of all places. At first, my father tried to talk my mom into maybe just an area rug or two, but her mind was set. The day the carpet was to be installed, the trucks pulled into the driveway and the men all got out wearing identical green cover-alls, as if their matching uniforms could somehow make up for their inadequacies of procedural forethought.
“I went inside to play, to smell my cake baking in the oven, and to look at my presents that were wrapped and sitting on the table in the family room. I was walking through the kitchen-god, it was hot in there, I remember that-it was the middle of August, no air conditioning, and the oven was on. I stood and watched as two of the workmen began to pour the glue on the floor to hold the carpet in place. No one ever thought about the pilot light on the stove.
“The glue was flammable. As it turns out, the stuff was so volatile it wasn’t even legal in all fifty states. What I remember most about the explosion is the way everything went white. So white that things almost looked transparent, like some of the films you can watch of atomic bomb blasts. That white. And quiet. No loud bang or anything like that. Just the white.
“And then I couldn’t move. I’m not sure how long I was out, though it couldn’t have been that long. I was in the garage. The explosion had blown me through the screen door and a pile of rubble had landed on top of me. I wasn’t hurt too bad, except for the cut on my face, but I couldn’t move because I was trapped under the debris. I tried to call out to someone, but the blast had knocked the wind out of me and I couldn’t catch my breath. I’ll tell you something, I was five years old, I could smell the smoke and feel the heat and I thought I was dying, Sandy. That’s not the kind of thing that’s easy to forget.
“I heard my mom screaming my name, but I couldn’t call back to her. I remember I kept thinking the sirens are coming, the sirens are coming. Not the firemen, just the sirens, and I remember thinking I wanted my mom to just please shut up so I could hear the sirens, and then I did hear them, that long, painful wail as they wound their way toward me, the smoke so thick I had to keep my eyes pinched shut.”
I paused for a moment to collect my thoughts. Sandy still held the helmet, but she’d turned it over where it now lay crown down in her lap, her hands caressing the age old sweat stains of the liner inside the hard shell. Tears were running down her cheeks and they dripped into the inside of the helmet with little plops that sounded like rain falling on top of snowpack at winter’s end. “And they pulled you out.” She said it softly, no louder than a whisper, her words thick and lonesome.
I was going to go on with my story, but Sandy spoke before I did, and what she said made me wonder about the workings of fate and the mystery of things we can never know, but only accept with astonishment and wonder. “It took two of them to get you out,” she said. “They always go in as a team. The debris was deep and heavy and they had to be careful when they were pulling it off so it didn’t collapse down and crush you. The other firemen were pouring water in to keep the flames back and when they finally got to you it was just before the rest of the garage collapsed, wasn’t it?”
I looked at her, my voice a shadow of itself. “Yes, but how-”
She laid her hand on my forearm to quiet me, then continued. “One of the firemen had to pick up a rafter that was directly over you. It landed just inches from your head. He picked it up, straining against its weight, the heat of the flames no longer being held back by the water. They were losing the fight, but you were almost free. And then, when he had the rafter up high enough, the other fireman picked you up and carried you out. It was only a dozen steps or so to safety. The one holding the rafter let it drop, but when he did it shifted and came down on top of him, crushing his legs. He couldn’t move and just seconds later there was a secondary explosion when the gas main went. But you and the other fireman made it out, isn’t that right?”
I couldn’t speak. When I tried to swallow I discovered my throat was as dry as scattered ash. When I opened my mouth to say something-I do not know what-my teeth clicked together like marbles being rattled around in a glass jar. I finally just nodded, letting her know she was right.
She took her hand from my arm and unsnapped the liner inside the helmet. Written in permanent marker on the inside of the hard shell was a name: S.C.A. Small. “S.C. stands for Station Chief,” she said. “The A. stands for Andrew. Station Chief Andy Small was my father, Jonesy. He died in that explosion while saving your life.”
She buried her head in my chest, her cries no less painful than the wail of the sirens I longed for on that fateful day so many years ago. I took the helmet from her lap and pulled her close, my arms tight around her shuddering body. There were no words to say in the moment so I just held her amidst the sound of the crackling fire as it threw off a heat unmatched by the shame and responsibility I felt. I had just made love to a woman whose father had given his life to save my own, and while I had lived, it was at the expense of Sandy’s life-long sorrow.
How do you reconcile that?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Sids. Up early. And grumpy. There was a schedule to keep, and now, it was time again.
This one would be coincidence. The Sids knew this. They had talked about it like everything else, tossed it around for a while like a game of Hot Potato. Junior thought it might be a problem, though by her own admission she couldn’t explain why, just that it might. Senior pointed out that wasn’t much of an argument, and even though it pissed her off, she knew he was right. “Besides,” he had said, “One way or another we’re going to do her. Might as well create a little misdirection while we’re at it.” Junior thought about it, and the more she did, the cooler the potato got. “Yeah, I can see that,” she finally said, and so for the Sids, the coincidence of another nurse was just that.
For Elle Richardson, third-shift nurse supervisor on the maternity ward at Methodist Hospital, it was anything but.
Elle Richardson thought she had about the best gosh-danged job in the entire hospital. No one really liked hospitals, she knew, but Elle (Ells to her husband Eugene and her close friends) thought they were about the best place on earth. Sure there were a lot of sick and dying, (nine gosh-danged floors of them if you were counting) but her floor was where life was delivered, where little bundles of hope and happiness slid out of the gate (Ells always giggled to herself when she thought of it that way) and were swaddled up in loving arms, the balance between life and death maintained for another day, or at least her eight hours of the ten-till-six. Like most of her clothing (including her mouse pad and coffee cups) Ells was reminded on a daily basis that Life is Good.
Her shift had been a busy one, that was for sure. Three singles and a double, (Ells sometimes thought her version of hospital speak sounded an awful lot like ordering at the drive-thru… either that or the scorecard of a little-league baseball game) all before her late morning break. But the rest of her shift remained quiet (all gates temporarily closed for business, ha, ha) and when the big hand was on the twelve and the little hand was on the six, Ells scrunched her shoulders at her co-workers, squinted her eyes, and gave them a tootle-do before she scooted down the hall and out to her car.
Gosh almighty, she felt happy. Her life was everything she had always hoped it would be, and more. Her husband, Eugene (Genes to her, Gene to his friends) was a police officer for the city of Indianapolis, and even though he was a cop and she was a nurse, Ells always thought she and Gene worked hand in hand to help bring goodness and life to the city where they lived. They were, Ells thought, a match made in heaven. It even said so on the matchbook covers at their wedding reception.
Gene worked the third shift as well, except his went ninety minutes longer than hers, but the good news was (and there’s always good news if people would just take their gosh-dang time and look for it) today marked the beginning of Gene’s weekend. Plus, now that Elle was a shift supervisor, she could make her own schedule so she and Hubby had the same two days off each week. Could life be any better? Ells thought not.
Problem was, Ells was wrong. She just didn’t know it yet.
The Sids in their van. Junior had the driver’s seat, Senior in the back, on his back and out of sight. They had the fucking thing planned nine ways from Sunday, but it didn’t take long for Senior to realize they’d forgotten at least one thing-something for him to lay on. The floor of the van was like any other, ribbed, or corrugated, or what- the-fuck-ever, and it was pressing into his spine like nobody’s business. “How much longer?” he grumbled.
Junior looked at her watch. “How the hell should I know? Just give it a few more minutes.”
