The Promise of Light Read Online Free Page A

the biggest syringe I had ever seen. While he was uncoiling the tube, he shouted up at the ceiling for his daughter. It was going to be a direct transfusion, so I had to be in a higher place than my father. Melville cleared off his marble counter top. He moved quickly but with such care that each glass jar of tongue depressors and cotton balls made no sound as he set them down at the far end of the counter.
    “I thought I was coming here to read him his last rites.” Willoughby’s hands fluttered in front of him. “When they called me…”
    “Last rites?” My father’s voice boomed through the house. “You keep back from him with your last rites. You let the poor man die in peace. And you leave me out of this. When Hagan went away, I didn’t hear any prayers for him, did I? And for his wife? We had to fight even to get her buried in the churchyard. You leave my son out of this!”
    The marble counter was cloudy white with threads of gray woven into the stone. It seemed to grab at the bare skin of my back as I lay down.
    “Keep away!” my father shouted. Then suddenly the belt that had pinned him gave way. The leather tore and flew off to the sides. He sat up and held his hands out in front of him. His palms were burned so badly that the skin had started to peel away.
    It was seeing his hands that made me realize how badly he was hurt.
    Slowly, my father lowered his outstretched arms. “Keep him out of this,” he said. His voice was no more than a whisper.
    Peg came running downstairs. She skidded into the room. She had arrived with such speed that I knew she must have been listening for his call, maybe with her ear pressed to the floorboards, hearing every muttered word.
    I couldn’t help staring at the blackness of her hair. Although it had been years, people still thought of her and her parents as strangers to the island. I did, as well. To me, Peg seemed to come from much farther away than Newport, although the island of Jamestown was separated from Newport by more than just the distance of the bay.
    The chromium shine of the syringe blinked at me.
    Melville tied a cord around my bicep. Soon the veins on my arm stood out, green-blue and crisscrossing. Then he poured ether onto a cotton pad and stepped behind my father.
    My father’s talking had died down. He was still sitting up, head bowed forward. His fingers twitched, as if he was trying to remember a tune on the piano.
    Melville set his hand on my father’s forehead and with his other hand, he held the pad against my father’s face.
    A shudder rocked down the length of my father’s spine. The ether flooded through him like a tide.
    Melville lowered him down onto the leather-covered pillow built into the table. Then he wheeled the table over to where I was lying.
    I could smell the ether. It was sweet and peppery.
    My father looked dead. I couldn’t see him breathing.
    Peg walked over to me and I tried to sit up, but she held out her hand and made me lie still. “Do you want me to cover your eyes, Benjamin?”
    For a second, calm settled on me as I heard the softness in her voice. I didn’t have time to answer. I wished we could be any place but this.
    “Cover his eyes.” Melville talked as he wiped alcohol on both needle ends of the tube. “He needs at least two pints of blood within the next twenty-four hours. One will do for now. Father Willoughby offered to donate, but we don’t have time to do the tests to see if his blood type is right. If we give him the wrong kind of blood, we’d kill him in no time at all. So we’ll be using yours for now, Benjamin. That way we’ll be sure. Tomorrow, he’ll be taken to the Naval hospital in Newport. They’ve already got a bed ready for him. He can’t be moved now.”
    Peg’s hands passed in front of my eyes and made me blind.
    I felt the slap of Melville’s fingers bouncing off my veins. Then came the pinch as the needle slid under my skin.
    I could feel the blood being taken. It was as if