Hannah sagged against the nearest vehicle. She felt Adam behind her, gasping for breath. She reached around and grabbed his hand. ‘She’s all right,’ Hannah whispered.
Suddenly, the milling crowd of officers parted, and a policewoman was standing just a few yards from Hannah, holding Sydney by the hand.
Hannah caught the child’s eye and fell down to her knees, her arms open.
‘Mom, Mom,’ Sydney cried, rushing to her.
Hannah thought she had never smelled anything as sweet as the child’s hair, or felt anything so welcome as those little arms wrapped around her. ‘You OK?’ she asked, squeezing her.
Sydney nodded. ‘Miss Mamie fell down. She got sick and fell down,’ the child said gravely.
‘Oh my God,’ said Hannah. ‘How . . . ? What happened?’
Adam prodded Hannah in the back. ‘Get up,’ he whispered. ‘We need to go.’
Hannah looked up at him, perplexed by his urgent tone, and then heard a voice booming beside her.
‘Mrs Whitman. Mr Whitman.’ Isaiah Revere, Mamie’s eldest son, approached them. They had met several times over the course of the last ten months, when he came to pay a visit to his mother. He was a bald man in his late fifties, wearing a nicely cut overcoat in a muted brown. He also wore a tie and gleaming cordovan shoes.
Hannah rose to her feet and shook his outstretched hand. ‘Hello, Mr Revere. How is Mamie? Is she going to be all right? What happened?’ she asked.
Just then, the bay doors slammed shut and the sirens on the ambulance began to wail.
Isaiah’s forehead was furrowed. ‘They think she had a stroke. They still have to do a lot of tests. I’m headed over to the hospital in my own car. I just wanted to commend your little angel here, Cindy. She was very brave. Weren’t you, dear?’
Sydney, huddled in Hannah’s arms, nonetheless looked directly at the city councilman. ‘Miss Mamie fell down. She’s sick.’
Isaiah Revere smiled. ‘She is. But she’s going to be all right. The doctors are going to take care of her.’
Hannah shook her head. ‘What happened? Who found her?’ she asked, looking at the collection of police vehicles, the ambulance gearing up to roar away. ‘Cindy’s too young to call for help.’
‘Well, in fact, we have this lady to thank,’ said Isaiah. With that he turned and gestured to a mannish-looking young woman standing nearby, speaking with another officer. Hannah immediately recognized the vet whom they had passed as they left for the birthday party.
‘Can you come over here, soldier?’ Isaiah asked. ‘These are the child’s parents.’
‘Dominga?’ Hannah said.
Dominga, looking somewhat shy, nodded. ‘Hi, Anna,’ she said.
Isaiah Revere looked surprised. ‘You two know each other?’
‘Yes. Well, I work at Restoration House. It’s a non-profit for vets.’
‘Apparently Ms Flores here heard your daughter screaming and went to the window. She saw my mother lying on the floor, so she made a quick decision and went in through the window.’
Hannah could feel Adam tugging on her arm. ‘Hannah, let’s go in,’ he whispered. ‘Cindy needs to get inside.’
Hannah felt annoyed at her husband for his abruptness. She too wanted to commend Dominga for her quick thinking. ‘Dominga, I don’t know how to thank you.’
Dominga tried to shake off the praise. ‘Just did what needed doin’,’ she said.
A bright light suddenly shone into Hannah’s face. ‘Councilman Revere. We got your call. We’re here from Channel Ten News. We heard your mother was ill. What’s going on?’
Sydney lifted a pudgy hand to cover her eyes. Hannah froze, realizing, too late, why Adam had wanted them to slip away.
‘Thank you for coming. I’ll tell you what’s going on,’ said Isaiah Revere, addressing the microphone. ‘I am on my way to the hospital to attend to my mother who was taken ill in her house tonight. But before I go, I want to point out that she would undoubtedly be dead but for the quick thinking of this young woman, Dominga Flores, who broke in and called 911. My mother was alone with this small child whom she was caring for.’ The cameraman turned his apparatus onto Hannah, who had Sydney in her arms.
Heart pounding, Hannah averted her face as best she could.
‘Ms Flores is an Iraq war vet, who has suffered greatly after her participation in that conflict,’ said Isaiah. ‘It’s not been an easy road for Dominga, as I understand it. She is without work, and without a place to live. But when my mother was in desperate trouble, and Ms Flores was facing an emergency, all her skills as a soldier came into play, and she performed heroically.’
Hannah heard Adam groan softly behind her. She felt paralyzed, trapped in the camera’s glare, exposed.
By this time several other news networks had showed up on the scene, answering the call from the councilman’s office. Anyone else would be on their way to the hospital or in the ambulance with their mother. Hannah realized, too late, that for Isaiah Revere, this was a political opportunity. He would never let a chance go by to collect a few votes. She felt as if she wanted to throw up, or faint. But she was holding Sydney, and they were talking about a young woman who had rescued her child. She couldn’t just turn her back and walk away.
‘I just wanted to point out, before I leave for the hospital, that Ms Flores’s actions should serve as a reminder to us of how we have failed our veterans in this country, even though they have never failed us. They respond on our behalf, no matter what, every time they are called.’
Dominga looked embarrassed but also proud. Hannah’s stomach was churning but she tried to smile. Maybe no one will see it, she told herself. It’s a
