Adam

"MOVE, Padre!" the man named Clayton screamed, and Adam was moving--moving as fast as he possibly could, one step at a time, his wife strapped to his back with several rolls of adhesive tape. He sweated buckets, his legs cramping, and two flights of stairs still to go, warm blood--Stacie-blood--sluicing down the back of his legs.

The deputy fired that freakishly huge gun again, the noise so loud it jogged his fillings, and when his hearing faded back in he heard the deputy screaming, "Come on! Come on! Come and get it, fucker! Come on! I don't got all day! Come on!"

Boom!

"Come on, you bastard! Yeah, you! You want some of this? You got it!"

Boom!

They rounded another landing and at the top of the next flight, he saw a door with a sign above it glowing under the emergency light--HELIPAD.

It gave him a burst of energy, small to be sure, but enough to push him those last fifteen steps, the deputy firing behind him and screaming to go, and then Adam buried his shoulder into the door and burst out into a cool, dark night.

Made it fifteen feet before crumbling to the concrete.

He'd lost Stacie's blood bag on the ascent.

A man with a chainsaw stood with a woman and four kids on the far side of the helipad, and they were waving their arms toward a sea of headlights, spotlights, flashlights, ambulance light bars on a steady burn, highway patrol cruisers sending out a manic frenzy of blues and reds. Every law enforcement and first response agency in the Four Corners had to be out there.

He reached back and began ripping the tape from his shoulders as Clayton broke through the door and then spun around and kicked it shut.

"Bolton!" he screamed. "Get your ass over here!"

Adam watched the man with the chainsaw limp quickly back across the helipad, the woman in tow.

When they reached Clayton, the woman took Adam's swaddled little girl out of his arms.

"Incoming," Clayton said.

"How many?"

"More than we can handle."

Adam ripped off the last bit of tape and eased Stacie onto the concrete. She shivered under her hospital gown and the insides of her legs were streaked with blood.

So, so much of it.

Adam had brought his backpack along, carrying it on the front of his chest. He unzipped it and grabbed another unit of O-positive, plugged Stacie's IV line into the bottom, then held it up so the blood ran down into her veins.

"Baby?" he said. "Can you hear me?"

Stacie's eyes opened.

Barely.

Slits.

"Where's Daniella?" she asked.

Adam glanced back toward the door, saw the woman who held his child hurrying over. She knelt beside them.

"That's our baby girl," Adam said.

"She's beautiful. I'm Jenny."

"I'm Adam. This is Stacie, my wife."

Even in the lowlight, he saw the concern darken Jenny's face.

"Here, would you take her?" She handed the sleeping infant--its neurological system shut down from all the mayhem--to Adam.

"Hi, Stacie, I'm a nurse. My name's Jenny."

Adam heard the sound of metal clanging nearby, saw Clayton and the man he'd called Bolton kicking one of the huge air conditioning units mounted to the roof.

Jenny took Stacie's wrist and held it for a moment.

"Postpartem hemorrhage?"

"That's what Nurse Herrick called it."

Jenny looked down at the blood still pooling on the cement between Stacie's legs.

"She's bleeding again," Jenny said. "Had they stopped it before?"

"I think so."

"Can I hold my baby?" Stacie whispered.

"Sure, sweetie." Adam laid their daughter in the crook of Stacie's arm.

Jenny said, "Could I speak with you for a moment, Adam?"

"What about this bag?"

"It's okay. You can put it down."

He laid the blood bag on the concrete and followed Jenny for a few feet toward the edge of the roof. Clayton and Bolton were struggling to push an air conditioning unit that was bigger than a refrigerator in front of the door to the hospital.

Jenny stopped and took both of Adam's hands and said, "I am so sorry, but I'm afraid your wife isn't going to make it."

Like someone had shovel-punched him in the gut.

Jenny continued, "It probably jarred the clots loose when you carried her up from the birth unit."

Adam felt a rush of emotion coming on.

Fought against it.

"How long does she have?"

Jenny just shook her head. "Go be with her."

Adam turned away from her, stared down at his wife lying on the helipad, stroking Daniella's head with her fingers. He had never been more scared, including the previous hour.

He walked back over to his family, sat down beside his wife.

"She's beautiful," Stacie said.

"She looks like you. Your eyes for sure."

Clayton and Bolton were muscling another unit toward the door, metal scraping against concrete. Thought he could hear inhuman screaming echoing from inside the hospital.

He laid his hand against his wife's forehead--cool and sweaty.

Closed his eyes. Prayed harder than he'd ever prayed in his life.

"I'm so cold, Adam."

He started unbuttoning his black shirt.

"I hope you won't lose your faith over this."

He wondered if she meant her death, if she knew it was imminent, or everything else.

"Of course not," he said, wondering if he was lying to her.

Stacie looked down into the face of her daughter, and as Adam pulled his arms out of his shirtsleeves and laid it across Stacie's chest, she said, "You'll tell her about me?"

"Stacie, stop, you're gonna be--"

"I know what's happening," she said.

He could barely get the words out. "Every day, darling. Every day. I love you, Stacie. I love you so much." Tears streamed down his face.

Her eyes were going glassy, filling slowly with a kind of stunned emptiness.

"Stacie! Do you hear me?"

She turned her head, and stared up into his eyes, one last and fading beat of lucidity.

"I know you love me, Adam," she whispered. "You know I love you?"

He nodded.

"I'm scared, Adam."

He laid down beside his wife as the demons started beating against the door, their faces turned toward each other, staring into Stacie's eyes as the life inside them drained away.