The Face

ambulance.
        [171] On the white van, in red letters trimmed in gold, under the bold word AMBULANCE, glowed the smaller words OUR LADY OF ANGELS HOSPITAL.
        Maybe they would give him a bed in Dunny’s old room.
        That prospect filled him with a choking dread.
        He closed his eyes for what seemed a blink, heard men warning one another “careful” and “easy, easy,” and when he looked again, he had blinked himself into the ambulance.
        He became aware that a needle already pierced his right arm, served by an IV tube and a dangling bag of plasma.
        For the first time, he heard his breathing-full of wheeze and rush and rattle-whereupon he knew that more than his legs had been crushed. He suspected that one or both of his lungs struggled against the confinement of a partially collapsed rib cage.
        He wished for pain. Anything but this terrible lack of feeling.
        The paramedic at Ethan’s side spoke urgently to his teammate, who stood in the rain, beyond the open doors: “We’re gonna need speed.”
        “I’ll burn asphalt,” the rain-lashed medic promised, and he slammed shut the doors.
        Along both side walls, near the ceiling, taut garlands of red tinsel sparkled. At the ends and in the middle of each garland, small silver bells, three per set, dangled brightly. Christmas decorations.
        The bells in each group were strung concentrically on the same string. The top bell, also the largest, overhung the middle bell, which overhung the third-which was also the smallest-in the set.
        When the door slammed, the tiny bells on each string jiggled against one another, producing a silvery ringing as faint as fairy music.
        The paramedic fitted Ethan with an oxygen mask.
        As cool as autumn, as sweet as springtime, a rich blend of air soothed his hot throat, but his wheezing did not in the least abate.
        [172] Having climbed behind the steering wheel in the front of the ambulance, the driver slammed his door, again causing the red tinsel to shimmer and the bells to ring.
        “Bells,” Ethan said, but the oxygen mask muffled the word.
        In the process of fitting the binaurals of a stethoscope to his ears, the paramedic paused. “What did you say?”
        The sight of the stethoscope inspired in Ethan the realization that he could hear his heartbeat, and that what he heard was ragged, uneven, alarming.
        Listening, he knew that he was hearing not just his heart, but also the knock-hoofed canter of Death’s horse approaching.
        “Bells,” he repeated, as throughout his mind the doors to a thousand fears flew open.
        The ambulance began to move, and as it rolled, the siren found its shrill voice.
        Ethan couldn’t hear the bells above the banshee wail, but he could see the nearest three trembling on their string. Trembling.
        He raised his left hand toward the dangling cluster but couldn’t reach that far. His hand grasped at empty air.
        This terrible intensity of fear brought with it a clouding confusion, and perhaps he was utterly delirious; nevertheless, the bells seemed to be more than mere decorations, seemed mystical in their shiny smoothness, in their glimmering curves, the embodiment of hope, and he desperately needed to hold them.
        Apparently the paramedic understood the urgency of Ethan’s need to have the bells, if not the reason for it. He plucked a small pair of scissors from a kit, and swaying with the movement of the vehicle, he clipped the knot that secured the nearest cluster to the garland of tinsel.
        Given the string of bells, Ethan clutched them in his left hand with a grip both tender and ferocious.
        He was exhausted, but he dared not close his eyes again, for he feared that when he opened them, darkness would remain and never go away, that he would henceforth see nothing of this world.
        [173] The paramedic picked up the stethoscope once more. He inserted the binaural tips in his ears.
        With the fingers of his left hand, Ethan counted the bells on the string, from tiniest to largest, to tiniest again.
        He realized that he held these ornaments as he’d held a rosary in the hushed hospital room during the last few nights of Hannah’s life: with equal measures of despair and hope, with an unexpected awe that sustained the heart and with a stoicism that armored it. His hope had been unrealized, his stoicism