Free In the Time of Kings by N. Gemini Sasson

sign post, I veer off into a narrow alley and pull out my cell. “Claire?”
    “No, Dermot here.” His voice is muffled by the pounding of rain. “Sorry to disturb you, Mr. ... Ross, but I think you need to come back. I checked in on your wife for you, and ... she looks quite ill.”
    Guilt shoots through me. I should have ignored her insistence that I go anyway. Claire was never one to want to be fussed over. “Is she still throwing up? Does she have a fever?”
    “No, but the pain’s worse, she said.” Over his words, I hear a long moan.
    “Was that her?”
    “Aye.”
    “Call an ambulance, Dermot. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” I snap the phone shut and pedal as fast as I can.
    ––––––––
    B y the time I skid to a halt in Dermot’s side driveway, chased there by the wail of a siren, my clothes are drenched. A burst of flashing red lights reflects against the windows as the ambulance turns the last corner. I plunge inside the house, then race up the steps three at a time.
    Claire lays curled up on her side in the middle of the floor, her fists balled to either side of her head and her jaw clenched in agonizing pain.
    Just inside the door is Dermot, wringing his apron in his hands. “I’m sorry. I tried to help her, but she wouldn’t let me. When she said she felt like her head had exploded, I called you.”
    Dermot continues to apologize, but I stop listening. Something is terribly wrong with Claire. She’d suffered from the occasional migraine before, but that usually only resulted in her closing the bedroom curtains, popping a few pills and burrowing beneath the covers to sleep it off. The way she has her head clamped between both hands and is wailing, you’d think someone has driven an ice pick into her skull.
    Footsteps pound in the stairway. Before I can even go to her side, the EMTs have pushed past me and are taking her vital signs.
    “Hello, miss,” one of the EMTs says calmly, as he pulls up one of her eyelids and shines a penlight in them to check her pupil dilation. “My name is Thomas. That’s Andrew and Harry with the stretcher. We’re here to take care of you. Can you tell me where it hurts?”
    Water is collecting in a puddle beneath me. I shiver from the dampness seeping into my bones. Even though I’m aware how cold and wet I am, I’m transfixed, wanting to help, yet not wanting to get in the way.
    As Thomas takes Claire’s jaw in his hand and positions her head to check her other eye, she whips her face sideways and lets out a scream. She gulps in air, sputters. “My head, my head, my —”
    She cries out again, the pitch rising until it comes out as a screech.
    Thomas tosses a commanding glance at his coworkers. Seconds later, they’re carefully hoisting her onto the stretcher. I snatch my glasses off the table and follow them.
    At some point, one of them asks who’s with her and I mumble, “I am.”
    Beyond that, I don’t remember any details about the ambulance ride to the hospital, the questions they ask me or even how long it takes to get there. I can only think of Claire, and how scared I am.
    This is our honeymoon. Things like this aren’t supposed to happen. This is the beginning of our forever.

10
    NOT SO LONG AGO
    Balfour, Indiana — 1999
    “T wenty-five hundred dollars?” Dad smacks the piece of paper against his palm, then tosses it onto the writing desk next to the rotary phone. “And our insurance doesn’t cover one cent, Goddamnit! They said it was an experimental procedure. Tell me where we’re supposed to get the money from, Rachel. Where, huh?”
    Mom looks down at her lap, twisting a tissue between her hands. Mascara is smudged beneath her eyes. A white streak runs down her cheek where a tear has washed away her foundation. She keeps her voice low, her tone apologetic. “I don’t know, Jack. But what was I supposed to do?”
    She looks so ... I don’t know. Forlorn, maybe? Yes, that’s the word. Like she’s lost her last