hairline above her crotch. Her navel was a pool of blood, like an eight-ounce can of tomato paste. The cut was raw and ugly. I dabbed at it and tried to push the blood back, but it welled up again like a pot flowing over. I covered it with my hand. The last thing I worried about, now, was infection.
Blood oozed between my fingers and kept coming. She was going to die, right here on this car seat, and there wasn’t a thing on earth I could do to save her.
There wasn’t anything to be done. Even if I could get the hole plugged, she’d be hemorrhaging inside. I was watching her die.
She smiled. Her face had a peaceful, dreamy look.
“Tam-pons,” she said. “Almost that…time of month.”
Tampons. Jesus Christ, tampons.
I got them out of her bag. The package looked small in my hand. It was what it was.
I tore the electrical tape off the steering wheel. There wasn’t enough left to go around her. But I had my belt, my shirt…
I ripped off the shirt and rigged her up the best I could. I cut a hole in my belt so it would fit her tight, and I pulled the shirt up between her legs, tying it to the belt front and back. It would be like a crude chastity belt and would work about as well as that ancient device ever had.
I shoved the tampons in and it took the whole package to stop the flow in the front. The wound on the side had sliced through her flesh, but the entire layer was still hanging there. I laid it back and drew the shirt tighter so it would hold.
A work of art.
A waste of time and we both knew it.
Then I got on the radio. I called nonstop for two hours and had no idea if I was getting through.
I held her hand and told her to be brave. These were just words. Who the hell was I to tell her about bravery?
She slipped into a deep sleep. I was losing her.
Dawn was breaking as the helicopter came over the trees.
Now the medics had it. I had to get away from there: my guts were in turmoil.
I climbed the hill. The cabin rose up suddenly, the lights still blazing. A woman stood in shadow at the window.
Eleanor.
I clumped up the steps and walked in. One look at my face and she knew. She cried and I held her and I looked down the slope with its aura of death and its red lights flashing.
In a while one of the medics came up the hill. “They’re taking her off now,” he said. “She’s awake and she wants to see you.”
I asked him to sit with Eleanor while I climbed back down the slope. Someone had covered Rigby with a blanket and I stepped around him on my way to the copter. I got inside and sat on the floor beside the cot where Trish lay pale as death.
She didn’t say anything, just held my hand a moment. “We gotta get moving,” the medic said, and his eyes met mine and I knew what he meant. It was touch and go.
“You boys ride her easy,” I said. “She’s got a bigger heart than all of us put together.”
I met the second medic coming down the hill. I stood on the bluff and watched the copter rise slowly over the woods. In the distance I could see police cars coming.
I went into the cabin to look for Eleanor, but she was gone.
59
I was sitting in the precinct room on the perp’s side of the table when I finally met Quintana. He came into the room with a steaming cup in his hand, sat across from me, and doled out the evil eye.
“You dumb fuck,” he said after a while.
The coffee was for me. I drank it black, same as he did.
