(2006) When Crickets Cry (42 page)

When I placed the arteries against Annie's own, Royer smiled and shook his head. I sewed the two aortas together and turned to the perfusionist.

"Let's warm her up."

I did this not to restart the heart, but to check my stitching and determine if I had any leaks-a trial run.

During the operation we had cooled the blood in the heartlung machine by about twenty degrees, to slow Annie's metabolism. This would decrease the body's demand for oxygen, and preserve the vitality of the heart muscle cells. Once I stitched together the aortas, we reheated the oxygenated blood, and as it flowed through the machine and into the coronary arteries that fed the heart, the heart slowly warmed up. As it did, its color changed-from dead gray to alive red. I wrapped my fingers gently around its growing volume, felt the chambers grow taut, and felt life fill the emptiness.

I placed the final sutures in the pulmonary artery, and the rich, warm blood began pouring into the new heart, feeding its millions of cells that had been starving for three hours and fortyeight minutes. I tugged gently on the heart and noticed one anastomosis that did not hold the way I thought it should. I turned to the perfusionist and said, "Hold her off and give me about five minutes."

I made the adjustments, turned once again to the perfusionist, and nodded. Again the heart filled and began to quiver like a steaming kettle just before it boiled. I held my breath.

I reached for the defibrillator paddles behind me, often used to start up a transplanted heart or shock it into a sinus rhythma regular pattern. I massaged the heart once, using my hand to remind it that it once had a rhythm. Hearts forget, but up to a point, they can be reminded.

It beat once, a hard jolting, pounding beat. It torqued, pumped itself empty, and refilled. The screaming flatline above me beeped once. Around the table, we waited for the second and the third and the ...

It didn't come.

Royer's face wrinkled with concern. I reached for the paddles and said calmly, "Charge to 100."

The nurse waited for the light to turn green and nodded at me. I slid the paddles alongside Annie's heart and said, "Clear." The heart jerked, almost shaking itself free of the current that swam through it, and then lay still.

I said it again. "Charge to 200."

Royer's face studied mine while I studied Annie's heart. It jumped again, and fell quiet, limp, and unresponsive. I paused, thought back through the process. Everything had been perfect. Why won't it start?

I shook my head and whispered, knowing it would be the last time. "Charge to 300."

The light turned green, and I shocked Annie's heart to where it rocked and spasmed, tugging violently against the sutures that held it. I pulled out the paddles and waited, but Annie's heart didn't even twitch. I reached in with my hand, wrapped it around the heart and massaged, pumping for her. Trying to pass life from my hand to her heart. I felt it fill and empty with each successive squeeze. And each time, it fell limp and melted into my aching palm. I squeezed for several minutes until my hand began to cramp. After ten minutes, it locked up.

Royer put his hand on my arm and shook his head. Around us, the nurses began crying. The chief resident turned from the table, the perfusionist buried her face in her hands. Royer eyed the clock. His voice cracked. "Time of death, 11:11 p.m."

The tears came slowly. First a trickle, then the Tallulah. For the first time since Emma died, I set sail into the current. The years of muffled pain, unvented anguish, and stifled sorrow caught me and swept me toward the dam. When I got there, the water flowed over, cracked the concrete, and flooded the valley below.

I fell backward, sending my instruments flying across the room. I bounced off the sterile stainless-steel table, hit the floor, pulled my knees in under my chest, and could not breathe. I opened the eyes of my mind, pulled hard, but could not reach the surface. Below me, the old town of Burton reached up, caught my ankles, and pulled me downward toward the darkness and remnant. Struggling, flailing for the surface, I screamed at Charlie, at the medics to "charge to 300! " and then at Emma to "wake up!" "Hold on!" and "Don't go!" Then I thought of a yellow dress, of a yellow bow floating in the wind, of a little girl yelling "Lemonaaaade!" at the top of her lungs and how something had awakened in me the moment I saw her.

My body shook. I cried hard, out beyond the pain. With every wail, I paid penance for the guilt of my soul, for the sorrow that knows no end, and the shame that was me. It was there I realized there were some sins for which I would never quit paying.

Down in the green, murky coldness near the bottom, I saw Emma. She swam to me, and on her chest I saw no scar. She touched my chin, kissed my cheek, and pulled me up to Annie, lying still, cold, and dead on the table. As quickly as she appeared, she was gone.

Annie lay still, her chest a cold, open wound holding a lifeless heart. On the table next to me sat the pitcher of water. Out of several cracks, holes and crevices, it was leaking water across the table, which was spilling all about me on the floor. I tried to lift it with one hand, but it was too heavy. I leaned in, lifted it off the table, poured it over Annie. As I poured, the blood washed away. The more and longer I poured, the cleaner she became, but the heavier the pitcher felt. With every passing second, Annie's heart filled with blood, her chest began to close itself-no scar.

The pitcher pulled against me, growing too heavy. I slipped, regained my balance, and held the stream over Annie. Losing my grip, I screamed against the weight of it. The weight of everything. Unable to hold it any longer, I lifted it high and poured the water over us both. Standing in the waterfall, I bathed. And for one brief second, came clean. Then my fingers gave way and the pitcher came crashing down, shattering on the stone floor beneath us.

The sound shocked me. I opened my eyes, ripped off my mask, and the wet air filled my lungs. I gasped, coughed, and found the room awash in light. From the distance, Emma whispered. The echo reached out of the void that had been us and spoke and it was then, there, that the words returned. I stood over Annie, my tears falling onto her cold, gray heart, and whispered-the one thing I had not done.

If life is where the blood flows, then death is where it does not.

ix weeks passed. The summer swell of peace-seekers had long since returned home, and the engineers cracked open the dam, dropping the level of the lake several inches. The quiet residue left in their wake spread across the water and brought with it the cold promise of a long winter. As winter progressed and water needs increased from Burton to Atlanta, the level would drop farther until next spring, when the rains would refill it.

With my home destroyed and the life I had come to lead changed forever, I returned, stood amid the wreckage, and sifted my hands through the rubble. Not much remained. Certainly, not much of worth. I found a few pictures and a couple of kitchen utensils, but little else. As best I could figure, the storm had picked up what was once mine and sent it scattering over the surrounding counties or dropped it in the lake north of us. The disheveled sight of every physical thing I had once held dear left me dumbstruck.

In hopes of finding anything that had been mine, I circled out from the house and spent three days searching the woods. Most of the trees were snapped in two about ten feet up, and all the tops were laid like pickup sticks across the landscape, making it difficult to get around. A couple hundred yards from the house, I found Emma's tub lying on its side with three of the four feet broken off. I ran my fingers along the edge, remembered Emma leaning her head against the rim and smiling at me as the steam rose off her face. I let it be. Another day and I called off the search. I never found the transit case.

After a week, I looked out over the lake-now clear of debrisand took it in. Maybe it was telling me something. I looked down in the water, saw my reflection, and decided it was.

I drove around the lake to my warehouse, pulled back the canvas, sneezed under a cloud of dust, and loaded up the trailer. By the end of the afternoon, I had made several trips and forced the return of my blisters.

Termite offered to help, so every afternoon when he got off work at the marina, he'd scream across the lake, beach his Jet Ski, and pitch in. The first day he showed up, he handed me several magazines. He shook his head and looked away. "I won't be needing these no more. I seen enough."

Most nights he'd work until midnight. He was tireless, and Charlie taught him, much as he'd taught me, how to turn and craft wood into something that, when finished, exceeded the sum of its parts.

While Charlie and Termite worked to rebuild the workshop and frame a new boathouse, I worked at cleaning up the mess. It took me the better part of a month. Finally, I hired a bulldozer and pushed what remained into a large pile. I got a burn permit, alerted the fire department (who sent a truck just in case), and then Termite lit the pile with a flick from his Zippo.

The fire burned for three days. The only particle of my past that remained was the shirt on my back and what hung around my neck.

We never found the Hacker. We found the engine and part of the steering column at the bottom of the lake beneath where the dock once stood, but the hull, cutwater, and most everything else disappeared into the whirlwind. The same went for most of our tools. We found power cords, a few screwdrivers, and whatever had been stored in the red toolbox, but on the whole, $15,000 worth of machinery had disappeared into the wind.

Oddly enough, the two-man shell that I had restored for Emma and in which she and then Charlie and I had spent many an hour, came to rest in the arms of a dogwood up the hill. Termite helped me pull her down. I patched up a hole in her hull, sanded her, applied several coats of spar varnish, and set her up to dry.

Charlie's house fared pretty well. It had been built into the side of the hill, and the tornado bounced over his house and lauded squarely on mine. He got hurt when he ran out the door to scream for us, only to be thrown back inside by the wind.

Since the day that Annie's heart died, I'd slept in a sleeping bag in the "cave" at the back of the woodshop. Most nights, when I turned out the lantern that lit my small world, Georgia appeared out of the night air, checked my nose, and then disappeared back to Charlie's side. I've heard that submarines deep in the ocean will send sound beacons to search each other out. Between Charlie and me, Georgia is that ping.

The purse stitch I had sewn into Annie's heart created quite a buzz in the medical world. Royer's phone had been ringing off the hook, but I asked him not to give out my number. He said, "It's time you get back on the horse that threw you."

IT WAS FRIDAY. I ROLLED OUT OF MY SLEEPING BAG AND WALKED out of my hole. The morning sun broke the skyline and sent the Sunkist screaming across the atmosphere. Standing on the bulkhead, watching the bream and bass dart below me, I watched my shadow stretch out across the water in front of me.

I jumped into the cold lake, washed off, and was standing in my birthday suit toweling dry when Sal walked down the steps and emptied his pipe. I pulled on my clothes and met him at the bulkhead.

He didn't look at me, but studied the lake, methodically packing his pipe. He lit it and puffed thoughtfully. Exhaling, he spoke. "Now that your secret's out, I've got something I want to say to you."

I raised my eyebrows and waited.

"I've been the only doctor around here for ... well, a long time. Probably too long." He looked at me. "It's time to pass the baton. But-" He nodded sternly and pointed the tip of his pipe at me. "I'm passing it to somebody who can run with it. Someone who understands new medicine, and who can offer it to these folks."

He painted the perimeter of the lake with his wafting pipe. "I'm talking about the high-tech stuff that only exists in places like Atlanta, Nashville, and New York." He paused. "I'll pay you the same thing I'm making. Sixty thousand. Royer says that's about a tenth of what you were making in Atlanta, but that's tough. I've never made more than sixty and besides, people around here don't have too much money. And as best I can figure, you ain't in it for the money."

He turned and began walking up the steps, scanning the lake again. Then he looked at me. "Folks around here need a good doctor, and you, boy, are a doctor. One of the best I ever seen.

"I'll wait to hear from you. Offer's open until you close it." He pulled his handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his eyes. "I saw what you did with Annie. I was standing in the corner of the room." He shook his head. "Don't let the doubt get you." He poked me in the chest. "It almost got me, but ... well, if you're going to be a doctor, and I mean be a doctor, you've got to deal with that now. 'Cause it's not going to get any easier." He paused long enough to catch his breath. "But that's the thing about doctoring. It's not about you. It's about them."

He took a long look across the lake, then eyed my neighbor's empty house next door and Charlie's cabin across the lake. "And them," he whispered, "is worth it."