Fury (33 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

                           
Finley

             
I sat at one of An’s outside tables with her. It had been thirteen hours, forty-three minutes, fifty-three… fifty-four… fifty-five seconds since I’d seen Ethan last. Detective Tran had been to and from Slánaigh with Father Connolly, trying to figure out where Ethan had gone to and how to bring him back. An’s father kept muttering in Vietnamese. She told me he kept repeating, “I knew he was wrong. I knew he was wrong.” We were all in a state of panic.

              But I was beside myself with worry. I’d physically fought An and Tran as they tried to keep me at Slánaigh once they’d told me what he’d done there in Hạ Long Bay, and what Tran thought he was going to do in Hanoi.
 

              “Will he die?” I asked An for the hundredth time that night.

              Phong came out with a cup of tea, set it front of me, and sat next to An. I didn’t touch the cup, too keyed up.

              “I don’t know, Finley,” she told me, not looking to sugarcoat anything, which I appreciated and hated.

              Tears gathered in my stinging eyes.

              “God, just send me some sort of signal,” I asked Him out loud. “I’m tormented.”

              A bus arriving from Hanoi came bustling down the narrow street. It’s normal route called for a stop right in front of An’s father’s tea shop. I stood when it made its regular stop and watched as the doors opened.

              I followed the steps up, expecting random patrons to come down, but instead was met with children huddled together. They looked burdened by something, their arms lifted at shoulder level.

              Phong noticed the oddity that was that bus and stood as well. “What in the world?” he asked no one.

              An followed suit and stood as well. “They’re
children
,” she observed, the tone of her voice leading from curiosity to bewilderment in one phrase.

              They were chattering in Vietnamese as they awkwardly descended from the bus and onto the sidewalk. There was a line of children five deep and maybe four or five wide packed together. They were struggling with something. A few more children piled off, running around the group as if they could try to help as the bus tore off.

              I took a closer look at them, studying them in the moonlight.

              “It’s a man,” I realized out loud. My heart jumped into my throat. “It’s a man,” I whispered, turning my chair over, and ran, knocking a few more out of my way, eager to get to the group.

              I rushed over to them and peered over their shoulders.

              There, on their laboring shoulders, laid Ethan Moonsong. Bleeding. Eyes gone to black.

              I screamed at the top of my lungs.

              “Jesus! Ethan! Ethan! Oh my God, Ethan!”

              I grabbed him from them and fell to the concrete walk. I laid him down as gently as I could, tears dripping down my face.

              I brushed back his hair and with shaking hands leaned over his body to check for a pulse. I found one, but it was faint, making me queasy. I leaned over his face to check if he was breathing. He was but, again, faintly.

              “Oh, Jesus! Ethan!” I cried. “An! Call Father! Get Dr. Nguyen! Phong! Come help me!”

An ran inside and Phong met me on the ground.

              “Do you have a knife? A-a-a pocketknife, maybe?”

              He handed me his pocketknife and I opened it. I tore Ethan’s shirt off his body, laying it at his sides and examining his torso. Large purple, hideous bruises tainted the skin there, making me cry out in agony.

              Carefully, but with trembling fingers, I slowly cut down his soaked-in-blood jeans, laying the fabric aside. His legs were so bloody I couldn’t find whatever wounds were doing the bleeding.

              “Phong,” I said, frantic, “I-I need, uh, water, lots of water and, uh, towels.”

He ran without hesitation to gather what I’d asked for.

              I moved up Ethan’s body, nearer to his face, his broken face, and soothed into his ear, “Come back to me, Ethan,” I said, laying my hands over his forehead, neck, and shoulders. I ran my skin over his again and again and again. “Please, my love. Please come back to me.”

Phong hovered over me in that moment, his eyes wide in terror.

“What?”

“Don’t worry about it now. Tend to Ethan,” he said, handing me the water and towels.

I ran the water over Ethan’s legs, using the towel to clean as much of it off as possible. I’d gotten it just clear enough to recognize bullet wounds. Seven total. One awfully close to the femoral artery.

              “Phong, apply pressure to the obvious wounds on that leg,” I told him and did the same for my side. “An! Bring me a few chairs!”

She did and we elevated his legs while I took the towels and tied them around his legs near each wound as pressure bandages. I did the same for the one near the femoral, but the towel filled too quickly with blood, making my own run cold. I shredded another towel into strips and twisted two until I had a tourniquet, wrapping it around his leg, and coiling it to keep the bleeding at bay.

              “Is Dr. Nguyen coming?” I asked An.

              “I’m here!” Dr. Nguyen answered for her.

She bent at his side and looked him over.

              “I have to take him to my office. He needs surgery,” she said.

              Detective Tran arrived in a compact car soon after, and I watched helplessly as they loaded him inside. I tried to jump into the front, but they insisted I follow them instead, which I didn’t understand at the time. It wasn’t until later I discovered they were trying to prevent me from getting killed just in case someone attacked their car.

              I stood on the curb, decimated, and unaware of what I was supposed to do. The tears came more freely then, wracking sobs spilled from my chest and lips.

              “Come with me,” An said, leading me to her bike.

She got on and I sat behind her, hugging my friend. We sped through the streets of Hạ Long Bay to Dr. Nguyen’s surgical office. My life seemed to speed past me as we rode along in vivid, striking memories—some horrifying and some extraordinary. The extraordinary painted the most beautiful images I’d ever seen, and they’d all involved Ethan in some way or another.

              Swimming at Hungry Horse with our class from school. Ethan there, always in the background, jumping from the cliffs, or swimming alongside us all. High school football games with Holly Raye on the bleachers with a blanket and a bucket of popcorn made all the more sweet by Ethan’s phenomenal abilities. Holly Raye and me at the eighth grade dance, brace-faced, and huddled in the corner commiserating over how lame eighth grade dances were, yet secretly dying of happiness inside. Wild, silly sleepovers with Holly Raye.
Daydreams
of sleepovers with Ethan Moonsong. Chemistry class with Ethan. Conversations with Ethan. Falling in “love” with Ethan. Falling out of “love” with Ethan. Befriending Ethan. Ethan saving me. Falling recklessly, deliriously, intensely in love with Ethan Moonsong.
Kissing
Ethan. Wanting Ethan. Owning Ethan.
Loving
Ethan.

              The tears clouded my eyes, so I closed them to rid myself of the pain, but it would not stop coming, would not stop hurting.

              When I thought I couldn’t take much more, we pulled up a sharp incline and made our way through the winding slope until we reached Dr. Nguyen’s office. I tore off the bike before An had really gotten a chance to slow down. I ran, abandoning my flip-flops as I did, and rushed into the building.

              Tran was there, sitting in a chair outside of the operating room.

              “Is he already in?” I asked.

              “He’s in. The nurses were already here, waiting.”

              I sank into a chair next to Tran, sitting right on the edge. My legs bounced with nervous energy.

              “Can’t sit,” I said, standing and pacing outside the operating room. I looked up when An entered.

              “Phong took the girls and the boys to Father and Sister,” An said, holding up her phone.

              “Where will they put them all?” I asked, thinking of Slánaigh’s already cramped quarters.

              “The girls are bunking with the others. The boys will be sleeping in the common room.”

              “Are they okay?” I asked.

              “They seem fine, brave.”

              “Did-did they say anything about what happened?”

              “I guess one of the older girls said Ethan just showed up on their floor and insisted to the three men watching over them that Khanh was looking for them. They didn’t question him, and when they entered the elevator, he… uh, well, he killed them.”

              “Oh my God,” I whispered, sitting down out of necessity instead of restlessness.

              “I guess he told them to stay where they were and that he would return to them later. He promised to protect them.”

              “I believe he did,” I said, unaware what it all really meant for Ethan.

              “Did she know what happened while he’d been gone?”

              An cleared her throat and looked at Tran. “Um, she said that he left for two to three hours and returned to them a bloody mess.” I gulped. “The girl said there were many guards there that night but that none ever took the elevator down to get them, not even to escape.”

My body shivered.

              “How many?” I whispered.

              “She thought at least fifty.”

I felt faint. Sick, really.

              Tran stood quickly and left the building. An and I listened for his car’s engine and when it turned over, we both jumped. We heard him back the car out of his space then pull forward before the sound disappeared. He’d left.

              I wanted to vomit. “What does that mean for Ethan?”

              “I think it means you and Ethan need to get the hell out of Vietnam, Finley. And you need to do it fast.”

              “How can I do that if he’s recovering from surgery?” I asked.

A loud shout came from the operating room, and my stomach dropped to my feet. Unable to help myself, I plastered my ear to the door. Clipped Vietnamese words were exchanged in rising octaves.

“What are they saying, An?”

She leaned in and stuck her ear to the door, facing me.

              Her brows furrowed in concentration for a few moments before they shot up in alarm.

              “What?” I spit out. “What?”

An swallowed.

              “An, I swear to God. I swear to God, An! What is going on!”

              “Sit down,” she said, gently prodding me.

I yanked my body back.

              “Tell me what’s going on, An.”

              “They-he had lost a lot of blood, Fin. I guess his blood pressure was dropping and they couldn’t get it back up.”

“You say he
had
. What do you mean he
had
?”

“Come sit down with me.”

“No. No, An. Don’t just sit there and tell me what I think you’re going to tell me, An. Don’t just sit there, An!” I screamed. Tears streamed down my face, gathered beneath my chin and neck.

An’s face had turned white as a sheet. “The nurses called time of death.”

              I fell to the ground, my backside landing with a hard thud. “
What?
” I asked in disbelief. “
What?
”

              “I’m so sorry, Finley,” she added quietly.

              “No! No!” I said, standing and pointing accusingly at her.

I slammed through the operating room door and took in the pools of blood beneath Ethan’s operating table. The nurses stood around, doing nothing, their arms tucked into their sides.