Flip

  Flip

  Christopher J. Fox

  First published by Christopher J. Fox 2019

  Copyright © 2019 by Christopher J. Fox

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Christopher J. Fox asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks, and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.

  First edition

  ISBN: 978-1-7332712-0-2

  Editing by Angela Brown

  Proofreading by Kate Schomaker

  Cover art by Lance Buckley

  This book is dedicated with love to the memory of my father, Brian Christopher Fox.

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, my wife, Dora. She and I developed the plot, the characters, and their voices together. This book, like everything else good in my life, is a product of our hard work and God’s blessings. Huge thanks to our daughters Anastasia, Gabrielle, and Catalina, who have thought about, read, and provided frank feedback on this book since our long road trip back to Omaha for our eldest daughter Mariana’s wedding.

  I am deeply grateful to my editor, Angela Brown, and my proofreader, Kate Schomaker for excellent work. Thanks to Lance Buckley who conceptualized and produced the cover art.

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  1 Medic 82

  2 Equilibrium and Potentials

  3 Indeterminacy

  4 Withdrawal

  5 The Crucifix and the Ice Pick

  6 Too Much Information

  7 Messages

  8 Eternity and a Day

  9 Certainty

  10 Confirmation

  11 Aida’s Day

  12 Waking Up

  13 Understanding

  14 Death in the Wave World

  15 Untangling the Knot

  16 Shell Game

  17 Volunteer 119

  18 The Production Floor

  19 Through the Night

  20 Back to Square One

  21 Hunting

  22 Abomination

  23 The Choice

  24 New Mexicans at the Gate

  25 Despair

  26 Max’s Gift

  27 Cabras de la Montaña

  28 The Last Leg

  29 Oro y Azul

  30 The Supercell

  31 Coming Back

  32 Healing

  “The more closely you look at one thing, the less closely can you see something else.”

  ~ Werner Heisenberg

  ***

  Once there was an old frog who had lived all his life in a dank well. One day a frog from the sea paid him a visit.

  “Where do you come from?” asked the frog in the well.

  “From the great ocean,” he replied.

  “How big is your ocean?”

  “It’s gigantic.”

  “You mean about a quarter of the size of my well here?”

  “Bigger.”

  “Bigger? You mean half as big?”

  “No, even bigger.”

  “Is it…as big as this well?”

  “There’s no comparison.”

  “That’s impossible! I’ve got to see this for myself.”

  They set off together. When the frog from the well saw the ocean, it was such a shock that his head just exploded into pieces.

  ~ Patrul Rinpoche from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

  Prologue

  A higbe watched his little sister, Ikazuabe, as she played with her pigtails and pulled at her seat belt. She didn’t want the restraint to wrinkle her new white cotton dress.

  “Ika, regarde à l’extérieur et dis-moi ce que tu vois. (Ika, look outside and tell me what you see),” he said.

  The six-year-old gazed out the airplane window at the dense tropical jungle sliding away below.

  “Des arbres et des plantes (Trees and plants),” she answered.

  This was her first trip from her home in Cotonou, Benin, to Paris, and though the family had left the central African nation not quite an hour ago, she was starting to squirm, and Ahigbe realized the novelty of flying had already worn off for her.

  “Combien de temps pour qu’on arrive là-bas, maman? (How long until we get there, Mama?)” Ikazuabe asked.

  “Keep looking for the Mediterranean Sea, dear. When you see that, it won’t be long.”

  Ahigbe was in the middle seat, his mother on the aisle. In a bid for temporary peace, he reached under the seat in front of him for his bag.

  “Ika, let’s read a book. Do you like Green Eggs and Ham?”

  “Yes, I do, Sam I Am!” The little girl giggled, her hands on her hips, pleased with the word game she had played with her brother. He opened the book and read the first page aloud.

  Suddenly a ferocious quake jolted them. A loud bang followed it, accompanied by painful pressure in Ahigbe’s ears. Screams erupted as the plane lurched to one side, and he could only see the ground below through the window and only bright sky above. Ika was shrieking, her hands on her ears. He grabbed for her before she was thrown from her seat.

  The man in the seat in front of him flew up, his head colliding with the overhead compartment with a sickening, wet crunch. Blood sprayed around the cabin and into Ahigbe’s face, soaking him.

  Everything was chaos. A screaming, howling wind deafened the boy and tore at his exposed flesh. Something hard hit him in the head. Wincing in pain, he wiped the blood from his eyes. Bags and laptops flew through the cabin. The yellow oxygen masks had dropped, but they were waving wildly about, eluding his frantic grasp. Gasping for a full breath, for any air that would come, Ahigbe clawed desperately for the yellow mask. His world constricted to the excruciating burning in his chest and the yellow blob bouncing around in front of him, and black spots filled his eyes. Another savage twist of the plane, and he was crushed into his seat, the remaining breath squeezed from his burning lungs. A moment as long as a lifetime later, mercifully, dark night came down like a curtain before his eyes.

  ***

  Ahigbe woke up and saw…trees? But where is the side of the plane? he asked himself. Dazed, he sat for a moment, trying to make sense of his now-stationary world. Slowly reality started to form around him again as he returned to his senses. The trees were still there, and Ika was lying like a limp doll in her seat.

  “Ika! Ika!” he cried, shaking his unresponsive sister. Panic clutched the twelve-year-old boy, but then he saw her little chest rise and fall. She coughed and opened her eyes.

  “Ahi!” she cried, and reached for her brother.

  “It’s okay, Ika. I’m here.”

  Ahigbe winced as he turned his head to the left at the sound of a cough and saw his mother covering her mouth with a bleeding hand. In the rows in front of him and behind, children cried and coughed as smoke roiled through what remained of the cabin. To his right, a woman was yelling. He jerked his head around, which made him wince again.

&nb
sp; “You’ve got to get out of there! Now!” she screamed in French. “Come here, toward me,” she said, motioning with her hands.

  His mother heard and saw the woman too, and she undid her seat belt. Ahigbe did the same and reached over to help Ika.

  “C’mon. Hurry!” the woman yelled again.

  Now that he was able to move, he got a better view of her. She was standing on the wing of the plane just a few feet from them, visible through the gaping hole. The woman wore a long white coat over a skirt and a white top. A golden light glinted off something that hung around her neck. She was gesturing frantically, a look of panic on her face.

  Clutching Ika to his chest, Ahigbe set one foot on the edge of the broken fuselage and swung his other foot as far as he could to reach the wing, which was about a foot away and two feet above. He thrust hard with his back leg and pushed up onto the wing, freeing the two of them from the wreckage. Ika breathed deeply and coughed once more when she was in the cleaner air.

  When he set Ika down on the wing, the woman said, “I’ll watch her. Go help your mother and the other children.”

  Ahigbe turned to grasp his mother’s hand and pulled with all the strength in his young arms. In an instant, the three of them were on the wing, sucking in deep breaths. After a few moments, he turned his attention back to the cries of other children carried on the acrid smoke that spewed from the cabin. He took a deep breath and stepped back inside the plane. He bent low and tried to search for anyone alive. The interior of the plane, blurred by the water running from his eyes and a blanket of smoke, was a wreckage of humanity. Ahigbe turned his eyes away from it and focused on the floor as he crawled down the aisle toward the shrieks. His arms and legs wobbled, and a disturbing shiver pulsed through his torso. He wanted to stop, to run back to his mother and sister, but the cries sounded too much like Ika’s. He found one little boy pinned underneath a pair of twisted legs and freed the child. The two boys stumbled to the opening, and Ahigbe handed him to his mother.

  “There’s no more time to go back in and search. Call for them,” the woman in white said.

  Ahigbe nodded, then called to the other children. “Undo your seat belts. Come here. We have to get off the plane!”

  Miraculously, a number of small children worked their way toward him, and he handed them out to his mother. Soon half a dozen children were gathered there. They were shaking, crying, and coughing, but otherwise uninjured, standing on the wing of the plane.

  Ahigbe paused, sweeping his eyes once more around what remained of the cabin and its occupants. He never had seen death like this before, and he knew the image of it never would leave him. His mother called to him, begging him to get out of the plane, so he did. Once he was on the wing, he looked around for the woman in white.

  “C’mon! C’mon!” the woman called, now at the end of the wing, about ten meters from him. “Hurry!”

  “Come here,” Ahigbe’s mother said, bending over to pick up Ika, who reached up, eager for the safety of her mother’s arms.

  “This way,” the woman called again. She was now off the wing, standing on the floor of the smoldering jungle. Ahigbe, seeing flames rise from the rear of the plane, rushed down the length of the wing as fast as he could, making sure his mother, sister, and the other children were close behind. The wing had shorn off the tops of the surrounding trees as the plane had crashed, and its tip had gouged out a trench in the dirt. It was a small step off the wing to the ground.

  “Follow me!” came the voice, now more commanding than before.

  Everyone moved toward it, into the overgrowth and away from the plane. The vegetation was too dense for running, as much as Ahigbe wanted to. Leaves slapped his face, and branches pulled at his clothes as he pushed them away to allow others to follow. Up ahead, he saw the woman standing in a clearing, just above them on a small hill. He lost sight of her as a leaf swatted him in the face, but the hill with the clearing was just straight ahead.

  In a moment, Ahigbe climbed the hill, panting. His mother was breathing hard behind him, and Ika sobbed softly. The woman was gone, but he saw a path running down the other side, the thick jungle undergrowth chopped back away from it.

  “This way!” came the voice from down the path.

  The group quickly followed, almost at a run now. A deafening explosion thundered at the scurrying survivors for the second time that day, this time accompanied by a rush of wind and heat on their backs. Ahigbe glanced over his shoulder and saw the fireball turn to oily black smoke as the last of the plane’s fuel was consumed. As frightening as the massive explosion was, he knew they were safe now. He started down the path again, this time following his mother.

  The woman led them down the path for about ten minutes. Ahigbe would catch glimpses of her white coat, or hear her call, then lose sight of her as she slipped around another bend. As he struggled to keep up, he tried to place her. He knew he hadn’t seen her on the plane, so where had she come from?

  “Over here there’s a road,” she called to them.

  Ahigbe burst ahead at a dead run. He knew a road was their best chance at finding help and getting away from here.

  “Please, lady, wait!” he shouted, and then his feet hit the gravel road. “Lady!” he called again, searching around for the woman in white.

  “Ahigbe!” his mother yelled from behind as she stepped out of the forest, waving him back with one hand as she carried Ika in the other.

  “Mama, the lady’s not here,” Ahigbe said as he caught his breath and looked around.

  “Where did she go?” she asked, her eyes sweeping the area.

  “I don’t know.” The boy shrugged. Ika wriggled, wanting to be put down now, but her mother wasn’t about to let her out of her protective arms.

  “Who was she?” Ahigbe asked his mother.

  With wide eyes, the woman blessed herself. “Au nom du Père, du Fils et du Saint-Esprit. Un ange,” she said. An angel.

  1 Medic 82

  “When sufficiently examined through this extraordinary view of reality, the causes for almost every event can be related to other preceding events or circumstances.”

  “Master, I noticed that you said almost every event. So some things are random and unpredictable?”

  “Perhaps, but remember our ability to comprehend all possible causes is limited.”

  “So, then, are you saying that nothing is truly unpredictable?”

  “Well, there are miracles.”

  —Lama Rinpoche Matthew Estabrook to newly ordained monks on the subject of transperceptual meditation

  F rom the passenger seat of Medic 82, John Holden gazed out at the maple leaves. Although their centers were still vibrant, the edges were curled and desiccated by the most stagnant, oppressive, sweltering Nebraska summer he’d experienced in his twenty-five years. This morning is a godsend, though, he thought. A gentle breeze stirred the leaves as fresh morning air swept over his face. It’s 8:25, and my uniform isn’t sticking to me yet.

  As he popped the last bite of his breakfast burrito into his mouth, the radio squawked, interrupting his reverie.

  “KEA571 to Medic 82. You have a call. Fifty-year-old woman, unresponsive at University Labs, building 87, room 2361. Campus security is on-site.”

  “That’s a straight shot,” John told his partner, Megan. He grabbed the mike while she started the engine and flipped on the sirens and lights. A moment later, Medic 82 rolled on the call.

  After keying the mike, John replied, “Medic 82 responding. ETA…” He glanced at Megan, who held up five fingers. “Five minutes.”

  “Acknowledged, Medic 82.”

  The unusual thing about driving an emergency vehicle during an actual emergency is that you have to be calm and careful and deliberate, which is incongruent with the sirens, lights, and churning engine. Megan, however, was a natural. She reminded John of the navy helicopter pilots he’d flown with when he was a rescue diver. As she smoothly moved the ambulance into the oncoming lane, weaving sedately to by
pass a minor traffic snarl on their side of the road, he thought he heard her hum the Beach Boys’ “409” while acting like this was just another 7-Eleven run.

  As good as Megan was, the ride to the scene always took too long for John, and he unconsciously leaned into his seat belt. Three minutes later, the ambulance turned onto University Drive South—the heavy traffic obediently parting before it—then headed for building 87. The impeccably groomed campus grounds were in full summer bloom and packed with students and staff arriving for classes. John counted a dozen or so bicyclists just on the visible stretch of road before them, which slowed them down even more. About two miles from the building, he unbuckled and gripped the bulkhead on either side, then stepped into the back to gather their gear. Unresponsiveness in a fifty-year-old woman could be caused any of a million things, but in his experience it was best to prepare for a cardiac, respiratory, neurological, or illness-related emergency. The dispatcher didn’t mention trauma, but he would prepare for that as well; maybe she had fallen down a set of stairs.

  “Hard left coming up!” Megan shouted.

  Suddenly the ambulance heaved, barely giving John time to brace himself. “What the hell!” he shouted back.

  “Sorry. Don’t whine. A pedestrian redirected us. We’re taking University Drive North.”

  With their gear outlined in his head and a jaw-grinding breath of exasperation, he made his way to the passenger seat and threw himself onto it. The winding University Drive North would add two miles to the drive as it looped around and then deposited them at their destination.

  Forty-five seconds ticked by, then forty-five more. Megan expertly moved Medic 82 along University Drive North. She was so much better than John at driving under pressure. She had her game face on and was doing her job to a T. Megan knew remaining unruffled was the best way to help the patient, and John knew he had to do the same. An annoyed, exasperated medic wasn’t nearly as effective as a calm, focused one.