Chương 9
He had converted every relationship into ownership because ownership was the only form of power he understood.
The boat slowed.
Dock lights appeared ahead.
The paramedics began preparing the stretcher.
I looked back at the screen.
Jonathan had stopped fighting.
He stood between two agents, breathing hard.
Then the lead agent said clearly, "Your wife is alive."
Jonathan did not react.
Not at first.
His eyes remained fixed on nothing.
The words seemed to pass through him without finding meaning.
The agent repeated them.
"Victoria survived."
Jonathan blinked.
Once.
Twice.
He looked toward the helicopter.
Then toward the black sky beyond the runway.
"No."
His voice was small.
"She survived the fall."
"No."
"She is receiving medical care."
He stared at the agent.
"You don't understand."
"Jonathan."
"I saw her."
His face drained of color.
"I saw her fall."
No one answered.
He began backing up despite the agents holding him.
"That's impossible."
The lead agent said, "Turn around."
Jonathan shook his head.
"She hit the water."
"Turn around."
"She couldn't."
One of the agents guided him toward an SUV.
Jonathan resisted only enough to keep facing the man speaking.
"How?"
The agent gave him nothing.
That absence frightened Jonathan more effectively than any explanation could have.
His eyes moved wildly across the tarmac.
"Where is she?"
Nobody answered.
"Where is she?"
He shouted it this time.
Then his gaze stopped on one of the black vehicles.
For a second, I could see him imagining me inside it.
Waiting.
Watching.
His face collapsed.
Not grief.
Not relief.
Something closer to dread.
"Victoria!"
He screamed my name into the floodlights.
I flinched.
Marcus muted the feed.
"No."
"Turn it back on."
"You don't need this."
"That isn't your decision."
He kept the phone away.
Normally I would have ordered him.
Instead I looked at the dock coming toward us.
A fire-rescue ambulance waited with its rear doors open.
Two police cars blocked access from the road.
Someone had cleared fishermen from half the pier, but a man in a red cap still stood behind the barrier holding a bait bucket and watching us with enormous interest.
Life was insultingly normal around catastrophe.
A pelican sat on a piling.
A vending machine buzzed beside the marina office.
I suddenly wanted a cold orange soda.
I had not wanted orange soda since college.
"Why am I thinking about vending machines?"
Dana smiled without amusement.
"Shock is weird."
"That's reassuring."
"It wasn't meant to be."
The boat touched the dock.
Hands reached for the stretcher.
The moment they tried to transfer me, another contraction tightened across my abdomen.
This one bent me around the pain.
Dana's entire posture changed.
"Time it."
Marcus checked his watch.
The paramedics moved faster.
I grabbed Dana's wrist.
"Is this labor?"
"It could be uterine irritability from trauma."
"That means what?"
"It means I am not diagnosing you on a dock."
"Is she coming?"
"I don't know."
The answer terrified me because it was honest.
They lifted me into the ambulance.
Marcus climbed in behind us.
"No."
He paused.
"You need to go to Owen."
"I have people with Owen."
"You're his boss."
"So are you."
"Tonight you are."
He looked at me for a long second.
Then stepped back out.
The doors began to close.
I caught his sleeve.
"Marcus."
He leaned in.
"Don't let Jonathan talk to anybody from my family."
"He won't."
"My board either."
"We've already notified counsel."
"And find the trust amendment."
His expression sharpened.
"Jonathan mentioned it?"
"In the helicopter."
"When?"
"Before he pushed me."
The doors paused.
"Exactly what did he say?"
"That I should have signed it."
Marcus's eyes changed.
The operation was no longer only about attempted murder.
"What amendment?"
"I don't know."
He nodded once.
The doors shut.
The ambulance moved.
I stared at the ceiling while Dana worked beside me.
The siren started.
City lights slid across the small rear windows.
For several minutes, nobody spoke.
I listened to the monitor.
My heart.
My daughter's heart.
Machines translating fear into numbers.
Then Dana's phone buzzed.
She looked at the screen.
"Your obstetric team is ready."
"Good."
"Trauma surgery too."
"Less good."
"It's precaution."
I turned my head toward the window.
The siren rose and fell.
My wet hair stuck to the side of my neck.
I smelled salt, antiseptic, and the metallic edge of my own blood from a cut near my shoulder.
A thought arrived that had nothing to do with Jonathan.
"I forgot the nursery chair."
Dana looked up.
"What?"
"I was supposed to order it today."
She stared at me.
Then she adjusted the blanket.
"That sounds like a tomorrow problem."
I almost cried.
Not because of the chair.
Because she had used the word tomorrow.
At the hospital, everything became fluorescent and fast.
People cut the rest of my dress away.
A nurse asked my date of birth twice.
Someone removed my earrings and sealed them in a plastic property bag.
A resident asked whether I had lost consciousness.
Another asked whether I had abdominal pain.
A third asked whether the fall had been accidental.
I stared at him.
"No."
He stopped writing.
"My husband pushed me out of a helicopter."
Nobody in the room moved for half a second.
Then the trauma surgeon said, "We can deal with that part after we deal with you."
It was the first sensible thing anyone had said since I hit the water.
They wheeled me through imaging modified for pregnancy and then into obstetric monitoring.
My left hip was badly bruised.
Two ribs were cracked.
There was no obvious spinal injury.
The baby remained distressed but stable.
No placental abruption showed on the first assessment.
Every piece of good news came wrapped in the phrase for now.
May you like
At eleven forty-three, lying in a hospital bed with monitors strapped across my stomach, I finally heard from Marcus.
He entered carrying my dry phone, a charger, and the expression he wore when a problem had acquired additional problems.
