first aid kit and bandages the head wound, but it’s clear to all of them that this is a life-threatening injury.
Even when they arrive at the hospital, he has not woken up.
* * *
—
Tom sits in the hospital waiting area holding a cup of water that he has not touched in fifteen minutes. He feels as though he’s in a trance. His clothes and hands are still covered in Dag’s blood. Erik is pacing the corridor slowly, his hands in his pockets, a man resigned to the whims of fate. Dag is in surgery. Erik greets each doctor with the courtesy and patience of a man who expects his child to survive this, but Tom saw the nurses’ faces when they pulled Dag from the helicopter. He doesn’t expect Dag to last the night.
This is his fault. If he’d used explosives like Clive said, they wouldn’t be in this predicament. In this purgatory. No. Wrong to think of oneself that way. His suffering is nothing. Dag is a boy. He deserves to be at a nightclub right now, checking out girls—or boys, whichever takes his preference—not lying on a table with someone sawing into his brain. His life hanging by a thread. Even if—if—he survives this, what if the injuries leave him with life-changing disabilities? Tom is in torment. He wonders what is worse—experiencing your own child going through something like this or watching another parent suffer, knowing that you alone have caused their child to go through this?
A nurse enters the corridor. Erik spins around, expecting news. They speak in low voices, and in Norwegian. Tom rises to his feet. If the news is bad, he has to be there for Erik. If the news is good, he wants to be there, too. He realizes his notion of what constitutes good and bad news has radically altered in the last twenty-four hours. He would sell his soul right now for Dag to make a full recovery. Literally sell his soul, like Faust. He takes a step toward the nurse, studies Erik’s face. He looks crestfallen. Tom feels as though his feet are mired in concrete. Please, God. Please . . . No . . .
The nurse approaches. “He is still in surgery,” she says. “Maybe an hour.”
He swallows that down, staggers back to his seat. He wants to say something to Erik, but he has resumed his pacing, both arms behind his back, and occasionally he says something to himself. Tom suspects he is praying.
Tom thinks of his own father. How lucky Dag is to have a father like Erik. He can well imagine what his own father would be doing right now, if Tom were in Dag’s place. He wouldn’t even be in the hospital. Tom isn’t an ethical vegan or a dedicated environmental architect because he wishes to atone for his father’s sins. It’s much more selfish than that. So terrified is he of being anything like his father, Giles Cornelius Faraday, that he has forced himself to become his opposite. Where Giles is avaricious, Tom is pointedly frugal. Giles is overbearing, so Tom is unimposing. Fashion sense, personal hygiene, even parenting styles have all been carefully observed and analyzed as to how they can be subverted, and yet the exercise has brought Tom shame. Tom recognizes that, ironically, this lifelong examination of his father in order to be nothing like him has defined him. Even now, at forty-three years old, Project Nothing Like Giles is too much a part of his life, an anxiety he should have long outgrown. But it is what it is.
Dag’s injuries could have been avoided. No; should have been avoided. Tom knew, right when they were hauling that damn drill up the cliff in the densest fog he’d ever known, that the drill was a bad idea. Clive was right: he has taken his principles too far. Principles are great; people staying alive is much better.
He makes a pact, there and then, with Mother Nature, that he’ll abandon the project entirely if she lets Dag live. He’ll put down his tools and go home.
And just then, right as he’s holding his head in his hands and whispering to Mother Nature, the doors open. A doctor appears, consults with Erik. A moment later Erik falls to his knees.
Tom rushes forward and catches him as he sinks to the ground, weeping.
25
the turning point
NOW
I told him he’d kill someone if he carried on like this. And what happened? He almost killed someone.”