would not be like a rat in a hole. I would die charging the enemy, guns blazing. My mind refocused and I became an active participant in my own fate. I gripped the knife, blade upward, and estimated the angle. Then I thrust across my body and over my left shoulder with all the strength that fear, desperation, and vengeance could muster.
The point struck bone, slipped a little, then plunged into mushy softness. His earlier scream was nothing compared with what now ripped from his throat. As he lurched backward his left hand dropped and his right hand passed across my throat. The chain end slithered to the floor, releasing its death hold.
I felt a dull ache across my throat, then something wet. It didn?t matter. All I wanted was air. I gulped hungrily, reaching up to loosen the links and feeling what I knew must be my own blood.
From behind me, another scream, high-pitched, primal, like the death cry of a feral animal. Panting and holding the counter for support, I turned to look.
He stumbled backward across the kitchen, one hand to his face, the other thrown out in an attempt at balance. Horrible sounds gurgled from his open mouth as he slammed against the far wall and slid slowly to the floor. The outthrust hand left a black streak snaking down the plaster. For a moment his head rolled back and forth, then a thin moan rose from his throat. His hands dropped and his head settled, chin down, eyes fixed on the floor.
I stood frozen in the sudden stillness, the only sounds my rasping breath and his fading whimpers. Through my pain, my surroundings began to register. Sink. Stove. Refrigerator, deathly still. Something slippery underfoot.
I stared at the form slumped inert on my kitchen floor, legs splayed forward, chin on chest, back propped against the wall. In the dimness I could see a dark smear trailing down his chest toward his left hand.
Lightning sparked like a welder?s torch, and illuminated my handiwork.
His body looked sleek, smoothed by the peacock blue membrane that encased it. A blue and red cap stretched across his scalp, flattening his hair and turning his head into a featureless oval.
The handle of the steak knife rose from his left eye like a flag pin on a putting green. Blood streamed down his face and throat, darkening the spandex on his chest. He had stopped moaning.
I gagged and the flotilla of spots sailed back into my field of vision. My knees buckled and I tried to lean against the counter.
I tried to breathe more deeply and raised my hands to my throat to remove the chain. I felt a warm slipperiness. I lowered one hand and stared. Oh yes. I?m bleeding.
I was moving toward the door, thinking of Katy, of getting help, when a sound froze me in place. The slither of steel links! The room flickered white, black.
Too beaten to run, I turned. A dark silhouette moved silently toward me.
I heard my own voice, then saw a thousand spots, and the black cloud rolled over everything.
Sirens wailing in the distance. Voices. Pressure on my throat.
I opened my eyes to light and movement. A form loomed over me. A hand pressed something against my neck.
Who? Where? My own living room. Memory. Panic. I struggled to sit up.
?
Hands pressed me gently down.
Then, a familiar voice. Unexpected. Out of context.
?Don?t move. You?ve lost a lot of blood. There is an ambulance on the way.?
Claudel.
?Where. I . . . ??
?You?re safe. We?ve got him.?
?What?s left of him.? Charbonneau.
?Katy??
?Lie back. You?ve got a gash on your throat and right neck and if you move your head, it bleeds. You?ve lost a good amount of blood and we don?t want you to lose any more.?
?My daughter??
Their faces floated above me. A bolt of lightning flared, turning them white.
?Katy?? My heart pounded. I couldn?t breathe.
?She?s fine. Anxious to see you. Friends are with her.?
?
He strode into the hall, glanced at something on the kitchen floor, then back at me, an odd expression on his face.
A siren?s wail grew louder, filled my tiny street. Then a second. I saw red and blue pulse outside the French doors.
?Relax now,? said Charbonneau. ?They?re here. We?ll see your daughter is looked after. It?s over.?
42
THERE?S STILL A GAP IN MY OFFICIAL MEMORY FILES. THE NEXT TWO days are there, but they?re fuzzy and out of synch, a disjointed collage of images and feelings that come and go, but have no rational pattern.
A clock with numbers that were never the same. Pain. Hands tugging, probing, lifting my eyelids. Voices. A light window. A dark window.
Faces. Claudel in harsh fluorescence. Jewel Tambeaux silhouetted against a white hot sun. Ryan in yellow lamplight, slowly turning pages. Charbonneau dozing, TV blue flickering across his features.
I had enough pharmaceuticals in me to numb the Iraqi army, so it?s hard to sort drugged sleep from waking reality. The dreams and memories spin and swirl like a cyclone circling its eye. No matter how often I retrace my steps through that time, I cannot sort out the images.
Coherence returned on Friday.
I opened my eyes to bright sunlight, saw a nurse adjusting an IV drip, and knew where I was. Someone to my right was making soft clicking noises. I turned my head and pain shot through it. A dull throbbing in my neck told me further movement was ill advised.
Ryan sat in a vinyl chair, entering something into a pocket organizer.
?Am I going to live?? My words sounded slurred.
?
I swallowed and repeated the question. My lips felt stiff and swollen.
The nurse reached for my wrist, placed her fingertips on it, focused on her watch.
?That?s what they say.? Ryan slid the organizer into his shirt pocket, rose, and crossed to the bed. ? Concussion, laceration of the right neck and throat region with significant loss of blood. Thirty-seven stitches, each carefully placed by a fine plastic surgeon. Prognosis: she?ll live.?
The nurse gave him a disapproving glance. ?Ten minutes,? she said, and left.
A flash of memory shot fear through the layer of drugs.
?Katy??
?Relax. She?ll be here in a while. She was in earlier, but you were out cold.?
I looked a question mark at him.
?She showed up with a friend just before you left in the ambulance. Some kid she knows at McGill. She?d been dropped at your place sans key that afternoon, but talked her way through the outer door. Seems some of your neighbors aren?t exactly security conscious.? He hooked a thumb inside his belt. ?But she couldn?t get into your unit. She called you at the office, but no score. So she left her pack to flag you that she was in town, and reconnected with her friend. Sayonara, Mom.
?She meant to get back by dinnertime, but the storm hit, so the two of them hung tight at Hurley?s and sippped a few. She tried to call, but couldn?t get through. She nearly blew a valve when she arrived, but I was
