When he'd managed to get most of his body through, he fell forward onto the ground, directly onto his chest and chin. Only after he'd lain facedown for a moment did his limbs start moving again, the agonized effort of an overturned turtle or beetle, trying to right itself. After he'd flopped onto his back, he lay facing the cloak of sky with one arm pushing up and out and snapping back and one leg scraping the soil in slow, deliberate motions.
Thirty feet away, Cree stood unable to move, sick with horror.
After a moment his arm dropped and he just lay there. Only his bare chest was moving, a lateral ripple, lifting on one side and falling on the other with the sinuous flexibility of a belly dancer. His mouth was stretched wide, a black round hole in his face, but no steam came from it. No breath came from his open throat.
Cree's hypnotic terror shattered as she realized she was watching a boy suffocating. 'Tommy!' she shouted. She lunged forward to help him just as the world exploded.
As if their invisible bonds had snapped, the three horses in the corral burst to life, pivoting away from Tommy. The gelding's wheeling shoulder struck Cree and sent her flying backward. She landed on her back, bounced hard, sat up immediately into a storm of flailing knobby legs as the mares hurtled past her, over her, shrieking. Something hard hit her head and knocked her flat, a string of firecrackers went off between her ears. The impact stunned her, but she jerked herself upright again and stared around her through the bloody yellow explosions in her head. Julieta's horses were back near the barn, wheeling and snorting as they raced up and down the far fence line. The phantom horses on the far side of the fence were gone. She heard their fading hoofbeats and their dwindling screams, so like the screams of women.
A yellow beam lit the ground as she struggled to her feet and lurched toward Tommy. Julieta's voice called from the infirmary door. Cree fell before she got to the boy, but she managed to crawl the rest of the way on her hands and knees. Tommy's chest continued its writhing, his mouth gaped for air but none came. When she dared to touch his skin, it was ice-cold.
Not knowing what else to do, she put her mouth over his and blew into it. The convulsing chest changed its rhythm but didn't seem to receive any air. She took her mouth away, shoved hard on his breastbone with both hands, put her lips over his and exhaled again.
The flashlight beam panned wildly, and she heard Lynn Pierce's voice as well and knew that the nurse and Julieta were running toward them, that's why the light gyred and came and went so jaggedly. She felt herself go distant and confused, but pulled her mouth away from Tommy again. This time she saw blood on Tommy's cheeks and realized it was her own, she was bleeding from her forehead and raining drops of red onto him. And it didn't matter, what mattered was getting air into the fish-gaping black mouth. She put her hands against his chest and brought her weight down hard once more. Before she could lean to his face, a wave of dizziness broke over her, rocked her back so that she lost her balance. But as she fell away, she heard a gasp at the back of Tommy's throat, and immediately another. And then Julieta was there, and light, and Lynn's hands holding her shoulders so she wouldn't topple.
11
Asynchronous breathing,' Cree said. 'One lung is inhaling while the other is exhaling.'
'That's not possible,' the nurse said. 'It's not anatomically possible!'
But of course it was, because they were looking at it. Tommy lay on the table beneath the bright, faltering lights of the examining room, eyes closed, arms at his sides. Once you understood what was going on, it was easy to see: The left side of his ribs rose and fell rapidly, while the right side drew slower, deeper breaths.
Ashen faced, speechless, Julieta stroked his forehead and gazed at him intensely, as if passion alone would allow her to see inside his skull.
Cree shut her eyes against the pounding pain and held the ice pack back against her forehead. 'As long as the two sides don't get into regular opposition, he draws in enough air. But if one side inhales at the same time the other exhales, if they get into rhythm that way, the air just passes from lung to lung. That's what was happening when he came through the fence. He blacked out because he was suffocating. He was just rebreathing his own used-up air.'
It was hard to think straight, but Cree realized they were talking about him as if he wasn't there. He acted like he was asleep, but she wasn't so sure. Through the pulsing haze in her head, she thought she felt him in there, disoriented but conscious.
Felt them in there.
'Tommy,' she said softly. 'Hey, Tommy.'
Tommy stirred, hitching one shoulder. Julieta's eyes caught Cree's, terrified.
'You awake?' Cree persisted.
Tommy's eyes opened, rolled, stabilized. 'Yeah.'
'What's going on with you? What do you feel?'
'Nothing. I don't know.' His speech was punctuated with wheezes, one lung laboring out of sync.
Cree gave him a moment to elaborate, but he didn't. 'Up for Mrs. Pierce poking at you? We want to make sure you're not hurt.'
He didn't answer but acquiesced by sitting up awkwardly, pushing himself up off the table with his left arm. He looked around him, blinking in the light, waiting. His breath steadied.
Lynn Pierce took over. 'I need to ask you things, and I want you to answer even if they seem stupid to you. Is that okay?'
'Like we did the other times?'
'Yep, same thing.' Lynn tried to smile. 'You're a great patient, Tommy.'
She looked into his eyes and ears, checked his reflexes with a rubber mallet, listened to his chest, and tried to conceal the alarm she obviously felt. 'What's your name?' she asked. 'I told you this would be stupid.'
'Tom Keeday.'
A tiny expression of relief on Lynn's face. 'Where are you from?'
'East of Sheep Springs.'
'What day is this?'
'Friday. September twenty-seventh.'
'Who's the president?'
'Begaye. But there's an election coming up, he'll probably lose.'
'Tribal president,' Lynn explained to Cree. 'Very good, Tommy. Can you stand up for me, good and straight?'
Tommy pushed aside the blankets and stepped off the table. His left leg wrongly anticipated the ground and he lurched, but after his right had tried twice to gauge the distance to the tile floor he managed to steady himself.
'Are you as straight as you can be?'
'Yeah.'
Arms at his sides, he was bent sideways, the middle of his spine bowed noticeably to the left, his head cocked to the right. Cree shot a glance at Julieta, standing behind Tommy, and found that her eyes had filled and overflowed.
'Tommy, I want you to shut your eyes now. I'm going to touch you, and I want you to tell me where I'm touching you. Just like before.'
He nodded and shut his eyes. When she gently prodded his left arm, he said, 'Arm.'
'You have to say left or right.'
'Left.'
'Great! Now this. And this.' She touched his left pectoral muscle, his forehead, his left thigh, his stomach, and he named them all correctly.
Lynn prodded him on his spine in the middle of his back.
'Arm,' he said. 'Right arm.'
Julieta's face folded in agony.
'This?' Another touch, this time on his neck, just below his buzz-cut hairline.
