“What the hell?” she said.
I need to sit down.
She left the cereal where it was and made her way to the table, pulled out the chair. Was the room spinning? Just a little?
She hadn’t had the “whirlies” in a very long time. She’d gotten drunk more than a few times over the years with her ex, Stanley. But even then, she’d never had enough to drink that the room spun. She had to go back to her days as a student at Thackeray for a memory like that.
But Patricia hadn’t been drinking. And what she was feeling now wasn’t the same as what she’d felt back then.
For one thing, her heart was starting to race.
She placed a hand on her chest, just about the swell of her breasts, to see if she could feel what she already knew she was feeling.
Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-tha-thump.
Her heart wasn’t just picking up the pace. It was doing so in an irregular fashion.
Patricia moved her hand from her chest to her forehead. Her skin was cold and clammy.
She wondered whether she could be having a heart attack. But she wasn’t old enough for one of those, was she? And she was in good shape. She worked out. She often rode her bike to work. She had a personal trainer, for God’s sake.
The pills.
Patricia figured she must have taken the wrong pills. But was there anything in that pill container that could do something like this to her?
No.
She stood, felt the floor move beneath her as though Promise Falls were undergoing an earthquake, which was not the sort of thing that happened often in upstate New York.
Maybe, she thought, I should just get my ass to Promise Falls General.
• • •
Gill Pickens, already in the kitchen, standing at the island, reading the New York Times on his laptop while he sipped on his third cup of coffee, was not overly surprised when his daughter, Marla, with his ten-month-old grandson, Matthew, in her arms, appeared.
“He wouldn’t stop fussing,” Marla said. “So I decided to get up and give him something to eat. Oh, thank God, you’ve already made coffee.”
Gill winced. “I just killed off the first pot. I’ll make some more.”
“That’s okay. I can—”
“No, let me. You take care of Matthew.”
“You’re up early,” she said to her father as she got Matthew strapped into his high chair.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he said.
“Still?”
Gill Pickens shrugged. “Jesus, Marla, it’s only been a little over two weeks. I didn’t sleep all that well before, anyway. You telling me you’ve been sleeping okay?”
“Sometimes,” Marla said. “They gave me something.”
Right. She’d been on a few things to help ease the shock of her mother’s death earlier that month, and learning that the baby she’d thought she’d lost at birth was actually alive.
Matthew.
But even if her prescriptions had allowed her to sleep better some nights than her father, there was still a cloud hanging over the house that showed no signs of moving off soon. Gill had not returned to work, in part because he simply wasn’t up to it, but also because child welfare authorities had only allowed Marla to take care of Matthew so long as she was living under the same roof as her father.
Gill had felt a need to be present, although he wondered how much longer that would be necessary. All the evidence suggested Marla was a wonderful, loving mother. And the other good news was her acceptance of reality. In the days immediately following Agnes’s jump off Promise Falls, Marla maintained the belief that her mother was actually alive, and would be returning to help her with her child.
Marla now understood that that was not going to happen.
She filled a pot with hot water from the tap, set it on the counter instead of the stove, then took a bottle of formula she’d made up the day before from the refrigerator and placed it in the pot.
Matthew had twisted himself around in the chair to see what was going on. His eyes landed on the bottle and he pointed.
“Nah,” he said.
“It’s coming,” Marla said. “I’m just letting it warm up some. But I have something else for you in the meantime.”
She turned a kitchen chair around so she could sit immediately opposite Matthew. She twisted the lid off a tiny jar of pureed apricots and, with a very small plastic spoon, aimed some at the baby’s mouth.
“You like this, don’t you?” she said, glancing in her father’s direction as he scanned his eyes over the laptop screen. He appeared to be squinting.
“Need glasses, Dad?”
He looked up. Gill suddenly looked very pale to her. “What?”
“You looked like you were having trouble looking at the screen.”
“Why are you doing that?” he asked her.
Matthew swatted at the spoon, knocked some apricots onto his chair.
“Why am I doing what?” Marla asked.
“Moving around like that.”
“I’m just sitting here,” she said, getting more apricot onto the spoon. “You want to bring that bottle over?”
The pot with the bottle in it was sitting immediately to the right of the laptop, but Gill appeared unable to focus on it.
“Is it funny in here?” he asked, setting down his mug of coffee too close to the edge of the island. It tipped, hit the floor and shattered, but Gill did not look down.
“Dad?”
Marla got out of the chair and moved quickly to her father’s side. “Are you okay?”
“Need to get Matthew to the hospital,” he said.
“Matthew? Why would Matthew have to go to the hospital?”
Gill looked into his daughter’s face. “Is something wrong with Matthew? Do you think he has what I have?”
“Dad?” Marla struggled to keep the panic out of her voice. “What’s going on with you? You’re breathing really fast. Why are you doing that?”
He put a hand on his chest, felt his heart beating through his robe.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” he said.
But he did not. Instead, he dropped to the floor.
• • •
Ali Brunson said, “Hang in there, Audrey. You’re going to be fine. You just have to hang in a little bit longer.”
Of course, Ali had said that many times in his career as a paramedic, and there were many of those times when he hadn’t believed it for a second. This looked as though it was turning into one of those times.
Audrey McMichael, fifty-three, 173 pounds, black, an insurance adjuster, resident of 21 Forsythe Avenue for the last twenty-two years, where she had lived with her husband, Clifford, was giving every indication of giving up the fight.
Ali called up to Tammy Fairweather, who was behind the wheel of the ambulance, and booting it to Promise Falls General. The good news was, it was early Saturday morning and there was hardly anyone on the road. The bad news was, it probably wasn’t going to matter. Audrey’s blood pressure was plummeting like an elevator with snapped cables. Barely 60 over 40.
When Ali and Tammy had arrived at the McMichael home, Audrey had been vomiting. For the better part of an hour, according to her husband, she had been complaining of nausea, dizziness, a headache. Her breathing had been growing increasingly rapid and shallow. There had been moments when she’d said she could not see.
Her condition continued to deteriorate after they loaded her into the ambulance.
“How we doing back there?” Tammy called.
“Don’t worry about me. Just get us to church on time,” Ali told her, keeping his voice even.
“I know people,” Tammy said over the wail of the siren, trying to lighten the mood. “You need a ticket fixed, I’m the girl to know.”
The radio crackled. Their dis
patcher.
“Let me know the second you clear PFG,” the male voice on the radio said.
“Not even there yet,” Tammy radioed back. “Will advise.”
“Need you at another location ASAP.”
“What’s the deal?” Tammy asked. “All the other units book off sick? They go fishing for the weekend?”
“Negative. All engaged.”
“What?”
“It’s like an instant flu outbreak all over town,” the dispatcher said. “Let me know the second you’re available.” The connection ended.
“What’d he say?” Ali asked.
Tammy swung the wheel hard. She could see the blue H atop Promise Falls General in the distance. No more than a mile away.
“Something going around,” Tammy said. “Not the kind of Saturday morning I was expecting.”
Whenever Tammy and Ali got the weekend morning shifts, they usually started them with coffee at Dunkin’s, chilling out until their first call.
There’d been no coffee today. Audrey McMichael, it turned out, was their second call of the day. The first had been to the home of Orrin Gruber, an eighty-two-year-old retired airline pilot who’d called 911 after experiencing dizziness and chest pains.
He never made it alive to Emerg.
Hypotension, Ali thought. Low blood pressure.
And here they were again, with another patient experiencing, among other things, dangerously low blood pressure.
Ali raised his head far enough to see out the front window, just as Tammy slammed on the brakes and screamed, “Jesus!”
There was a man standing in the path of the ambulance, halfway into their lane. Standing was not quite accurate. More like stooping, with one hand on his chest, the other raised, palm up, asking the ambulance to stop. Then the man doubled over, and vomited onto the street.
“Goddamn it!” Tammy said. She grabbed her radio. “I need help!”
“Drive around him!” Ali said. “We don’t have time to help some geezer cross the road.”
“I can’t just—he’s on his knees, Ali. Jesus fucking Christ!”
Tammy threw the shift lever into PARK, said, “Be right back!” and jumped out of the ambulance.
The dispatcher said, “What’s happening?”
Ali couldn’t leave Audrey McMichael to tell him.
“Sir!” Tammy said, striding briskly toward the man, who looked to be in his late fifties, early sixties. “What’s wrong, sir?”
“Help me,” he whispered.
“What’s your name, sir?”
The man mumbled something.
“What’s that?”
“Fisher,” he said. “Walden Fisher. I don’t feel . . . something’s . . . not right. My stomach . . . just threw up.”
Tammy put a hand on his shoulder. “Talk to me, Mr. Fisher. What other symptoms have you been experiencing?” The man’s breaths were rapid and shallow, just as they were for Audrey McMichael and Orrin Gruber.
This is one serious clusterfuck. That’s what this is, Tammy thought.
“Dizzy. Sick to my stomach. Something’s not right.” He looked fearfully into the the paramedic’s face. “My heart. I think there’s something wrong with my heart.”
“Come with me, sir,” she said, leading him to the back of the ambulance. She’d put him in there with Audrey.
The more the merrier, she thought, shaking her head, wondering, What next?
Which was when she heard the explosion.
• • •
When Emily Townsend had her first sip of coffee, she thought it tasted just a tiny bit off.
So she poured out the entire pot—six cups’ worth—as well as the filter filled with coffee grounds, and started over.
Ran the water for thirty seconds from the tap to make sure it was fresh before adding it to the machine. Put in a new filter and six scoops of coffee from the tin.
Hit the button.
Waited.
When the machine beeped, she poured herself a cup—a clean one; she’d already put the first one into the dishwasher—added one sugar and just a titch of cream, and gave it a stir.
Brought the warm mug to her lips and tentatively sipped.
Must have been her imagination. This tasted just fine.
Maybe it was her toothpaste. Made that first cup taste funny.
• • •
Before Patricia Henderson decided to try to get herself to the hospital, she dialed 911.
She figured, when you called 911, someone answered right away. First ring. But 911 did not respond on the first ring, nor did it respond on the second.
Or the third.
By four rings, Patricia was thinking maybe this was not the way to go.
But then, an answer.
“Please hold!” someone said hurriedly, and then nothing.
Patricia’s symptoms—and there were more than a few—were not subsiding, and she did not believe, even in her increasingly confused state, that she could wait around for some 911 dispatcher to get back to her.
She let go of the receiver, not bothering to place it back in the cradle, and looked for her purse. Was that it, over there, waaaay over there, on the small table by the front door?
Patricia squinted, and determined that it was.
She stumbled toward it, reached into the bag for her car keys. After ten seconds of digging around without success, she turned the bag over and dumped the contents onto the table, most of them spilling onto the floor.
She blinked several times, tried to focus. It was as though she’d just stepped out of the shower, was trying to get the water out of her eyes so she could see. She bent over at the waist to grab what appeared to be her keys, but was snatching at air, some three inches above where her keys lay.
“Come on, stop that,” Patricia told the keys. “Don’t be that way.”
She leaned over slightly more, grabbed hold of the keys, but tumbled forward into the hallway. As she struggled to get to her knees, nausea overwhelmed her and she vomited onto the floor.
“Hospital,” she whispered.
She struggled to her feet, opened the door, made no effort to lock it or even close it behind her, and went down the hallway to the elevators, one hand feeling the wall along the way to steady herself. She was only on the third floor, but she still possessed enough smarts to know she could not handle two flights of stairs.
Patricia blinked several times to make sure she hit the DOWN instead of the UP button. Ten seconds later, although to Patricia it might as well have been an hour and a half, the doors opened. She stumbled into the elevator, looked for G, hit the button. She leaned forward, rested her head where the doors met, which meant that, when they opened on the ground floor a few seconds later, she fell into the lobby.
No one was there to see it. But that didn’t mean there was nobody in the lobby. There was a body.
In her semidelirious state, Patricia thought she recognized Mrs. Gwynn from 3B facedown in a puddle of her own vomit.
Patricia managed to cross the lobby and get outside. She had one of the best parking spots. First one past those designated for the handicapped.
I deserve one of those today, Patricia thought.
She pointed her key in the direction of her Hyundai, pressed a button. The trunk swung open. Pressed another button as she reached the driver’s side, got in, fumbled about, getting the key into the ignition. Once she had the engine running, she took a moment to steel herself. Rested her head momentarily on the top of the steering wheel.
And asked herself, Where am I going?
The hospital. Yes! The hospital. What a perfectly splendid idea.
She turned around to see her way out of the spot, but her view was blocked by the upraised trunk lid. Not a problem. She hit the gas, driving the back end of her car into a Volvo own
ed by Mr. Lewis, a retired Social Security employee who happened to live three doors down from her.
A headlight shattered, but Patricia did not hear it.
She put the car into drive and sped out of the apartment building parking lot, the Hyundai veering sharply left and right as she oversteered in the manner of someone who’d had far too much to drink or was texting.
The car was quickly doing sixty miles per hour in a thirty zone, and what Patricia was unaware of was that she was heading not in the direction of the hospital, which, ironically, was only half a mile from her home, but toward the Weston Street Branch of the Promise Falls Library System.
The last thing she was thinking about, before her mind went blank and her heart stopped working, was that when they had that meeting about Internet filtering, she was going to tell those narrow-minded, puritanical assholes who wanted what anyone saw on a library computer closely monitored to go fuck themselves.
But she wouldn’t get that chance, because her Hyundai had cut across three lanes, bounced over the curb at the Exxon station, and driven straight into a self-serve pump at more than sixty miles per hour.
The explosion was heard up to two miles away.
• • •
Those sirens woke Victor Rooney.
It was a few minutes past eight when he opened his eyes. Looked at the clock radio next to his bed, the half-empty bottle of beer positioned next to it. He’d slept well, considering everything, and didn’t feel all that bad now, even though he hadn’t fallen into bed until almost two in the morning. But once his head hit the pillow, he was out.
He reached out from under the covers to turn on the radio, maybe catch the news. But the Albany station had finished with the eight o’clock newscast and was now onto music. Springsteen. “Streets of Philadelphia.” That seemed kind of appropriate for a Memorial Day Saturday. On a weekend that celebrated the men and women who had died fighting for their country, a song about the city where the Declaration of Independence had been signed.
Fitting.
Victor had always liked Springsteen, but hearing the song saddened him. He and Olivia had talked once about going to one of his concerts.
Olivia had loved music.
She hadn’t been quite as crazy about Bruce as he was, but she did have her favorites, especially those from the sixties and the seventies. Simon and Garfunkel. Creedence Clearwater Revival. The Beatles, it went without saying. One time, she’d started singing “Happy Together” and he’d asked her who the hell’d done that. The Turtles, she’d told him.
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