Rollback

Her limbs were splayed, and the lightweight summer dress she was wearing had billowed about her like a shroud. It seemed clear that she’d taken a tumble coming down the stairs to the entryway. "Sarah, are you all right?"

She stirred, lifting her head a little.

"No," said Don. "No, no. Don’t move!"

"My leg," she said softly. "My God, you should have heard the snap…"

He’d learned some first aid years ago. "This one?" he said, touching her right leg.

"No. The other one."

He shifted the dress so that he could see her leg, and the bruising and swelling were obvious. He touched it gingerly, and he saw Sarah wince. There was no phone in the entryway; Sarah would have had to have pulled herself up the six stairs to the living room to call him; she had neither the sense of balance nor the strength in her other leg to hop. He got out his datacom, and said to it, "Nine-one-one," a term now used as a name in this post-phone-number age.

"Fire, police, or ambulance?" asked the operator.

"Ambulance," Don said. "Please hurry!"

"You’re calling from a mobile device," the operator said, "but we have the GPS coordinates. You’re at—" and she read the address to him. "Correct?"

"Yes, yes."

"What’s happened?"

He gulped for air. "My wife — she’s eighty-seven, and she’s fallen down some stairs."

"I’ve dispatched the ambulance," said the operator. "The data-com you’re calling from is registered to Donald R. Halifax; is that you?"

"Yes."

"Is your wife conscious, Mr. Halifax?"

"Yes. But her leg is broken. I’m sure of it."

"Don’t move her, then. Don’t try to move her."

"I won’t. I haven’t."

"Is the door to your house unlocked?"

He looked up. The door was still wide open. "Yes."

"All right. Don’t leave her."

Don took his wife’s hand. "No, no, I won’t." God, why hadn’t he been here? He looked into her pale blue eyes, which were bloodshot and half-closed. "I won’t leave her. I swear I won’t ever leave her."

He finished with the operator, and put the datacom down on the floor. "I’m sorry," he said to Sarah. "I’m so sorry."

"It’s all right," she said, weakly. "I knew you’d be home soon, although…"

She left the thought unspoken, but doubtless she’d been thinking he should have been home earlier than this.

"I’m sorry," Don said again, his gut clenching. "I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I am so sorry…"

"It’s okay," insisted Sarah, and she managed a small smile. "No permanent damage done, I’m sure. After all, this is the age of miracle and wonder." A song lyric, from their youth. Don recognized it, but shook his head slightly, lost. She gestured with her head at him, and, after a moment, he got it: she was referring to his new, younger form. Now she was holding his hand, comforting him. "It’ll be all right," she said.

"Everything will be fine."

He couldn’t meet her eyes as they waited and waited until, at last, the ambulance’s siren drowned out the thoughts that were torturing him, and everything was bathed in strobing red through the open front door.

Chapter 28

Fortunately it was a clean, simple fracture. Orthopedics had come a long way since Don had broken his own leg in 1977, during a high-school football game. The pieces of Sarah’s femur were aligned, some of the excess fluid was drained off, Sarah was given the calcium infusion into her legs that she would have received anyway had the rejuvenation process worked on her, and a small external support was erected around her leg — these days, only dinosaur bones were wrapped in plaster. The doctor said she’d be fine in two months, and, with the support, which had its own little motors, she wouldn’t even need crutches while she healed, although a cane was advisable.

Fortunately, too, their provincial health plan covered all this. Most of the crises in Canadian health care had passed. Yes, there’d been a period when biotechnology had been young during which costs had spiraled out of control, but all technologies come down in price with time, even medical ones. Procedures that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in Don’s youth now cost a tiny fraction of that. Even sophisticated pharmaceuticals were so inexpensive to develop and produce that governments could give them away in the Third World. Why, someday, even the magic of rejuvenation would be available to all those who wanted it.

Once they got home from the hospital, Don helped Sarah get ready for bed. Within minutes of lying down, she was asleep, helped into the arms of Morpheus, no doubt, by the painkillers the doctor had prescribed.

Don, however, couldn’t sleep. He just lay on his back, staring up in the dark at the ceiling, an occasional band of light caused by a passing car sweeping across it.

He loved Sarah. He’d loved her for almost his entire life. And he never, ever wanted to hurt her. But when she’d needed him, he wasn’t there for her.

He heard a siren in the distance; someone else with their own crisis, just like the one they’d faced today.