Charlie St. Cloud Page 0,5
saw the full moon. God dropped it there, he was sure, as a reminder of our small place in the world. A reminder that what is beautiful is fleeting.
Then the ambulance lurched forward, and the siren screamed. He pulled the doors closed. For an instant, his fingers found the well-worn gold medallion around his neck. It was St. Jude of Desperate Situations.
Show me the way . . .
He put his stethoscope to the chest of the younger boy. He listened and knew the simple truth.
This was a time for miracles.
THREE
A MIST SHROUDED THE GROUND, MUFFLING THE SOUNDS of the world. Charlie, Sam, and Oscar huddled in the damp and dark. There was no one else around. They could have been anywhere or nowhere. It didn’t matter. They were together.
“Mom will kill us for this,” Sam said, shivering. He smacked his fist into his mitt. “She’s gonna be mad. Really mad.”
“Don’t worry, little man,” Charlie said. He pushed the curls from his brother’s face. “I’ll take care of it.”
He could imagine his mother’s disappointment: her forehead turning red, the veins in her temples pulsing, her devastating frown with those little lines scrunching around her lips.
“They’ll send us to jail for this,” Sam said. “Mrs. Pung will make us pay, and we don’t have any money.” He turned his head and focused on a jagged shape in the murk. There it was—the carcass of the station wagon. What hadn’t been destroyed in the crash had been cut to pieces by the rescuers.
“You won’t go to jail,” Charlie said. “You’re not old enough. They wouldn’t punish a twelve-year-old that way. Maybe me, I was driving; but not you.”
“What are we gonna do?” Sam said.
“I’ll think of something.”
“I’m sorry,” Sam said. “It was my fault.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“I distracted you with the moon.”
“No, you didn’t. I should’ve seen the truck and gotten out of the way.”
Sam thwacked his glove. The sound fell flat in the nothingness. Another thwack. “So now what?” he said.
“Give me a minute,” Charlie said. “I’m thinking.” He looked around, trying to make sense of the landscape. There was no sign of the bridge, no curve of the river, no outline of the city. The sky was a blanket of black. He searched for Polaris, the North Star. He scanned for any constellation to give him bearings. All he could see were shapes moving in the distance, solids in the fluid of night.
And then through the gloom, he began to realize where they were. Somehow, mysteriously, they had been transported to a small hill with two drooping willows overlooking the harbor. He recognized the curve of the shore with its huddle of masts bobbing on the water and the green glow of the lighthouse.
“I think we’re home,” he said.
“How’d that happen?”
“No idea, but look, there’s Tucker’s wharf.”
He pointed, but Sam wasn’t interested. “Mom’s going to ground us,” Sam said. “We better make up a good story, or she’ll use the belt.”
“No, she won’t,” Charlie said. “I’m coming up with a plan right now. Trust me.”
But he had no idea what to do or how to get them out of this jam. Then he saw another light in the distance, faint at first, but growing brighter. Maybe a flashlight or a rescue party. Oscar began to bark, friendly at first, then he let out a long yowl.
“Look,” Sam said. “Who’s that?”
“Oh shit.” Charlie never swore, and Sam tensed up.
“Is that Mom?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Then who? Who’s coming? I’m scared.”
The light was warm and bright, and it was getting closer.
“Don’t be afraid,” Charlie said.
They were dead and gone.
No pulse. No breath. Hypoxic. No oxygen in the blood, from cardiac arrest brought on by blunt trauma. Dead and gone. Florio flashed his light stick one more time into the blown pupils of the older boy. They were black and bottomless.
He stuck leads on the kid’s wrists and left chest, then punched the button on the monitor. The line on the six-second ECG strip was flat.
“This is Medic Two,” he said into the radio. “I’ve got two crunch cases. Pulseless nonbreathers.”
Florio grabbed his intubation kit and slipped the curved steel blade of the laryngoscope into the boy’s mouth. Pushing aside the kid’s slack tongue, he aimed for the entryway to the trachea, a small gap between the vocal cords. He pressed harder and the instrument eased into position. Perfect. With a whirl of motion, he inflated the cuff, fastened the ambu bag, and began to ventilate.
The vehicle hurtled toward the North Shore ER, and Florio