One Breath Away Page 9

  “There was a fire and Mom got burned and the house smelled like smoke and Augie had to drag me out in my blanket, and the fire department came and an ambulance,” P.J. said all in one breath.

  I watched my dad’s face carefully. He tried so hard when it came to P.J., but he couldn’t always hide whatever it was he felt about him…irritation, jealousy, hate. I don’t know. “Are you okay, P.J.?” my father asked in a nice voice, and I relaxed.

  “I’m okay,” P.J. answered, looking up at him like he was God or something. “How are you?” I had to roll my eyes. He’s such a little old man. Before my dad could answer, an ancient-looking woman with short, poodle-permed gray hair and a white coat came over to us.

  “I’m Dr. Ahern,” she introduced herself, shaking each of our hands, even P.J.’s. “You’re the family of Holly Baker?”

  “Yes,” my father said. “Well, I’m Holly’s ex-husband, and these are her children, Augie and P.J.”

  Dr. Ahern nodded in understanding. “The burns on Holly’s hands and arms appear to be quite severe. We’ve started an IV of antibiotics to prevent infection and we have her heavily sedated to keep her comfortable. The other burns, on her face and ear, appear to be less severe, but we will monitor her carefully.”

  “Is she coming home tonight?” P.J. asked. His lower lip quivered and his eyes filled.

  The doctor shook her head. “I’m sorry, your mother will be in the hospital for several days. The burn team will assess her injuries, but I imagine that she will be with us for a while.”

  One fat tear rolled down P.J.’s face, leaving a dirty path down his cheek. He looked over at me. “Where will we go?” I was wondering the same thing and I looked over at my dad, who was doing his best to not look back.

  “Can we go and see her?” I sniffed, trying to keep my own tears from falling. If it hadn’t been for my stupidity my mother wouldn’t even be in the hospital.

  She shook her head no. “Not just yet. We’ll get her settled and have someone check in with you periodically. If you’d like to go and get cleaned up, you can leave your number at the nurses’ station and we can call you when you’ll be able to see her.”

  P.J. and I both looked over at my dad. “I’ll take you over to the house and you can shower, and we’ll get you some clean clothes.” He pulled me close to him and it felt so good, but I couldn’t help but notice P.J. standing off on his own a bit. No hugs for him.

  “P.J., too?” I asked.

  “Of course,” my father said, as if it was a silly question, though I knew better.

  Before I can tell Mr. Ellery that I need to go find my brother he slides off his desk. “Stay here,” he orders. “I’m going to look just outside the door.”

  “I don’t think you should,” Beth says, scrambling to her feet and reaching out for his sleeve.

  “It’s okay, Beth,” he tells her. “I’m just going to take a look out into the hall.” He walks over to the door and presses his face onto the window, rolling his forehead against the glass, first left, then right, trying to see down the long hallway.

  He turns the knob and silently, slowly, opens the door, being careful not to let it squeak.

  “Where are you going?” Beth says frantically. “You can’t leave us.”

  “Shhh, Beth,” Mr. Ellery orders. “Go back and sit down.”

  “No, don’t go out there,” Beth insists. I’m surprised at the panic in her voice. She is usually so calm and unbothered by anything.

  I stand and go to her and pull at her elbow, trying to lead her away from Mr. Ellery. “Come on,” I say softly into her ear.

  “What if he comes in here?” Beth asks in a wobbly voice. “What if he’s here to get me?”

  “Who?” Mr. Ellery says, looking hard at Beth’s pale face. “Do you know anything about this?”

  “She thinks it’s her dad.” I whisper so no one else can hear. “She thinks he’s coming to get her.”

  Beth glares at me; her scared eyes have become hard and angry. There went my one friendship in Broken Branch. Gone, just like that.

  I hear the faintest click as Mr. Ellery closes the door. He leads Beth away from the door, away from the other students to another corner of the room. I want to go with them, hoping to make it up to Beth, but Mr. Ellery gives a short shake of his head and I go back to my spot on the cold floor.

  “What the hell is that all about?” Noah asks. I shrug and feel my face get hot when my stomach growls loudly. I wish I would have eaten something for breakfast, but in true Augie fashion, as my mom would say, I backed myself into a corner. I was mad at my grandpa and because he told me I should eat something before I got on the bus this morning, I told him I wasn’t hungry. Plus, I didn’t eat anything but a bag of chips at lunchtime. Now even though I’m scared and feel sick to my stomach, I am hungry.

  Beth is crying now and Mr. Ellery is trying to shush her by patting her on the shoulder. He looks uncomfortable and with a yank of his head he signals that I should come over, but I have a feeling that would just make things worse, so instead I lay my head on my jeans and turn my face away from him, pretending I don’t see.

  Chapter 26:

  Holly

  The doctor comes in, checks the skin grafts on my arms as well as the graft site, a long stretch of skin taken from my thigh. For many weeks the pain has been so overwhelming I didn’t have the energy to really think about how I look. But now I can’t help looking at my damaged skin and wondering what it will be like when I’m completely healed. “It will take some time for us to be sure that the surgeries are a success, but the grafts seem like they are healing nicely, Holly,” she tells me. “Our bigger concern right now is your secondary infection and why it’s so slow to respond to antibiotics.”

  I nod. Infection has always been the greatest concern. “What about my hands?” I ask. This is my biggest worry. Not the fevers or my face and arms, but my hands. They, for some reason, weren’t burned quite as badly in the fire, but still received second-degree burns. Without full use of my hands I won’t be able to return to my job cutting hair. To some it may not seem that great of a profession, but I love it. I love the way a client will smile shyly with satisfaction in looking at their new haircut or new hair color. I love the up-dos that I get to do on brides-to-be and for teenagers getting ready for prom, transforming them for their special day. I may not have stuck around the farm any longer than I had to, but I did learn something growing up in my parents’ house. How to work hard. And I do. The money isn’t fabulous, but I do well enough to take care of Augie and P.J.

  “Stick with your therapy,” the doctor reassures me, “and I see no reason for you to not recover full use of your hands.” I sink back against my pillows, suddenly very tired but relieved. “You’re from Iowa, right?” the doctor asks as she gets up to leave. My mother and I both nod. “There’s something about a school in Iowa and a gunman on the news.”

  “Oh, my, that’s terrible,” my mother exclaims as a nurse peeks her head into the room.

  “Ready to lotion up?” The nurse holds up the tube of lotion that she rubs on my skin grafts in order to avoid the drying and cracking of the skin.

  “Bring it on,” I say. I’m ready to get well and get out of here. The sooner, the better.

  Chapter 27:

  Mrs. Oliver

  Mrs. Oliver didn’t quite know what to say to the man with the gun after his declaration that he would shoot one student for every time she guessed his identity incorrectly. She didn’t really think he actually would shoot a child, but how could she be sure? He was growing very distracted, checking the screen on his phone every few minutes. It was the exact phone that she had Cal buy for her. You could talk, purchase something online and send an email all at the same time.

  Once again, Mrs. Oliver surveyed her students; most continued to do remarkably well.
Even Austin, who couldn’t go thirty seconds without getting up and out of his seat, was staying put. And Natalie’s coloring was finally returning to normal, her face so wan that Mrs. Oliver was sure she was going to faint. She wished the man would let them read books or draw, something that would relax them a little bit, put them more at ease, help pass the time.

  What worried Mrs. Oliver most, besides, of course, any of the children getting hurt or worse, was how the children would feel about coming back to school once this was all over. Broken Branch School, her classroom, was meant to be a place where students felt welcomed and safe. A second home to many, and if you really watched and listened, for some students it was a more nurturing, caring environment than their own homes. Take Andrew Pippin, for example. Mrs. Oliver couldn’t prove it, but she was sure the boy was being pushed around by his stepfather. There were the bruises, always explained away, but there was something else. An anxiousness in Andrew’s eyes as the end of the school day loomed. Andrew would fidget even more, become more disruptive, all the while his eyes flicking to the clock on the wall as three-twenty drew closer.

  Andrew would lose that sense of safety now. All the children would. All the hard work she invested in creating a warm welcoming environment, destroyed by this terrible man. The more she thought about it, the more indignant she became. Would the children have nightmares about school? Would they begin to shake and sweat upon arriving on school grounds? Would their stomachs clench and churn as they walked up the stairs and down the hallway to the classroom? Post-traumatic stress syndrome they called it, now a proven psychological disorder. Her heart would break if this was all the children would one day be able to recall of their third-grade year. “What was your third-grade teacher’s name?” people would ask and they would respond, “I don’t remember her name, but I sure remember the day a man with a gun came into our classroom!”

  “A gun?” the person would exclaim. “What did your teacher do?”

  Her former students would shake their heads sadly, hands stuffed in their pockets and say, “Not a damn thing.”

  Mrs. Oliver knew she was getting up there in age, had responded more times than she cared to admit to the question of when she was finally going to retire and begin to enjoy life. She knew some days she struggled to keep up with her students, that more than once she caught herself dozing at her desk. There was the time during Jillie Quinn’s presentation on penguins she caught herself softly snoring. Thankfully P. J. Thwaite was the only one who noticed and he discreetly whispered that his grandfather drank four cups of coffee on Sunday mornings right before church in order to avoid the same thing happening to him.

  There was no way Mrs. Oliver was going out this way. She was not going to retire this June being remembered as the teacher who had done nothing. She didn’t want her students’ last memories of their school, before it closed down forever and they moved on to other schools in nearby towns, to be ones of terror. She would rather die first. In the rafters of her brain she could hear Cal trying to reason with her. “Now, Evie,” he would say soothingly, and she could almost feel his hand on her arm. “Do you really think it would be better for the children to see their teacher getting shot?”

  He was right, of course, he nearly always was, but taking action didn’t necessarily mean death. She took a mental inventory of the possible weapons she had at her disposal—scissors, stapler, thumbtacks. There must be a way she could immobilize the man, long enough, at least, to get the children to safety.

  The man looked up from his phone, catching Mrs. Oliver looking at him. “What?” he asked. “You don’t have a cell phone?”

  She decided to play dumb. Not something she was proud of but thought perhaps her perceived dimness might help them all later on.

  “My husband doesn’t believe in them,” she answered demurely.

  “What? Like it’s the Easter bunny or something?” he asked. Several heads snapped up and her students looked to her in confusion.

  She glared at the man. He didn’t need to puncture every last bit of their innocence in one fell swoop. The man didn’t seem to notice and returned his attention to his phone. In fact, Mrs. Oliver thought of herself as very technologically savvy. She spent hours learning the newest programs and she was the one her colleagues went to for help with creating spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations. Cal actually very much believed in cell phones and insisted that Mrs. Oliver get one for her own safety. It was sitting in the zippered pocket of her black leather purse, which was tucked inside her lower left-hand drawer of her desk. If there was some way to get to her phone she could tell the police that he was right there in her classroom waving his gun around. She would bide her time. She could be a very patient woman.

  Chapter 28:

  Meg

  Chief McKinney and I watch as a reserve officer drives away with Gail and her husband. “What’s next?” I ask.

  He looks levelly at me. “What’s next is I ask you if you’re okay?”

  “What?” I ask in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “Your daughter goes to this school.”

  “Yes, but she’s not there now. She’s with Tim….”

  “Can you handle this, Meg? Will you be able to possibly deal with your daughter’s classmates, her teachers, getting shot?” McKinney asks.

  I don’t miss a beat. “Dammit, Chief, you know better than to ask me that. I’ve been to the homes of half of the kids that attend the school for one reason or another and have been nothing but professional.”

  “Ah, Meg, I know. I just had to ask. We’re really on our own on this one.”

  “None of the tac team can make it?” I ask.

  “No, the highways are shit. I’ve tried to call the folks in Waterloo and Cedar Falls in hopes that they can send some officers over to help with crowd control. The roads are terrible, though. It could be hours before more help arrives. Ice storms to the south of us, blizzards to the north. We’ll have to make do with the personnel we have. In the meantime, we follow the lockdown plan we have in place. We need to get a handle on exactly who’s inside that building. Teachers, students, lunch ladies. I’ve got Donna trying to get ahold of a current enrollment list with emergency contacts, so we can check off names as students come out and make sure they get handed off to the right adult.”

  I nod at the crowd. “If those kids don’t come out soon, I think some of them will try and go in after them.”

  “That can’t happen.” McKinney’s voice is like granite. He shakes his head. “Dammit, if these people don’t let us do our job and something happens to anyone… What the hell?” he says, looking at something over my shoulder that has caught his attention, his mustache drooping even lower letting me know that the sight isn’t a pleasant one. A group of men. Farmers, I conclude, by their mud-brown Carhartt overalls, feed store caps and shotguns. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” McKinney says between clenched teeth.

  Chapter 29:

  Will

  Will watched the Vinson brothers emerge from their truck with their shotguns and trek through the snow toward the crowd of parents and he opened his door to join them.

  “Hey, boys,” Will said by way of greeting. The two brothers whirled around.

  “Mornin’, Will,” Neal said, tipping his chin to the older man. “Something else, what’s going on in there,” he added, and yanked his neck toward the school. Neal and his brother Ned were two years apart but looked nearly identical. They both had long, horsey faces set atop narrow shoulders. They were also known for their hair-trigger tempers. Rumor had it that Ned shot his prize Angus bull for butting him to the ground. The nine-thousand-dollar bull bleeding all over the paddock. Ned’s version was that the bull had bovine tuberculosis and needed to be put down before infecting the entire herd.

&n
bsp; “What’s with the shotguns?” Will asked innocently, even though he knew that the brothers had the same thing in mind that he initially had when he left home.

  “Thought it best to be prepared for whatever it was we ended up finding out here,” Neal answered before hawking something thick and wet into the snow behind them.

  “It looks like Chief McKinney and his men have things well under control,” Will responded, even though the crowd was becoming louder and more unruly.

  “Well, that’s why we’re here,” Neal added, “to see what the story is.”

  “I think it might be a good idea for you to put those shotguns back into your truck,” Will advised. “It looks like McKinney brought in some reinforcements from other towns. I’d hate for someone to get hurt if there’s no need.”

  “Your grandkids in there?” Ned asked Will.

  “They are,” Will acquiesced.

  “And you’re willing to just stand by and let some crazy man hold them hostage?”

  Will shrugged. “I don’t think we know anything for certain as of yet. Could all be a big misunderstanding, could be some nine-year-old with a cap gun.”

  “Come on, Ned,” Neal said impatiently. “I’m getting cold. Let’s go talk to McKinney. Find out what’s happening.” From the opposite corner of the parking lot another group of men, shotguns in hand and shoulders hunched against the wind, worked their way toward McKinney and the brothers. “Good Lord,” Will said, throwing his hands up in defeat. “Hope you don’t get yourselves shot,” he muttered under his breath. He spied Verna Fraise in the crowd and made his way over to her side. Verna and Marlys had been best friends for years. Verna almost made the trip to Arizona with Marlys instead of Will. “She’s your daughter, Will,” Marlys had said incredulously when Will had broached the idea of not accompanying her.

  “I know Holly’s my daughter. But she hasn’t spoken to me in fifteen years. I just don’t know if this would be the best time for me to show my face.”