The Meridians (3 page)

"Honey? Honey?" said Robbie, then leapt to her side and grabbed her as Lynette pitched forward violently.

I'm having a heart attack, she thought. Not even thirty years old and I'm having a heart attack!

Then everything went dark for a minute or for an hour, and suddenly she was on the floor of her kitchen, and her feet and hands were tapping a rapid tattoo against her kitchen floor and her husband was breathing into her mouth and pounding his big hands against her chest as he performed CPR on her.

Am I not breathing? she thought.

Then all was black again, and again she could not tell how much time had passed, but when she woke she was in an ambulance, with Robbie holding tightly to her hand as a paramedic hurriedly did things that she didn't understand.

"What's going on?" she heard Robbie say, and her heart nearly broke at the anguish in his voice. Don't worry, she wanted to say to him, but when she tried all that happened was that she managed to exhale a single shallow breath before the paramedic injected her with something and again she lapsed into unconsciousness.

When she woke the next time she was shivering horrifically, her entire body spasming as though she were hypothermic, though she did not feel cold. She was aware she had a terrible taste in her mouth, though she was unaware of where she was. She groaned, and felt warmth pass between her shaking legs. She grew lightheaded at the same time and knew she was bleeding; knew she was bleeding to death, in fact.

A voice said, "She's gone hemorrhagic, get me a transfusion kit,
now
," and she had the sensation of all sorts of people around her, then all went dark again.

When she woke again, Robbie was there. He was white-faced and wild-eyed, products of the panic she could read in his face, but he was
there
, thank heaven he was there.

"Hey, hon," he whispered.

"Hey," she whispered back. Or tried to. There was something wrong with her voice. "The baby," she whispered, because she could see that there were bags of blood hanging above her, knew that everything was going wrong, knew that the baby was coming early.

"They're going to help it come soon," said Robbie, his voice choking with emotion as he said it. "Right now, in fact."

"What..." she began the question, but couldn't finish it.

"They said you have something called an amniotic fluid embolism. Some of the baby's cells got into your system, and well, your body didn't like that too much."

"Understatement," she whispered, and Robbie laughed.

The laugh turned into a sob a moment later, though, and she realized that Robbie, gentle, strong Robbie, was crying. "Please, Lord," Robbie said, his head in his hands, with her tiny, frail hand clutched between his strong ones. "Please, save my wife, save my baby."

Then once again Lynette felt as though there was a sudden increase of movement around her.

"What's going on?" said Robbie, and she wanted to reach out and comfort him, take away the pain and fear in his voice. But she couldn't move, couldn't even see much beyond the bright light that hung above her head.

I'm in a hospital, she realized. I'm in an operating room.

Then another part of her wondered if they were going to "help the baby come," as Robbie had put it, because the poor child was already dead. But no, Robbie would not have prayed for God to save the baby if there was nothing to save. Besides, she could hear someone - a doctor or a nurse, no doubt - talking to Robbie.

"Mr. Randall, you have to go now -" began the person.

"No!" shouted Robbie. "I'm not leaving her."

Then there were sounds of a scuffle, and Robbie shouted for Lynette.

Then all was dark again.

She was floating, floating. Floating in a cool place where everything was safe. She was floating in Robbie's arms. She was floating in her mother's arms, on one of the few days when her mother wasn't drunk or abusive. She was floating with her baby in her arms. She looked down and could see the baby, and he was beautiful, which surprised her. Oh, not that he was beautiful - how could he be anything
but
beautiful, with Robbie for a father? But that it was a
he
. Both she and Robbie had decided they would rather be surprised by the baby's sex, so had decided against finding out.

A boy, she thought, in the everywhere of her mind, the everyplace of her dream. A boy. His name should be Kevin, after Robbie's own daddy. Kevin Angel Randall. Because he
was
an angel. She was sure of it.

She looked in her arms, and looked at the baby there, and little Kevin smiled. He didn't look at her, which she thought was odd, but he smiled as though he could see something bright and marvelous just over her shoulder.

Then he reached out and she saw something in his palm. Impossibly, the newborn was
holding
something. And it was vaguely familiar, though she could not place it at this particular instant. It was small and dull: a dark, matted gray and misshapen object that seemed to suck light into it as she looked.

The baby looked past her still, but spoke then. It spoke, and the words it spoke were almost as strange as the object in his tiny palm. "Keep it," said the small voice. "Keep it, it's important."

Then the child closed its eyes, and disappeared from her arms, but Lynette wasn't frightened. She felt cared for, as though she were nestled in the palm of the hand of God Himself, safe and secure.

Then there was a tugging feeling, a pull at her arm, and something said, "Lynny?" and there was a bright light that raided her eyes and left them aching and sore.

"What? What?" was all she could manage.

"Thank God," came the voice. Robbie's voice, she realized. "Thank God, thank you, thank you, God."

"Robbie?" she said, blinking her eyes.

"Yeah, Lynny. I'm here."

"What happened?"

"You got sick. You had a sort of allergic reaction to the baby."

"The baby?" Lynette managed to raise herself up on one arm before falling limply back into the hospital gurney she found herself laying on. Not the same one she had been on in the ambulance, nor was it the one she had been on while in the operating room. This was a roomier version, wider and with manila plastic guardrails that had a variety of controls for raising and lowering the bed, and for controlling the television that no doubt hunched in some corner of the room like a sort of boxy night watchman.

"Shhh," sighed Robbie, pushing her deeper back into the bed. His touch was gentle, as gentle as she had ever felt it, as though he were afraid that she had suddenly transmuted from flesh to something more debilitated or effete. She was no longer human, she was a butterfly wing in woman's shape, and the merest breeze might blow her away.

"Shhh," said Robbie again. "The baby is...." His voice drifted off.

Again Lynette felt herself try to sit up. "What's wrong?" she demanded, her voice surprisingly strong. A cramp bit at her belly as she did so, and she felt a sudden strange slackness there and realized that she must have had a caesarean section. "Where's my little boy?" she said.

"He's in the neonatal intensive care unit," said Robbie.

"The NICU?" asked Lynette, feeling as though she had been punched in the stomach. Robbie nodded. "What's he doing there?"

Robbie inhaled deeply, as though trying to figure out where to start with the answer to his wife's query. "He was born too soon, first of all," he said. "Second of all -" and then he broke off and looked at her intently. "How did you know that the baby was a boy?"

Lynette flashed to the strange dream she had had what seemed only a few moments before: the beautiful boy with the lovely eyes that would not look at her, the strange object in his little hand. "I don't know," she answered honestly. "I just do."

Robbie looked at her as though he were contemplating ringing for a nurse to bring a sedative, but then continued, "...and not only was he born prematurely, but he was severely anemic."

Anemia? thought Lynette. Out loud, she said, "That doesn't sound so bad. I had a friend who was anemic, she just ate a lot of spinach."

Robbie grinned, but she could see that his heart wasn't in it. He was still trying to be strong for her, bless him. But she didn't want him to be strong right now. She wanted him to tell her what was wrong with their baby, with little Kevin Angel. "It's a bit worse than that," he said. "I didn't understand everything the doctor told me, but I gathered he was severely anemic. They had to take him to the NICU and give him an emergency transfusion."

"Transfusion?" said Lynette. She didn't even know they
did
that for babies.

Robbie nodded. "Lucky kid, though, he had the same blood type as you."

"How was that lucky?" asked Lynette. She was AB negative, a blood type that only about one in one hundred seventy people had, so she knew that often hospitals didn't even
have
the necessary supplies for transfusions of that blood type and had to settle for using O negative, the universal transfusion blood type. And she couldn't imagine that receiving a second-string blood type would be very good for a preemie.

"Because they had several AB negative donors just a few days ago. So you
and
the kid are getting the very best blood for your bodies." Robbie smiled a little more sincerely, then chuckled. "That was probably the most macabre sentence I've ever spoken," he said.

Lynette started to chuckle as well, then realized anew that her baby was in the NICU, the place for babies who were by definition in some kind of critical condition, and sobered.

She sobered still further when the door opened and a dour-faced doctor came into the room, followed by a nurse and....

"What's going on?" said Robbie.

"Mr. Randall?" asked one of the police officers who had followed the doctor and nurse into the room. "Could you please come with us for a bit?"

"What's going on?" This time it was Lynette asking the question, but neither the doctor, the nurse, nor the policemen seemed very intent on answering. Instead, they took out
handcuffs
, and placed them on Robbie's thick wrists before leading him out of the room.

"What's happening?" Lynette demanded.

"Please relax, Mrs. Randall," said the doctor. "My name is Doctor Cody, and I need to examine you."

"Examine me for what?" she asked.

Doctor Cody paused, as though unsure how to say what came next. "For the record, I can't conceive of your husband doing what we're worried he might have done. I have never seen a man more beside himself about his wife than your husband was about you. But also for the record, I don't know how we could have possibly found what we found without...." His voice drifted off.

"Without what?" she asked, putting as much venom into it as possible. It weakened her terribly, but she had just seen her husband taken away in
handcuffs
, for goodness sake. "What are you looking for?"

"We're," said Cody, and gulped before continuing. "We have to examine you, Mrs. Randall."

"
What are you looking for
? Tell me!" she entreated, falling back once again to her bed, hot tears coming to her eyes.

Doctor Cody shared a glance with the nurse, who shrugged. Then he finally looked back at Lynette and said, "Bullet wounds, Mrs. Randall. We're looking to see if you've been shot."

***

4.

***

It was only a moment.

Only a moment, but it seemed like forever: that instant between the death of his family and his own first brush with death. In spite of working in the LAPD for the better part of a decade, and working with Homicide for a good portion of that, Scott Cowley had never before drawn his gun. And now here he was with gun in hand, holding it even as he held onto his family's bodies.

That was what saved his life.

After that first instant, that first instant where he felt the loss of Amy and Chad as keenly as though he had been suffering their loss for years instead of only nanoseconds, he heard a noise.

It was a scuff. The sibilant scrape of a shoe on pavement, the sound of someone trying desperately to remain silent in an alley that was littered with trash and detritus and blood and bodies.

And Scott
knew
. He knew in that instant who was behind him. He knew what had happened, and what was going to happen if he didn't make the next move.

They were executed
.

The thought tore through him like a lightning bolt, like a flash fire through dry brush. But he knew that it was more than a random firing of grief-stricken neurons. Either through cop sense or instinct or some other, deeper understanding of the universe that he had no name for, Scott knew that his family had not just been killed, they had been murdered to send a message.