Chapter Fifteen
The second week of camp ended early on Friday, with Hannah sending them all to Winston’s Dairy in recognition of their hard work. The move had seemed spontaneous until Rose saw the line of host-family cars in the parking area, ready to caravan out toward the North Fork and ice cream. Bubbles rode out in the town car with them, in the back with Rose while Maji took shotgun for a change of pace.
“Does camp always come with ice cream on the second Friday?” Rose asked.
Bubbles grinned. “If we’ve been very good. And we always are.”
“Something good today?” Frank asked, looking at them in the rearview mirror.
Rose thought of Bayani bringing the workout to a hushed halt when she knocked one of the boxing dummies to the floor. “A ninety-eight pound girl laid out a Bob with one hard kick,” she offered. “That was impressive.”
“Bob? You got guys in there, too?”
Rose shook her head, deciding not to share her theory about the willowy Filipina’s original gender assignment. If Hannah accepted Bayani as a young woman, so would the rest of them. “No,” she told Frank. “We have six Body Object Bags. Bobs.”
“Huh. No Joe or Dino. Not even a Ricky?”
As Rose and Maji had helped Bayani right the dummy, Maji had asked the teen who she’d been thinking of. Tariq was the answer, the name spat out with half chagrin, half defiance. And Maji had shared the names she’d given the Bobs—Efran, Skip, Gus, Lalo. And a girl’s name—Sheila? Rose gave him a wink via his mirror. “Maybe we’ll have a Ricky this year.”
The girls got their cones to go, heading off with their host families to play tourist for the weekend. Bubbles caught a ride with the other instructors, anxious to spend an evening at home with Rey. Maji checked in with Frank and left him posted up on the little road into the farm, enjoying a cone in the town car. She and Rose sat at a picnic table, watching the cows graze in the field.
Maji allowed herself a moment to just enjoy being out in the open, with no walls or alarms. Frank could watch the drive up to the farm. She had her earpiece in and her gun pressed into the small of her back. They were secure enough, and the ice cream was as fantastic as she remembered.
“It’s so bucolic,” Rose said next to her, leaning back against the picnic table, taking in the rolling hills of grass and scrub. “I’d come here even if they didn’t make the best ice cream on Long Island.”
“You’ve sampled all the competition?”
“I’ve had a lot of summers to explore this area. And I really like homemade ice cream. Isn’t that in my file?”
Maji laughed. “No.” She turned partway toward Rose, wishing she could see her eyes behind those big sunglasses. “If you were free to roam this summer, where would you go?”
“Oh, the usual. The beach, window-shopping in East Hampton, the arboretums, maybe a Gold Coast estate. And the farmers’ market, of course.”
Maji would have loved to tag along, hand in hand, if this summer had been the vacation she had planned for herself. “Next summer, maybe.” There would be life here after Angelo, wouldn’t there? Rose would come back to see her grandmother, at least.
“Maji?”
“Mm-hmm.” It was so nice to hear Rose speak her name.
“Was the girl in Bubbles’s story the Sheila-Bob you mentioned to Bayani?”
Maji sat up straight but didn’t turn to look at Rose. The afternoon’s discussion session had gone from the importance of looking out for each other, to roofies, to Bubbles’s disclosure before Maji had had time to prepare herself for the memory of that terrible day. And while she was impressed that Bubbles could talk about it, finally, so matter-of-factly, Maji wasn’t sure she could. The whole time Bubbles had been telling the story, she could feel Rose watching her. She exhaled slowly. “Yeah.”
“Was Sheila a friend of yours? Before she set Bubbles up, of course.”
Maji didn’t try to hide her bitterness. “A junkie can’t be your friend. They can pretend to, but underneath that, everything is always about the next fix. I learned that years before Sheila.”
“I’m sorry,” Rose said softly and laid her hand on Maji’s. When Maji pulled hers away, Rose didn’t object. Instead, she handed Maji a bottle of water and a napkin.
Maji washed the stickiness off her hands in silence, grateful for the moment to pull herself back together. She’d been holding the memories at bay since the afternoon, locked behind her blank-slate face.
“I can’t believe you took on four guys by yourself. I mean, I can believe it, but…you could have been killed.” The quaver in Rose’s voice gave away the horror behind the words.
“I was lucky,” Maji conceded. “Lucky I got her out without killing anybody.”
Rose took her hand. “Nobody could have blamed you if you had.”
“I would have.” And how she would have lived with the aftermath at fourteen, she didn’t know. It was hard enough as an adult.
Rose turned Maji’s face toward hers. “You can’t know that,” she said, her warm brown eyes liquid with caring so sweet it hurt to look at them.
“Yes. I can.”
Rose’s eyebrows shot up, her hand rising to her mouth. “I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I forgot.”
Maji looked away. She stood and turned toward the road, clicking the transmitter back on. “Frank, let’s roll.”
No reply came back.
Maji slipped the gun from its holster with one hand and pulled Rose off the bench seat with the other. “Stay behind me.”
Rose opened her mouth to ask what was wrong, but no words came out. She sprinted after Maji, barely keeping up. When the town car came into view, Maji stopped short and Rose had to dodge to keep from running into her. “What is it?”
“Don’t know,” Maji answered, scanning the area between them and the car, and the road beyond. “Stand by,” she added quietly. Rose realized she was speaking to her team via the comm.
They approached the car at a cautious jog. When Rose saw Frank slumped over the wheel, she gasped and surged forward. She felt herself knocked aside, then steadied by Maji’s hands on her shoulders. “Get behind the wall, and stay down until I say so. Clear?”
Rose followed her glance to the stone wall across the drive, with the Winston’s Dairy sign propped against it. She nodded and went, fighting the urge to run to the car and yank the door open instead.
When Maji opened the driver’s door, Frank didn’t move. Maji briskly checked him over, talking all the while. Rose couldn’t tell from her hiding spot whether she was speaking with Frank or the team. When Maji hefted him out of the car and onto the ground, Rose headed over to help. The sight of Frank on the dirt road, clammy and pale, made her light-headed.
“Not yet!” Maji barked, waving her back. When Rose retreated, she slid into the driver’s seat. Only when Rose complied with her gestured command to duck behind the wall did Maji start the engine. Then she stepped back out and waved Rose over.
As Rose ran over, she realized with a shudder that Maji had protected her from the possibility of the car exploding. The thought gave her a surge of adrenaline, and with it the strength to help Maji wrestle Frank’s deadweight into the backseat.
“You drive,” Maji said, climbing in over Frank and pulling the door shut behind her.
Rose got in and clicked her belt without thinking, slammed the car into drive, and started down the road. “Where?”
“The VA. Ang, you got it called in?” Maji said, then paused. “No, VA is closer. Yes, they can. Call it in!” And then, “Stand by.”
At the two-lane road, Rose braked. “Which way?”
“Right.” From there, Maji guided her turn by turn, rubbing Frank’s sternum and speaking words of encouragement to him. At the parkway entrance, she told Rose, “Go as fast as you can, safely.”
Rose took a deep breath and hit the gas, the car bouncing onto the wider roadway. Maji’s head hit the roof as she leaned over Frank. “Sorry!”
“Just drive,” Maji said, her voice steady but dead serious. From the front, Rose heard her steady patter continue. “Stay with me, Frank. Hang in there.”
He just gurgled in response, drool running from the corner of his mouth as his head lolled. Rose pulled her eyes off the scene in the rearview and back to the road. She changed lanes without signaling and shot past a car moseying along at the speed limit.
A siren wailed behind them, a patrol car appearing on the town car’s tail. “Shit,” Rose spat. “We don’t have time for this.”
Maji’s head popped up, turned to take in the cruiser. “Slow down and wave him up.” She smiled tightly in Rose’s general direction, which Rose took as reassurance. “Window down. Ask for an escort.”
Rose drove half in the right lane, and half on the shoulder. The patrol car pulled alongside, cutting its siren as it straddled the lanes. The look on Rose’s face stopped the driver before he could speak.
“We have to get to the VA,” she pleaded. “He won’t wake up!”
The patrolman nodded, and with a booming, “Follow me, ma’am,” pulled ahead of her, relaunching the sirens while accelerating. Rose stuck as close to his bumper as she dared, barely registering the traffic that pulled over to let them by and halted at the intersections they sped through. In what seemed both a flash and an eternity, they pulled under the ER marquee. A team in scrubs with a gurney and oxygen waited, pouncing forward as she came to a stop.
Maji lifted herself out of the way inside the car, then followed Frank’s limp body out as they hoisted it onto the gurney. She exchanged rapid-fire data with the team, jogging alongside them as they disappeared through the sliding doors.
Rose meant to open her door, stand up, and follow them, but a wave of light-headedness washed over her. “Ma’am?” she heard vaguely. “Ma’am?”
She looked up, and the patrolman was opening her door. She let him give her a steadying hand out and seat her in a hospital wheelchair.
The double doors slid open, and Maji emerged onto the sidewalk, looking concerned. “You have to move the car, ma’am,” the patrolman said to her. Maji glanced anxiously from the car to Rose, and back. “I’ll get her hydrated,” he added, and she nodded to him.
Maji crouched and squeezed Rose’s hands, looking steadily into her eyes. “I’ll be right back.”
In the waiting room, Rose listened while Maji talked to Angelo on a cell phone, like any normal person in an ER. The words didn’t make sense to her; and for a minute she thought perhaps she needed more water to counter the shock. But then she recognized the Arabic and knew they were not talking normal-people talk. When Maji hung up, letting her hand go, Rose asked, “Is he coming?”
Maji shook her head. “But Tom and Dev will be here soon to pick us up.”
“But—” Rose protested, then caught herself. She got up and walked over to the admissions clerk. “He’s conscious,” Rose exclaimed on her return. “They want to keep him overnight, but we can see him.” At Maji’s doubtful expression, she explained, feeling sheepish, “I might have called him Dad instead of Frank.”
Frank looked, if possible, even worse than he had on the drive to the hospital. But at least he was breathing, alive. Rose approached his bedside and started to grasp his free hand. At her touch, he jerked and gasped, jangling the IV attached on his other side. She flinched and stepped back.
“Some wake-up call, huh?” Maji quipped, laying a hand on the small of Rose’s back.
Frank tried to smile, but grimaced instead. “Swore I’d never be here again,” he whispered hoarsely. Maji passed a cup of water from the bed-foot table to Rose, who gingerly held the straw for Frank.
He sipped and closed his eyes. “Owe ya again,” he said to Maji.
Maji shook her head, her hand back on Rose’s back. “Not this time. Rose tore the tires off the car to get you here.”
Frank looked at Rose, and his eyes filled with tears. Blinking them away seemed to hurt.
A nurse appeared in the doorway. “Sorry, ladies. He’s due for a sedative.” To Rose she added, “You can pick your father up in the morning.”
As she nodded her consent to the nurse, Rose noticed the look that Frank shot Maji. She winked at him and said, “Just rest, Frank.”