Chapter 9

When the phone rang, Will was deeply asleep.

He had no idea how many times the cell phone on the dresser had rung before he was awake enough to climb out of bed. The caller was insistent, calling back every time Will's phone routed the call to voicemail after three rings.

Will reached the dresser and stared at the cell phone with bleary eyes for a moment, fighting the feeling of dread that had suddenly settled deep down in his stomach. He glanced at the alarm clock on his bedside table.

Ten past five in the morning, he thought. Let it be a wrong number, so I can dress down the asshole that's making phone calls piss drunk at this hour.

Back in his bed, Claire stirred, raising her head from the pillow and looking at him with narrowed eyes. On the dresser, the cell phone went through its ring cycle again. He picked it up and pressed the "answer" button.

"Hello?"

"Will!" The voice on the other end of the line almost shouted with relief. "It's Christa."

The knot in his stomach twisted itself tighter at the sound of her voice, dissolved in tears.

"What's wrong? What happened?"

"You need to come to Knoxville," she said, and ended the sentence with a sob. "Your brother is dying."

He felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water down his back. All traces of sleep were washed away in an instant, and he let out a shaky breath. His head suddenly started swimming, and he grasped the edge of the dresser to steady himself, almost dropping the cell phone in the process.

"What happened?" he asked after a moment of silence.

"He was up late last night, and he went out to the convenience store. At one in the morning," she added. "Some kids were robbing the place, and he walked right into it." She sobbed again, and he felt tears welling up in the corners of his own eyes.

"One of them hit him in the head with a steel crowbar. They must have thought he was dead, because they just dragged him out of sight and left him there in front of the fridge." Christa started crying again. "They cleaned out the store, cigarettes and beer and all, and then locked it from the outside. Nobody noticed until some cop showed up for a coffee two hours later."

"Son of a bitch," Will muttered numbly. "Son of a bitch."

Claire was fully awake now, looking at him with concern, and he sat down on the floor in front of the dresser, propping himself up against it.

"He's in surgery right now, but they say I should call the family and tell them... tell them to come if anyone wants to see him before..."

"Where are you?" Will demanded, cutting her off, as if preventing her from saying it out loud could somehow negate the possibility of the event.

"St. Mary's Medical Center," she said. "Erica is here, too."

He opened a drawer, clamping the phone to his ear with his shoulder as he rifled through the contents.

"I'm coming down there," he said. "We're leaving right now. I'll charter a plane at Bangor or Hancock County. Don't do anything until I'm there." And tell that son of a bitch to hold on, he thought.

"Okay," Christa said simply. "Okay. Hurry up, Will."

"Have you called mom yet?"

"Yes. She's driving down to Boston right now to catch the morning flight at seven thirty."

"Don't go anywhere," Will said. "I'll be there in a few hours. Call me on the cell phone if you need to."

"Okay," Christa said. "Please hurry, Will," she repeated.

"I will."

He filled Claire in while they hurried to get dressed. He had taken Claire to his house in Ellsworth, and they had spent the last day driving around Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. It had been a lovely evening, but now he regretted the four glasses of wine he'd had during and after dinner.

There was nobody around at the local airfield, so Will tried some of the numbers for flight services at Bangor. Few of the places he called offered charter services, and none of them were prepared to do business on such short notice, but on his fifth call, he offered a large enough sum for the owner himself to offer his services.

"I have a Beech Baron that can make the trip in five hours, give or take," the owner said. "How many people? The plane can hold five plus pilot."

"Just two and a dog, no luggage," Will said. "How soon can you take off?"

"I need to fuel her up, check the weather, and file a flight plan. Give me about an hour, and we should be ready to go."

"We'll be there," Will promised.

The drive from Ellsworth to Bangor on Route 1A usually took a little under an hour. Thankfully, the road was mostly empty at five thirty in the morning, and Will made the drive in thirty-five minutes, breaking the speed limit by a considerable margin. Whether by providence or sheer dumb luck, there was no cop on the road looking to net early-morning speeders, and they made it all the way to the airport unmolested, rushing through a sleeping Bangor.

The charter company was located in a dark corner of the airport. There was a sleek twin-engine propeller plane sitting in front of the hangar, and a lanky gray-haired man in jeans and leather jacket was walking around it with a checklist.

"You're the fella who called, I reckon," the man said by way of greeting, and Will nodded before accepting the outstretched hand.

"Will Liebkind. This is Claire Connelly. I appreciate you taking our business so early in the morning."

"Well," the old guy chuckled. "To be honest, that's some mighty good money you're offering. I'd be a fool not to take it. These things are expensive to keep running." He patted the side of his plane lovingly. "Airline all out of tickets for today?"

"My brother's been in a mugging down in Knoxville," Will said. "Got a crowbar against the head. He's hanging on by a thread, and I really need to get there as soon as I can. No time to mess with Delta."

The smile dropped from the face of the pilot, and Will could tell that the old fellow was momentarily embarrassed. Then he pointed over his shoulder with a calloused thumb.

"Let's get going, then. I've filed for twenty thousand feet, and if I goose the old girl here, we can be there by ten or so."

The airplane was a six-seater, with the passenger compartment behind the pilot featuring two pairs of leather seats that faced each other. Will and Claire each claimed a seat, and the pilot sealed the side door before climbing into the pilot's seat. He spun up the engines, obtained taxi clearance, and rolled the plane out onto the taxiway. Will only paid cursory attention to the proceedings. The windows of the nearby terminal building reflected the strobe lights of the Beechcraft, and he could see the mirror image of the plane in them as they rolled by, the tires kicking up little puffs of snow.

Traffic at the airport was light. They were in the air in less than five minutes, and Will settled into his seat as the plane started its ascent into the dark clouds above Bangor.

The pilot was true to his word. They touched down in Knoxville five minutes before ten o'clock. Will settled business with the pilot, and they rushed to the rental counters. Will lost his temper with the rental agent who dragged her feet with the paperwork even after he had impressed the urgency of the situation to her. They finally rushed out of the rental lot, and Will raced the car up Alcoa Highway towards downtown.

After they had dropped Oliver off at home with a bowl of food and a rawhide bone, Claire called Christa on Will's phone to get terminal directions. They pulled into the parking garage of the medical center a bare thirty minutes after they had touched down. Just like in Bangor, they had made it without getting pulled over by police, despite Will pushing the rental Buick to triple digits and passing cars to the left and right.

The medical center was a collection of drab-looking brownstone towers, and the inside of the place didn't look any more cheerful than the outside. They rushed through the main building, Claire getting routing information from Christa via cell phone. After what seemed like a half hour of dashing through anonymous linoleum-lined corridors, they rounded a corner and stepped into a waiting room.

Will's heart sank when he saw Christa and Erica huddled on two chairs in a corner of the room. The furniture of the place gave it all the charm of an East Berlin hotel room. Christa put the phone aside when she saw them walk in, and Erica turned to face them. He saw that they both had red eyes, but there were no tears in evidence, as if they had cried themselves out a few hours ago already.

"Oh, Will." Christa stood up and rushed towards him, and he hugged her tightly. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Claire walking over to Erica and embracing her.

"What's going on?" Will asked. "Have you been here since you called me this morning?"

"Pretty much," Christa said. "He's in surgery again—third time."

"That's good," Will said. "That's great. They don't put someone on the table three times if they don't have a chance of making it."

Christa looked at him with an expression that was part doubt, part hope.

"God, Will, I hope you're right. The surgeon said he has a five percent chance of making it. They say they've never seen anyone with a hematoma of that size." She sobbed again.

"He was on the floor of that store for two hours, just bleeding into his brain. They say it would have been much better if he had gotten into surgery right away, but now..."

"He's got a hard head," Will assured his sister-in-law. "He'll probably outlive the rest of us. He's just using a quarter of that brain anyway," he added, and Christa chuckled despite the tears that were flowing down her cheeks once again.

"How's the kid?" he asked in a low voice, glancing over at Erica, who had surrendered to Claire's embrace in a disturbingly passive manner.

"Numb," Christa said. "She's all cried out. Hasn't had a sip or bite of anything since we got here."

"Sons of bitches," Will exclaimed. "Did they catch the guys who did it?"

"Cops said they're looking for them," Christa replied. "They knocked the security cameras off the wall, but they couldn't figure out where the tape recorder was stored. Everything's on tape."

"They'll have 'em soon enough." Will looked across the room to where Claire stroked Erica's hair, talking to her in a voice that was too low for Will to understand.

"What is this world coming to?" he asked quietly. "How much money can you get out of a convenience store register? Trying to kill a guy for a grand in cash and a few cartons of cigarettes?"

"I just know I'd like to get my hands on them," Christa said. "Leave me in a room with them for a few minutes, and they'll get all the due process they deserve."

"I'll reload the gun for you," Will smiled, and hugged her again.

They sat in silence for a half hour before Will's stomach reminded him that he hadn't eaten a thing since they had been woken up early in the morning. He left the waiting room and asked a passing nurse for directions to the cafeteria. Fifteen minutes later, he returned with a small tray full of sandwiches and a cardboard carrier loaded with orange juice and coffee cups. He placed the sandwiches on a table in the corner of the room, and then handed drinks to Christa and Claire. When he held out a cup of orange juice to Erica, she shook her head with a weak smile.

"Come on," he prodded gently. "You need to get something into your stomach."

He held the cup out again, and this time she took it without enthusiasm, taking a sip of the contents and then placing the cup on the table next to her chair.

They waited another hour, and Will was just about ready to go and beat up someone for some information, when a tired-looking doctor in green scrubs walked into the waiting room. Christa stood up immediately, barely contained trepidation in her face.

"Mrs. Liebkind?" the doctor asked, and Christa nodded.

"Are these folks family as well?"

"I'm his brother," Will said. "What's the news?"

"Well," the doctor said. "Things are not great, but they're a little better than they were this morning. I've evacuated the biggest subdural hematoma I've ever seen from his skull. That's one for the medical books, I think."

"Is he going to live?" Christa asked, and Will's heart seemed to want to skip a beat as they waited for the doctor's response.

"He's made it this far, and that's more than I hoped for this morning, to be honest with you."

"Pretend you don't have to beat around the bush and spare our feelings," Will said. "Let's cut the tippy-toe bullshit. What's the prognosis?"

The doctor looked at Will for a moment, and then smiled a tired little smile.

"Well, you have to understand that I've never had anyone live who had that much blood in their brain for so long, so everything I can tell you is basically what we medical professionals call a 'wild-ass guess.'"

Will nodded, and motioned for the doctor to take one of the available chairs.

"The trauma was one thing. The damage from the blood pooling in the right side of his brain is another. There's no telling what kind of damage was done until he wakes up."

If he wakes up, you mean, Will thought grimly.

"He's in an artificial coma now. We've done all we can do from a surgery standpoint for now, and it's all 'wait and see' from here on out."

"So all you know right now is that he isn't dead, but that you don't know whether that'll change," Will summarized, and the doctor shrugged.

"Mr. Liebkind, I've been a neurosurgeon long enough to know that we don't know a whole lot yet about traumatic brain injuries. Some people die from what should be a minor issue, and some people survive what all the textbooks say should be a fatal injury." He shrugged his shoulders, and the fatigue in his face made him look haggard.

"I'm just glad that we managed to keep your brother alive and get rid of that hematoma in his head. If he's made it this far, he has a good chance of coming out of it, although I can't even begin to predict what kind of permanent damage he has suffered." He paused, and glanced at Christa, who looked like she was on the verge of tears again.

"Sorry if that sounds a bit bleak, but you said you wanted the straight dope, and quite frankly, I'm a bit too worn out right now to coat it all in optimistic pep talk." He smiled apologetically.

"Thanks, doctor," Will replied, and offered his hand.

"You've fixed what you could, and he's alive. That's not bleak, that's good news. It certainly beats the hell out of the alternative."

They decided to split up duties and take turns going home for showers and meals. Christa insisted on remaining in the hospital for now, and Claire decided to keep her company. Will volunteered to take Erica back to the house, and she came with him without protest.

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A Bettered Life

Michael Lindgren

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