The Awakening of Dr. Brown

Outside the barricades people stood clumped together in groups, holding each other, some weeping, some just staring at the frantic scene with dazed and empty eyes.

With Tom running interference, Ethan pushed his way through the crowds and vehicles. He spotted Kenny Baumgartner near an EMS wagon and waved at him as he approached one of the cops manning the barricade. “I’m a doctor,” he shouted. “I can help.”

The cop looked over at Kenny, who yelled, “It’s okay, he’s a doctor. Let him in.” He shifted the barricade enough to let Ethan through, then moved to block Tom Applegate and Rupert Dove when they would have followed.

“They’re with me,” Ethan said, but Tom already had his I.D. out.

“Where he goes, I go,” the Secret Service agent said flatly. The cop gave the I.D. a glance, then looked up…and up…at Tom’s impassive face, and moved aside. He looked as if he wanted to step in again when Rupert Dove moved to follow in Tom’s wake, then thought better of it and waved him on through.

Ethan waded toward The Gardens through a swampy quagmire of deja vu. Had it been so short a time since he’d been here? A few days that seemed like hours-or a lifetime. It seemed the same to him in so many ways-the darkness, the aura of tragedy and disbelief and shock-and yet so much was not the same. Then he’d been one of the shadowy figures going about his work with detached calm, his emotions safely shut away in the protected Eden of his quiet place. Now he was one of them-the shattered and frightened ones, caught unawares by capricious disaster, his emotions all out in the open, unshielded, unguarded and unprepared. Joanna…Joanna… His fear for her was like a beast, tearing at his insides. It would not listen to arguments and reason. No use telling it she might not be here at all, and that if she had come, in all likelihood she’d have escaped the building along with everyone else. On some primitive level of awareness he knew. He knew.

A baby’s crying penetrated the worry that cloaked him, and then a woman’s voice, bright and shrill with hysteria. It seemed somehow familiar to him. Focusing on the sound, he saw a woman clutching a sobbing, hiccuping baby, struggling in the determined grip of a paramedic. A new fear joined the beast already gnawing at his insides as he recognized Michael’s aunt, Tamara.

He had no memory of how he got to her, only of touching her arm and finding it dangerously cold and clammy. He joined the paramedic in trying to get her to sit down on the steps of the EMS truck, but she turned on him, clawing blindly at his shoulders, her voice shredded, made almost inaudible by her terror and grief. “Oh, God- Michael’s in there. Michael’s in there. She went after him, but they ain’t come back. Oh, God-somebody go-”

“She? Who went after him? Who?” His throat brought up the words, and it was like coughing up glass.

“I don’t know her name…” Tamara’s knees were buckling. As Ethan and the paramedic eased her and her baby to the ground, she gasped out, “She was with y’all the other day when you brought Michael-”

Ethan turned blindly-and ran straight into a solid wall named Special Agent Tom Applegate. Breathing hard through his nose, he said flatly, “I’m going after her.”

The Secret Service man’s voice was just as unequivocal. “Sir, the only way you’re going in there is over my dead body.”

Something primative leaped inside Ethan’s chest. Adrenaline surged through his muscles. His fists curled. The next thing he knew he was caught in a viselike embrace, and his arms were pinioned to his sides. Near his ear Tom’s quiet voice, breaking a little, was saying, “Sir, I’m sorry…I can’t let you go in there. You know I can’t. I’m sorry…”

Seconds passed. Ethan’s sanity balanced on a razor’s edge. Then a long quivering breath dragged agonizingly through his chest. “All right,” he breathed. “All right…”

“Sir, let the firefighters do their job. They’ll find her. If she’s in there, they’ll do everything they can to bring her out.”

But will it be in time? Will everything be enough? “Yeah…okay. All right…”

The bands around him eased. He drew another excruciating breath; his heart was racing, every beat torture. Dazed and shaking like a sleepwalker woken up too suddenly, he pulled away from the Secret Service man and looked around. But it was another few seconds before he was able to make full sense of his surroundings, and when he did, realization slammed him in the chest. Pivoting, he clutched a handful of Tom Applegate’s shirt.

“Where’s Rupert Dove?”

There were some advantages after all, Doveman thought, to being old. Old age made a person invisible, especially to the young. Young folks concentrating hard on doing a worrisome and difficult job paid no mind to an old black man-not until it was too late. He heard the shouts that followed him up the steps of the corner row house, but he paid them no mind. Then he was inside the burning building, and couldn’t hear them, anyway.

The noise of the fire filled his ears, filled his head, filled his mind, suffocating thought. Ahead of him through the swirling, billowing smoke, he could see the stairs. Pulling the tail of his shirt over his face, he focused on them, held his breath and began to climb.

He knew just where she’d be. He’d spotted that third-floor window, the first one on the side, the one with the crumpled ledge and the remains of a broken balcony hanging off the bricks. The one where that boy’s poor momma had died. Doveman knew his Joanna. If she’d gone after the boy, that’s where she’d look for him. If she was alive, that’s where she’d be.

And she was alive, Doveman was sure of that. The Lord wouldn’t have brought her all this way to take her now, not when she was so close to the Promised Land…

Momma? Where are you? It’s dark, and I’m scared. I can’t see you, Momma…

I’m here, baby. Put out your hand…see? Just hold on to me. Everything’s going to be all right…

“Momma? Momma!”

“It’s okay, baby, I’m coming,” Joanna shouted. Coughing racked her again as she crawled along the floor, feeling her way through the choking darkness, but it was mixed now with sobs of sheer relief. “Keep calling, Michael. Keep calling so I can find you…”

“Mom-ma! I can’t see you!” The voice was closer now. And angry rather than afraid.

“I’m coming, Michael, I’m coming…” And all at once she could see him, over by a window-a dark head-shape in a backward baseball cap, silhouetted against the flashing lights from the emergency vehicles outside. “Here I am, Michael, I see you.” And she was laughing…coughing, choking and laughing with relief and joy. “Put out your hand, see? Just hold on to me. Everything’s going to be all right…” She felt a hand creep into hers, like a little lost thing seeking shelter. She reached out, and a pair of thin arms wrapped themselves around her neck. A cheek came against hers, leaving it wet with tears. “It’s okay,” she croaked, patting the child’s shaking back. “Okay.”

Trying to peel the boy’s arms from her neck was like bending wire. “Michael, now listen,” she said firmly. “We have to crawl now, okay? Like this…and hold your breath as long as you can-like when you swim underwater. Okay? Let’s go…”

But out in the hallway the smoke was thicker, taking up all the space, even down near the floor. Michael began to whimper. “I can’t breathe…I can’t…breathe!”

Joanna tried desperately not to breathe. Then she was desperate to breathe…and found that she couldn’t. It was just like her nightmare-there was no air for breathing.

With her last ounce of strength she gathered Michael into her arms, lurched to her feet and staggered toward the stairs. Darkness closed in, and she was falling…falling…

Then…as in her old nightmare, just when she was sure the darkness would take her forever, she felt strong arms around her, and a cracked voice murmuring comforting words in her ear: “It’s okay, baby-girl…you gonna be all right now. Doveman’s got you under his wings…”

Ethan was standing on the edge of the chaos, hugging himself and shivering in the muggy night, hearing his teeth chatter as he stared through glittering, flickering patterns of light and darkness. When a cry went up from someone in the moving crowd of emergency personnel, he started upright, his body tensing as if it had received a powerful jolt of electricity. Cheers followed, and a smattering of applause, and the crowd surged forward as one