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.
Dr. Masutu moved closer, a model of crisp efficiency. 'You'd best leave, Mrs. Wells. We can't risk an additional sedative with his respiratory system so stressed.'
Jacob clutched her hand, muscles tight with desperation. Sweat broke loose on his face. 'Where is she?'
Renee stepped away and the ointment caused Jacob to lose his grip. He stared at the back of his hand, at the white blisters, at the pink skin peeling away. His wedding ring was gone. Everything was gone. Joshua had taken it.
'She's here,' Renee said.
He sat up and dizziness swarmed in. The room tilted, Dr. Masutu's face grew alternately larger and smaller, Renee bobbed like a ship moving away toward the horizon.
Jacob tried to move his legs, but they were mutinous. He lunged for the edge of the bed and collapsed on the railing. His IV bag fell over and spattered open against the cold tiles. Dr. Masutu gripped him by the shoulders and tried to ease him back onto the bed.
'Easy, Mr. Wells,' the doctor said. His breath smelled of disinfectant, the first odor Jacob had noticed since awakening.
'I want to see her. Where is she?' he screamed at Renee. He didn't care if she lied. He just needed an answer, any answer, or the hard concrete in his chest would let no more air pass.
Renee stopped at the door, hunched and shivering. She cupped her hands and leaned against the wall, slowly sliding down its surface like the victim of a firing squad.
'Mr. Wells,' the doctor said, pulling him against the pillow. 'Don't make me have to call for assistance.'
'Fuck you,' Jacob said, yanking free and pulling himself onto the rail. He caught a fleeting glimpse of himself in the mirror, a wild-eyed lab animal breaking free of a cruel experiment, its flesh mottled red. Then he went over. The respirator tube must have become disconnected, because oxygen escaped with a snakelike hiss. The loose tube protruded from Jacob's mouth as his torso struck the floor, one leg tangled in the bed rails, the other twisted in the sheets. He kicked free, ignoring the pain that chopped him with its hundred dull axes.
He scrabbled across the floor like a paraplegic crab, Dr. Masutu in a hurry somewhere across the room, Renee shaking. The tiles were cool against his skin, and the thin hospital gown had come undone. The strings dangled down the backs of his legs, lit firecracker fuses. His whole body was heating up, swollen dynamite, a bilious volcano about to erupt.
He reached Renee and pulled her hands from her face. Her green eyes were drowned with red, her face twenty years older than he remembered it. She was a stranger, he was a stranger, and neither belonged to this world. Not where things like this happened.
Jacob grabbed the respirator tube with one hand and pulled it from his throat. A piece of skin broke free from his lip and clung to the clear plastic. If only he could tear himself away a piece at a time, like a jigsaw puzzle in reverse, and undo his own existence. But even if he vanished, Joshua would still be there, and then Joshua would have everything.
' Tell… me…,' he said. ' Where?'
She turned away and sobbed some words against the white surface of the wall.
He touched her hair, fought an urge to clamp his fingers around the strands and slam the truth out of her.
Her words were invisible bullets: 'You said it wouldn't happen again.'
Dr. Masutu moved somewhere above them, and someone else had entered the room. They may as well have been shadows on the wall, for all Jacob noticed or cared. Dr. Masutu shouted some sort of command, but Jacob
