“I don’t know,” he said. “Guess I thought if I cozied up to the boss, I might get a little more than the usual six percent annual raise.”
Bobby laughed, then slapped him again on the shoulder. “You were wrong. So, are you coming or not?”
“Not.” He watched as Bobby and some of the other faces from the office raced toward the gigantic spinning contraption. He had to get away from here, and quick. It was making him ill. The Ferris wheel—and everything else. Everything about this. Everything about his life. Everything.
Tony spotted her near the concession stand—the Double D Cowpoke Corral, to be precise. He’d gone in to get a Coke to settle his stomach. She was sitting at one of the picnic tables nursing some kind of drink. She was tall and thin and looked to him like someone you’d expect to see smiling down from the cover of Elle magazine. But there she was, sitting at a chipped and faded picnic table at Frontier City—alone.
He knew it was stupid, but he couldn’t help himself. Maybe it was the intoxicating swirl of the Ferris wheel still working on his brain, undermining his common sense. Maybe it was the sad truth that he had nothing to lose, because his present life was so empty. Whatever the cause, he found himself walking toward her, eventually taking a seat on the opposite side of her table.
To his surprise, she did not appear annoyed. Not particularly pleased, but not annoyed, either.
“Waiting for someone?” he asked.
Her head turned slowly toward his, but her eyes did not leave her cup. “No. Why?”
“I—thought maybe you were waiting for your kids.”
“No. I don’t have children.”
“Boyfriend?”
“No.”
“You’re here … by yourself?”
“Is there something wrong with that?”
“No. I just …” He shifted awkwardly, knocking into his Coke in the process. He caught it at the last possible moment before it spilled. He felt like an idiot. Who did he think he was? Casanova? Casanova was never such a klutz. “Most people don’t come to amusement parks alone.”
Her eyes rose slightly. “Are you here alone?”
“No. Well … no. Feels like it, though.”
She responded with a barely perceptible nod. “I just wanted to be someplace where … where people are happy.”
Tony fell silent. He didn’t understand. And then again, he did.
“Where will you go next?” he asked.
Her eyes were strangely vacant. “I don’t know. I have no idea.”
He stretched his arm impulsively across the table. “You should come back with me.”
Again he feared she would be annoyed, but she wasn’t. A tiny smile played on her lips. For the first time, her eyes met his. “Is that so?”
“Yes. Come with me. Please.”
“Why should I?”
“I’d make you happy. I want to make you happy.”
“Where would we go? Another amusement park?”
“No. This is no place for someone like you. A woman like you—you deserve to be … I don’t know. You deserve to be on some island in the South Pacific, relaxing on a lounge chair on the beach, maybe a couple of servants to bring you drinks served in the shell of a coconut.”
Her smile increased. “My, my. You do think big, don’t you?”
“Oh, I’ve barely begun. After you spend a leisurely afternoon on the beach, you retire to our beach house—no, our hacienda. A big spread, with fountains, and an Olympic-size pool, and … and … our own personal tennis court. Ours would be the biggest spread on the island. In fact, I think we’d own the island.”
“Stop me if I’m wrong, but this fantasy you’re spinning might be somewhat expensive. Should I assume you’re a billionaire?”
“Well …”
“What do you do for a living?”
He stared into her dark hazel eyes. Somehow, he couldn’t lie to this woman. It would be wrong. Worse than wrong—it would be … like a sin. “I work for a big corporation not far from Tulsa. I’m an accountant.”
“That doesn’t sound like a job that brings in private South Sea island-type income.”
“No, it isn’t.” A shadow fell over his face. “But I know where I could get money. A lot of money.”
“Oh?” Her eyes widened, large and watery. “Then why haven’t you?”
“I don’t know. I suppose … I never had any reason to. Before now.”
She looked at him carefully. His hand was touching hers now, just barely. But she did not move away. “Why would you do this for me? You don’t know anything about me.”
“I do. I mean, I don’t, but …” He gazed into her lovely endless eyes. “I know enough. I know you lost something you cared about very much. Or someone. I don’t know who or what it was, but I know it was important to you, so important you feel like you can’t go on without it.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “But you can. We can.”
Her fingers tightened around his hand, like a drowning person gasping for air. “I wish I could believe you.”
“You can,” he said, and he was never so sure of anything in his entire life. “You can.”
“BRACE YOURSELVES!” the bus driver shouted.
Tony lurched forward, trying to see what was happening. He was sitting in the back, but he could still observe the oncoming headlights whiting out the windshield. The bus began to skid, and it seemed like it skidded forever, on and on …
Until they crashed. The impact flung Tony forward, almost over the next row of seats. His head banged down on the hard plastic seat back, cutting a deep gash across his forehead. Backpacks, cups, broken glass flew everywhere. The screams from his fellow passengers pierced his ears.
And the bus was still moving. Not forward this time, but sideways, teetering, losing its grip on the highway.
Dear God, don’t let us turn over, he thought, but it was much too late for prayer. The bus pitched to one side, hitting the highway with a shattering impact.
“No!” Tony wasn’t sure who was screaming now. There were dozens of them, scrambling, fighting their way to their feet, trying to quell their panic.
“Get off the bus! Everyone off the bus!” The bus driver was shouting at them. At first, no one moved. Many of them had been sleeping; all had been resting before the crash. Everyone was too dazed, too stunned by the double impacts.
Then the driver added the kicker: “I think we pierced the fuel tank.”
The driver was silhouetted by an eerie orange glow. Tony pulled himself up from the rubble and saw that it was true. A furious fuel-fed fire engulfed the front of the bus … and was slowly making its way toward the rear.
They screamed. Everyone still conscious scrambled, moving all ways at once. Tony fought his way downstream, back toward his original seat, back to the beautiful woman who had been sitting beside him.
Her eyes were closed. Tony took her shoulders and shook her, first gently, then much less so. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t even know her name. But she had to wake up. She had to.
She did not rouse. Fine, he thought, clenching his teeth. Then I’ll drag you out. He threw her arm over his shoulder and started toward the rear of the bus.
Before he had moved two feet, he ran into Bobby Hendricks. “There’s no exit!” he shouted in Tony’s ear.
“But—there must be—the back—the emergency exit—”
“There isn’t one!”
Tony looked over his shoulder. He saw three of his colleagues pounding their fists against the rear window, futilely trying to escape.
There was no emergency exit on the left side of the bus. The only rear exit was on the right side, which was now pressed flat against the concrete.
He turned back toward the front of the bus. The flames were still there, burning a steady path through the bus. The blaze licked the ceiling, obscuring everything behind it. It was as if someone were standing at the front of the bus with a flamethrower. The fire was coming straight toward them. All of them.
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Tony tried to block the panicked shrieks out of his mind. He released the woman, then started toward the back. Three panicked men were pounding on the rear window, but it wasn’t giving.
We need a tool, he thought. Anything. He saw a picnic basket at his feet and scooped it up. There was a large thermos inside. He raised it like a hammer and began pounding at the window. He pounded again and again, but the window didn’t break. Didn’t even crack.
He turned and saw the flames were still coming, even closer than before. The fire had reached the eighth row of the bus—only twelve more to go. Already the heat on Tony’s face was scalding; it was as if he had dipped his face into the sun.
He had to get the woman away from the fire. He owed it to her; she was only here because of him. As he scanned the bus, all around him, he saw a solid mass of desperate, screaming, flailing figures, all pressed together in an increasingly smaller space.
Tony crawled over the tops of the seats, swearing with each step. It was so hot he could barely breathe. The seats were so hot they scalded his fingers. Don’t think about it, he kept telling himself. Put it out of your mind. You can complain later. Right now you have to move.
Something exploded. The boom split his eardrums as he was buffeted backward. The explosion rocked the bus, though not enough to clear an exit. They were still trapped—those who hadn’t burned already.
He saw the beautiful brunette woman near the fifteenth row, now very close to the fire. Her eyes were still not open. He had to get to her.
Most of the survivors had been thrown together in a huge pileup, fighting their way toward the rear of the bus. Tony had to get past them. He saw a six-inch space at the top and dove for it. Someone else saw him coming and tried to protect his place at the top. It was Bobby. He jabbed his elbow into Tony’s eye.
Tony screamed, then tumbled off the pileup. He landed face first against a window. And as soon as he regained his bearings, he noticed that some of the windows were broken—but since they were pressed against the highway, he could not escape through them.
He fought his way to the beautiful woman, who was still unconscious. He pulled her up and tucked her in a corner, so she would be safe from his crazed, panicked coworkers. She was so lovely, he thought, even now. She deserved so much better.
It was difficult to breathe, even more difficult to move. He propelled himself forward through the broken and lifeless bodies that surrounded him. They were weighing down on him, choking him. Straining with all his might, he forced himself through. He had to get away from the encroaching flames. He grabbed the back of a seat, then screamed. It was like touching a frying pan. The seats were so hot they literally melted between his fingers.
Steeling himself, he placed his hands on the seat again and this time he held fast. The pain was excruciating, but he had to do it.
“I want to get out! Please let me out!”
Tony’s heart sank as he heard the tiny voice behind him. It was a little girl—Bobby’s nine-year-old daughter. Damn! Why had he brought her? Why had he brought any of them?
The girl’s blouse was on fire. Tony reached across and ripped the blouse off her. He scooped her up, then shoved her toward the back of the bus. “Go as far back as you can, sweetheart, then wait,” he told the terrified girl. “Wait for an opening. A door, a window, anything. As soon as you see one, you run for it as quickly as you can.”
The girl nodded and obeyed. Tony had no idea whether there ever would be such an opening, but at least he had given her something to hope for. Something to do other than watch the flames draw closer.
The smoke was so dense now he could hardly see. He could sense his attention waning. Smoke inhalation was getting to him, poisoning his system, robbing him of his final moments of unclouded thought.
The sea of bodies had become too dense, the flames too intense. He could move backward no farther. He pushed himself toward what was once the left side of the bus, toward the only unobstructed windows. Flames were everywhere. The screams and shrieks of terror were becoming less frequent—for the worst of all possible reasons.
He glanced behind him and saw the still-slumbering face of the woman he had invited onto the bus. Her eyes were still closed; her face was caked with blood and soot. But she was still beautiful.
“Forgive me,” he whispered, and all at once, tears filled his eyes.
He turned toward the windows above him, suddenly consumed with rage. He tried to lower the sash, but the buttons were unbearably hot, and even when he forced himself to keep trying, they didn’t work. Clutching the back of a seat with each hand, he swung himself upward, kicking the windows with all his strength.
“Safety windows,” he muttered under his breath. They were supposed to be safety windows. Kick them and they pop out. But as hard as he kicked, nothing happened.
“Break, damn you!” he screamed. “Break!”
Five minutes later the police and firefighters arrived at the scene—less than ten minutes after the crash. But by that time, there was nothing they could do. The fire had consumed the bus to such a degree that the policemen could not initially tell what it was. Flames were everywhere, radiating from all points, surging twenty feet into the sky.
Now
BILLY’s MOMMY FIGURED HE probably had the flu. There wasn’t that much to it at first—just coughs, runny nose, congestion. She went through the usual drill: rest, lots of liquids, and occasional doses of Tylenol. After a week, though, he still wasn’t any better, and his fever was climbing. His appetite had disappeared; he had to be forced to eat and even then ate precious little. He seemed pale, and this was a twelve-year-old boy in the midst of an Oklahoma summer. He moved more slowly, although he still wasn’t willing to curtail his social life.
“Gee, Mom, I gotta go out. Gavin’s got a new computer game. They say it makes Doom 2 look like sissy stuff.”
Cecily Elkins, Billy’s mother, checked the reading on the thermometer. “You’re not going anywhere until your temperature comes down.”
“But Mo-om—”
“Don’t Mom me. You’re staying in bed.”
“Oh, all right. Great.” He glanced back at her. “What about you?”
“What do you mean, what about me?”
“You look kinda tired yourself. You’ve been workin" too hard.”
Come to think of it, she was rather tired. Having a sick child at home for a week was a major strain, no two ways about it. But how many twelve-year-olds would’ve noticed?
“Tell you what, pardner,” she said, fluffing his pillow. “If you’ll stay in bed, I’ll go take a short nap.”
“Make it a long one, Mom. You need your rest.”
She put her hands on her hips. “Now wait a minute. Who’s the parent here?”
Billy laughed.
“I think I’m supposed to be in charge, buster, remember?”
“I think we should take care of each other, now that it’s just the two of us.” Billy’s expression was innocent and without guile. “Isn’t that right?”
She wanted to hug him, but she resisted, since she knew he would complain about it.
More days passed and Billy still did not get well. Cecily became most concerned, however, when she noticed the bruises. There were several of them up and down his arms. When she removed his shirt, she found them on his chest as well. That was when she began to suspect they might be dealing with something other than the flu. She made an appointment for Billy to see his pediatrician that afternoon.
Dr. Harlan Freidrich tried to mask his concern, but it was obvious to Cecily that he was alarmed by Billy’s appearance. He said words that were calming and reassuring, but Cecily ignored the words and focused on the doctor’s eyes. The eyes were worried.
Yes, he had some upper respiratory congestion. Yes, there must be an infection of some sort. The bruises might be an indicator of some sort of anemia, he explained, a deficiency of blood platelets. Billy’s lymph nodes were also slightly swollen. Eventually, in his calm, ther
e’s-nothing-to-worry-about voice, Dr. Freidrich told Cecily that he suspected Billy had some sort of blood disorder. That hit her hard, but what struck even stronger was the creeping sensation she got from peering into the doctor’s eyes. What he had told her was horrible. But she sensed there was something more, something he suspected but dared not tell her—yet.
If Cecily had not looked at the chart left behind in Billy’s hospital room, two weeks later, she might not have been prepared for the worst. But she had looked—and why shouldn’t she? She knew it shouldn’t have been left on that desk, that it was an accident that resulted when the nurse tried to do too many things at once. But Billy was her son, damn it. She had a right to know anything there was to know. Even things the doctors were not yet prepared to tell her.
Much of the gibberish on the chart meant little or nothing to her. “Underweight, lethargic, twelve-year-old. Normally active, but not of late. Easy bruisability.” She skipped to the analysis of the now dozens of blood tests that had been performed. “Results indicate generalized lymphadenopathy, although no petechiae. The spleen was not palpable.” It didn’t sound good, but she didn’t really know what it meant.
She continued flipping through the pages. The day before, the doctors had performed what they called a bone marrow aspiration. Decoding the doctor’s atrocious handwriting, she read the results. “Thirty-eight percent blast cells.” Next to the results, the doctor had drawn an arrow and written in: “Definite signs of leukemogenesis.”
That afternoon, Dr. Freidrich called Cecily into his office. He had also wanted Billy’s father to be present, but when Cecily called him, he said he was in the middle of an important project at work and couldn’t get away. So Cecily was alone when she received the bad news she already knew was coming.
“Your son has leukemia,” the doctor said. He cleared his throat, then walked around his desk and sat in the chair beside her. “There’s no doubt in our minds. It’s acute lymphocytic leukemia.”
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