by RJ Blain
The darkness hid a lot, and while we had found some flashlights, I had focused my attention elsewhere.
“You did all that work in those heels?” Daniel blurted, and in his tone, I heard his disbelief and what I hoped was respect. “Jesus, ma’am, your feet are going to be a bloody mess. Why didn’t you have us check your legs? You never said you were hurt.”
“Busy,” I choked out. My voice was so hoarse I wondered if he understood me.
Twisting around without rising, he gestured to one of the women who served as his assistant. “Water and the cleanest shirt you can find.”
A giggle bubbled out of me. Using the tourist trap shirts had resulted in interesting bandages, if the running jokes among the survivors were to be believed. The thought of wearing them on my feet was so absurd I burst into laughter. Those nearby stared at me as though I had lost my mind.
Maybe I had.
In a state of sick fascination, I watched Daniel peel my heels off. I wasn’t the only one to wince at the bruised and blistered state of my feet. In a way, I was thankful I couldn’t distinguish color.
My feet made Daniel’s helper gag.
“You’re not going to be walking anywhere in any shoes anytime soon, ma’am. Well, maybe a week. Give orders from a chair. Think you can keep her off her feet, Ryan?” The splash of water on my feet drew a pained gasp out of me.
The gasp led to coughing and wheezing, and by the time I controlled the worst of the fit, I couldn’t sit up without help.
Ryan adjusted his hold on me, keeping me upright when all I wanted was to flop on the floor and sleep. “Won’t be a problem.”
“Smoke inhalation,” the paramedic announced. “Hell, we’ve all got it to some degree or another. No surprise there. Keep her in the fresh air, give her as much water as she’ll drink without throwing it up. You know how to do CPR, Ryan?”
My entire body went cold. While there had been cases of people surviving because of CPR, it was a losing proposition. Chest compressions took effort—more effort than most of us had left. The breathing component was intensive, too, although we had been taught in class the chest compression was the most important element.
If I needed CPR, I’d likely be leaving LaGuardia in a body bag. I knew it, and judging from the paramedic’s expression, so did he.
“I’ll keep an eye on her. Anything we can do?”
“Breathing exercises. Long and deep. I’ll see if anyone has an emergency inhaler. What we need is an oxygen mask, but beggars can’t be choosers. I’ll get someone to break open the glass more. We could all use the fresh air. Ma’am, just focus on taking deep breaths. Don’t talk unless you can’t avoid it, and try to avoid coughing. Keep her awake, Ryan.”
“Anything else, Daniel?”
“Got any miracles handy? We could use a couple.”
“I’ll see what I have in stock.”
I laughed, which led to bone-jarring coughs. Working one arm under my knees while the other supported my back, Ryan lifted me up and carried me to the seats closest to the window. He ordered someone to move, freeing enough space for him to sit with me on his lap, my head nestled in the crook of his arm while my legs stretched out over the empty seats. The cold air bit at my aching lungs.
Fresh air didn’t make it any easier to breathe, but I was too tired to feel anything more than resignation.
Ryan held me as though we were friends rather than strangers with the misfortune of meeting in an airport prior to it exploding. I listened to him talk of his love of the outdoors, especially up high in the mountains. If my lack of questions or replies bothered him, he showed no sign of it. Most people expected something out of me during a conversation.
All he seemed to want was someone to listen.
The smoke made his voice pleasantly husky. The animated way he spoke of the outdoors made me want to see his expression as he took in the landscapes he so adored.
When he spoke of a sapphire sky dipping down to crystal snow, it was the sparkling white that drew me in and held me enthralled to his story.
I wanted to take pictures of such a place, adding them to my collection of colorless photos, hoping for the impossible dream of seeing the world through his eyes. I wanted to know what it was like to breathe in the cold air of a world untouched by man, high above everything, with the gold of the sun and the sapphire of the sky surrounding me while I stood on a mountain of white snow covering gray stones.
The mountains seemed like the perfect place for my world to meet the real one.
Ryan smiled, staring out the window while he talked, and I wondered what it would be like if a man smiled that way for me. Love, for him, was a faraway place, forever unobtainable to me.
Why did I always desire what I couldn’t have?
“I want to take pictures of a place like that,” I confessed in a whisper. My voice betrayed me, so hoarse and weak I could barely hear myself.
Ryan’s gaze turned to me, and his smile faded. “Do you?”
“I want to see that shade of blue.” If Ryan could love it so much, so could I, if only I had the chance.
His laughter warmed me, and he leaned over and picked up a bottle of water. Giving it a good shake before opening it, he offered it to me. “This should help your throat a little.”
“Remind me never to trust you with soda.”
“And ruin the surprise when you forget?”
The question touched on a future out of my reach. I had no idea what sort of future I would have—if there was one for me.
I had never imagined a world without Dad in it.
I took the bottle and took a long swig of the water. The smoke and the chemicals hanging in the air gave it a bitter taste. I wrinkled my nose, drinking anyway since the liquid eased some of the ache in my throat. “Thanks.”
“Go ahead and drink it all. I can get another bottle.”
I obeyed. If water held another coughing fit at bay, I’d guzzle down three or four if I had to. When I finished, he took the bottle out of my hand, grinned at me, and lobbed it up and out the window through a gap barely large enough for it to fit. “Score!”
I caught myself before I laughed.
“You know, you’re different, and I like that. Don’t change.”
The direct way he spoke reminded me of the way Dad liked to give orders during a meeting. I should have been offended, but I was too used to people who didn’t like the way I minced words or chose not to speak at all.
I liked the fact my quiet didn’t bother him even more than I liked his chest. It had never occurred to me there could be a man out there who didn’t mind a quiet woman. Instead of answering, I made a thoughtful noise in my throat.
It was a mistake. The first cough burst out of me, igniting a fire in my throat and lungs, burning away everything other than my awareness of how much harder it became to breathe after each and every rasping cough.
Without fear and desperation driving me, there was nothing left to anchor me to the real world. My body rebelled at all the work I had done, leaving me trembling.
My awareness narrowed to the weariness in my body, the faint whistle of my breath, and the way my throat tightened as time passed. From time to time, my chest hurt, far beyond the ache I had endured when working despite the choking smoke. During my more lucid moments, I was aware of my entire body throbbing to the faltering beat of my heart.
Death had been something I’d known about since I was little. Every year in the late fall, Dad told the same story. Maybe he meant to absolve his guilt by being honest about my mother’s death, but he made sure I never forgot.
In the same sure way the seasons flowed into one another, death came for us all. Sometimes we went out with a bang, killed instantly in a car crash. When I had been a little girl haunting his shadow, he had called me his little miracle, a cat with one fewer lives.
Maybe Dad’s open acknowledgement of the fleeting nature of life better prepared me for when I’d make the transition from life to death. Dad understood fai
lure and accepted it readily enough, as long as it hadn’t been a failure due to negligence.
Effort mattered to him.
It was easier to accept how tired and worn I was knowing I hadn’t gone out without a fight.
When the pain ebbed and I floated in darkness, I wondered if death was the peaceful calm and quiet of the moment before sleep. That I had the presence of mind for thought at all intrigued me.
A steady beep convinced me I probably wasn’t dead. I considered the sound, high enough in pitch to annoy me, infrequent enough to convince me it wasn’t some sort of alarm or warning, and rhythmic enough I could use it to measure time.
At least, I thought I could. I made it up to three hundred beats before my muddled thoughts refused to comprehend the nature of numbers, forcing me to start over at one.
I blamed whatever was keeping my body so numb. Maybe I had become a ghost with a fetish for devices that beeped? I wanted to giggle, but couldn’t, which disappointed me.
Maybe I didn’t like talking all that much, but I enjoyed laughing. In the comfort of home, away from prying eyes, I watched comedies until I cried from my mirth, earning disgusted scowls from Dad, who never managed to get me to share the joke with him.
Sometimes, I laughed to make him wonder.
Maybe there was something to the belief someone’s life flashed before their eyes before death. It wasn’t a flash, though. I leisurely explored my memories, right up until the bitter end, when I had accepted I wouldn’t find Dad in the rubble.
I had found so many others, but not him.
It was a mercy for both of us. Death ended many things, but Dad wouldn’t have to live with me dying first. I was okay with being the second to go.
All I hoped was he hadn’t felt a thing. Of all the people in the world, he deserved an instant, painless end.
He had endured enough because of me.
Hell was the steady beep in my ear. At first, I could ignore it, thinking it would go away. Lights in tunnels, out of body experiences, all the little myths surrounding death I could accept.
I wanted to throw something at the source of the sound, which was somewhere to my right. That I had a sense of direction convinced me death was either a very logical place, or I was somehow quite alive.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Fucking beeps.
English had a lot of foul words hidden away in its vocabulary, and I practiced as many of them as I could in my head, my irritation at the sound growing the longer I was forced to listen to it.
The noise did serve one good purpose, however. As it annoyed me to whole new levels, the evidence I wasn’t quite dead yet filtered through the numbness fogging my head. Both of my feet ached, and I only made the mistake of wiggling my toes once.
Pain was an excellent teacher, and as my nerves started reporting in, I wondered if I could make a strategic retreat back to the land of the suspected dead. The beep was wretched, but it didn’t hurt me.
My chest throbbed, my feet were raw, and pain burst up my legs if I so much as shifted my weight. The prick of a needle near my elbow gave me the necessary clue to figure out the source of the infernal beeping.
Hospitals were filled with beeping machines. I had visited them often enough between charity events and appointments trying to figure out what exactly was wrong with my head. Life support machines and monitors were the common offenders, and they were necessary evils.
They kept people alive.
Sometime between piecing together the fact I was alive and figuring out I was in a hospital, I managed to force all of my fingers and toes to report in and confirm I was somewhat intact.
Mostly.
My memory of how I got to the hospital was fuzzy. I vaguely remembered something about my shoes killing my feet. After that, everything was a blur followed by nothing.
If I ever got on a plane ever again, I’d make a point of wearing sneakers with my business attire. Maybe I’d start wearing sneakers exclusively. I could afford to be eccentric. I got enough stares for my tendency to remain silent. What was wearing comfortable shoes compared to that?
I took my time preparing to open my eyes. Once I did, I had a feeling the gates of hell would truly open. I hadn’t given anyone my name, and my purse was gone, likely blown to bits along with the rest of my identification.
I didn’t want to step back into a world without Dad in it, but I couldn’t hide forever. He’d been the one to teach me that.
The light hurt my eyes, and I squinted and waited until I could see without my vision blurring and sharp stabs of pain arcing through my head all the way down to my toes. All of the curses I’d been practicing in my head battled for dominance.
I settled for an oldie but a goody. “Fuck!”
Motion in the corner of my eye drew my attention, and a slack-jawed nurse stared at me, a clipboard in her hand. Her pen hit the floor, its clatter loud enough to drown out the wretched beep.
Hospital rooms had lots of little buttons, and the nurse slapped one of them. I blinked at the nurse, who blinked back at me, as though she wasn’t quite sure she believed what she saw.
Was it that uncommon for someone to wake up spitting curses? Surely it had to happen often in a hospital. My throat itched, and my mouth felt like I had chewed on salty cotton balls.
Maybe she was impressed I managed to say a word, considering I was convinced my tongue had become a clay block in my mouth.
Before I could figure out if I could wrangle my mouth into forming another word, a man dressed in a doctor’s white coat swept in. I liked doctors’ coats. They were a truth; my world overlapped with normal people, bound together by the color white.
“Well, well, well. This is promising,” the doctor said, his tone light with his satisfaction. “Margie, please make arrangements for a full set of tests.”
“Yes, sir. She, ah, was vocal, too. She woke up and said a single word.”
It was intriguing watching them watch me, talking to each other as though I didn’t exist.
“What word?”
Some words were worth repeating, and if I was going to demonstrate I was conscious and aware, it was worth trying to speak a second time. “Fuck.”
All in all, I sounded pretty cheerful. Morning breath wasn’t a pleasant experience for anyone, but there should have been limits to just how bad it could get. It tasted like something had been roasted to a crisp and shoved down my throat to rot. The nurse’s cheeks darkened, and she made a helpless gesture.
I was just glad I couldn’t smell my breath.
“Get those tests scheduled,” the doctor ordered, taking the clipboard out of the nurse’s hand. “Let’s try you with a sip or two of water and see how that goes. You’ve been a very sick young lady.”
If there was an understatement of the year award, his comment was a strong contender for the top prize. The water was cold and soothed my mouth. The first few sips didn’t even reach my throat, my mouth was so desperate for moisture. I would have kept drinking until I floated away, but the doctor pulled the bottle out of my reach.
“Is that better?”
I nodded, which was when I discovered there were objects stuck to my forehead. The movement triggered a mild headache, and I decided I’d use up next year’s stockpile of spoken words to cut to the chase. “My name is Matia Hannah Evans.”
I proceeded to give him my home address, place of employment, and every other relevant bit of information on my life. I even had my insurance policy number memorized. Once done, I explained what had happened, giving him a full account until I reached the blank spots in my memory.
By the time I was done, my voice was so hoarse I was impressed I wasn’t spitting blood. While I talked, the doctor dutifully wrote down the information I gave him. For the most part, he listened in silence, interrupting only to request a repeat of certain bits of information. When he asked if I had any family, I hesitated.
Once I spoke the words, I wouldn’t be able to take them back. If I spoke
them, I’d be fully acknowledging the likely truth. Taking a deep breath made my lungs ache. “I don’t know if my father survived.”
“Do you know his number?”
I gave him my father’s cell phone number, and after a moment of thought, I also gave him Annamarie’s number, explaining she was our assistant.
“You’re young to have an assistant.”
I blinked at the doctor and said nothing.
“What’s your father’s name?”
“Ralph Evans.”
The doctor choked on his own spit. “Are you serious? Ralph Evans? The businessman?”
“We were at the airport when the bombs went off. I’d gone through security before him, so we were separated.”
“Excuse me for a moment, Miss Evans.” The doctor left the room, pulling a cell phone out of his pocket. He stayed right outside of the room, watching me. He spoke for a few minutes. Without hanging up, he returned, holding the phone to my ear.
“Matia?” The hope in Dad’s voice hurt so much I burst into tears.
“Daddy?” I hadn’t called him that in years, and I didn’t care. I didn’t care I blubbered the word, or that my tears made my eyes sting, or that my hitched breathing stabbed my lungs and throat.
“It’s okay, Matia. I’m okay. It’ll take me a few hours to get to you, but I’m coming, okay? Don’t you go anywhere.”
I stared at the various machines attached to me and wondered how he thought it’d be possible for me to leave the bed let alone stage an escape. Torn between laughter and helpless sobbing, I agreed.
Then I started coughing, and the doctor took the phone away, claiming they had to run tests, although he probably wanted to make sure I didn’t cough to death.
Chapter Four
The doctor ran me through so many machines I didn’t know which end was up. Four hours after the start of the gauntlet, the verdict was in. I had survived, although the jury was still out on whether or not I’d live a normal life again.
