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I hold his cold hand in mine, squeeze it.
A male nurse, cutting off Brian’s clothes with a long pair of surgical scissors, says, “What’s his name?”
“Brian,” I answer, holding his hand tight as the elevator swiftly descends into the hospital. “I don’t know his last name. He’s a train engineer.”
“And you?”
“Amy,” I say.
“Do you know him?”
“No.”
“Why are you with him?”
I say, “I killed the man who shot him.”
When the elevator reaches its destination, the door slides open, the scrum of doctors and nurses push Brian out into a nearby open area, and I realize we must be in the emergency room at New York–Presbyterian/Lower Manhattan Hospital. Another crash cart comes out and Brian really gets attention; curtains are quickly drawn around him.
I’m alone.
I hear other nurses and doctors working, see scrub-garbed medical personnel trotting up and down the wide, shiny corridors. As personnel cluster around a nurse’s station, I find a chair and sit down, utterly exhausted and drained.
I wait.
Alone.
How soon,I think,before more victims come in, coughing, choking, sputtering, their mouths and lungs burned beyond repair? How long before the men, the women, the children, are stacked up here in the emergency-room corridors? How long before they are lined up out in the parking lot, crowding the streets, the dying and choking, all seeking comfort and aid?
How long?
I close my eyes.
Wait.
A voice.
“Amy.”
I open my eyes.
Jeremy Windsor, looking as tired as I feel, stands there.
“How did you find me?” I ask.
“A security officer told me an NYPD helicopter dropped off a wounded train engineer, with a woman accompanying him. Could only be you.”
I wipe at my face with my right hand, feeling the moisture there. “Ah, shit, Jeremy, we didn’t make it. We failed. So many…”
I can’t finish my sentence.
Jeremy sits down next to me, takes my hand. Ordinarily I’d have a sarcastic retort for such a familiar gesture, but not this time.
“Amy,” he says. “I did, but you didn’t.”
Chapter123
AMY’S HAIRis matted and twisted, her face is smeared with diesel soot, there’s dried blood on her hands and cheeks, and her clothes are a mess as well, with large splotches of dried blood on her formerly white blouse.
