Day of the Dead - J. A. Jance [145]
Together Officer Downs and Brian raced to Brandon Walker’s side. He wasn’t breathing. There was no pulse. But there was no blood, either—no sign of any wounds other than a gash on his head from where he had scraped his head on the rough tree bark as he fell.
“He’s not shot,” Officer Downs surmised. “I think he’s had a heart attack. Get that vest off him. I’ve got a defibrillator in the car. I’ll be right back.”
She returned moments later carrying a bag of equipment. “I’ve been through the training,” she said as she knelt next to Brandon’s still body, “but I’ve never used one of these things in the field before.”
“Let’s hope it works,” Brian Fellows told her. “Let’s hope to God it works!”
Thirty
Then, after a time, the woman heard someone speaking very, very softly. She knew without looking that it was I’itoi—Elder Brother—who was speaking to her.
I’itoi said: The babies are here, my sister. They are the babies who have left their mothers, just as your baby has left you, to live with me. These tiny brown curled leaves are the cradles in which the little ones go to sleep when they are tired. These babies who have left their mothers are very happy with me. And they do not like you to feel as you do. That is why they are crying now in their tiny brown leaf-cradles. Are you different from all the mothers?”
And the woman raised her head from her hands and smiled. And from all around her came the sound of babies laughing.
Then the woman took her own brown cradle blanket and went back to the village.
She found the neighbor women busy in her home. The ground was swept and cleaned. The fire was burning under the cooking olla.
A friend called out to her not to go too close to the fire; the smoke would make her eyes bad. But an old Indian woman who looked at her sharply said, “She has talked to I’itoi.”
And always after this the woman’s eyes seemed to be looking a great way off. Sometimes you see eyes like that, big and quiet but looking beyond—farther and farther. Then you will know, that person has talked to I’itoi.
When Brandon Walker finally opened his eyes, it took time for him to make sense of his surroundings. He was alone in a dimly lit room that seemed to be filled with a collection of humming medical equipment. Pinned to the pillow beside him was a cord with a button on it, a call button, he reasoned.
He was about to push it when Diana came into the room. Her hair was pulled back in a ragged ponytail. She wore no makeup. Her face was lined with weariness. She looked more haggard than he had ever seen her, but when she saw him looking up at her, her face brightened while her eyes glistened with sudden tears.
“You’re awake,” she said, reaching for his hand and gripping it tightly in her own, squeezing it until his knuckles ground together.
Brandon tried to speak, but something prevented it.
“It’s the tube,” she explained. “You can’t talk until they take it out.”
He freed his hand from hers and then made a writing motion. Diana searched until she found pencil and paper. When she handed it to him, he scrawled a single question mark onto the paper.
“You had a heart attack,” she said. “Brian found you—Brian and a DPS officer named Cassie Downs, who happened to have a defibrillator in her patrol car. She managed to get your heart going again. Fortunately, there was a helicopter there to pick up someone from the gravel-truck accident. The woman in the Honda didn’t make it. The medevac chopper picked you up instead and brought you here.”
Brandon took the paper from Diana’s hand. He pointed to the question mark a second time.
“You mean, where’s ‘here’?” she asked.
Brandon nodded impatiently.
“You’re at Tucson Medical Center,” she said. “You’ve had triple bypass surgery. Damn Dr. Browder, anyway. He was always going on about your hip and your knee. Why the hell