Page 27

CHAPTER 27

A WHITE OUT AND A HIDEAWAY

Nadira

T he moment I pull up to a closed clinic, the sky decides it no longer wants to cooperate with me. Fat snow flurries begin to fall. We’re still two hours out from Denver if road conditions remain clear. During snowfall, that two hours easily doubles. Without knowing the extent of Julian’s injury, I’m not willing to risk his life.

I break into the closed building and search for the supplies I need. There’s no time to cover my tracks. The town we’re in may be small, but I’m sure a guard and possibly the police will come by soon to check on the breached security system. I need to be gone long before they arrive.

Faced with a room full of supplies, I call the one person I trust to keep this secret. “Moni, I have a hypothetical situation that requires a proper solution. Gunshot wound to the abdomen, no access to X-ray machines or anesthesia or hospitals, how do I get it out and not kill the person in the process?”

“Girl, it is Christmas Eve. How you going to?—”

“Moni! I don’t have time to explain. Please, what do I need?” My voice breaks. It’s the first time I’ve ever shown strong emotion before, and it works to get Moni talking.

I fill a bag with everything she lists and a little more for safe measure, hoping it will suffice given my limitations.

“Thanks, Moni.”

“Will you tell me what this is for?”

“Probably not. Just know that if all goes well, I’ll owe you for the rest of my life.” I rush to leave the building and get Julian to safety.

Outside, the ground already has an inch of snow and visibility is fading fast. At this rate, our chances on the road are as bad as returning to Douglas and meeting up with my assailants.

“We need to get off the road.” Julian hands me his phone. On the screen is a map of the area showing the rooftops of homes surrounded by trees. “There are some homes about ten miles out. Maybe we’ll find an empty one.”

Occupied or not, I’m stopping at the first house without smoke rising from their chimneys. I randomly choose a house and enter it into the GPS. It takes more than half an hour to traverse the road because of the snow falling fast and heavy, and the GPS stalling from connectivity issues.

Julian is paler than when I stopped at the clinic. He wrapped the wound with strips from his shirt, but he bleeds through the makeshift bandage. I barely resist the urge to speed toward safety to treat him. The thoughts running through my mind center on one thing: I don’t want to lose Julian.

I blink back the panicked tears that could blind me and try to remember how to be the rational, cool-headed person in a crisis. After all, emotional driving will do us no good if we skid off this mountain and die. I’m so busy keeping the car on the road I almost miss the turnoff for the house I recall seeing on Julian’s phone before the signal acted up.

The trees thicken the deeper we go, confirming I guessed correctly. The dense forestry hides the house I’m seeking. Only an aerial view like the one on Julian’s phone will give away its location.

I utter a prayer under my breath that the house is empty and I won’t have to take any hostages. I may kill for a living, but I don’t do so indiscriminately. I pull up to a dark house.

“Stay here until I check things out.” I glance at Julian who is barely conscious.

I have to do this fast because he isn’t able to defend himself. Leaper takes up watch in his lap as if she can protect him from a larger predator. If I had time, I would joke about the picture they make, but I don’t. When I step out of the vehicle, I drop into half a foot of snow.

Urgency drives me as I break into the house. If the weather continues unabated, we won’t have a choice but to stay here. The silence inside gives me reason to hope. As I go from room to room, I confirm the place is empty. Next, I check the kitchen. The place is fully stocked, which means the owners, a couple I guess to be in their mid-fifties based on the pictures around the house, expect to return. Given sane people won’t be on the road right now, I have to bank on them being stranded away from home, the same way Julian and I are.

This risk I must take. I return to the car where another inch has accumulated since our arrival. After getting Julian situated on a sofa inside the den, I collect the things from the clinic. Leaper jumps out and disappears under the snow. Her forlorn calls prompt me to dig her out and juggle her with the mountain of other things in my hands as I go back into the house.

She leaps out of my arms, and I drop the supplies to check on Julian. His skin is clammy but his forehead feels warm. Given the heat in the house only suffices to keep the pipes from freezing, my concern escalates. I run around, increasing the heat, boiling water, rooting through the supplies I stole, and a myriad of other tasks I need to complete before I can see to Julian’s wound.

When I finally have everything set out, I inject him with morphine to dull the pain I’m about to inflict on him. I unwrap the bandage saturated in Julian’s blood and expose the entrance wound in his abdomen where the bullet hit him. Although he told me the ammunition is inside him, I roll him over to check for an exit, praying he’s wrong. No one in heaven is listening to my plea because there is no exit wound.

“Julian, you know how you like to grant me whatever desires I have? Well, right now, I need you to not wake up,” I say, hoping he can hear me in his unconscious state. I don gloves and clean the area, slicing through the hole to make it larger and easier to search for the bullet.

He groans as I feel for where the slug lodged during his earlier fight, but he doesn’t regain consciousness. When my finger brushes against a hard metallic material after feeling soft tissue, I grab a pair of forceps with my free hand and remove the round. Blood spurts out of the affected area and I work to stem the bleeding. When it slows, I do my best to close and bandage the wound, praying I haven’t done more damage in removing the projectile.

I rummage through the medicine until I find antibiotics and give him the dose Moni suggested. Then I transfer him to a bedroom where he’ll be more comfortable. During the long hours that follow, I watch him, change his bandages, and wipe him clean. Anything that allows me to touch him and feel that he’s still breathing, still alive, and still has a fighting chance, that my actions haven’t killed him.

Leaper sits atop the headboard, peering down at him, drooling with concern. She’s as worried as I am, refusing to leave his side.

In the next twelve hours, his body begins to shiver, and sweat dots his brow.

“Julian, can you hear me?”

He opens feverish eyes, but there’s no recognition and no focus. His temperature is 103.

I hold crushed ice to his lips, but he shies away, crying, “Yolanda, why won’t you come back to me? Why? I need you.”

“I’m here,” I say, but if he sees me at all, he doesn’t recognize me.

He’s lost either in a fevered dream or through the pain meds. Although we’ve spoken about how my disappearance affected him, his voice is full of fresh pain, as if he’s reliving a low point. His hurt is so visceral, it feels like he’s yanking on my insides and ripping out my heart and guts in one go.

The night continues like this. While the snow outside piles up, I split my time between caring for Julian and making sure we won’t be trapped inside when the snow stops. Already, I’ve cleared a path to and around the car three times. Each time feels shorter than the last. This time, like the last, I step out and into another three inches of snow and plow the area.

Each time I re-enter the home, I’m soaked and my muscles scream in protest. But I can’t rest. I check on Julian, make sure he’s hydrated, and wipe him down to keep his fever under control.

Inside the master bedroom, Julian vacillates between the present and the past. Sometimes he recognizes me, most times he doesn’t, but he always cries out for some version of me. At one point, he brushes his hand against my face, causing me to think he’s lucid.

“Nadira, my queen, how long must I wait?”

“Wait for what? What do you need? I’ll give you anything.” I grab his hand between my two and kiss his knuckles.

He lapses into silence then closes his eyes, leaving me in a state of suspended confusion.

The lights flicker in and out until we lose all power. With my breath streaming in the cold air, I retrieve the firewood the owners have in a dry room and start a fire. Soon a humming from a generator comes on, turning the lights on again.

We go into the next day with Julian’s fever fluctuating and keeping me awake. I won’t rest easy until he does. Leaper has stopped eating, and I only stomach the sight of food long enough to heat the broth I found in the pantry and feed it to Julian.

The snow finally stops in the early morning hours. There’s no signal on the TV, radio, or phone to get news updates, but I doubt anyone is traveling. Between the snowdrift and natural snowfall, my guess is four feet of the cold white stuff is on the ground.

I go into the bedroom to check on Julian and find my body giving out. I slump in the chair beside him, unable to move a muscle.

“Nadira?”

“I’m here, Julian.”

A bitter laugh burst from him. “Julian, Julian, always Julian.” He shakes his head. “Never the name I want to hear from your lips.”

I manage to grab his hand and get closer. His eyes are glossy as he blindly stares through me.

“What name do you want me to call you?”

He twists his head and a frown appears on his brow as if he hears me. “There’s only one title I’ve lived to be worthy of. Is my devotion not enough? I worship my queen because the world doesn’t deserve her. All I’ve ever wanted is to stand by her side.”

“You do stand by my side. You’re the only one I want beside me. How can you not think you’re worthy enough?”

He sleepily blinks until his lids fully close, blocking me from seeing if my words penetrated.

Tonight, Julian twists violently. I fear he’ll reopen his wound and worsen his fever. I lie atop him, making sure not to put pressure on his wounded side. The moment we connect, he settles and buries his face in my neck.

“Mr. Caddel…Mr. Zane… Mr. Flott… I don’t care what name as long as she calls me husband. Just call me husband…”

I barely hear him, but when the words register, a wave of guilt washes over me. I’ve accepted Julian’s presence in my life, his protection, and his love. I’ve taken so much, yet what have I given in return?

Yes, I told him I loved him, but have I shown him? He doesn’t know what seeing him this weak does to me. I’m hanging on by the last bit of fibers on a thin rope preventing me from falling into complete despair. Like Julian, I’ve lost loved ones. My parents, being the freshest loss I’ve relived. I can’t lose him, too.

I grab his face, but he’s asleep, no longer tossing and muttering. A broken sob escapes me as a tear falls from my lash to land on his cheek. “You are such a fool, you know that? How else do you explain why you don’t know you’ve come to mean more than my murky past and my uncertain present?” I swipe my runny nose. “For you, the name Julian isn’t as significant as the title of husband, but that’s because you don’t know what Julian means to me. Julian is the sun by which I tell time, the moon that heals, and the air that breathes life. You are Julian, no matter where you go or how many aliases you have. And I can’t believe you don’t know that Julian is tattooed on my heart. Even when I didn’t know you, you were there.”

Silence meets my confession, but I’ll tell him again when the time is right. I can’t stand to watch him in pain whether it’s physical or emotional. I’m even less equipped to handle his distress while knowing I’m the cause. But until we remove the danger his company poses to our happiness, I’m leery about confessing the depths of my feelings. I’m not a superstitious person, but the scenarios that play in my mind prove me wrong. I keep imagining his joy when I admit how deeply embedded in my heart he is, then one of us dies at the hands of his company. After everything they’ve taken from me, I won’t survive the pain of losing Julian, and he would be even worse off.

Another day goes by while Julian’s fever slowly ebbs. I take heart in his progress because he has more lucid moments. The antibiotics seem to be working, and the tight vise around my chest begins to loosen.

Outside, I continue to shovel snow bit by bit to clear the driveway, but it’s turned to mostly ice and takes a lot more out of me. Exhaustion drags at me, making every step, arm raise, and muscle movement more onerous than the last. I have yet to sleep more than twenty minutes at a time, too concerned Julian will begin tossing again and backslide.

Today is the fourth day we’ve been holed up. The generator is out. Thankfully, two hours later, the heating system kicks in again. I go to check on Julian, who is sitting upright in bed, and I rush to his side to take his temperature.

He grabs my hand before I can place the external monitor on his forehead. The beautiful golden brown of his irises is the clearest I’ve seen since we took refuge here.

“Julian?”

“What have you done to yourself?”

My hand immediately goes to the corn rows in my hair. I discarded my blonde wig days ago and haven’t thought about wrapping my hair once. I must look a mess. While I feel self-conscious for the first time in recent memory, Julian reaches out to caress the thin skin under my eye.

“When was the last time you slept?”

I brush his hand away. “You don’t get to ask me that when all it’ll take to blow you over is a stiff wind.” I blink away the tears of relief that make his image blurry.

“Now sit still while I take your temperature.”

He frowns at me as I touch his forehead. “I bet you haven’t eaten properly without me to look after you.”

The thermometer reads ninety-eight degrees. “Your temp is good, but don’t think that I’ll allow you to overexert yourself. I don’t want you getting another fever.”

“Nadira, do you realize you’ve been swaying this whole time? Lie beside me and rest.”

“I’m not swaying…” I blink, fluttering my eyes to keep him in focus, but he seems to get farther and farther away. “Maybe I’ll sit for a …”