“How long . . .?” Jacob wasn’t sure what he wanted to ask. How long he’d been dead? How long before he wasn’t dead anymore?
“You’ve been here thirty-six hours. You’re a very lucky man. Upper airway edema, second-degree burns over fifty percent of your body, a dislocated hip.” A hand touched Jacob’s arm again. “I’m Dr. Masutu.”
Jacob shivered, his flesh cold but his skin like that of a baked potato, rough and hot and dry. He flexed his fingers and they felt like water balloons. The doctor must have noticed the movement.
“You’re a little swollen at the moment. It’s typical for burn victims to gain twenty or thirty pounds due to fluid buildup. Your metabolism is in hyperactive mode right now, trying to heal your injuries.”
A memory sparked in Jacob’s head, but it was swept away by a yellow wave of pain. The wave rushed up the beaches of his soul, the foam tickled him, and then the pain receded. The pain reminded him of something, as if it were part of him and he should not be spared. His tongue was thick against the tube and he couldn’t feel his teeth.
“I’ve adjusted your morphine drip,” Dr. Masutu said. “Now that you’re awake, you’ll probably feel a little discomfort. Unfortunately, we have to go easy on the suppressants because your respiratory system is overtaxed.”
Doctors always used the word "discomfort" in place of "pain."
“And extra antibiotics,” the doctor continued. “The burns will heal, but it’s a dangerous time for your body. Because your system is fighting so hard to grow new skin and replace your fluids, you’re vulnerable to infections. But we’re going to be just fine.”
Jacob felt himself sliding back into the languor of the grotto. Something the doctor had said, one word among that stream of syllables, caused him to open his eyes just before he succumbed to darkness.
Burns.
Burns meant heat.
Heat meant fire.
Fire meant that the other dream was not a dream, and the memory of flames eating the walls returned. The past built itself on blackened timbers, stacked like logs, nailed itself together into a wobbly house.
Fire. House.
And a name.
Then words meant nothing, because he was in the grotto again, its water soft against his skin. Cool darkness reclaimed him, and he welcomed it.
A familiar voice accompanied him on his next journey to the surface.
“Honey? Can you hear me?”
Jacob could hear Renee, but couldn’t respond. His tongue was like a sock, his mouth a leather shoe. He forced his eyes open and the spotlight stung them. The gauze had been removed. The corners of the room swam on the edges of his vision.
“Doctor, he opened his eyes.”
He sensed movement, and shadows fell across his face. His hands and feet were numb. His chest was cold, and for a moment he thought he was naked. Jacob rolled his eyes down far enough to see that a loose sheet covered his body. Or maybe it was a shroud.
“Welcome back, Mr. Wells,” came a voice that he dimly recognized. “It’s Dr. Masutu.”
Jacob’s lips parted, and he pushed his tongue out enough to feel the chapped skin around his mouth. His cheeks were coated with a cold gel. He tried to raise his arm and wipe it away, but the doctor caught his hand.
“Easy does it. You still have a drip in that arm.”
Jacob looked into the dark, featureless face of the man above him. Then he saw the person to the right of the doctor. The shape of the hair was familiar, the way it curled out at shoulder length. He tried to focus on her but his head throbbed, shattering his vision into tiny shards of meaningless images. He closed his eyes again.
“Relax, honey. Take it slow,” Renee said.
Take it slow. She’d whispered that the first time they’d made love, when Jacob and Renee were fellow sophomores at North Carolina State. Before Mattie and the other one. Before Joshua came back.
Jacob had taken it slow many times, but never as slow as he did now. Because gravity still pressed upon him, each machine-assisted breath brought embers of agony, and his limbs felt like alien parasites leeched to his torso. He tried to collect the pieces of himself, to reacquaint flesh with bone, to integrate his organs into a functioning cooperative. He gave up. The only connection between his many parts was a network of pain.
“Renee,” he said in a wheeze.
“Don’t talk.”
He wasn’t talking. He was gasping, choking, mouthing nonsense air. He opened his eyes again.
Renee bent over him, and her face filled the hazy circle where the spotlight had been. She was nothing but eyes and a slash of teeth. The eyes were like lost binary stars against the endless depth of space.
Those eyes looked familiar.
Whose eyes? Green like that—
And it all came back in a scream, the fire, the collapsing roof, Mattie amid her scorched stuffed animals. He fought to sit upright but was far too weak. The movement sent a rocket flare of agony up his left hip.
“Where’s Mattie?” he said, this time summoning enough air to fill the room with his words. They echoed off the room’s sterile surfaces of tile, chrome, and glass.
He couldn’t see Renee well enough to be sure, but her face seemed to collapse in upon itself, like a flower gone putrid in steam.
“Shhh, honey,” she whispered. “We can talk about that later.”
Later? How could she possibly think he would make it to later unless he knew? Giant claws scratched at his intestines, a monster inside him wanting to tear itself free. He fought it down as if it were a rush of nausea. “Where is she?”
Renee turned her head toward the doctor, and they must have shared a look. Dr. Masutu gave a stiff nod. Renee’s hand took his, and her small fingers were slick in the ointment that coated his skin. He squeezed weakly, begging with all the meager strength he could summon.
“Where?” he whispered, already knowing, never wanting to know.
“The fire—when the second floor collapsed and threw you out of the fire, she was still there and—she got burned bad—”
Her voice cracked in synch with the breaking of Jacob’s heart.
Not Mattie.
Not. Not. Not.
She was the Happy Sunshine Girl, who played doctor to make her dolls better and held tea parties for her stuffed animals. She was the favorite in her class among all the teachers at Middlewood Elementary. She loved soccer and jump rope and Sunday morning cartoons, the ones that came on just before the scary preacher shows. She was beautiful, the thing that spiritually bound him to Renee, the creature that connected him to the future rather than a past he loathed.
A strange sound poured out of his lungs, the internal monster turning into a vomit of voice. If not for the raw pain of its passing through his throat, he wouldn’t have recognized the voice as his own.
Renee squeezed more tightly, two hands now, as he twisted in the sheets. Dr. Masutu moved around the bed, trying to calm him with incomprehensible medical terminology. Jacob thrashed his head from side to side, the ceiling a blur of silver and white streaks.
“It’s all going to be okay,” Renee said, choking, her face close to his, her breath cool on his cheek.
The monster ripped his insides, claw and tooth and sharp bone. The monster laughed, rattling the truth against his rib cage like a scythe strumming a xylophone. The monster chewed his aortic chambers, spitting pieces of flesh in its triumph. The pain inside met the pain outside and rose into an unbearable crescendo.
Jacob wailed, a plea to God, a damning of God.
He sobbed and coughed, pushed at the tube in his mouth with his tongue.
He had promised himself that he would be stronger this time, that he’d protect her from Joshua. He would protect all of them. But he had failed again. And that knowledge slashed him with its acid talons.
Renee dabbed a tissue against his eyes. Her whisper was as soft as the steady wheezing of the respirator: “Jake.”
“Where is she?” he repeated, his teeth clenched around the tube. He looked in the mirror above the sink as if Mattie were in the room.