Henry Franks A Novel - By Peter Adam Salomon Page 0,57

“I was crying. I loved her; no, I love her. I cut her vocal cords with the scalpel. There was too much blood, and she’d already lost so much.”

Henry rested his hand on his father’s arm and William stared at the contact.

He took a deep breath, then looked up at his son and Justine. “For you, I’d stockpiled blood. I didn’t have any for your mom except my own. I was so weak, and she was dying.”

“You saved her,” Henry said.

“She’s not human anymore, Henry.” His father closed his eyes. “I don’t know what she is now. I’m sorry.”

Henry pulled his hand away, breaking the fragile connection with his father. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. Lightning illuminated the room and he saw tears mixed with the blood on his father’s face. Henry swallowed, struggling to remember the stranger standing next to him. “How did we end up here?” he asked in the silence after the thunder.

William opened his eyes, the faint memory of a smile crossing his face. “Dr. Saville grew up in this house, married some guy named Richard, but it didn’t work out and she moved to Birmingham. When I needed a place to go, she gave me the keys.” The smile grew enough to be seen for just a moment before fading away. “I moved us—the three of us. You were both in comas, unresponsive. I didn’t know if the surgeries had worked, but you were both alive and too many people knew us in Birmingham. So we moved.”

Faint sunlight filtered into the room through thick curtains drawn tight. The ceiling fan was still and the sound of the air-conditioning was drowned out by the hum of the machinery in the room. On the beds, Henry and Chrissy slept on.

The outside light faded as Frank’s eyes fell closed, his last view that of his wife, sleeping peacefully.

The hiss was all around him. Air deflating a balloon, escaping a tire, moaning like wind scratching branches against a window trying to enter the room.

In his dream, a single hand reached off the bed to touch him, to hurt him. To pay back in kind.

Frank blinked. On the bed, Chrissy slept on, the monitors undisturbed. Her left arm, connected to the IV, rested at her side. Her right stretched out toward him. He stared, unable to move, afraid to breathe.

The fingers had uncurled, the entire arm hanging off the bed, the tip of her index finger almost, but not quite, touching his knee. Drawing in a breath, he stretched his hand out, preparing to move her arm back to the bed from where it had fallen. At his touch, her eyes screamed open, wide, frightened.

She hissed, the sound rough, forced through broken vocal cords. Her tongue slid out of her mouth as she rolled her head to the side and a strand of drool fell to the pillow.

“Chrissy!” He scrambled to the side of the bed, checking the monitors, but when he went to touch her, she hissed again. “Shhh,” he said, raising his hand to caress her cheek.

She twisted off the thin mattress, crashing her teeth together hard enough to chip the enamel, straining to bite his fingers.

She thrashed on the bed, threatening to pull the IV out of her arm. Early morning sunlight poured into the room through cracks where the curtains met, a shaft of sunlight illuminating dust motes and falling on Henry’s face. Frank tried to grab hold of Chrissy’s arms, to keep her still, to keep her safe. She struggled against his touch, trying to reach her mouth around to bite him, and she kept attacking him each time she managed to free a hand.

He grabbed hold of her shoulders, his fingers sliding over the scar tissue on her neck, and she bent her head to try to bite him, twisting around. Then she was still, frigid and cold in his grasp, her muscles tight in his grip as she stared at her son.

She hissed, the sound somewhere between a moan and a name: “Henry.” Though it was unrecognizable, Frank heard the name.

“Chrissy?” he asked, releasing the death grip he had on her arms.

With a spasm of her arm she smacked Frank across the chin, following up by biting his shoulder where it drifted too close to her mouth, the teeth puncturing the skin, drawing blood.

Dazed, he stumbled to the IV still taped into her arm and opened wide the morphine drip until her body slumped to the gurney.