“Not who. Where. Over the state line in Colorado. There’s a clinic. In Craig. With medicines. You can fill the prescription there.”

“But—”

He glances at his watch again, steadying its immense dial with one hand. “Get out the map, put on your boots, and go. There isn’t much time.”

“Wait! What—”

The intercom interrupts her. “Dr. Kunz. Dr. Kunz to Emergency. Code Purple. Stat.”

“Gotta go, schweetheart. It’s been fun, and it’s been real, and get up off your ass and go get the meds.” With that he begins to fade, and the hospital room around him. Kirsten’s eyes snap open, to the now-familiar sight of the fire and Asimov’s anxious gaze, and the too-quiet form beneath the sleeping bag.

“Gods, what a damn dream—” Without thought, she raises a hand to rub at her aching forehead.

There is a paper in it. A paper that was not there before.

Hardly trusting her sight, let alone her mind, Kirsten looks down at the words that march across the corner of the Wyoming/Colorado map from Koda’s rucksack. In her own neat handwriting it says, “Levaquin Injectible. 500 mg/day for 10 days. Packet 10 3 cc syringes w/needles.”

“Ok,” she says, wiping her hands on her pants. The script crinkles in protest. “I can do this. I have to do this. Even if that nutty striped Marcus Welby wannabe from my very weird subconscious didn’t tell me, I’d still have to do it. So let’s get going. First things first. It’s gonna be a long hike, so I need to be dressed for it. Or as dressed as I can be, anyway.”

Slipping off her sweats, she tugs on a dirty pair of jeans, then pulls the sweats back on over them, then pulls Dakota’s sweats on over them, changing her appearance to that of a housewife who’s spent a little too much time with the bon-bons and soaps. They have two dry t-shirts left, and she pulls both of them on, then one of her own flannels, then one of Dakota’s, and finally Dakota’s heavily lined flannel that is more jacket than shirt. A third flannel is tied, babushka style, over her head. A pair of heavy, clean socks double as mittens. “I know, I know,” she remarks to Asi, who seems to be laughing at her, “I look like the bagperson from Hell, but at least I’ll be warm. I hope.” Three pairs of socks and her boots come last.

Fully dressed for whatever may come, she waddles over to Dakota and, with the effort of a small child in a full snowsuit, lowers herself to her knees. “I’ll be back soon, sweetheart. I promise you.” She strokes the damp hair from her partner’s forehead. “I’ll have the meds you need and you’ll be better in no time. Then we can finish this shit and get on with the rest of our lives, ok?” Tears sting her eyes and she swipes at them. “Just…hang in there while I’m gone, alright?” Bending still further, she places a tiny kiss on Dakota’s forehead, and a longer one on dry, cracked lips. “I love you, Dakota Rivers. Never forget that. Ever.”

Pulling away, she pauses for a moment, and looks up at the ceiling. “Ina Maka? I don’t know if you can hear me. Hell, I don’t even know if I believe you even exist. But Dakota does, I know that, and that’s enough for me. I don’t pray much—heck, I don’t pray at all, really, but I’m doing it now. Please, please watch over her while I’m gone, ok? I know that you and her are close, and you might be thinking of calling her to your side so you can be together all the time, but…don’t do it just yet, ok? I need her. I need her and I love her…so much. And if you really are up there, you know that. So please, just…watch over her for me, alright? Thanks.”

Struggling back to her feet, she takes one long, last look at her lover, then turns to her dog. “Guard her with your life, Asimov. I mean that. Do you understand me?”

A stern bark is her answer as she exits the cabin without looking back.

CHAPTER FIFTY SIX

WITH A SOFT GRUNT, Kirsten lays the crumpled map flat against a rock whose cap of snow has melted away in the warm summer sun. Removing her makeshift mittens, she pulls out the old-fashioned compass, surprised she still knows how to read one in these days of GPS tracking, takes a reading, and looks back down at the map, frowning. “The compass says I’m going the right way. The damn map says I’m going the right way. So would someone please tell me what the hell this mountain is doing here?!?”

The world around her is, unsurprisingly, silent on the issue.

“Jesus H. Christ on a crutch, three goddamn hours of walking for what?!?” She looks slowly left, and then right. The snow-covered cliff face, nearly vertical and reaching almost as high as the clouds, stretches to the horizon in both directions. The town of Craig is only five miles away. Five miles and an unscalable mountain away, that is. “Fuck! What now?” She can’t turn back. That much is certain. Just the memory of her lover, lying still and pale as death, fills her with a desperation that fires her nerve endings and urges her muscles into action. Any action.

“What I wouldn’t give for a goddamn pair of wings.”

Perfectly on cue, a piercing call sounds above her head, and as she looks up, she sees the trademark shape of a hawk circling above her. A disbelieving smile comes to her face. “Wiyo? Is that you, girl?”

The hawk, who is indeed Wiyo, calls out once more, then gracefully shoots in for a landing atop the rock where Kirsten’s map is perched. “It is you! God, it’s so good to see a friendly face around here.” She reaches out, but Wiyo takes a step back, not quite as trusting of this woman as her two-foot companion. Kirsten laughs. “That’s okay, girl. I was only wishing for wings. I wasn’t planning on stealing yours.” Sighing, she slumps forward, leaning her elbows on the sun-warmed rock, letting the heat of it bleed into her cold-numb body. “I hope Dakota’s doing ok. I hated leaving her. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done…but I had to do it. I have to. There isn’t any other choice. And now this…this…blasted mountain is keeping me from getting back to her.”

Wiyo cocks her head, dark eyes piercing and somehow frightfully aware. After a moment, she takes off from her perch on the rock, crying out her signature call. “Sorry, girl,” Kirsten says, watching her go, “I guess I’m not very good company. Be safe, wherever you’re off to.”

Which, it turns out, isn’t very far at all. The hawk lands atop a huge, snow-covered fir and screeches out again, twice.

“I’m sorry, girl,” Kirsten calls. “If you’re talking to me, I don’t understand you. Dakota would understand you, but she’s not here and I’m not her.” She looks around, slightly abashed. “Great, now I’m talking to birds. I’m definitely losing it here.”

Wiyo calls again, lifts off a bit from the top of the tree, and lands once more. “What? Are we playing charades? I don’t understand you, girl!”

With yet another call, Wiyo jumps from her perch and lands on the next pine over, fluttering her wings. If it were possible for a hawk to look supremely frustrated, Wiyo is accomplishing the task admirably.

“Ok, ok, I get it. You’re trying to tell me something. I don’t know what it is, but it’s something alright.” Shoving her map and compass back into her pockets, she slogs through snow still up to her knees toward Wiyo’s current perch. Just as she arrives, the bird takes off, arrowing for another pine a hundred or so feet away. “Great. First it’s charades, now it’s tag. You’re definitely not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Or maybe you are and you just can’t read a map. Or a compass.”

At the sixth hopscotch, and approximately a mile away from where she had stopped at the rock, Kirsten stands staring in amazement at a tiny pass through the mountain. “Holy Jesus! I never would have found this in a million years!” She looks over her shoulder at Wiyo, perched on yet another tree and presumably agreeing with her. “Yeah, I know, I’m not super tracker, but…thanks, Wiyo. I owe you one. And I’ll pay up. I promise.”

With a screeching call, Wiyo takes off once again into the skies, circles once, and is quickly gone from her sight.

*

Craig, Colorado, a small city which, in its heyday, boasted a population of just under ten thousand souls, is a ghost-town. Wandering through its empty streets, Kirsten can’t help wishing for a set of eyes in the back of her head. Something about the town is eerie, though she can’t quite put her finger on just what that might be. Her raccoon hallucination hadn’t seen fit to give her the name of the clinic she is supposed to be raiding, nor its exact address, so she finds herself wasting yet more precious time trying to track down the medicine she needs to save her lover’s life.

Choosing a street more or less at random—more or less only because she has seen a physician’s shingle hung out on one of the well-tended houses and figures where the doctors are, a hospital can’t be all that far away—she lengthens her stride, peering fitfully at the sun which has already started its downward descent. The road she is on is narrow, curving, and steep, and as she breasts the hill, the clinic, or what remains of it, comes into full view. It had once, she surmises, been a rather beautiful place, as medical clinics go, with its broad expanse of lawn just now going to seed and a fantastic view of the mountainous wilderness seen in panorama like a postcard in a fancy boutique. It is now a mostly burned out hulk with the words “YOUR BABIES WERE MURDERED HERE” scrawled across its once-pleasant wood and stone facing in huge, red letters. “Great,” she sighs, unsurprised to feel the sting of tears, once again, pricking at her eyes. “I walk all this fucking way to find a bombed out abortion clinic. Shit!” Still, her desperate need presses her onward in the hope that something, anything, of value might yet be scavenged from the wreckage. “Please, God, just this once, ok? I’ll never ask for another thing again as long as I live.”