That Spring in Paris

by Ciji Ware

  “Saint Louis Hospital—near Le Petit Cambodge and the concert hall—was overwhelmed with casualties,” the doctor explained with a shrug. “The other person in the ambulance was an American and conscious, as Jean-Pierre was not. She apparently demanded to be brought here when the line of emergency vehicles ferrying victims to the nearest medical treatment backed up more than a block. We have an ER here, too, so the emergency responders agreed to her wishes, given the jam-up near the scene of the attacks. It was anybody’s guess how long they would have waited to get help at St. Louis versus the twenty or thirty minutes it took to drive at top speed here to Neuilly.”

  Finn nodded, and resumed his seat next to his aunt, repeating to the assembled group what he’d learned.

  Nearing midnight that endless Saturday, the Deschanels were urged to go home to get some rest. Then again on Sunday mid-morning and into the afternoon, Finn and his aunt stayed with the family when Jean-Pierre was taken for a second time into the operating room for an emergency procedure to relieve the building pressure of blood leaking into his brain cavity.

  Their huddled little group had watched in silence as orderlies wheeled the patient, his head and upper body swathed in bandages, out of the trauma ward and down the corridor toward an unknown fate. For Finn, a bizarre wave of relief came over him that the scene greeting them now and when they had initially arrived at the hospital was so antiseptic that it had spared him the sight of the bloody slaughter he’d seen so often in the Middle East. Reflecting how thankful he’d been to stay at a distance from the carnage the last two days, he was overcome with shame.

  As Sunday evening approached, the lights came on in the hospital’s waiting area, rousing Finn from his viciously circular thoughts and sending Madame Grenelle and his aunt once again into a rapid-fire exchange of French. Listening intently, Finn gathered that the Grenelle matriarch urged him and his aunt to return home for a second time and await a phone call when there was word as to the outcome of this latest medical procedure. Claudine, her weariness reflected in her lined face, nodded in agreement and beckoned to Finn to obey Eloise’s bidding. The pair walked out the hospital’s impressive glass and brushed-steel revolving door and into the cold, dark, November night. Claudine paused, allowing her nephew to keep a grip on her arm.

  “Why don’t we both go to my place for something to eat?” she suggested. “I’ll make us some scrambled eggs and then you can go back to the barge, feed Eloise’s cat, and get some sleep. Monday may be a very long day.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “As for tomorrow, shall we plan to meet here at the hospital, say around quarter to twelve?”

  “Don’t you want me to pick you up?” he asked, predicting the answer of his feisty, septuagenarian aunt.

  “No, not at that hour. It’s faster for both of us Monday if I take the metro or the bus.” She regarded her nephew for a long moment then said, “You heard the American doctor describe Jean-Pierre’s injuries earlier today. Given what you know about these things, Finn, what chance of survival does poor Jean-Pierre have, do you think?”

  Finn hesitated. He debated whether to hold off giving his dire prediction. His opinion was based on the ravages of similar heavy-arms fire he’d witnessed in his time in the military. He could only assume that the bi-lingual surgeon treating Jean-Pierre had described in more detail to the Grenelle family the seriousness of the victim’s wounds—and their likely outcome. Why should he voice the grim probability that the young man had only a slim chance of pulling through—and in heaven knows what shape?

  “Well,” he replied carefully, “let’s hope a second surgery will do some good.”

  “But you don’t think there’s much, at this point, that can help, do you? Even if he lives, he’ll be little more than a vegetable, given his head wounds?”

  Finn held her gaze. “We’re in a Catholic country, so I suppose we shouldn’t rule out miracles.”

  “And I suppose we should pray for one,” Claudine noted acerbically, “but alas, we’ve missed Sunday Mass—yet again.”

  Finn could think of several miracles they should probably be praying for.

  CHAPTER 2

  November 16, 2015

  Juliet Morgan Thayer had no notion of what lay ahead as she stepped off an all-night flight to Paris from San Francisco a few minutes before ten a.m. on that Monday morning in mid-November. Hers had been one of the first planes to land after De Gaulle Airport had reopened following the terrorist attacks. An eerie stillness permeated the nearly deserted terminal and she was struck by the pinched, pained expressions on the faces of her fellow passengers, still reeling, as she was, from what had happened in France less than three days before their arrival.

  Turning left with the crowd, her knee-high winter boots treaded soundlessly along the close-cropped red carpeting that led from the jet way into the central section of the airport. Military police in full battle gear lined the corridors in all directions, stone-faced beneath the tilt of their berets. Everywhere she looked, a forest of menacing black assault rifles were pointed at the floor, trigger fingers extended along the gun barrels. She could feel the eyes of the security forces giving her the once-over as they warily scanned arriving and departing travelers passing by their assigned positions.

  Her senses on high alert for anything out of the ordinary, Juliet pulled her 21-inch wheeled carry-on behind her, more convinced than ever that if a terrorist suddenly appeared, there was nothing she could do to protect herself.

  * * *

  Just like poor Avery...

  The minute Juliet had heard her longtime friend’s thin, reedy voice message from Friday on her cell phone, she’d gone online to purchase a one-way ticket to Paris. Avery’s call for help had been amongst seventeen messages that Juliet had been too swamped with work to answer until the weekend. When she finally heard it, the sound of screaming sirens had been in the background nearly obliterating the first words of Avery’s rasped plea to come to the American Hospital in Paris—and then her phone had abruptly cut off.

  It all seemed so surreal. Avery Evans in the wrong place at the wrong time, shot by a bunch of terrorists who didn’t even know her name, let alone that she was American.

  Juliet hadn’t slept a moment as she hurtled six thousand miles through the air at 33,000 feet. Whenever she closed her eyes, horrifying images she’d seen on CNN danced on her lids: sirens wailing... police massing outside a concert hall, their bodies encased in bullet-proof uniforms and helmets with opaque shields... first responders in Day-Glo vests carrying blood-drenched victims on stretchers on that most unlucky of Fridays, November 13th. Just before Juliet had boarded the plane, the latest estimates were that 350 had been injured and some 130 souls had lost their lives suddenly, randomly, and with absolutely no warning to family or friends.

  Oh, God, is Avery alive... or is she one of the fatalities?

  Juliet scanned the overhead signs for directions to Passport Control and then simply surrendered to the line of travelers funneling down a long corridor as her thoughts rehashed the unhappier aspects of her departure from San Francisco the previous evening. Everyone at home had denounced this trip and thrown roadblocks in her way. Juliet’s father feared for her safety, given she spoke such poor French. Her mother—as usual in solidarity with Juliet’s eldest brother—was of the opinion that her only daughter was being rash and overly dramatic. “For pity’s sake, Juliet! You’re crazy to launch into such a wild goose chase for a wanna-be portrait artist with little talent who left a real job here to dabble in Paris.”

  “She has lots of talent,” Juliet had hotly defended her friend. “You’re just parroting what your sainted eldest son said when Avery quit working for him.”

  Another major detractor regarding Juliet’s dash to San Francisco International Airport had been her on-again-off-again boyfriend, Jed Jarvis. At the ridiculous age of 36, they were still tap-dancing around whether or not they were even an actual couple.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Jed had
declared when she told him of her plans to depart immediately. “You don’t even know for sure where Avery is. Let her family play rescue ranger. Brad said her dad’s rich enough to medevac her outta there if she needs it.”

  But the reaction from Bradshaw Thayer, IV, her eldest brother, was the worst, hands down. A former Stanford track star, the Thayer family Golden Boy and current CEO of a successful family start-up had stormed into the art department after her staff had departed for the day. She’d been toiling over a sketch of a roadside bomb blowing up a hum-vee before creating it electronically in her computer-assisted design program. She liked to work out her ideas on paper, first, but for this assignment, she’d felt nothing but a sense of loathing both for the project—and her participation in it.

  “Shit, Jules!” Brad had yelled, stomping across the room to stand next to her slanted drawing board. “I just got your email. I don’t care what’s happened in France! No way can you take time off right now. You’re on deadline, remember?”

  “But I can’t get Avery to answer her phone!”

  Brad had shot her a look of outrage mixed with disdain when Juliet announced she’d already booked the first available flight to Paris. He’d slammed the side of his fist on the top edge of her big computer screen, nearly tipping it over.

  “I said no, God dammit! We’ve got two new video games in production and I need you to get on the stick and work out the final packaging. I just got another big reorder from the Air Force wanting to use the next Sky Slaughter release in their latest flight-training program. It’s been the number one video on Amazon for six months now. Every kid in America wants the next version for Christmas. You can’t leave now, even for a day!”

  Juliet’s temples began to pound as they did so often in confrontations with her eldest sibling.

  “The woman ran our computer graphics department for four years,” she’d protested. “She’s a large part of why you got that reorder!”

  “So?”

  An insolent ‘so’ had always been Brad’s go-to non-answer, but by then, his eyes were slits of blue ice and his lips had all but disappeared as he scowled at his sister.

  “When she called me, she was in an ambulance!” Juliet protested. “She begged me to come.”

  “So?” he repeated. “Your supposed best pal left the company at the exact moment our video sales went viral and we were about to take GatherGames public! She was a key employee. She could have jeopardized everything.”

  Juliet threw the pencil she’d been sketching with onto the table. “And you’re comparing the run-up to GG’s public offering on the hallowed New York Stock Exchange with someone who’s been shot in a café by terrorists?”

  “Whatever...” he said, with a wave of his hand.

  “Well, I’m going to Paris to see if my best friend is still alive, so just deal with it!”

  She’d grabbed her tote bag and exited her office before he could answer or threaten to fire her, which he did, anyway, in a subsequent text message.

  Just thinking about that conversation with her brother provoked a bolt of anger in Juliet’s solar plexus so potent, it nearly knocked her flat. And now, here she was, in the supposed City of Light that had entered one of the darkest periods in its history. In near-panic mode, she wondered how she would navigate the next few days with her lousy command of French, a factor that her other brother Jamie had also pointed out—although more gently than her father—when he drove her to the airport.

  James Diaz Thayer... the one person always in my corner—and Avery’s, too. If only Jamie had come with her.

  Just then, Juliet caught sight of the sign guiding travelers to the airport’s immigration checkpoint. By this time, her rolling suitcase felt as if it were full of rocks. She was dizzy from both jet lag and lack of sleep. The wave of anxiety gnawing in the pit of her stomach made her fear she might be sick right in front of all those French police clad in riot gear. Additional men in army uniforms were posted in front of airport shops and cafés that were abandoned and shuttered tight. The passenger next to her on the flight had said that several routes of the underground metro had been closed until further notice. Fortunately, a helpful flight attendant had told her where she could most likely find a taxi—if there were any to be had.

  The small crowd already gathered at immigration stood silently waiting their turns. She wondered how many people in line had rushed to Paris like she had in search of loved ones whose fate it had been to end up in a Paris hospital—or worse—after Friday’s attacks? Glancing at her watch, Juliet felt another wave of anxiety assault her. How long would it take her to get to the American Hospital? And where the heck was it, anyway?

  “En avant!”

  Juliet hadn’t noticed who had barked the order, but she was being waved forward to one of several glass windows. The blue-coated officer stamping passports scrutinized her face and auburn, shoulder-length hair, comparing them with her picture ID. He asked in clipped tones in English why she was entering France at such a perilous time.

  Juliet responded in her halting French, hoping to convince the officer of the importance of her mission. “M-my friend... she’s like a sister to me. She was shot on Friday and I’ve come to try to—”

  “Est-elle morte?” he replied, switching to his native language.

  Did the officer actually ask, “Is she dead?”

  Juliet sucked in her breath. Her father was right. Every word of French she’d learned in one of the few academic courses she’d taken in art school flew out of her head.

  “I don’t know,” she answered, remembering suddenly, “Je ne sais pas.”

  The immigration officer’s expression softened, his pen poised over Juliet’s documents. Despite the man’s civil inquiries, however, she felt as if she were treading through a movie that was set in Nazi-occupied France during World War II.

  “You haven’t noted how long you’ll be staying in this country.” He pointed to the form she’d filled out on board the plane.

  “I don’t know... it depends on—”

  “Just an estimate will do. Shall we say a month?”

  “Maybe less... but yes... a month is probably best to put down.”

  Brad’s most recent text said he would “fire her ass” if she stayed in Paris more than a week.

  If Avery has died, though, it’ll take time to have her body shipped and—

  Stop! she ordered herself. The only way to get through this was to keep calm, put one foot in front of the other, and see where things led.

  The officer glanced at the line of travelers standing behind her as he stamped her passport and handed it to her through the window.

  “I will pray that your friend is all right,” he said, surprising her with his kindly tone. “So many are not.”

  “I know,” she murmured. “Thank you.”

  Juliet knew at that moment she was not in a movie. This was real. Perhaps the immigration officer also knew someone who had been injured or killed? Six degrees of separation. Maybe less.

  With her passport restored to her, Juliet blurted, “I am so sorry for what has happened in France, monsieur.”

  The man behind the plate glass nodded and their eyes met.

  “It will likely be called our Nine-Eleven, don’t you suppose?”

  Juliet nodded without reply, thinking to herself that the brutal attacks at the French cartoon magazine, Charlie Hebdo, the previous January had come close to qualifying as a French 9/11. Poor France, she thought, pushing through the turnstile to her right and sprinting through the Arrivals door, her suitcase in tow.

  Once outside the airport in the cold November morning air, she was assaulted by the disconcerting sounds of whirling helicopters hovering overhead. Fortunately, there were a number of taxis waiting for passengers and Juliet raced to join the short line. Everywhere she gazed, scores more military and local police looking like Star Wars warriors patrolled the entrance and the airport’s perimeters.

  The driver of the car she was assigned gav
e a perfunctory nod and loaded her suitcase into the trunk. She showed him the address she’d pulled up on her mobile phone and attempted to ask in French how long it would take to get to the American Hospital. Within the torrent of his reply, she gathered he’d said that it was located on the outskirts of the city and was about a half-hour drive, given the light traffic.

  Juliet sank into the back seat and closed her eyes. Half an hour. In half an hour, she would find out if Avery had survived.

  The car left the airport complex and entered the nearly empty streets. Rousing herself from her stupor, Juliet noted that flags everywhere were flying at half-staff. More helicopters were buzzing overhead. She tried to ignore them, along with her copy of the International New York Times that she’d tossed on the seat beside her. The blaring headline declared that the remaining terrorists who hadn’t blown themselves up had not yet been apprehended.

  Don’t think about that now... just think about getting to Avery...

  Juliet drew a shaky breath when the taxi turned off a quiet, tree-lined residential road and sped up a cement ramp, halting in front of a stone and red brick-fronted building that turned out to be the entrance to the American Hospital. The driver, having gathered from their halting exchanges en route that his passenger knew someone wounded in the recent attacks, bounded from the car and lifted her small suitcase from the trunk.

  “Bonne chance, mademoiselle,” he said with a melancholy smile, refusing to accept payment for the trip.

  Moisture welled in Juliet’s eyes at his gesture of kindness and she attempted to smile her thanks in return. She had never felt so exhausted in her life and thought she might keel over right there on the sidewalk and have to be carried into the L’Hôpital Américain de Paris on her own stretcher. Inhaling deeply again to steady her nerves, she made a headlong dash toward the chrome and glass revolving door, her wheeled suitcase bumping along behind her.

  She never even noticed that a tall figure clad in a worn leather flight jacket was heading in precisely the same direction at the same moment she was—equally in a hurry.