a part to play in the fight. If he made you a fox, he must need a fox, so be the fox he made. Don't think you're smart enough to improve his strategy."
"And if I die"
"You will die. You know that."
"I meant-"
"I know. Gather your strength now. Your biggest trials are coming soon. Remember the Grandfathers, the ones who chose to stand and fight to block the trail while their friends escaped."
Jane awoke. She was in the big, dimly lit room on the couch, covered with a sheet. She was sweating, and she was very conscious of the tight bandage wrapped around her leg. Her white blouse and vest had been replaced by a man's shirt. She was terribly hot. She wondered if she had a fever and if it meant that the wound was infected.
Her eyes moved, following the weak, dim light to the source, a reading lamp on a small desk far off on the other end of the room. It seemed to flicker, and she realized there was also a laptop computer on the desk. A movie was playing on its screen. Jane hoped it was an online version, and not just a DVD playing. In less than a minute she could use a computer to e-mail her husband Carey or the local police. There were a pair of earphones on the desk, but nobody was visible.
Jane welcomed the extra light because it illuminated her surroundings, and gave her a chance to explore without moving. There were six windows in a row about fifteen feet from the floor, but they looked like immovable glass installed to let daylight into the building but not to open. They had been covered with blackout fabric taped to the glass so no light could pass in or out-had they simply been painted black They had no latches. The right side of the big room had a wall with four doors, but the wall seemed to extend only to the acoustic tile ceiling.