The First (2 page)

“Very soon. I promise we’re almost done. We just need to ask you a few more questions.”

“It’s been over a week of ‘a few more questions.’ Questions and tests and pokes and prods and more questions. You’re the fourth person to ask me these questions. You realize that, don’t you?”

“Yes, Edmund.”

“So why am I still here? I don’t understand any of this.”

“Please,” Helen said. She reached over the table and placed her hands atop Edmund’s. “Just one more time. You could be leaving as soon as tomorrow, Edmund. This won’t go on much longer. But I do need to ask you these questions again.”

He rubbed his face. “I don’t suppose I have much choice, do I?”

Helen did not reply.

“Well,” Edmund began, “The first thing I remember about that morning was going in to work.”

“Could you be more specific? Do you remember waking up that morning? Do you remember getting dressed, brushing your teeth?”

“As I’ve said before, no,” Edmund replied. “But I’m certain I did. It’s what I always do in the morning. Why would that morning be any different?”

“Please continue,” Helen said. Near the table a small video camera stood atop a tripod.

“I’m so tired of this,” Edmund huffed, his attention turning to the camera. “I haven’t done anything. I don’t understand any of this.”

“You have to admit,” Helen replied, “you’re a special case, Edmund. You’re the first person I’ve ever met to miraculously return from the dead.” She reached into a briefcase next to her chair and withdrew a large manila envelope. She placed it on the table. “Has anyone shown you these?”

Edmund reached forward and took the envelope. He was certain that whatever was inside was not going to be good. He fumbled with the envelope, but finally managed it. “Oh,” he said as the contents slid out.

In the envelope were photographs of a dead man. His face was swollen and distorted. His eyes were shut and there was a large gaping wound on the top of his skull. His skin was pale and blotchy, like nothing Edmund had ever seen before. Each photograph was grimmer than the last. The man had obviously died quite a horrible death. Edmund closed the envelope quickly and withdrew from it. He said nothing.

“So?” Helen asked. Her expression was somewhere between curious and apologetic.

Edmund did not reply.

“You do recognize him, don’t you?”

Edmund was quiet for a moment, then he nodded.

“So what do you think about it?”

A silence settled over the room. Edmund sat back in his chair, looking at Helen, his brow furrowed, as if trying to solve a riddle. “I...” He hesitated. “I can’t explain any of this,” he said finally. Then: “I just want to see Emily.”

* * *

Emily existed in a foggy, distorted land of chronic insomnia and protracted anxiety where everything felt far away and unreal. She was fatigued enough to believe anything. The sleeplessness did nothing at all to help her driving. Everything and everyone on the highway seemed to blur together. There were no cars around her, only one large river of lights and steel and fiberglass. One long chain of humanity that was not Edmund, no matter how much she wanted to believe that somehow he might run into her.

She had made the decision to drive to D.C. knowing full well that it was the wrong thing to do. “He’ll come to you,” her mother had told her, trying to talk her out of it. “He’s come this far. You need to be patient.”

“It’s been over a week now,” Emily said. “I can’t wait any longer. I have to see him. I have to know that he’s real. I have to know that all of this is real.”

“Of course he’s real, Emily,” her mother insisted. “Why is this upsetting you so much? Aren’t you happy he’s back?”

Emily had tried more than once to explain to her mother why Edmund’s return had thrown her into such disarray. There was nothing normal about what was happening. As much as she wanted Edmund back, it wasn’t supposed to be this way. But it was more than just the strangeness of the situation that bothered her.

The past year had been difficult for Emily. She learned not to visit the places that the two of them had visited. She had grown accustom to drowning out the memories of him when they came bubbling up from her mind. She had become a master at keeping herself distracted. She even took up running—something she had considered foolish and a waste of energy before. She never understood why people ran if they weren’t being chased.

But then Edmund died and she found herself alone, in the remains of a life that was on the cusp of being built for two, and all of a sudden running seemed like the thing to do. In the beginning it just got her out of the house, away from the paintings, away from his clothes that still hung in the closet like tombstones. It was a way for her body to take her away from her mind.

The past year had been full of nothing but running from Edmund’s memory, trying to escape that place in her heart where the memories of him lived. And she had grown thinner, more tired, more fatigued in the past year. Closer to giving it all up than even her mother had known.

And now, all of a sudden, all of that was undone, and neither her mind nor her body knew how to process it.

She needed to see him, and she could not wait any longer for him to come to her. There were questions she needed to ask, words she needed to hear, things she needed to say. She wanted to apologize for everything that she had done in the past year—all the ways she had been trying to forget him—and she needed for him to tell her that it was okay, to tell her that none of it mattered now, that whatever method had brought him back to life would remain for years and years to come. She needed to hear that it was all going to be okay.

And sitting at home sleepless was not going to make any of that happen.

She had never been to D.C. before and she had no idea where Edmund was being held or what she would do if she found out where he was. In her mind, she played and replayed the moment when she arrived at the large towering building where they were keeping Edmund. She imagined fighting her way through the crowd of security men and news crews and curious onlookers toward a podium at the doors of the building where Edmund stood, preparing to make a statement. The people around her closed in as she came through the crowd. They swarmed her, clinging and clawing at her, slowing her down with each and every step.

But she would not be stopped. He had returned from the dead for her, after all. The least she could do was fight her way through the people of this world to get to him. In this dream—this near-dream of someone who had not slept in far too long—by the time she reached him, she was bloodied and bruised. Her hair was in disarray, blood dripping from her mouth. But there he was—tall and lanky, his blond hair flopped over his forehead—as always, waiting for her. His eyes shone. His face was radiant. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said.

“I know,” she replied, huffing.

Then he reached down and pulled her from the crowd. The whole world seemed to stop then—at the moment he took her hand, at the moment of his touch. “I thought you were never coming back,” she said.

“How could I ever stay away?” he asked. He sighed and Emily could smell him—that familiar oaky scent that he had always had. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tighter than he ever had before. Then he took her face into his hands and kissed her.

At the wheel of the car, she drifted across the center line of the highway. Cars blared their horns and sped up to pass her, but she would not be stopped. She had to find him. Her logic was that of an insomniac, of someone desperately in love and terribly afraid. The traffic around her dripped into a distorted blur, but by the time she realized that it wasn’t the movement around her but rather the tears in her eyes causing the world to distort, she had already lost control of the car.

* * *

Edmund had to get away. He was being held in a small room with only a bed, a desk, a pair of chairs and a television. It was clearly an office, not a jail, but there was a small team of men in suits keeping watch on him, making it impossible for him to get away on his own.

The news showed images of Emily’s car turned upside down in a muddy ditch like a giant insect, and when a photograph of the two of them together—beneath the lights and exaggerated colors of the county fair—flashed on the screen, Edmund became agitated.

“Where is that?” Edmund asked the man who was assigned to keep an eye on him. “Where is she? How did this happen?”

The man sat back in his chair and inhaled deeply. “You probably shouldn’t be watching this,” he said, and made a move toward the television. Edmund grabbed his hand.

“Did you know about this?”

“Easy,” he said. He sounded genuinely concerned. “I’m sure everything’s fine.”

“I’ve got to leave,” Edmund said. “You’ve got to help me get out of here.”

“You know I can’t do that,” the man replied. “Listen, I understand that you want to be with her, but...”

Edmund sat on the end of his bed and put his head between his hands. Emily’s face appeared in his mind and he imagined her in the ditch, buried beneath her car, gasping for air. “Marcus—” Edmund said, looking up at the man. “That’s your name, right?”

The man hesitated.

“Marcus, have you ever lost someone?”

“None of your business,” Marcus replied defensively. He sat back in his chair. His hand began to fidget. Edmund thought he saw the reflection of a tear forming in the man’s eyes.

“Who was it?” he continued. “Father? Mother?”

A look of heartache spread across the man’s face. “It wasn’t our fault,” he said eventually. His voice was low and soft, as if he was afraid someone might hear, or as if the words held a certain reverence for him. “We did everything a parent is supposed to do.” His voice became far away as he spoke. “Kids get sick, you know? We thought it was just a fever like every other kid gets. We took her out of school, gave her plenty of fluids, all that.” He scratched his chin nervously. “You got kids?”

“No,” Edmund replied. “Emily and I talked about it. I wanted girls. A big family of girls.” He smiled. “I don’t really know why. I just liked the idea of it.”

“How come you never had any?”

He shrugged. “We never got the chance.”

“Everyone should have kids,” Marcus replied. “Everyone should have big families. The bigger the better.” He sighed. “We were going to have at least four—two boys, two girls. We joked about keeping the numbers even so that the fights would always end in a draw.” He laughed. “Silly as hell, I know, but it is what it is.”

Edmund sat forward. He opened his hands. “And your daughter, if she came back, would you want to be back with her?”

Marcus flinched. “Of course I would.”

“You’d do anything to be with her, wouldn’t you? To hold her again. To see her smile. You would, wouldn’t you?”

Marcus nodded.

“That’s all I want,” Edmund said. “That’s all this is. I don’t know anything about what this is about. All I know is that I’m alive. Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I am. I’m alive and I want to be back with the woman I love. You can understand that, can’t you?”

* * *

That was two days ago.

They made their escape on the night when Edmund was being moved to a different location. There was a long convoy of cars, with Marcus and Edmund in the middle of it. Around them were identical cars so that the media—who had managed to find where Edmund was being held—wouldn’t be able to tell which car to harass.

Getting away from the rest of the convoy had been easier than Edmund had expected. When the news vans followed the convoy, an order was given for the cars to split up. The hope was that the media would follow one of the decoys and not the car that actually held Edmund and Marcus.

The plan worked perfectly. Edmund and Marcus were away from the convoy and the news crews. Alone in a car and bound for North Carolina.

They were on the highway nearly three hours now, heading south. Marcus tossed his cell phone from the car window somewhere just outside D.C. Edmund asked him whether or not the car could be tracked, but Marcus only told him not to worry and then drove in silence.

Edmund’s thoughts centered on Emily, on that last day together. It had taken him so long to muster up the courage to propose. He spent weeks with the ring in the glove compartment of his car, traveling back and forth with it to work, to home, to his apartment—all those weeks with Emily riding in the very same car, sitting only a foot or so away from the biggest question of Edmund’s life. But then, finally, he’d managed the proposal.

And now a year had passed. For her, at least. For Edmund, it was all still fresh, all completely immediate. She had accepted his proposal hardly a week ago. His heart still rang like a bell at the mere mention of her name.

But would it be the same for her? he wondered.

* * *

When she awoke, she was alone. Her head ached and the hospital room seemed to spin. On the wall at the end of her bed, the television was muted. Soundless images flickered. Emily watched for a while, still trying to understand how she had gotten here. She remembered getting into the car. She remembered driving. But that was all.

When she tried to sit up, a wave of pain washed over her. All at once her entire body hurt. It took her a while but, eventually she adjusted to it and managed to sit up in the bed. The room spun. She coughed. Then she remembered Edmund.

As if he could sense her thoughts, he appeared in the doorway, holding a cup of coffee, looking exactly the way she remembered him.

“I just stepped out for a coffee,” he said, smiling.

She replied with a half laugh that rolled into blissful tears as he sat down on the bed and wrapped his arms around her. She wanted to speak, but her throat felt rough and she had trouble assembling the words in her mind. Everything felt foggy and distant. None of this seemed real.

“It’s okay,” Edmund said. He helped her onto her back. “You’re okay. You just...you just had an accident.” He wiped a bead of sweat from her brow and dabbed the tears from her eyes.

Emily worked her mouth, searching for words, but nothing came out.

“Just relax,” Edmund said. “You need your strength. It’s a miracle you survived at all.” He looked over at a glass of water sitting near the bed. “Here,” he said, offering her a drink. She lifted her head with a grunt and took the water in small sips. “What the hell were you thinking?” he asked, holding his smile even though the tremble in his voice betrayed him.