Julia stands there, unsure what to do. Then she glances down at the stick in her hand and her blood runs cold. She’s forgotten to keep track of her path in the dirt. She looks over her shoulder at the tunnels, heart humping wildly. Which way had she come from? Left or right? She racks her brain but everything looks the same.
She takes a guess and chooses right, walks a few feet then stops. Nothing looks familiar. She goes back, looks around for any sign of the blood or the trail she had previously made in the dirt. But there’s nothing. Oh, this isn’t good, she thinks, this isn’t good at all. With a shaking hand, she pulls out her cell phone and checks the signal. There isn’t one, of course. She’s takes a breath. Don’t panic, she tells herself, you can do this.
She moves forward, rounding a corner into a room she hasn’t seen before. Her flashlight dips, catching something to the left. A figure slumped against the wall. Daniel. He turns and looks into the light. Tears are streaming down his face.
“I can’t find her.”
Julia’s shocked by the state of him and for a moment she can’t speak.
“I promise you, I came back for her. We were going to start a new life together. We were going to be happy.”
“What do you mean you can’t find her?” says Julia, choking on her words.
“I’ve tried,” he gasps. “I don’t know where she is.”
Julia grabs him by the shirt. “That’s not good enough. You have to think. Where is she, Daniel?”
Blood is seeping from his bandage. His skin is gray and clammy.
“Oh God. Let me die. Just let me die.” He begins to fade out.
Julia twists the fabric of his shirt until her knuckles are white. “Which way, Daniel? Which way did you take her?”
“Left,” he says finally. “I think it was left.”
83
Julia bolts from the room, her flashlight bobbing wildly against the pockmarked walls.
“Toni! Toni!”
Inside her head she prays to every God she can think of. Implores her dead mother for help. Strikes a foolhardy bargain with the devil. She searches frantically, checking caves and rooms, tunnels and passageways.
“Toni!”
She yells until her throat hurts. But there’s no sign of Toni anywhere. Julia halts, breathing hard. The despair is so heavy, she almost sinks to her knees. It’s impossible. There’s no way she’ll ever find her. Then she hears the voice.
“Julia.”
At first, she thinks it’s her mind playing tricks. Then she hears it again. The breathy, warm voice. The one she remembers from childhood, especially at nighttime when it wouldn’t be quiet even though they were supposed to be sleeping.
“Toni?”
“Julia, is that really you?”
Julia sweeps the flashlight around and sees the opening in the wall, the precious form of her sister huddled on the ground.
“Oh my God, Toni,” says Julia, darting forward.
Toni blinks sluggishly into the light. “You came. I knew you would.”
Julia embraces her. She’s just skin and bones. “Oh, Toni. It’s so good to see you.”
Leaning back, Julia brushes Toni’s hair from her forehead and examines the head injury. The front right-hand side of the cranium is distended and purple, likely due to intracranial pressure, swelling on the brain. Julia feels a flash of anger. Toni should have been admitted to the hospital days ago.
“You hurt your head, huh?”
Toni nods, woozy. “I fell down the stairs.”
“Look at me, Toni.”
Toni blinks at her.
“We’re going to go now.”
Toni smiles. “Okay.”
Julia threads Toni’s arm around her neck and hoists her to her feet. “Hang on.”
“Julia?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry.”
Julia chokes back tears. “Me too, Toni.”
Julia turns to face the darkness and wonders how on earth she’s ever going to find her way out.
“Come on, Mom. We really need your help.”
Then she hears Leo calling her name.
Epilogue
Julia hitches up her surgical mask and slices through the diseased aortic valve attached to Mr. García’s fifty-five-year-old inert, unbeating heart. A few feet away, the machine keeping Mr. Garcia alive hums at a rhythmic pace as it pumps blood around his body. Two and a half hours earlier, Mr. Garcia’s heart had been purposely stopped in order to connect him to the cardiopulmonary bypass machine, aka the heart-lung machine. Something necessary to carrying out the surgery. Monitoring this sophisticated piece of machinery is Billy Mathers, a technician known as a perfusionist who, with his flop of blond hair and tribal tattoos, looks more like a nightclub DJ than a medical professional.
Julia’s eyes flick to the observation gallery above, where a small cluster of eight medical students watch her perform the surgery. To be more precise, six students are watching. The other two, both female, have their eyes trained on Billy Mathers, no doubt enamored by his good looks and cool hipster vibe.
Julia’s pleased to see the med students each hold the briefing notes she had prepared earlier. Not all surgeons bother to do this. But she knows the notes will prove invaluable for their exams later on.
Today the students are doubly lucky because they have the benefit of Dr. Phillip Kincaid, teaching fellow at the UCSF School of Medicine, to talk them through the procedure. Not only is Dr. Kincaid one of the United States’ most respected cardiothoracic surgeons, he is also a very nice man with a gift for colorful commentary. With his snow-white Sigmund Freud goatee, satin waistcoats, and impressive collection of hand-carved pipes (which he never, in fact, smoked), he was a flamboyant figure. Julia can only imagine the graphic and eye-watering explanation he is imparting to the students as she carries out the operation.
Not that any additional gore is necessary. The surgery itself is brutal enough, beginning with a procedure called a sternotomy, in which Julia cut a ten-inch vertical incision along Mr. Garcia’s chest, allowing access to the sternum, which she opened up with a
