alcove with bright light.
Kirk took Amy's arm and put both crutches under his other arm. The doors hissed closed behind them. Kirk leaned against the wall and rested.
'Which floor is Emergency on?' Amy asked.
'One,' replied Kirk.
Amy pushed the 'One' button and the elevator lurched and began to descend.
'I think we ought to go back. I don't want to be in the way,' Amy said.
'We won't be in the way. We won't even go in, just peek through the door.'
The elevator came to a stop and the doors hissed open again. The first-floor hallway was very dim. Except for the emergency ward at the other end of the hospital, there were only offices and receptionists and gift shops and outpatient units on the first floor. In the silence, the sirens still wailed from outside the building.
'It must be something pretty big from the sound of it. I wonder what could have happened.'
Amy and Kirk walked cautiously through the corridors toward the sound of the sirens. They turned a corner and saw the bright lights of the emergency ward beneath the door at the end of the hallway. Under the double swinging door, shadows crossed and recrossed in the light.
'Let's go back,' Amy suggested again.
'No way. We're this far. I can't go back now without checking.'
They moved down the hallway until they stood just outside the swinging doors. The sirens continued, and now Amy and Kirk heard the sound of running footsteps and crying and moans and doors slamming.
Kirk pushed against the right of the two doors, swinging it slightly open. He and Amy leaned forward to look.
They squinted from the brightness of the glare.
The scene through the door was horrible. Slumped bodies were in every free chair. Kids leaned against the walls. Nurses and doctors and residents in white rushed from person to person. Heads were bandaged, blood ran down cheeks, two boys lay writhing on the floor. Amy saw a piece of bone sticking through the skin of a young girl's arm.
'More help here,' one doctor yelled, and a nurse rushed from one bleeding teenager to another.
The outside doors of the emergency ward opened and the sound of the sirens swept loudly into the room. Four more teenagers entered, three of them helping the fourth to walk. Two ambulance attendants carried a stretcher with a sixteen-year-old girl on it. She was unconscious.
Amy turned away from the door and looked into the dimness of the long hallway that stretched away from her in the opposite direction from the emergency ward.
'God, Kirk, what's going on?' she asked.
'I don't know. It's crazy. I'm going in to find out.'
Amy turned to grab his arm. 'No, don't.'
'I want to. No one will notice one more kid in there. Stay here.'
Kirk pushed through the door and it swung shut behind him. Amy stood alone in the hall. She couldn't block out the sound of the sirens and the moaning and crying, although she tried covering her ears with her hands.
She pushed the door open and followed.
Kirk was standing, leaning on his crutches just inside the door. Amy stood beside him. If anything, the scene was even worse now they had entered into it.
'God, let's do something! We can't just stand here and not help,' Amy said.
'We can't do anything,' Kirk said.
A girl Amy's age was standing against the far wall screaming. A doctor stuck her with a needle and she seemed to crumple almost immediately. The doctor moved on to a boy whose shirt was covered with blood. A nurse stopped and straightened the fallen girl's legs.
There must have been thirty kids in there, all of them bleeding, all of them hurt.
Near where Kirk and Amy were standing, a young girl was sitting in a chair. She leaned forward and held her head in her arms. There were cuts above her elbow, but they were bandaged already. Blood was seeping through the gauze.
Amy went over to her and squatted down next to the chair.
'What happened?' she asked. Kirk moved over and stood behind Amy.
'Oh, God. I don't know. The bus turned over.'
'What bus? Where were you going?' Kirk asked.
'On a trip, a trip to a concert from church. The bus went over the side of the road and flipped. God, the glass flew all over. John had his arm through a window. All the bodies crashed down.' The girl started to cry.
Amy reached out and put her arm around the girl's shoulders.
'It was so dark. It was all black. I couldn't find the way out. It was so awful. I kept cutting myself. I don't remember...'
'It's all right now,' Amy said. 'It's all over. Everyone will be all right. Everybody's being taken care of.'
'Oh, God,' the girl sighed. 'I don't know...'
'It's okay. Look, everybody's getting their cuts all fixed up.'
The doctors and nurses still rushed like mad people from patient to patient. There was blood on the chairs and blood on the floor.
Amy dabbed at the blood leaking from under the bandage on the girl's arm. Then she noticed a small trickle of thick, half-congealed blood flowing slowly down the girl's hair, along her neck. Amy reached her Kleenex up and tried to wipe that away too.
'It's so stupid, so awful...' the girl said and began to cry again.
Amy started to cry too. She looked up and saw the chaotic rush of doctors and nurses, the hurt and crying kids, the bloodstained bandages.
Kirk put a hand on Amy's shoulder. 'Let's go,' he said.
Amy looked up at him. Tears were still running down her cheeks, although she made no noise. Kirk was pale.
'Let's go,' he said. 'We can't do anything here. We'll get in the way. The doctors will do just fine without us.'
Amy turned back to the sobbing teenage girl and put a hand out. Kirk tugged persistently at Amy's shoulder.
Amy gazed again across the room. 'I'm going to stay. Maybe I can do something.'
'We've got to forget it, Amy. There's nothing we can do. No one's hurt bad here. They'll be fine.'
He pulled at the sleeve of her bathrobe. Amy gave in and Kirk maneuvered her through the swinging doors. They were silent all the way up in the elevator and down the hall to the room.
The television was off. Brent had put away his sketching materials and was reading again. He looked up when they entered the room. Amy's eyes were red and puffy. Brent could tell immediately that she was upset.
'What was it?' he asked.
'Wouldn't you know, it was a real mess down there,' Kirk replied. 'Some bus with a bunch of kids going to a concert turned over. There must have been thirty of forty of them, all cut up. It was a real horror scene all right.'
'Oh, it was awful, Brent,' Amy said. 'I felt so sorry for them all. The doctors couldn't seem to get to everybody fast enough. I just felt I wanted to do something to help. There was blood all over and everybody was crying and all. I should have stayed. I could have helped out the nurses or something.'
'Right. Just like Scarlett O'Hara during the siege of Atlanta. Listen, Amy, don't let it shake you up. They'll all be fine. We couldn't have done anything much. We just would have been in the way.'
Amy turned on him. 'You just don't care is all, Kirk. You just close it all out of your safe little world and say, 'No sweat.' I don't care what you say, we should have stayed. Sometimes I wonder whether you'd help anybody, you're so wrapped up in yourself.'
'Listen, Amy...' Brent began. He didn't like to hear them fighting. It gave him a weird feeling.
'No, it's all right,' Kirk said. 'Let her think what she wants. Amy, those kids down there are probably a hell of a lot better off right now than any of us up here, and that's no crap. So don't come on righteous and Florence
