Joe tried to erase the feeling he had, but it wouldn't go away. Maybe he was getting paranoid. Maybe finding that killing field and thinking about the circumstances that led up to it was making him suspicious. Maybe he just wanted to get mad at someone because he felt guilty about not being able to prevent what had happened to his wife.
He drove through Saddlestring, through four straight red lights, and out the other side. Billings, Montana, was an hour and a half away, an hour if he drove 100 miles an hour. He tried to imagine what Marybeth was thinking, and he tried to send his thoughts to her up there somewhere in the air probably right over the Wyoming/Montana border. He told her he loved her. He told her to be stronger than hell and hang in there. He told her he would be with her very soon. He told her that she couldn't die, because if she did, he didn't think he had the strength and ability to hold their perfect little family together by himself, without his anchor to the planet.
His hands strangled the steering wheel. His legs trembled strangely. He drove even faster.
***
Surgery was on the third floor. He headed up there, ignoring the shouts of the receptionist to leave his holster at the desk and sign in. The elevator was busy, so he took the stairs two at a time and
burst out into the third-floor hallway breathing hard. He approached the doorway of the operating room just as a heavyset woman in a green scrub suit emerged from it, held up a rubber gloved palm, and said, 'Stop!'
'I'm the husband,' he said. 'My name is Joe Pickett.'
The woman said she would get the surgeon but only if Joe would stay exactly where he was.
'I'll stay here for about a minute,' Joe said. 'If he isn't out here by then, I'm coming in.'
The nurse looked him over, sizing him up. 'I'll get the doctor,' she said.
Joe paced. Through the thick windows covered by blinds, he tried to see what was going on in the OR. He could see movement and light; a half-dozen people in green suits like the nurse wore were standing side-by-side with their backs to him. Marybeth must be on the table in front of them. What were they doing to her? The thought of his wife in that room with all of those unfamiliar people around her disturbed him. Was she bleeding? Broken? Crying?
Joe had never liked hospitals. They brought out something mean in him. He had made an effort all of his life to avoid going in them. Even when Marybeth had been in one to have Sheridan and Lucy, he struggled with-himself to be in the room with her when she delivered. It wasn't the blood or illness or weakness that turned his stomach. It was his memories of being in a hospital when he was very young, visiting his mother after she fell down the stairs. He must have been around six years old at the time. Looking out at him from her hospital bed, her face had been mottled and blue, her bottom lip was split and stitched back together, and her arms were in casts. He remembered how the nurses would smile at him like they were sorry for him instead of his mother, and how they would look at each other when he told them she had fallen down the stairs while he was sleeping. It was much later before he learned that she had never had the accident, that it was the result of a drunken fight with his father outside of the Elks Club. Nevertheless, he hated the forced quiet, the antiseptic smell, the artifice of the nurses who patted his head and looked at each other, and the doctors who thought of themselves as Olympian gods. He shivered when he heard the sounds of nurse's shoes squeaking down the hall as they walked.
A short, wiry doctor came out of the operating room and walked directly to him. The man's scrub suit was flecked with dark blood and his latex gloves were tinted pink from being immersed in it. The doctor slipped his mask down to his neck. Joe introduced himself.
'You may want to sit down,' the doctor said by way of introduction.
'I'm okay,' Joe said calmly. He tried to brace himself for the absolute worst.
'She's stable but still in danger,' the doctor said bluntly. 'The baby is lost.
It might have been possible to save him, but it wouldn't have been the wisest thing to do considering his condition. We had to make a choice between saving your wife and saving a very damaged fetus.'
Joe stepped slowly backwards until he could rest against the wall. Otherwise, he was afraid he might slump over. The moment passed.
'Are you all right?' the doctor asked.
Joe couldn't think of anything to say, so he nodded that he understood.
'The bullet entered below her sternum, glanced off of her rib cage, and exited her lower back. It may have injured her spine. We don't know how extensive that injury will be.'
Joe appreciated the fact that the doctor was being absolutely straight with him. But he struggled with the magnitude of what he was being told. His baby--his first son--was lost, and his wife might not be able to walk again.
'When can I see her?' Joe asked, his voice a whisper.
The doctor sighed. He started to say something soothing and procedural but the look in Joe's eyes made him reconsider. Then: 'They're finishing up in there now. She's sleeping. They should be done and have her back in bed in intensive care within the hour. You can see her then, but don't expect her to be awake.'
Joe nodded. His mouth was dry, and it hurt to swallow. The doctor approached him and put his hand on Joe's shoulder.
'There's no easy way to tell you these things,' the doctor said. 'Be strong, and love her back to health when she's out of here. That's the best advice I can give you.'
Joe thanked him, but he really wanted to tell him to go away. He didn't want to be seen by anyone right now. He didn't want nurses clucking over him like they had when his mother was in the hospital. The doctor seemed to sense what Joe was thinking and went back into the operating room.
Joe turned and stumbled down the hallway until he found the men's bathroom. He went in it, turned out the lights, and wailed for the first time in his life.
***
Wacey knew just enough about the telephone lines in rural Twelve Sleep County to be dangerous. What little he knew he had learned from a couple of U.S. West telephone company engineers who had once needed his help.
