Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale (26 page)

Chapter Sixty

“Stop dying on me, you bastard.”

Deena squeezed Tak fierce as a Heimlich, only to have him shove her away rough.

Hurt flooded in as surely as if he’d hit her. Then he vomited into the flood waters.

More liquid, more bile, until he did nothing but gag. Deena beat him on the back, then rubbed, waiting for the moment he’d calm.

She looked up at the sky. Would the chopper even recognize their property anymore? It sat like pins in a bowling alley, shards here and there after a hit in the dark.

Which made her think of something else.

“What happened?” Tak said. “One minute I was standing there giving you hell, the next…”

“The rumbling,” Deena said. “It was a land slide coming for us. No doubt, it had been traveling for miles, picking up boulders, all manner of cars and parts of homes en route.”

“But Aruba’s flat,” Tak said. “Flat as our house.”

He fed her a weak smile. Leave it to him to already find this funny.

“Slopes can be subtle,” Deena said, deciding she wasn’t ready for his humor just yet. “And with so much rain saturation, anything remotely unstable unhinges once the soil or foundation is compromised. Sustained winds of—”

“Alright, Daichi. Tell me if it’s done. Or if we’re going to be swept into the sea in a few seconds.”

Deena took in the decimated ruins on either side of her. Initially, she believed herself to be in what once were their gardens, but on realizing there were roof tops of homes she knew behind her, she guesstimated that they were on the side of the house.

“I don’t want to get back in the water. But we need higher ground. If you can swim at all—”

“I can’t.”

Deena looked down and saw—really saw—the condition he was in. Black hair painted to his skull, face the color of wash-worn parchment. Blotches of red at his cheek. His teeth clamped down into a careful grimace. He didn’t want her to see the extent of his injuries. Even after all that had happened, he still tried to protect her.

“Tak—”

Then she heard it. Wild winds that sent her hair airborne, slicing a roaring vortex.

The helicopter was back.

They were saved.

Chapter Sixty-One

Once the suspended ladder dropped, it became apparent that Tak couldn’t climb. In fact, he couldn’t even stand. The realization sent ice through her veins. The same co-pilot that strapped up with Noah descended again, this time to fit Tak with a bright orange vest adorned in an assortment of black straps and buttons. As he worked, Deena informed him of old injuries sustained by Tak’s car accident years ago and the possibility of aggravating them. When Tak was secured, she peppered the co-pilot with questions during the lift about weight capacity of the vest and load capacity for the pulley system. When those ran dry, she moved on to his trainings and certifications, when they were up for renewal and how many such rescues he’d completed. A congenial, if alarmingly slim man, he admitted to her that his work in the U.S. Army trained him for the task just fine.

Then his mouth spread wide for Deena.

“But that doesn’t ease your worries, does it?” he said, pleasure apparent in his voice.

She wanted something snarky to say, but could conjure no anger for the man who’d rescued them.

“No,” she admitted.

“Love’s funny that way, I reckon,” and only then did Deena hear the yawn of a warm Texas drawl.

After Deena and the co-pilot boarded, they air lifted with chopper blades slashing, blasting out all sounds and thought.

Tak sat still and whitened; white as a harvest moon with teeth baring, slick with the filth of polluted waters.

“Tell me where it hurts,” Deena said and slid her hand into her husband’s.

He bore down on it. Faintly, she registered pain.

“My leg. Lift my pants leg for me.”

His dark blue jeans ran black, swathed in grime and dripping a grease-like substance. But when she drew up his jeans as far as they could go, stopping at the knee, blood gushed from a crosswise slash.

“Give me something,” she said. “To staunch it.”

“First aid kit behind my seat,” the co-pilot said. Strapped in and at the side of a stern captain, both men focused on the endless panel of controls. Their ascent had them cutting a sharp turn east. Deena sucked in a wave of nausea, bit down on resolve, and concentrated on an immediate series of tasks.

“Dee—”

She snatched the white box with its oversized red cross and threw it open, before dropping it altogether. Trembling fingers fumbled with the metal latch. She scolded them to steadying and opened the box. Tourniquet in hand, she lifted it, dropped it, picked it up, then set it aside to search for a cleaning agent.

“Deena.”

Not a question. He’d said her name with certainty, with the utmost of familiarity. She’d answer to a thousand different pet names, so long as he said them like that.

What was it that Shakespeare said about names?

That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

She shoved the thought aside and found the peroxide before scouring a third of the bottle onto his wound. She tied the tourniquet tight enough to earn a hiss. She went for the other leg, found a similar cut, though shallow in comparison, and repeated her treatment. He said her name again. She shushed him, buried her smile, and yanked up his shirt for a view of his torso. Carved, filth strewn-muscles were all that met her.

Tak grabbed her by the wrist.

“What about you?”

“I’m fine.”

“Good. Let’s see.”

So, she found her seat and proceeded to reveal first one leg, then the other, before rolling up her shirt. The gash running down her side surprised her.

“My turn,” Tak said and set about dressing her wound.

He worked in silence. When the cleaning and bandaging were done, he looked up at her, bleary-eyed.

“We need to talk,” he said.

Her eyes shot wide in disbelief. Surely, he could think of nothing but the fact that he’d nearly lost his life…again.

“Whatever you have to say can wait. You practically died,” she said. “You could have drowned. That metal could have severed an artery. You would have bled out in minutes.”

The truth of it collided with her, colossal in its strength. She struggled it down in a thousand swallows, fought it back with a billion eye blinks. With a sigh, Tak’s hand on her wrist relaxed to run up the length of her arm.

“But it didn’t, Dee.”

“Yes, I know. But you could have!”

She snatched away, remembering her maniacal rage, her torment, and the hateful, spit-ladled words she’d shrieked at God. She’d been an animal in grief, knowing and understanding nothing but her own agony.

And still, Tak was given back to her.

Again the tears wanted out, hot violent tears that shoved at her. Deena shoved back and went to work cleaning the first aid mess she’d made.

“It’s not enough to love me,” Tak said to her bowed head. “You have to believe in me, you have to believe that I can be the things you need. That I can be as strong or as there as you need me to be. That I can handle whatever comes as it comes.”

He could. She knew he could. But to relinquish that part, to freefall in that way… She’d loved her parents, needed them, and knew what it was to lose them nonetheless. That part of her, folded tight as origami, couldn’t bear to opened, to be revealed for the flower it was meant to be.

“I love you so much,” she said. “And I was so afraid of ruining what we had. I thought leaving you…separating from you, was the best way to preserve it.”

She’d feared losing him completely. Like the false mother in the bible, subject to King Solomon’s rule, bitterness meant she’d take him piecemeal and under her own terms, rather than lose him altogether to another.

Bitterness and a need to control had made her the fool.

Tak pulled her to him and wrapped an arm around her, before burying his face in the filth that was her hair.

“Baby? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Deena couldn’t help but laugh.

Chapter Sixty-Two

Tak traced lazy circles on the back of Deena’s hand, looping script that only he knew the meaning of. Partially upright in the hospital bed, white bedding draped his legs and tucked underneath the mattress. Outside was a view of the sea.

“I’ve been thinking,” Tak said and ceased his hypnotic drawing to lace fingers through his wife’s. “About everything that happened in Aruba.”

“Tak, you don’t have to—”

They had gushed their apologies on the helicopter, desperate rambling words meant to capture every regret and every emotion ever felt. Still, it had somehow fallen short. But what more could be said?

Infection had him hospitalized for two weeks. Muscle melted from his frame as he lived off the offerings of his I.V. Stitches knitted both his legs, and he’d spent his every day wading through a mountain of painkillers to form thoughts. Clarity had found him at last.

“I miss you,” Tak said. “Sometimes when you’re right beside me. A part of you detaches and you’re distant. It’s how I know you’re keeping something from me.”

She’d done away with her foolhardy plans to protect him through secrecy; done away with them for good. What could he possibly mean with this latest accusation?

“Your mother,” he said. “When is she released?”

She blinked in surprise. He had a way of slicing to the bone without trying, of sifting through the junk to find treasure in an instant.

“She’s already out,” Deena said. It wasn’t that she’d kept that. It was only that he’d been so preoccupied by his condition that the right time to discuss it hadn’t come up.

“Did you tell her that she could stay with us?”

Stay with them.

Deena released him and went to the window. His private suite in St. Elizabeth Hospital afforded lush views of shimmering blue waters and a sky that, for the moment, dulled to a bleeding rose on the sun’s exit from the sky. Thin white clouds pockmarked the heavens.

Each of them had spent some time at the hospital, first for routine exams and tetanus shots after the exposure to polluted waters, and second, for various treatments as needed. Deena and a few others had suffered from mild dehydration and a low grade infection or two. But only Tak’s condition and Grandma Emma’s had required extended treatment. She had been flown back to Miami for that, where pneumonia had set in. Respiratory failure soon followed. Eventually, the family would have to take her off the ventilator. When Tak and Deena returned to Florida and life settled down, they would make the final arrangements.

“Come here,” Tak said. “And tell me what you want. What you think you want if you’re not sure.”

She crossed the room and he took both her hands in his.

There was warmth there, but something else: a purposefully blank expression, slack and unreadable. He was leaving it up to her. He was leaving the decision of her mother absolutely up to her.

Deena snatched away from him and collapsed into a chair.

“Don’t do that to me,” she said. “Don’t make it all mine. Am I really supposed to know the right thing? Automatically?”

He studied her in that way that had once been all Daichi’s, but had become his as age crept up. Astute, deliberate, studious.

Tak exhaled.

“You’re right. She’s our mother. So, let’s figure this out.”

Our mother.

She had never heard the phrase. Not from Anthony. Not from Lizzie. No one took on the enormity of that burden; it had always been hers in a single, solitary world.

And here he was to join her.

Deena came to him and cupped his face with both hands.

“Tell me what you want,” she said and ran a hand through his hair. It could have been her own; that hair was so familiar.

Tak scooted over, away from the IV and monitoring machines strapped to his torso, and created a tenuous tangle of cords.

“Get in.”

“In the bed with you?”

He looked at her.

“Fine” Deena grunted. But then she stared at the sliver of spot he’d provided. White sheets pulled back to reveal white fabric on a thin stretch of mattress.

“I’m sure there are rules about this, sweetheart.”

Tak twisted his lips into a heavy veil of scorn.

“Oh, tell me what you want, Takumi,” he mocked in a high pitched whine. “I almost lost you and—”

Deena kicked off her loafers, twisted enough to keep an eye on the machine cords and slid in delicately beside them. Her jeans rustled against his bare skin. He felt smaller, frailer. She bit back the fright.

“I should drown more often, genie.”

Tak smiled at her and pinched the bridge of her nose.

Deena exhaled. His constant flood of jokes when his health was poorest always hit her wrong. Unlike Kenji, she didn’t lash out at him or chastise him for ignoring her feelings. If quips about a debilitated condition somehow empowered him, then she was all for anything that led to healing.

“I don’t think I could take you drowning again,” was all she said on the matter.

“Me either,” he said and kissed her.

His lips were chapped but insistent, parting her as his hands roamed. A clear cord streamed across the side of their faces, while another rested on her chest. Still, she inched closer to him as he reached underneath her simple black blouse, cupped her breast and ran a hand down the ridges of her spine.

“Tak…” she protested. It was all she could think of to say.

“Don’t make me waste my second wish, genie.” He muttered it into her mouth as her bra snapped open.

“Why?” Deena said. “What were you saving it for?”

He dipped again for her lips, claiming with a fierceness that said he resented interruptions.

“For us,” he said. “To renew our vows. Now that you know how un-leaveable I am.”