"Talk to her," I said, "if you need to. Ask her whether she's willing to go."
If she was still alert enough to answer him. If she remembered that I'd spoken to her.
He said, "I love her more than life itself."
Condon called out, "We need you here!"
I drained half the bottle while Simon gazed at me, tears welling in his eyes. The water was clean and pure and delicious.
Then I was back with Sorley on the obstetric chains, pulling in concert with the pregnant heifer's dying spasms.
* * * * *
We finally extracted the calf around midnight, and it lay on the straw in a tangle of itself, forelegs tucked under its limp body, its bloodshot eyes lifeless.
Condon stood over the small body a little while. Then he said to me, "Is there anything you can do for it?"
"I can't raise it from the dead, if that's what you mean."
Sorley gave me a warning look, as if to say: Don't torture him; this is hard enough.
I edged to the door of the barn. Simon had disappeared an hour earlier, while we were still struggling with a flood of hemorrhagic blood that had drenched the already sodden straw, our clothing, our arms and hands. Through the open wedge of the door I could see movement around the car—my car—and a blink of checkered cloth that might have been Simon's shirt.
He was doing something out there. I hoped I knew what.
Sorley looked from the dead calf to Pastor Dan Condon and back again, stroking his beard, oblivious of the blood he was braiding into it. "Maybe if we burned it," he said.
Condon gave him a withering, hopeless stare.
"But maybe," Sorley said.
Then Simon threw open the barn doors and let in a gust of cool air. We turned to look. The moon over his shoulder was gibbous and alien.
"She's in the car," he said. "Ready to go." Speaking to me but staring hard at Sorley and Condon, almost daring them to respond.
Pastor Dan just shrugged, as if these worldly matters were no longer pertinent.
I looked at Brother Aaron. Brother Aaron leaned toward the rifle.
"I can't stop you," I said. "But I'm walking out the door."
He halted in midreach and frowned. He looked as if he were trying to puzzle out the sequence of events that had brought him to this moment, each one leading inexorably to the next, logical as stepping stones, and yet, and yet…
His hand dropped to his side. He turned to Pastor Dan.
"I think if we burned it anyway, that would be all right."
I walked to the barn door and joined Simon, not looking back. Sorley could have changed his mind, grabbed his rifle and taken aim. I was no longer entirely capable of caring.
"Maybe burn it before morning," I heard him say. "Before the sun comes up again."
* * * * *
"You drive," Simon said when we reached the car. "There's gas in the tank and extra gas in jericans in the trunk. And a little food and more bottled water. You drive and I'll sit in back and keep her steady."
I started the car and drove slowly uphill, past the split-rail fence and the moonlit ocotillo toward the highway.
SPIN
A few miles up the road and a safe distance from the Condon farm I pulled over and told Simon to get out.
"What," he said, "here?"
"I need to examine Diane. I need you to get the flashlight out of the trunk and hold it for me. Okay?"
He nodded, wide-eyed.
Diane hadn't said a word since we'd left the ranch. She had simply lain across the backseat with her head in Simon's lap, drawing breath. Her breathing had been the loudest sound in the car.
While Simon stood by, flashlight in hand, I stripped off my blood-soaked clothing and washed myself as thoroughly as I could—a bottle of mineral water with a little gasoline to strip away the filth, a second bottle to rinse. Then I put on clean Levi's and a sweatshirt from my luggage and a pair of latex gloves from the medical kit. I drank a third bottle of water straight down. Then I had Simon angle the light on Diane while I looked at her.
She was more or less conscious but too groggy to put together a fully coherent sentence. She was thinner than I had ever seen her, almost anorexically thin, and dangerously feverish. Her BP and pulse were elevated, and when I listened to her chest her lungs sounded like a child sucking a milk shake through a narrow straw.
I managed to get her to swallow a little water and an aspirin on top of it. Then I ripped the seal on a sterile hypodermic.
"What's that?" Simon asked.
"General-purpose antibiotic." I swabbed her arm and with some difficulty located a vein. "You'll need one, too." And me. The heifer's blood had undoubtedly been loaded with live CVWS bacteria.
"Will that cure her?"
"No, Simon, I'm afraid it won't. A month ago it might have. Not anymore. She needs medical attention."
"You're a doctor."
"I may be a doctor, but I'm not a hospital."
"Then maybe we can take her into Phoenix."
I thought about that. Everything I'd learned during the flickers suggested that an urban hospital would be swamped at best, a smoldering ruin at worst. But maybe not.
I took out my phone and scrolled through its memory for a half-forgotten number.
Simon said, "Who're you calling?"
"Someone I used to know."
His name was Colin Hinz, and we had roomed together back at Stony Brook. We kept in touch a little. Last I'd heard from him he was working management at St. Joseph's in Phoenix. It was worth a try—now, before the sun came up and scrubbed telecommunications for another day.
I entered his personal number. The phone rang a long while but eventually he picked up and said, "This better be good."
I identified myself and told him I was maybe an hour out of town with a casualty in need of immediate attention— someone close to me.
Colin sighed. "I don't know what to tell you, Tyler. St. Joe's is working, and I hear the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale is open, but we both have minimal staff. There are conflicting reports from other hospitals. But you won't get quick attention anywhere, sure as hell not here. We've got people stacked up outside the doors—gunshot wounds, attempted suicides, auto accidents, heart attacks, you name it. And cops on the doors to keep them from mobbing Emerg. What's your patient's condition?"
I told him Diane was late-stage CVWS and would probably need airway support soon.
"Where the fuck did she pick up CVWS? No, never mind—doesn't matter. Honestly, I'd help you if I could, but our nurses have been doing parking-lot triage all night and I can't promise they'd give your patient any priority, even with a word from me. In fact it's pretty much a sure thing she wouldn't even be assessed by a physician for another twenty-four hours. If any of us live that long."
"I'm a physician, remember? All I need is a little gear to support her. Ringer's, an airway kit, oxygen—"
"I don't want to sound callous, but we're wading through blood here… you might ask yourself whether it's really worthwhile supporting a terminal CVWS case, given what's happening. If you've got what you need to keep her comfortable—"
"I don't want to keep her comfortable. I want to save her life."
"Okay… but what you described is a terminal situation, unless I misunderstood." In the background I could hear other voices demanding his attention, a generalized rattle of human misery.
"I need to take her somewhere," I said, "and I need to get her there alive. I need the supplies more than I need a bed."
"We've got nothing to spare. Tell me if there's anything else I can do for you. Otherwise, I'm sorry, I have work to do."
I thought frantically. Then I said, "Okay, but the supplies— anywhere I can pick up Ringer's, Colin, that's all I ask."