Henry Franks A Novel - By Peter Adam Salomon Page 0,58

His blood dripped from her lips and gray hair was clenched in her fists where she’d pulled it out of his head.

“Henry,” she whispered one final time, her eyelids fluttering, exposing crazed eyes. He placed her arms back on the bed before ransacking a closet of odds and ends in order to find leather cuffs to use as restraints.

Searching through his dwindling supplies, he mixed a cocktail of anesthesia, morphine, and benzodiazepine and hooked it up to her IV, sending her into a drug-induced coma.

Frank fell back into his chair, his shoulder bleeding through his shirt, thin trickles of blood sliding down from his scalp. More blood from his arms where her fingernails had raked through his skin.

It failed.

No.

I failed.

He couldn’t kill her, not Chrissy, not the woman he’d fallen in love with, raised a son with. Not the woman he’d die for, that he’d killed for.

In a cabinet, he found another set of restraints and placed them on Henry’s arms. He sighed, a tear sliding though one of the cuts on his face. The hospital bed scraped the door frame as Frank wheeled it out of the room, the equipment piled high on either side of Henry.

Through the empty kitchen there was a small laundry room, the windows looking out over a large backyard filled with trees. Frank pushed the bed up to the window, tilting Henry’s face so that the sun landed on his skin.

“Welcome to Georgia, Henry,” Frank said, squeezing the limp fingers in his hand. “Saint Simons Island. We live on an island, like we used to talk about, remember?” He wiped his sleeve across his eyes then looked at his son. “There’s a big backyard. You’d have really loved it here, Henry.”

Frank let go of his son’s hand, pulled out a tissue, then blew his nose. “Hey, there’s a squirrel out there too. And a bird feeder. Big trees. Magnolias, I think, big white flowers, and oak trees, draped in moss like in those pictures we used to look at.”

Tears slid down his face and his nose was all stuffed up. “I’m sorry, Henry, I thought it would work.” He sighed. “It should have, I guess. But, it didn’t, not even close. All my fault. I failed. Twice.”

He swallowed, trying to breathe, his eyes so raw it was difficult to focus as the sun warmed the small laundry room.

“I love you, Henry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Frank closed off the IV—cutting the nutrients, ending the morphine drip—and clicked the machines off. Not quite as dramatic as pulling the plug, but the end result would be the same. “I’m sorry,” he said again, watching through his tears as the sun moved across the sky, leaving Henry’s face in shadows.

In the semi-darkness it was difficult to see, the poor light playing tricks on his mind.

Henry drew in a deep breath, letting it out in a sigh.

He blinked. Again, and then turned his face away from the window. Machinery was piled up, surrounding him.

“Breathe, Henry,” someone whispered. “Breathe.”

“Who,” he coughed again, his throat rough and raw, “is Henry?”

He fought to breathe, struggling to raise his hands. Someone pushed a button and the bed inclined, elevating him. Machinery slid down to the foot of the bed.

“Henry,” the person said from the shadows at the foot of his bed. “Son, there was an accident.”

NOAA Alert:

Hurricane Erika Category 4;

Landfall in Saint Mary, GA

Miami, FL—August 29, 2009, 12:43 AM: FOR EMERGENCY RELEASE:

At 12:17 a.m. EDT, Hurricane Erika made landfall in St. Mary’s, Georgia; 31 miles north of Jacksonville, Florida, as a Category Four on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale with maximum sustained winds of 145 mph extending outward to sixty miles from the center and tropical storm force winds extending outward almost 150 miles.

Officials have reported successful evacuations of Amelia Island in Florida as well as Cumberland, Jekyll, St. Simons, and Sea Islands in Georgia.

St. Mary’s, Georgia, in Camden County, population 14,000, is home to the Kings Bay Naval Submarine base.

thirty one

In the flashes of lightning, Henry caught glimpses of his father struggling to breathe. Justine’s arms were warm around him, but he couldn’t stop shivering. His father kept talking, struggling to stand up as words dripped out like individual drops of blood.

“When you woke up I called Dr. Saville,” his father said. “She left Birmingham to try to help you but there was little she could do. Then, a few months ago, I woke Chrissy up. Thought I’d figured it out.”

The hissing was everywhere, thunder and wind buffeting the house. Rain beat against