Devine Intervention (20 page)

H
ERE'S THE THING
with squirrels: Sometimes when you're walking down the sidewalk minding your own business, one will run straight at you, and it freaks you out because for a second you think maybe it has rabies and is coming in for the kill, but then at the last moment it zips off in a crazy direction and you can breathe again.

There's a reason for that. Squirrels can see souls. But unlike dogs, they go out of their way to avoid them. Maybe it's because there's not that much separating squirrels from death. Maybe they think death is like tag and if a soul touches you,
bam!
You're it!

Here's another thing with squirrels: They are usually not very smart, which makes them way hard to catch. You can't chase them and think, “Okay, what's that little dude going to do next?” because that would mean they are using their brains to figure out which way they're going to skitter. Whatever part they're using, it's not brains. But
there's maybe some stomach involved, because when I showed the first squirrel I saw the sack of nuts, he stopped panicking and started creeping toward me with his tail fluffed out like a toilet brush.

“Come on, little dude. Come and get the nut. Nut, nut, nut.”

I said this and made these smacky little kissing noises and prayed no one would see me enacting my piece-of-Chevy plan, which was to lure him to me using the nuts as bait. Then I'd use the squirrel as bait for Jiminy's soul, do the switcheroo with him and Heidi, then shoop her right quick to Gabe and Xavier and straighten everything out.

Hopefully the squirrel wouldn't be too mad when he figured out they were celestial nuts, because I don't think those are edible for the living.

Once I had the squirrel's attention, I zeroed in on the soul map, which worked a little bit like the Terminator's evil robot eyeball, giving me an extra layer of information on top of everything else I was seeing. Jiminy was nearby, even if I couldn't quite make him out through the rain. Heidi's soul wasn't visible, but I couldn't worry about that. One thing at a time.

I walked backward down the sidewalk in the direction of Jiminy, saying, “Nut, nut, nut.” The squirrel followed, stopping every so often to sniff the wind and flick the rain off his whiskers. At that point, it was really coming down. We were in a rhythm with the nuts and whiskers thing, so I checked the map again. Jiminy was so close, it felt like someone was tapping a finger in my head.

Before long, I spotted him in real life. As soon as that
happened, the map started dinging too. That was the good news. The bad news was that Jiminy'd seen us first. He bore down on the squirrel like someone had shot him out of a cannon. Or maybe a .177-caliber Beeman rifle, which kind of would've served me right. I was so surprised I jumped backward through a tree and lost sight of the squirrel for a second — enough time for his little pea brain to forget about the nuts I was offering.

By the time I saw the squirrel again, he was smoothing his whiskers, and Jiminy was coming in for the kill. That's when the squirrel noticed he was under attack. He did this little sideways sort of hop into the street, which wouldn't have been all that bad except for he chose to hit the pavement the very moment a car was zooming by, an old diesel Mercedes.

Brakes squealed. Rubber burned. It was the sound and smell of Hell, and I wanted to close my eyes but knew I had to stay in the game and make sure the little dude didn't get turned into a fuzzy hood ornament. I stuffed the nut sack in my pocket, took a flying leap, and used every bit of screaming emotion I felt to scoot him onto the bumper. Then I prayed to the Creator that he'd hold on as the car plowed through me.

As my soul was run through with two thousand pounds of swerving metal, the map in my head started flashing and dinging like the slots at the reservation casino. Heidi. She was near. Not only near but also inside the car, and I couldn't do a darned thing about it. After the car drove through me, I got so dizzy I took a header on the pavement. The car stopped, but only for a second. It picked up
speed, kicking up clouds of misty rain that fuzzed the edges of the road.

Jiminy zipped up to where I was lying on my back. He gave me a quick sniff and took off after the Benz. I rolled onto my stomach. Rain splattered through my soul like someone had dumped a bucket of it on me, and I wished I still had my field jacket. It wouldn't have kept me dry, but somehow, I would've felt better wearing it as I lay there in the middle of the road watching the car's taillights disappear into a red smear. The soul map faded back to almost nothingness.

I was about two seconds from giving up when I realized something important about all that nothingness. The road. It was empty. There wasn't any squirrel on it. No carcass, no ripped-up tufts of fur. And right that second, I got a little dose of something I hadn't tasted in so long, I'd almost forgotten what it was.

Hope.

Maybe I'd been lucky. Maybe he'd been lucky, and he'd stuck himself to that bumper like he was corn and it was teeth. There was only one way for me to find out if he'd made it. I picked myself up and started running down the road after all of them.

In the distance was a big white building full of lit-up windows looking down on me like eyes. When I was close enough, I figured out what it was. The hospital. That's where Heidi was going. I knew it as sure as shorts, as sure as I knew the truth about me and my pop and everything that had happened in my life. What's more, I could beat them there if I shooped.

Seven minutes to go.

“D
ID WE HIT
it?” Megan asked. “I don't see a body, but the windows are pretty fogged up so it's hard to tell.”

“Oh, one can tell when one has hit something with one's car,” Mrs. Thorpe said. “Or so I've been told. No doubt that squirrel scampered right back onto the sidewalk where he belongs.”

She glided into the hospital parking lot, pulling to a stop by the emergency entrance.

“Is that close enough for you two?”

“It's fine,” Heidi said. She stole a glance at the dashboard clock. Seven minutes. “Megan, help me out of the car. And hurry.”

Maybe there was such a thing as being fashionably late when it came to terminating life support, but Heidi doubted it. She'd read about organ donation and had come
away with the distinct impression that doctors liked to be prompt about these things.

She tried not to dwell on that, or the pain in her body as Megan carried her through the rain toward the hospital. She wondered which of the windows overhead was hers. Most glowed with light — so many sick and dying people in there.

A thought struck. Maybe they could call. Ask for a stay of execution. “Did you bring your cell phone?”

“No,” Megan said. “Why would I be making phone calls when you were dying? Sheesh.”

They stood in front of the double glass doors.

“Oh no,” Megan said. “The sign. It says no pets.” It also had a picture of the international NO symbol stamped over silhouettes of a cat, a dog, a baby chick, and a coiled snake. Heidi was about to curse her impossibly bad luck when she remembered something.

“You're wearing the shirt,” she said. “The one with the stripes.”

It took Megan less than a second to understand her point. “And the contractions are coming every two minutes. The baby's not quite crowning, but —”

“Megan. Enough detail. Be careful. I'm still injured.”

Megan unbuttoned her hairy coat and arranged Heidi under her shirt, holding the dog's body in place with both hands.

“Coming through!” she said. “Pregnant teen coming through!”

She waddled up to the information desk, even using a Southern accent for the performance: “Now don't you
worry your pretty little head, sugar,” she said. “I'm not due for another, oh, twelve hours or so. But you can be darned tootin' I'll holler if my water breaks.”

The nurse didn't buy it. She didn't even rent it for a second. “Do you have an animal underneath your shirt? I saw you through the window, holding a dog.”

“No,” Megan answered, the Southern accent disappearing. “That was someone else.”

“Megan,” Heidi hissed. “Run!”

She ran. The receptionist paged security in a voice loud enough to make the hospital intercom system erupt in static. Behind them thudded the heavy footsteps of the security guy. Every bounce was agony.

“Heidi,” Megan panted. “I'm running, just like you asked. But it would probably be better if we were actually running somewhere specific.”

“Stop!” a man's voice yelled.

“Should I stop?” Megan said. “Are we going to get arrested? I don't want to get arrested.”

“Don't stop. Lift up your shirt instead.”

“I don't think that's going to work. The good part of me is up front and if I turn around —”

“It's not that. I think I caught the scent of my family. They're on the fourth floor. The fourth floor!”

“The fourth floor?” Megan repeated. “Are you sure?”

Heidi hoped her mind wasn't playing tricks. But it was true. Over the stronger scents of Megan's bath gel and perspiration, she picked up the sharp smell of Rory's cinnamon gum. She smelled her mother's lotion and her father's dandruff shampoo. And she smelled something
else — despair. She also caught sight of a clock. Three and a half minutes left.

“Should we take the elevator?” Megan said.

“Stairs. That jerkbox might catch us before the doors even open.”

Megan dashed to the stairs. Heidi peered around her and caught sight of the security guard, who'd opted for the elevator. He jabbed the button repeatedly and glared at Megan. He held four fingers up and nodded slowly. He'd heard their exchange. The only thing they could do was get there faster.

Heidi whipped her face back around, and Megan pressed through the door and ran, her sneakers ringing against the metal stair treads. Unit names were printed on the walls of the floors they were passing: S
URGERY
, X-
RAY
L
ABS
, C
HILDBIRTH
C
ENTER
, and finally, I
NTENSIVE CARE
.

Megan set Heidi gently on the ground. “Sorry,” she panted. “I can't open the door and hold you at the same time.” She scratched Heidi behind the ears and leaned in to give her a kiss on the forehead. “Are you going to be okay? You don't look so good.”

“Just hurry and open the door.”

Megan pushed. She grunted and pushed harder. “It's locked! I can't open it.”

“They never lock hospital doors. It's impossible.”

The last of Heidi's hope drained away. Surely her time was up. She wondered what her soul would feel like once the body it belonged to was gone, and resolved to face the moment with her eyes open, absorbing every last detail as
if she could bring the world around her inside her soul. She took in the scuffed, white walls of the stairwell and found the beauty in their imperfection. She smelled soap and sweat on Megan's skin and it filled her heart. The sound of Megan beating the door rocked her ears like thunder. She was no longer at the edges of things. She was at their very center. And then, as quickly as it started, it stopped.

“Oh, it's a pull door,” Megan said. “Sometimes I can be such a silly.”

Megan whipped it open. There, in front of them, stood the security guard.

“I'm going to have to ask you and your dog to come with me,” he said. He slid his flashlight out of his holster and tapped it against the meat of his hand as if to show he wasn't afraid to brain a girl and her terrier in the name of hospital security.

Heidi trembled beside Megan and spoke. “We surrender.”

Megan looked down at her as if she'd gone bonkers. She pulled off her jacket and threw it at the guard, who dropped his flashlight and pawed at his covered face. Megan lifted Heidi across her chest and ran.

“Which way?”

Heidi sniffed. A riot of scents — flowers, sickness, Tic Tacs, tears. She pushed aside a split-second bout of despair. She could do this. She took one last whiff and panted, “Cinnamon gum. To the left. Halfway down the hall.”

Megan's shoes squeaked as she turned. Heidi hoped she was right. Even more, she hoped she'd have just a
minute left to see her family and her body before she disappeared.

They ran.

“Stop!” The guard was after them again.

They reached the door. Megan held Heidi to the window and she saw her mom. Her dad. Rory. They'd gathered around the bed that held her, and while it was a terrible thing to see herself pale and still, with an octopus of tubes curving out of her nose and mouth, she felt something more powerful than fear. In her separation from her body — her gross, giant, hesitant body that was a laughingstock on at least two continents — it had turned into something different in her mind.

Something, she realized with a pang, that she loved.