Ellie slowed when she reached a pathway at the far edge of the Sheep Meadow and staggered in a circle with a finger jammed into each ear.
As Bess and I approached she turned toward me and shouted, “Don’t tell me you can’t hear it now?”
Her distress was so genuine, and I felt so helpless.
“I don’t know what else to tell you, Ellie. I don’t hear anything.” I turned to Bess. “Do you?”
She shook her head. “I hear the traffic up on the street but that’s all. What’s it sound like?”
“Like a moan—a long moan that never stops. And so loud! Not as loud as it was back in the field, but—” She jammed her hands over her ears again. “I can’t stand it!”
I hovered beside her. “I don’t know what to do!”
“Make it stop. Please, Mom, you’ve got to make it stop!”
“We can’t hear it, Ellie. That means it’s in your head. Does covering your ears help?”
“No, it’s all around.”
A man had trotted up and skidded to a stop before her.
“You hear it too?” he said, staring.
Ellie nodded as her face paled further, and her cheeks…they seemed to be sinking.
I looked at the man—tall and wiry with ruddy skin, high cheekbones, and a sharp nose. He looked Indian—not the Hindu kind, the Native American kind. If he heard it, that meant it wasn’t just in Ellie’s head, not some mental aberration.
“It’s making me sick. I wanna go home!”
“You mean like back to Mizzou?” Bess said.
Ellie retched. “I’m gonna puke!”
“No, don’t! You know I hate that smell. It makes me wanna puke!”
“Hush, Bess!” I said. This wasn’t about her.
The man started to turn away. He looked like he was in pain—from the sound?
And then, as she’d warned, Ellie vomited—not her breakfast but a long stream of bright red blood.
“Oh, no!” I cried, horrified. “Ellie, no!”
She dropped to her knees and did it again. So much blood…
And then she fell onto her side, but never took her hands off her ears.
“Make it stop, Mom,” she gasped, her face so white. “Make it stop!”
And then her eyelids fluttered and she passed out.
The stranger knelt and slipped his arms under Ellie’s back and knees. As he lifted her, he said, “Call 9-1-1!”
“What are you doing?” I screamed as he started carrying her away. “Put her down!”
“The sound’s not so loud up by the street,” he said.
“What sound?”
“You really don’t hear it?”
“No! And put her down!”
“Just follow me, lady. She’ll be better on the sidewalk.”
He increased his pace and I stared to scream for help.
“He’s taking my little girl! Someone stop him! Please, someone stop him!”
But people simply stared. No one moved to intervene, so I ran after him.
He reached the sidewalk and darted to the nearest bench where a young couple sat staring at their phones.
“Move-move-move!” he shouted
As they jumped up and stepped away, he laid Ellie on the bench and began slapping her cheeks—gently but insistent.
“Kid? Wake up, kid. The sound’s not so loud here.”
I grabbed his shoulder and pulled him away, then pushed myself between them.
“Get away from her!”
“Did you call the EMTs?”
“I was too busy chasing you!”
He made a face as he pulled out his phone and stabbed at the keypad. After a few seconds he said, “Little girl vomiting blood at Sixty-Ninth and CPW,” then ended the call.
A moment later, Ellie woke up.
“The noise…”
I kissed her forehead. “It’s gone now?”
“No. But it not as loud. It’s not making me sick anymore.”
I looked up and met the stranger’s concerned eyes. I realized he’d only been trying to help.
“Thank you. I’m sorry I panicked. I just—”
He shrugged and smiled. “A strange man carrying my daughter off? I’d panic too.”
“But what’s this sound she’s talking about? I thought it was all in her head, but you seem to hear it too.”
He looked from Bess to me. “And you don’t? Neither of you?” When we both shook our heads he turned to the small crowd that had gathered out of nowhere. “Who here hears that noise, that loud low hum?”
Not one person raised a hand. They looked at him like he was crazy.
“What is it?” I said. “Where does it come from?”
He shrugged. “Wish I knew. Heard it Friday, now again today.”
Just like Ellie…
“Thank you again. May I ask your name?”
He hesitated, then said, “Hill…Tier Hill.”
Tier…an odd name. I wanted to ask him about the sound but just then Ellie started to sob.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“It stopped! It finally stopped!”
And then she passed out again.
The police and EMTs arrived together and made me back off while they checked Ellie. I looked around for the stranger. I wanted to ask him more about what he’d heard, but he was gone. Then one of the EMTs grabbed my arm.
“That’s your daughter, right?” Something hostile in her expression.
“Yes…”
“Where’d she get those burns?”
“What burns?”
“She’s burned all over.”
Panicked, I pushed past the police and the EMTs to Ellie’s side. They had one arm out of her sleeve—to start an IV, I suppose—but her skin was covered with red, angry, inch-wide blisters. They’d pulled up her sweater to reveal her abdomen and the blisters were even bigger there.
“What?” I screamed. “What did you do to her?”
“That’s what we were about to ask you,” said a cop. “Her clothes aren’t burned. She must have had those when she got dressed.”
“No wonder she’s passed out,” said another EMT. “Those look like third-degree burns.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off those horrible marks. “But we just walked all the way across the park.”
“Really?” said a black cop. “A woman over there says she saw a man carrying her out of the park.”
No…they couldn’t think…
Before I could reply, an EMT shouted, “She’s going into shock. We’ve got to get her to a burn unit and fast!”
4
And