October 7, 1969
Harsh white light shone insistently on her eyelids. The woman surfaced slowly from the depths of a long, unnatural slumber, becoming slowly aware of her surroundings as her senses began to attain clarity and focus. The low buzz of electronic equipment, the steady beep of a cardiac monitor and the soft whisper of a respirator droned monotonously near her left shoulder. The cool, crisp smell of alcohol and astringents suffused the air, under-laid by the stifling odor of illness. The mattress on which she lay was thin, inadequate next to the steel it cushioned and her back ached from long hours of lying prone.
Gradually, she became aware of the whispered conversation on the other side of the room. It was intense in nature, judging by the sentence fragments that drifted her way, and she wondered dreamily whom they were discussing. The voices, however, were fuzzy and vague, like they were coming from the opposite end of a long tunnel; she found herself unable to piece together more than a little of what they were saying.
“…Severe concussion...X-ray…lucky...alive...”
“…That man…wild look about him…”
“…Husband…”
“…Early pregnancy…very early…”
Trying to better understand the whispered conversation, she turned her head slightly to the left. The voices faded out as pain began to pound in her temples. Hammers shivered over the crown of her head and down her back, driving her to the trembling edge of madness as bright pinpoints of light and color began swimming gracefully, malevolently in front of her eyelids. The muscles in her neck and back cried out in staunch protest and an anguished moan exited her parched mouth in the form of a dry, gritty squeak.
The other occupants of the room heard her. The conversation ground to a halt a moment before one of the voices, the deep, reassuring baritone of a male, carefully modulated to a gentle hush, asked her how she was feeling.
Unable to open her eyes more than a sliver against the brilliance of fluorescent lights, she saw a featureless shadow outlined irregularly in front of the glare. Her lips parted slightly, trying to speak, to convey to him the pain that held her subdued. Communication however, was showing itself to be a monumental task, likened to the troubles of a small child who had not yet learned to meld sound and syllable in sensible union. She could only seem to force one word past her dry, swollen tongue, the effort monumental, her voice a gravelly gasp completely foreign to her ears, “Thirsty.”
Through a blurry haze she watched the nurse move quickly, quietly across the room, her footsteps hushed in her thick soled shoes, her light tread so smooth and flowing that, to the woman in the bed, whose fevered imagination had taken off in the most bizarre way, it seemed as though the nurse didn’t walk and in fact, had no feet at all. The woman imagined that the nurse floated serenely, silently a few inches above the floor, reaching the carafe that sat but a few inches away from the bed on a rolling stand, which she had not the ability to reach by herself.
Grabbing a depressingly small paper cup, she filled it with an even smaller amount of liquid and added a straw. The nurse held it to her mouth, and helped the woman hold her head up slightly that she might drink, cautioning her to sip slowly. She obeyed, drinking carefully despite the moment of rebellion she felt, wanting to cool the burn in her throat with the water and let it help relieve the hunger cramping her stomach.
She hadn’t the strength however, and she soon found that she could only drink a little before she fell back on the bed, gasping as sharp points of agony curled sinuously up her body. Shaking visibly and limp with exhaustion, she looked around the room for a moment, her gaze traversing the shadowy figures gathered around the bed. Then she closed her eyes and surrendered once again to darkness, seeking escape from the pain in sleep.
March 28, 1970
The small cry of a newborn broke the hush that had settled like a pall over the operating room, amazingly lusty in spite of the fact that the baby had been born three months too early. The little mouth opened again and another tiny bellow came forth. The doctors and nurses surrounding the operating table looked at the infant in surprise. Small though it was, weighing only slightly less than three pounds, the baby was proven to be tenacious.
The doctor, though intensely curious about the child, spared it only a moment of his attention, a single glance, before he resumed his useless endeavors on the mother.
She had wasted away during the pregnancy; her face and body, both of which at one time had been fairly aglow with youth and vitality, were emaciated. Her eyes stared up at him uncomprehendingly. Emotionless now, they were dull and glazed with fatigue and pain where once they had sparkled with life and determination, the intense blue of a perfect summer sky.
Less than six short months ago she had been admitted into this hospital, the tragic victim of a drunken driving accident. She was also expecting the child that he, but a few moments past, had delivered into the waiting arms of the nurse standing at serene attention nearby.
When she had come in to the hospital, broken and bloody though she had been, he had seen in her thick, lustrous hair and smooth complexion a normally healthy woman, a fighter in her own right. Despite the battered state she’d been in when she had been admitted, his initial prognosis for her recovery, if not a full one, had been good.
That was before they had discovered the existence of the baby however, the child that grew within her. They had tried to compensate for her the nutrients that the baby would need to develop, and would take from the mother if no ready supply presented itself. Unfortunately, even the vitamin regimen in combination with the strict diet routine that they had studiously applied, could not save her. The child had taken it all, growing and developing at an astonishing, an almost upsetting rate. While the woman had all but lain to waste, the child matured within the bounds of her womb growing strong and healthy, and with dizzying speed. The doctor, stricken with a sense of angry futility, had watched the expectant mother die a little more every day.
He’d known her blood was too thin; the pale, delicate state of her body showed even outwardly that she was anemic. He’d had to cut her however, when she’d begun first stage labor at twenty-eight weeks, twelve full weeks preterm. He’d had to take the baby, who had taken from her lifeless body voraciously that which she had needed herself to survive. As a result, she had never healed fully or properly from the car accident and her body would not have been able to withstand the rigors of natural childbirth. Her flesh was still bruised darkly, swollen and misshapen from the numerous injuries she’d sustained. She was now a shell of the woman she had been, withered to nothing, and he knew she would not survive. It was only a matter of time before her exhausted body gave way completely, succumbed because she could no longer fight the pull.
Trying to stem the flow of blood from the woman was a lesson in the improbable, as if the indomitable will of death that already hung its heavy, ghostly shroud over her. Silent communion with an invisible specter showed in her slack, delicate features, taking her life just as he was sworn to try to preserve it, to cheat death. Folding in and stitching the final layer of her skin, her life’s essence flowing out of her despite the sealing of the incision in her abdomen, the doctor tied the last knot in her sutures and cut the string, knowing that there was nothing more he could do for her. His heart and head pounding with the futile rage that welled in his chest, he nevertheless controlled his breathing and quelled the urge to shout at the heavens with outrage, angry that all his practice in the healing arts could not save this woman. He looked away from the face that he couldn’t bear to see any longer, lest he lose his own mind in the resigned, defeated depths of her eyes.
Finished with his ministrations on the woman, he turned to watch the infant wheeled away in an incubator and believed, like everyone else, that the baby would die.
The high-pitched whine and flat line pattern of a dying heart broke the silence behind him. Without having to turn around and look into her soulless eyes, he knew that she was gone.
Present Day
Raine Donnelly opened the kitchen door with a vicious yank, and a gust of arctic wind assaulted him. Swearing softly, he quickly ducked his head to shield his eyes from the sharp sting of small flecks of blowing snow, which could cause blindness as quickly and easily as the pristine white of the frozen earth. Then he faced into the wind, gritting his teeth when a tentacle of frigid air feathered down his back. Hunching his shoulders he began the slow, laborious trek to the vehicle parked fifteen feet away.
His was a black '98 model sport utility vehicle, powerful and functional in the Colorado Rocky Mountains where he made his home, about half an hour outside of Boulder. The SUV was pretty in its own right, smooth lines and sleek angles made it a relaxed and comfortable ride. The eight-cylinder engine and all-wheel drive were well equipped to handle the sharp up and downhill slopes that one often encountered living in the mountains.
Brushing the snow away from the door lock, he inserted the key and turned gently, hoping fervently that the lock had not frozen in the cold. It turned easily however, and he opened the door and climbed into the drivers’ seat, inserting the key into the ignition and starting the car to warm it up, breathing a low sigh of relief when the engine roared easily to life and the cold air blasting from the dashboard vents began to warm.
Unearthing his ice scraper from the backseat of the SUV, he got out of the vehicle and pried the sheets of ice and snow from the windshield with clumsy, cold-numbed hands, and then got back into the cab. Turning up the heat, he adjusted the vents to defrost the windows, allowing his fingertips and shaking hands time to thaw and steady. Then he fastened his seatbelt and put the car in gear, backing as carefully down the driveway and onto the road as his hurry and panic would allow.
The drive to the grocery store was slow and tedious. Blaine, Colorado was not large by any means. With a population of little more than two hundred, it was a quiet town nestled in the heart of the mountains. Like many small towns throughout the Midwest, Blaine still boasted cobbled streets around the town hall and turn of the century architecture. Everyone knew everyone else and nothing escaped the town gossip, no matter how valiant the effort. Locals from the outskirts of town gathered at Ian's Place, the town Bar & Grill, to toss back a beer at the end of the day, and the most anticipated event was the semi-annual ice cream social the church sponsored.
It was the perfect setting for the impossible to become a reality.
Unbidden, the thought whispered across his mind, catapulting him back to the events of that morning and Raine began to see terrifying anomalies flash vividly across his memory...
Laughter on the fringes of a dream had woken him. The gentle sound of feminine gaiety had roused him from his slumber as effectively as an intravenous caffeine drip.
He'd jerked awake and looked around with bleary, unfocused eyes as the last remnants of the dream evaporated and he was in his room again. Trembling violently, breathing heavily as though he'd just run a marathon and not woken from a dream he could not remember, he had sat up, wondering why he could not shake the sudden feeling that the disembodied laughter was vital. He could not rid himself of the instinctive and unexplainable knowledge that the woman behind the sound was critical to him in a way he could not understand or anticipate.
Groaning softly, he stretched and sat up, reaching over to turn on the bedside lamp and check the clock. It was half past five in the morning, and he resigned himself to getting up, knowing he would be awake now, despite the early hour. The first watery light of predawn had just begun to leak over the eastern horizon and unseasonable frost lined the panes, standing desolate reminder that winter still cuddled the earth in an icy blanket.
It was mid-April now, far beyond the time that the frosty breath of winter should have given way to the new flora and fauna of spring. This last winter had been a hard one, sweeping in on skeletal wings as soon as early October. Folks had tried to weather the winter the way they had done each previous, children running around in the wind and snow at first, parents keeping a watchful eye at a respectful distance. Soon however, the cold had proven too much for even the hottest blooded among them and had driven the townsfolk indoors when the wind and snow began to break long standing records on five of seven days a week. During the course of the season, they had already been buried under a whopping four feet of snow with one more front set to arrive later on today though with the pressure in the air around him, he could tell it had already arrived.
Dragging himself out of bed and forcing sleep clumsy limbs to cooperate, Raine stood. Weak light from the lamp illuminated his reflection in the window as he pulled on his jeans and grimaced slightly at what he saw. Standing at six feet three inches with broad shoulders, slim hips, and a well and fit if not chiseled physique, he never knew why he had many times been the object of come hither stares of doe-eyed, stars in the eyes adulation, though by now he was used to it. He was forever afraid and in danger of hitting his head against low hanging branches and door jambs as well as any ceiling that wasn’t vaulted, and he had on more than one occasion, earning the laughter of anyone in the immediate vicinity, which was both painful and embarrassing.
In his opinion, his eyes were his most arresting feature. Startling, sensuous eyes of a vivid blue were generously fringed by long, dark, curly lashes; his eyebrows a dark slash above them that seemed to be strong and aristocratic all at once. His jaw was strong and square though a little too angular in his opinion and when he smiled, two dimples showed prominently, the bane of his youthful existence. His teeth were straight and white, courtesy of painstaking care during his younger years. Jet black hair, sleep mussed now and sticking straight up in odd places at odd angles, usually fell with a flourish to frame his face; thick, wavy, and ever so slightly in need of a trim. The natural olive tint of his skin emphasized the starkness of his features, though it did provide mobility and a strong contrast for his eyes.
Having spent the majority of his teenage years closeted in his room with school books instead of outside worshipping the wide open spaces as had most of his peers, weather and sun had never leathered his skin. Even now at thirty-two, when the signs of aging had begun to creep up on most his age, his face still remained remarkably unlined, no crow's feet haunted the corners of his eyes and his forehead was smooth and unblemished, a fact for which a secret smile usually teased the corners of his mouth.
Walking into the bathroom, he opened the medicine cabinet and got out his toothbrush and toothpaste, razor, shaving gel, and deodorant, then closed it again. His reflection confronted him once more and he stuck out his tongue, which did absolutely no good but for whatever reason made him feel oddly better.