Collision Read online

  “This won’t hurt,” I say. “This will help.” The conflict in his eyes is apparent. He may not be able to speak, but his intelligence is evident—the need to trust, the uncertainty about these strange people with their modern ways. It must be jarring for someone that’s lived their whole life in the desert to see our dependence on seemingly magical machines. “Please.”

  I feel as though I can read his thoughts. He’s scared of the unknown. Guns. Electric lights. Buzzing machines. It’s new and upsetting. His wide eyes tell me it’s all he can do to trust me. I squeeze his hand and his fingers tighten in rapid response. For a moment, I wonder if he’s not going to let go, or if he’s going to pull me closer, but he releases his grip. For someone that’s mute, touch must be an important means of communicating.

  I position an x-ray plate beneath his back, making sure it covers his upper shoulder and head. Gently, I position his head sideways so he’s looking at Chen behind the radiation shield. I’m curious. Beneath his straggly hair, his skull is slightly deformed—as though it has been squeezed and elongated in a vice. He has an occipital bun—a bulge at the back of his skull. It’s not natural. It can’t be. I suspect it’s the result of a childhood injury, and I wonder if this is why he can’t speak, but in the back of my mind there’s a nagging doubt. When Chen spoke of the wild ones she noted that none of them could talk, which is striking. Could the entire community be the victim of some inbred genetic condition? Perhaps something that deforms the region of the brain associated with speech?

  “Stay still,” I say, backing away slowly. His eyes never leave mine. Chen engages the x-ray, and for a moment there’s a whir, followed by silence. I remove the plate and slide another beneath his shoulder blade, well outside the area affected by the gunshot, but again, I’m curious. His ribcage is barrel-shaped, with the lower ribs protruding noticeably. It’s the kind of deformity I’d associate with early childhood injuries failing to heal properly.

  “Dial back the juice,” I say to Chen. “I want to pick up some soft tissue in the image.” I’m curious about his internal organs. His enlarged lower ribs could be the result of long term tumor growth.

  The tribesman is more relaxed with this shot, so I sneak in one more, slipping a small plate beneath his hand. “Now hold still,” I say, splaying his fingers wide. He smiles. He has no idea his body is being blasted with highly energetic electromagnetic radiation that passes almost unobstructed through the cells in his hand.

  After hiding behind the radiation shield one last time, I send Chen off to get the plates developed, while I wheel him back to the ICU. I’m not sure if it’s a side effect of the anesthetic, but he’s happy.

  “You’re going to be fine,” I say, touching lightly on his good shoulder. I park his gurney next to his father and cover him with a woolen blanket. For me, the blankets here in the hospital are as itchy as hell. They’re coarse and thick. As I pull the blanket up I wonder about this strange man’s life. The way he looks at me, it’s as though he’s never known kindness. Or perhaps he has, but never from a stranger. The world is a hostile place for those that differ from the norm.

  I check on his father. Although it looks like he’s asleep, I know better. The old man is in a sustained state of unconsciousness. Despite our best efforts, he’s not recovered. His heart is weak, and I have to hunt to find a heartbeat so I hook him up to a biometric monitor. I cover him with a blanket, and the tribesman smiles, clearly appreciating how I’ve extended them both the same courtesy, even though such a gesture is meaningless to a physician with nine years of med school behind her. It is, quite literally, the least I can do.

  Chen brings me some coffee. I’m not sure I want any, but the night is cool and the cup is warm so I sip at it. I’m tired—exhausted. I’m ready to collapse on the cot behind the nursing station. My apartment is only five minutes away by car, but I have spare clothes here.

  “They tease them,” she says softly to me.

  “The wild ones?”

  “I’ve only ever seen the women before today. They keep to themselves.”

  “And the father. He’s not a biological parent, right?”

  “No,” she says. “It’s a different world in the desert. They adopt them. Feed them. Use them for labor.”

  I sit on the edge of the bench inside the nursing station, relieved to finally have my feet up. Sitting there, I swing my legs back and forth, shaking out the aches. It’s been a long day.

  “You should get some sleep,” she says.

  “Yeah,” I reply, only half finishing my coffee.

  I curl up in the cot, turning away from the light, and drift off to sleep within seconds.

  Thankfully, the night is quiet. My sleep is deep. I wake to find Chen sitting at the foot of the cot. She’s wearing a change of clothes and looks refreshed. I doubt I look half as composed. The sun is up.

  “How are our patients?”

  “The father still hasn’t regained consciousness. The wild one snores.” She laughs softly. “It sounds like he’s cutting firewood with a chainsaw.” She’s right. I can hear him from the back of the nursing station.

  I get up, use the bathroom, shower and change, and feel like a brand new person. As I walk back into the ICU I notice the tribesman is gone. For a moment, my heart skips a beat, but he’s in the garden outside.

  The director of the hospital has a fondness for flowers, which isn’t surprising given the arid desert around us. Bayingol is a town of about forty thousand, surrounded by farms, but the desert encroaches on the roads, the footpaths and yards. After a dust storm, the place looks like a ghost town. The director uses grey water from the showers for his garden, and the patients enjoy convalescing in the sunshine as the sweet scent of flowers drifts around them. That tiny stretch of greenery might be the only patch of flowers in a thousand miles. I hope the director sees the funny side of his garden being raided by a desert tribesman, although to my surprise, it’s the weeds the nomad is interested in. Instead of plucking some of the roses, he’s focused on the wildflowers—thin, lanky daisies at the end of long stems. If anything, the director should thank him.

  I check on the old man. His eyes are sunken and hollow. I peel back his eyelids and shine a light on his pupils. No response. The biometric monitor reveals an erratic heartbeat, but I’m old school. I like to listen. There are subtleties that only a trained ear can detect, details missed by electronics. I shift my stethoscope around his chest and over his ribs, stopping at regular intervals to listen. I’m surprised he’s still alive. If I was to stop the IV, I suspect he’d die from organ failure within a few hours, and I know I’m prolonging the inevitable.

  Chen and I sit chatting in the back of the nursing station, munching on what look like crab apples. They’re sour, and there’s not much flesh, but fruit is always a treat, especially for breakfast.

  A deep, resonant wail echoes through the ICU, and we jump up, but it quickly becomes apparent no one’s in discomfort. The tribesman is singing, although that’s the wrong term as his voice sounds more like a wind instrument. Sweet, striking, crisp notes echo through the room without any words being articulated. The chant is unlike the tribal songs of American Indians, and seems more like that of a primate—perhaps gibbons singing in the trees. There are vowels, but no clear consonants, and yet it is unmistakably music. There’s rhythm, and the repetition of similar phrases.

  Ohh—aaaaahh—eeeeeyyy—aaa—uuuhhh—aaa—uuuhhh—oooaaa—iiieeeyyy.

  I’m spellbound. I don’t think any of us have ever heard anything like this, as the vocal range spans several octaves, which is astonishing, the kind of feat only a trained opera singer could accomplish. The musical scale is foreign to me, being neither minor, nor major.

  The tribesman has linked the tiny flowers together into daisy chains, but not in a simple necklace. Some of the patterns have the intricacy of a dreamcatcher.

  An alarm sounds. The old man is flatlining.

  “Code Blue,” Chen yells over the chanting, and we
spring into action. One of the nurses grabs the crash cart, and I rip the blanket from the old man.

  Ohh—aaaaahh—eeeeeyyy—aaa—uuuhhh—aaa—uuuhhh—oooaaa—iiieeeyyy.

  Chen preps the defibrillator, applying gel to the pads as I start CPR, keeping my eyes on the heart monitor. Although I suspect it’s hopeless, I can’t stand by and watch someone die. Our actions over the next few seconds could extend his life by years, perhaps a decade. What is life if not a fight against death? I have to fight.

  Chen positions the electrodes on his chest.

  Ohh—aaaaahh—eeeeeyyy—aaa—uuuhhh—aaa—uuuhhh—oooaaa—iiieeeyyy.

  “Clear,” I yell and Chen fires the defibrillator. The frail body flexes before us, with every muscle contracting briefly before sagging again.

  I continue CPR.

  “Adenosine?” Chen asks. I shake my head. In his state, it’ll kill him.

  Ohh—aaaaahh—eeeeeyyy—aaa—uuuhhh—aaa—uuuhhh—oooaaa—iiieeeyyy.

  “Charging.”

  One of the nurses removes the old man’s oxygen mask and uses a handheld plastic pump to drive air into his lungs. I thump hard against his chest, circulating blood through his system, trying to keep his brain alive.

  “Ready.”

  “Clear,” I say, breathing heavily from the exertion. I step back and again the aging body before me flexes, arching up over the gurney before collapsing.

  Ohh—aaaaahh—eeeeeyyy—aaa—uuuhhh—aaa—uuuhhh—oooaaa—iiieeeyyy.

  As a doctor, I hate to concede defeat, but there’s nothing more I can do. There are numerous euphemisms to explain away the odious nature of death—gone, passed, left, departed, but the truth is death is the failure of the life support system we call a body. At some point, the intricate biological machinery breaks down and the miracle of consciousness comes to an end.

  I stop CPR. Chen and I exchange a brief look. She’s amazing. She’d keep going for hours if need be until I called it, but we both know our efforts are futile. I look at my watch.

  “Mark the time as 8:50—unidentified male from the province of Xinjiang, approximately sixty years old, deceased as the result of heart failure.”

  The nurse bows her head, nodding as she writes on a clipboard. I didn’t notice until now, but the chanting has stopped. The tempo in the ICU has changed drastically, it’s as though we were driving down a highway at 100 mph and drove into mud. Everything slows.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, turning to the tribesman. He has tears in his eyes. One of the nurses goes to pull a sheet over the body, but I signal for her to stop. The tribesman lays a ring of flowers on the old man’s chest, arranging them with meticulous care. He’s crying. He strokes the man’s hair, sweeping it to one side, and fusses with the dead man’s arms, laying them against his side. He places bunches of weeds in the old man’s hands. The exact meaning behind this gesture is lost on me, but it’s clearly symbolic of life.

  Chen and I back away.

  One of the other doctors walks into the ICU. He stops, realizing what’s happened, and skirts the side of the ward, bringing a large envelope over to me.

  “Your x-rays.”

  “Thanks.”

  Given the heartache of the moment, this distraction is welcome.

  The fluorescent tube in the light box mounted on the wall of the nursing station blew several months ago, so I hold each of the x-rays up against a window, allowing the natural sunlight to backlight the images. Chen points at several of the features.

  “His skull. It’s deformed.”

  “Strange, isn’t it?” I reply, switching to the x-ray of the nomad’s chest, and examining his rib cage. I run the tip of a pencil gently over the image. “Look at the ribs. What do you notice?”

  Chen leans in, following the motion of my pencil as I trace the bones branching from the sternum.

  “Nothing.”

  “Me neither. No damage. No deformity. No abrupt changes in density, signaling an old injury. Look at how smooth the gradient is moving down to the floating ribs.”

  “And the heart and lungs,” Chen says, gesturing to the lighter mass beneath the ribs. “They’re huge.” She’s right. For a small man, his internal organs are oversized, and his lungs have a slightly different shape, with the broad tips dipping lower toward his stomach.

  I take a photo of the x-ray with my smartphone before putting the first x-ray back on the windowpane and snapping another photo. I’m on the verge of blurting out what I’m thinking, but I don’t want to sound stupid. Science is about careful, methodical ideas being drawn from the evidence, and I’m struggling not to jump to conclusions. I examine his skull again.

  “Look at how thick the bones are,” Chen says.

  “And his chin,” I say, which I see is almost non-existent. I’d previously noticed the tribesman’s chin wasn’t that pronounced, but his jaw is largely hidden by his beard. Now, though, I can see that his jaw lacks the thick bone normally associated with a chin.

  Chen traces the plates in the skull, running a pencil along the thin lines marking where the bones fused in early childhood. “No obvious injuries.”

  I’m interested in the occipital bun, the protrusion at the back of his skull, causing his head to appear elongated. Not only is there no damage to the bone, but the brain mass extends into that portion of the skull cavity.

  “What are we dealing with?” Chen asks, but there’s one final x-ray of his lower arm, wrist and hand to examine. I flick it up onto the glass and take another photo. “Look at the metacarpal bones.” Instead of fine, easily broken twigs, the bones in his hand are thick and sturdy.

  “Have you seen this before?” Chen asks.

  I pause before replying. “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “In textbooks. Museums. Never in a living person.”

  Chen is silent, waiting for me to elaborate.

  “His physiology is hominid.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  I slip the x-rays back into the protective pouch, saying, “He’s not human. I think our tribesman is a Neanderthal.”

  Chapter 02: City of the Dead

  Chen whispers, “That’s not possible.”

  “You’re telling me,” I reply, watching as the tribesman wraps the old man’s body in animal skins.

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Apparently not.” I’m shaking, but not out of fear. Adrenaline surges through my body in the excitement of the moment. “Have you heard of the Wollemi Pine?” Chen shakes her head. “Imagine the surprise of scientists when a hiker comes across a tree that’s only ever been found in the fossil record from two hundred million years ago. Or the discovery of the Coelacanth, a fish thought to be extinct since before the time of the dinosaurs, only here it is, unchanged after four hundred million years.”

  “And you think,” she says, looking at him.

  “It’s possible. Isolated enclave. Limited interaction with the outside world. Fits the pattern, but I won’t know for sure until the blood results come back from the lab.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  The tribesman hoists the dead body over his good shoulder, and picks up his pack.

  “Well, we’re not going to let him walk out of here.”

  I raise my hand and signal for the tribesman to pause.

  “Ah,” I begin, not knowing where the conversation is going. Physically, I can’t stop him. If I was to get the police involved, this could end badly. He clearly wants to provide his stepfather with a proper burial, but it must have taken him several days to reach us. The body will putrefy long before he reaches his tribal lands. My mind is racing at a million miles per hour. Where there’s one Neanderthal, there must be more. “We’ll take you home.”

  “What?” Chen says. Her eyes go wide in surprise.

  “Xioping, can you cover for me?” I say to one of the doctors.

  “Sure.”

  “You want to go out there?” Chen says, pointing at the desert beyond the hospit
al window.

  “We’ll be fine,” I say. “I’ve got a four-wheel drive.”

  My father is wealthy, influential, and paranoid, which isn’t as bad a combination as it might seem. He flipped out when I told him I accepted an assignment to work in rural China. He had a brand new Toyota Land Cruiser shipped in from Hong Kong, equipped with dual long range fuel tanks, extra fresh water tanks, GPS, satellite phone, dash cam, survival kit, electric air pump, secondary batteries, and an industrial winch that could pull a tank out of the mud. Once a month, he pays for a mechanic to drive the two hundred mile round trip from Urumqi to service the cruiser, even though in the eighteen months I’ve been here I’ve only clocked three hundred miles in total. I’ve never had to fill it up with diesel. The mechanic is constantly draining and topping up the tanks, as he feels guilty not actually doing anything when he gets here. He stripped down the transmission and rebuilt the running gear when I complained about a slight rattle, so I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut. I’m told I’ll get over a thousand miles from the diesel tanks. I could drive most of the way to Moscow without filling up.

  Chen doesn’t look convinced, but the tribesman is already walking toward the door.

  “A day out. A day back. What could go wrong?” Technically, I have today off anyway, so I have no qualms about going for a drive to see the countryside—at least, that’s how I’m justifying this crazy idea to myself.

  “Over here,” I say to the tribesman, grabbing my keys and leading him out into the parking lot. Chen follows, but she’s not convinced. If anything, she must feel compelled to go with me as she’s my in-country assistant. I open the back of the cruiser and shift a few bags around. There’s a tent, sleeping bag, and long-life emergency ration pack. If anything, I’m relishing the opportunity to actually put some of this stuff to good use. I doubt my assembly of the tent will look quite like the glossy image on the cover, but I’m sure I can erect something suitable for one night at least. Whether everything will fit back in the bag is another story.