What grisly scene had she walked into? Where were the patients, the doctors and nurses? Her head hurt; the room spun. At the end of the hall, a Native American woman in scrubs. Was Mara seeing things?

She was five again. The whole Hill was buzzing with excitement. They’d dropped the bomb. People celebrated. She didn’t understand then, but she’d replayed it in her mind many times over the next seventy-five years. A custodian from the San Ildefonso wearing beige coveralls grinned at a scientist in a pinstripe tie. “We did it, didn’t we?”

“Yes, we did.”

They’d held a country line dance at the San Ildefonso sweat lodge, brought glass bottles of Coca-Cola and the Native people had made fry bread.

Chaiwa had told Mara lizard meant close to the earth. Close to the dirt. The sand. We all come from the sand, she’d said. Formed from the rocks. Chaiwa wanted to teach her to be that low, that connected, again. It’s not something you should be able to teach, she’d said. Like she was teaching her words in Tewa. But I sense a lizard spirit in you. The tail of the lizard meant breaking into a new reality, letting go of the old and making a miracle of the new—growing it right there, yourself.

Mara thought of this as she approached the lone woman in the hospital hall. The woman’s voice reminded her of Chaiwa’s, though Mara hadn’t heard it in seventy-five years. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Where is everyone?”

The woman in scrubs sighed, her long black hair in a braid down her side. She was tall, solidly built. “Gone.”

“Where did they go? My friend’s son, Julian Jimenez was a patient here. My friend would have come for him. After that flash. Did you see it?”

The woman nodded.

“You work here, right? You knew him?”

“You shouldn’t be here,” she repeated in a low voice, her insistence startling Mara.

“Please help me. I need to find my friend.” Her boots scuffled against the linoleum. She walked closer to the woman. A nurse? A doctor? She couldn’t tell. “Can you help me?”

EIGHT

EIGHT

BAD MOON RISING