Page 138 of After Anna

“Peach, get a flashlight. I need to see.” Noah leaned closer to the injured man, patting his face. “Buddy, stay with me.”

“Doc, sew him up! You got the stuff, right?”

“Peach, a flashlight. Hurry.” Noah raced to unbutton the injured man’s shirt, and a stream of blood geysered into the air.

“Doc, he’s bleedin’ like crazy!” The inmate recoiled. “You gotta sew him up!”

Noah grabbed a towel off the rack, balled it up, and pressed it down on the injured man’s chest. He had to stanch the bloodflow so he could examine the wound. He could feel the warm blood pulsing into the towel under his palms, coming at regular intervals. The knife must have severed an artery.

“Here’s light!” Peach aimed a cone of jittery brightness on the man’s heaving chest.

“Stay with me, buddy.” Noah moved the towel to look at the injured man’s chest. It was a gruesome sight. One four-inch gash near the heart, severing the aortic artery. Two cuts puncturing the left lobe of the lung, bubbling air and blood. Noah replaced the towel and pressed down to stop the loss of blood.

“Doc, what are you waiting for! Sew him up!”

“I can’t. I can’t move the towel. He needs surgery.”

“So do it!”

“It doesn’t work that way—” Noah started to say, but the inmate shoved him in fury. He fell backwards, scrambling to keep his balance. The soaked towel came off the injured man’s chest. Noah lunged forward, grabbed it, and pressed it back down.

“Doc, sew him!”

The injured man stopped breathing. His eyes traveled heavenward, then stopped there, fixed.

Noah started chest compressions on top of the towel. “We have to call somebody.”

“Sew him, come on!”

“Listen, you can’t just sew the skin. He’ll bleed out internally.There’s not enough blood to keep the heart pumping. That’s why it stopped.” Noah kept compressing the chest. He didn’t feel the arterial pulse anymore.

“Doc, sew him up!” The inmate thrust the needle at Noah.

“It’s not going to do any good.” Noah’s hands were slick with blood. He couldn’t have threaded the needle with dental floss if he tried. “If you don’t call the CO, he’s dead. Call or I will.”

“Doc, if you call the CO,you’redead.”

Noah felt for the injured man’s pulse as he pumped. It was gone. The man was dead. Noah hadn’t been able to save his life. He hadn’t been able to save Anna either. But he kept pumping, not knowing whom he was trying to save. Himself.

“Guard!” Noah hollered, but it was too late.

For both of them.

Chapter Sixty-eight

Maggie, After

Maggie steered the rental Honda through the snow-covered streets of Congreve, down the main drag that she remembered from last April. It had been chilly then, but it was freezing now, 4° at 6:23P.M., according to the red digital numbers on the bank sign. It was already dark, and snowflakes gusted in the frigid wind. There was little traffic except for plows and salt trucks, and the sidewalks were deserted except for one or two hardy souls. The shops and restaurants were closing, their lights going off in their storefronts.

Maggie drove carefully in the storm, which had gummed up everything at the airport. Flights were delayed or canceled with Thanksgiving only days away. Luckily, the holiday left vacancies at the Congreve Inn, and she had booked two rooms, though they were going directly to the school. Caleb slept in the backseat, tired from the excitement of the plane ride.

“Do you believe this weather?” Kathy asked, marveling. “Mainers are better than we are.”

“What do you mean?” Maggie looked over with a smile.

“They’re stronger. They’re tougher. I couldn’t live here. I’d die of laziness.”

Maggie chuckled, driving along, and the windshield wipers flapped madly, struggling to keep the flakes at bay. They passed bundled-upresidents operating snowblowers, clearing their sidewalks and driveways before too much snow accumulated.