Embark
ON A HIKING
adventure and explore the beauty of nature’s best…
In the
WOODS.
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Part 2 The surgery took eleven hours. The doctors removed part of my jaw and rebuilt it with a piece of bone from my leg. When I woke up, I couldn’t speak. My face was wrapped, swollen, and numb. There was a tube in my throat, and I couldn’t even ask for a mirror.
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PART 2 I read the bank document twice before I understood it. It was a mortgage payoff letter. For my house. Dated January, eleven years ago. Six weeks after Conrad died. “Paid in full. $61,800. Payment received from: anonymous third party.”
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PART 2 I unbuttoned my shirt and pressed that baby against my bare chest. Skin to skin. Then I wrapped my jacket around both of us. My grandmother was a midwife in Chihuahua. When I was a boy, she told me the warmest place in the world for a newborn is a heartbeat. With my other hand, I called 911.
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PART 2 I left my third graders with the music aide and drove to the mall faster than I’ve ever driven. Olive was sitting in a small gray security office with a juice box she hadn’t touched. Her face was red and swollen from crying. When she saw me, she ran into my arms.
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PART 2 Dr. Ng didn’t wait. She picked up her phone and called the state’s emergency response team. Then the county health department. Then the sheriff. “There’s a two-year-old drinking this water,” she told them. “Today.”
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PART 2 I stepped forward. “Darryl,” I said. “Take your hand off my sister’s neck.” He didn’t.