by Joshua Corin
The director of the men’s club, a die-hard Tigers fan, sometimes teased him about it.
The tables were arranged in a circle, with the food and drink arrayed on a few islands in the center. They ate shoulder to shoulder. Three hundred forty-two Americans breaking fast on a warm June morn. Above them, a meager assortment of fans loudly rotated the air. There was orange juice in a punch bowl and the ice floes helped keep it cool. And of course there was the coffee, for those who were willing to suffer heat for the taste of black ambrosia.
Still, the dining hall was not a large space. It was possible to pour a cup of OJ in the hub of the tables and accidentally splash a drop or two on just about anyone who was seated. Only twice a year did the entire congregation gather in here. Most of the time, it was used for committee meetings or rented out to the local Boy Scout troop. A few times a year, it hosted a wedding reception. The space fit the mosque, which is to say it served its purpose, nothing more, nothing less.
The imam, like his grandfather, had always been attracted to pragmatism.
And all to allow these 342 human beings to better serve Allah. The imam didn’t know all 342 by name. He’d always been better with the names of athletes, strangers. Why was that? Certainly part of it lay in the fact that some of these people were new to the congregation. Holidays were always reliable for increased attendance. Especially holidays with food. For example, the young man at the buffet tables in the center of the room—he appeared to be entirely unfamiliar. Certainly the imam would have remembered a man with a head so tiny in proportion to his mammoth torso. It was as if nature had attached a gangly boy’s head on the body of one of those Christmastime Santa Clauses. Then again, many of those Christmastime Santas wore stuffing under their suits to fatten up their body profile.
The young man picked at the food but didn’t put any on his plate. What an odd young man. Checking the time on his cheap wristwatch. Unbuttoning his spacious suit jacket. Clutching something from inside his jacket. The imam sat forward in his seat. The odd young man spun around and faced the imam. The inside lining of the young man’s jacket was ball bearings and carpenter nails and fistfuls of C4. No one had time to stop him.
Chapter 11
“Quarantine?” Malik sat up with such sudden speed that Sergeant Gallagher, the other man in his neat little chamber of the ER, flinched. “Why?”
“Lie back,” said Gallagher. He was Savannah Irish and looked the part. Stocky build. Curly red-orange hair. A disposition simultaneously cheery and melancholic. “You’ll rip your stitches.”
But Malik didn’t have any stitches. At least none the doctor had mentioned after he came to. Bandages? Oh yes. Along the back of his neck. Along his legs. Both of his hands and feet were wrapped in gauze and stank of ointment. At least he still had sensation in his hands and feet. They felt raw and cold. Four fat lumps of beef straight out of the deli freezer.
But back to the matter at hand.
“Sergeant,” he demanded, “why is there a quarantine?”
Malik’s mind flitted toward the worst possible scenario. The missile that impacted the mosque carried not only an explosive warhead but also a chemical or biological component. But was that even possible? Wouldn’t a fire-blast counter any cloud of sarin gas or whatever poison the scumbags behind all this had attached?
Even though they were the only people in the room, one of the room’s walls was nothing more than a purple curtain, so Sergeant Gallagher leaned in close and whispered his response.
“A little while back we received an anonymous tip that the people responsible for this morning’s attack had loosed a strain of plague here at Piedmont so they could, in their own words, ‘finish what they started.’ ”
“Plague?”
“Several medical teams have been dispatched throughout the hospital to check for any symptoms,” Gallagher continued quietly, “and to administer antibiotics as a precaution to all hospital staff, personnel, patients, and visitors.”
“But that’s got to be thousands of people. There’s no way the hospital has enough antibiotics for everyone.”
Gallagher nodded. “The CDC is on its way to help out.”
Malik exhaled, and then coughed up some more of the black sludge his lungs had accrued during his brave and foolhardy rescue mission. His chest lit up in flames with each cough. The black shit landed in wet clumps on his hospital blanket.
Gallagher handed Malik a cup of water.
After finishing it, Malik nodded his thanks.
“Are you good in here?” the sergeant asked. He obviously wanted to be anywhere but here. “Do you need anything?”
“Who received the anonymous tip?”
“The call came into the precinct. We were able to get a clean trace on the phone, but…”
“But?”
“It was a burner. Already dumped in the Chattahoochee over by the Fulton-Cobb border. Anyway, I should, you know, go check on Ray. See how he’s doing. You hang in there, buddy.”
Gallagher punctuated his farewell with two pats on Malik’s bed and then left the room to “go check on Ray.”
Ray Queen.
Boot-wearing, Toby-Keith-listening, racist-joke-telling-but-don’t-dare-call-me-a-redneck Ray Queen. Who had charged into hell on earth to save a congregation of Muslims. And he had saved them. According to Sergeant Gallagher, who relayed the testimony of the survivors, Ray Queen had turned into Superman in there. He’d kicked down smoldering doors and tossed aside fiery debris and led several dozen men, women, and children to freedom. And then he charged back into hell on earth to save some more.
Except he wasn’t Superman the second go-round. He was just a man and this time he didn’t come out, and hell on earth reduced Ray Queen to a slab of bacon. According to Sergeant Gallagher, when the firefighters finally found Ray Queen, he had sustained third-degree burns to over 70 percent of his body. Ray Queen most likely wasn’t going to survive the day.
Already the chief of police, according to Sergeant Gallagher, was talking commendations and medals. Service above and beyond.
Malik had barely rescued three little girls and then collapsed in the parking lot.
But at least he wasn’t dead. At least his mother wouldn’t be in mourning. He could see her now, wailing that her son the nonbeliever was now in Jahannam, the Islamic version of hell, very much not on earth. In Jahannam, as a nonbeliever, Malik’s brain would boil and he would be consumed by hunger until the Last Day. Oh, her son! How she had tried to protect him from this torture!
Wait. Did she know he wasn’t dead? Did she even know he had been at the mosque during the attack? It wasn’t as if he’d told her. How that conversation might have gone down! Ha! Guess what, Mama? I actually will be going to a mosque for Eid! No, no, Mama, not inside the mosque.
Malik needed to call her. He needed to make sure she and his sister were okay. Both his mother and his sister were deeply involved in the Atlanta Muslim community. Surely they knew some of those in attendance at the North Buckhead Islamic Center.
His uniform, and therefore, he assumed, his mobile phone, were in a bag on the counter. Just under the cabinets. Right beside the sink. Not far at all. Malik turned over on his side and stretched out his left hand and…and…
No.
His fingers fluttered at the air. Fewer than twelve inches of air. But too far.
Fine. He would have to do this the hard way.
He looked down at his feet, or at least the mummified appendages below his ankles. He willed them to move and they moved. Okay, great.
Step number 2 would be more difficult.
For this he had to sit up, and this roused another pint of black sludge from his chest. The dark, wet deposits on his blanket were beginning to resemble continents. Malik whisked the blanket off his body, gazed down at the hard floor, gazed back at his mummified feet, and then, like a tod
dler inching into a pool for the very first time, he lowered himself down.
And there was no pain!
Relief stretched his lips into a grin. He had been anticipating a flare-up from his burned feet that would have popped his head off his spine, but instead he could barely feel anything at all—which was peculiar in and of itself, but in a choice between agony and numbness, well, was there really a choice?
Because his feet were so lacking in sensation, his balance was very off, so Malik maintained one mitted hand on the railing of his bed while with the other he searched through his belongings for his phone.
He had no messages.
Now came step number 3, the most difficult of all.
He needed to unlock and operate his phone with swathed hands.
And so he jabbed at the screen with his mitts. He oafishly thumped at it. He tried using the tip of his nose. He tried using the hill of his chin. He even tried using an earlobe. But the home screen remained locked.
Damn technology.
He knew what he had to do next. There really was no alternative here. He needed help. And so he maneuvered himself over to the purple curtain using the counter as a crutch, and then he clutched at the wall for support, and then he slipped through the curtain into the hub of the ER.
Though the noise level of the tumult had calmed, dozens of personnel continued to zoom and zigzag like billiard balls from room to desk to room to desk. And not just to the rooms. The corridors were lined with gurneys and each gurney held a patient and each patient was bruised and/or bleeding and/or burned, and many of them mercifully slept but some of them didn’t, some were awake to experience their pain, and Malik suddenly felt very, very, very lucky.
Although still unable to perform the simple task of calling his mother.
But who to ask? Malik wasn’t about to disturb one of the injured with his banal, and frankly embarrassing, request. And he certainly wasn’t going to step into the path of a physician assistant or nurse and steal some of their valuable time. No. What he needed was an orderly or a candy striper or a visitor wandering about because his or her loved one was currently asleep.
But Malik saw no such prospects. Everyone in the ER was already buzzing about, already preoccupied, already busy. Everyone but him.
In that moment, Malik also realized that the back of his gown was loose and his ass was bare for all to see. Not that there was anything he could do about that, either, not with this brace of toilet-papered deadweight at the end of his arms.
So now he needed someone to operate his phone and tie up his gown. And he needed the balls to ask them. Who could he possibly find who might—
“For the love of God,” came a female voice from a nearby room, “will someone let me borrow their phone?”
Chapter 12
Feeling a bit like a fool, Malik knocked on the woman’s purple curtain. The curtain shook a bit.
“Excuse me,” he said.
Pause, then: “Yes?” Her voice was clear and without any trace of an accent. “Can I help you?”
Malik thought for a moment. How best to answer this question without coming across as an idiot?
So he tried this: “I have a phone.”
Best to keep it simple.
And apparently it worked because she invited him in. He considered warning her about the state of his undress, but this was an emergency room and she probably was wearing the same ridiculous half-outfit.
And she was. She also was quite pregnant and hooked up intravenously to several hanging bags of, well, some sort of liquid.
“My name’s Malik,” he said. “I’m a cop.”
“I can tell from your uniform.”
“What? Oh. Ha. No. What’s your name?”
“Sara.”
“I don’t recognize you from the mosque.”
“You were at the mosque?” She tried to sit up. She gave up after a futile few seconds. “Do you remember a man…taller than you…brown hair, brown eyes, brown skin…”
Could her description be vaguer? Still, Malik forced a sympathetic expression to his face. After all, he needed something from this woman.
Then she added a detail about a divot in his chin and Malik did remember someone, maybe, from this morning. One of the gentlemen who had arrived solo. In the dark blue Honda Accord? Yes. It was part of Malik’s job to be observant, and he took his job seriously, even if he had been less than enthusiastic about the assignment.
Sara must have seen a look of recognition in his eyes because she once again tried to sit up. “Do you know if he’s here? Is he okay?”
“I don’t know,” Malik replied. “But I can check.”
“His name is Rayyan Khouri. He’s my husband. You said you have a phone?”
Ah. Right. Yes.
Malik lifted the phone into view—but kept it just out of Sara’s reach, much as it had been just out of his reach not very long ago. “Before you call Rayyan or whoever else, I need a favor.”
“A favor?”
“Yes. You see—”
“A favor?” Sara tried yet again to sit up. “Are you for real? My husband may be dead.”
“No, I get that, but—”
“Do you think I’m in the hospital because I’m bored? I have appendicitis! Combine that with the fact that I’m in my third trimester and everything’s looking a little scary. Plus, because apparently it needs to be repeated, my baby’s father may be dead! And you want to ask me for a favor?”
Malik nodded. He was going to stand his ground. “I need to call my mother. I’d do it myself but my hands…”
Sara didn’t try to sit up. She didn’t even say a word. She simply stared at him and stared at him and stared at him, and Malik got the impression that she was going to stare at him until the end of time unless he said or did something…so he handed her the phone.
“My call won’t take long,” he said.
Sara asked him his passcode. He gave it.
She then went online.
“What are you searching for?”
“Shut up, hiilit ‘ommu.”
Hiilit ‘ommu. Mama’s boy.
Well. That was unkind.
Malik went to grab the phone back, but Sara held up her free hand to him. “Seriously?”
Now, Malik was a trained law enforcement official. Even with his hands bandaged, he knew he could disarm this woman in three seconds. He could even do it without causing her any harm. He was bigger and he was—okay, she was bigger, what with the baby and all—but he knew he was stronger. In fact, one of those bags of medicine probably contained some kind of narcotic to ease Sara’s pain. Appendicitis was supposed to hurt like a son of a bitch. It was a minor miracle she was even conscious. He easily could have stopped her and ended this. He would have to find someone else, but so what? The ER had no shortage of individuals.
And yet, instead, Malik took a step back and let Sara continue with whatever she was doing. Why? Was he simply a beta male, as she had implied? Or did his compassion trump his own self-interest? Either way, he stood there, muffled hands at his sides, while Sara commandeered his phone.
After a moment’s silence, she glanced up at him with her dark eyes and then spoke.
“To answer your question, I am downloading an app that will allow me to access my phone, including its contacts, from yours. I’ll pay you back the $9.99. You don’t have a very strong signal. Who is your carrier? Oh, I see. That’s a mistake. You should switch.”
“Why don’t you just use the hospital Wi-Fi?”
“Because hello! I try not to use a public connection when I’m accessing private information! Wow. There should be a test that people need to pass before they’re even allowed to have a phone. Okay. Here we go.” Sara pressed one more button and then held the phone to her ear. “Step out and listen for his ringtone. You can’t
miss it. It is Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy.’ ”
Malik, his balance still wobbly from having fast-asleep feet, inched his way through the purple curtain and took note of all the sounds. The beeping heart monitors. The shuffle of cheap rubber soles along tiled floor. The nearest nurse station was manned by a man and a woman, both in pink scrubs, and both nurses seemed to be in a deep discussion about risk assessment.
Someone somewhere else was crying.
Someone somewhere else was moaning.
Malik inched back through the purple curtain.
“Well?” Sara asked him.
He shook his head.
“I don’t even know if that’s good news or not.”
“It’s possible he turned his phone off,” said Malik. “My mother and sister always turn their phones off before services.”
“Then why didn’t he turn it back on?”
Malik shrugged. “Maybe he’s at another hospital. Or maybe he didn’t go to services at all.”
“Are you suggesting he’s at Six Flags?”
“What I’m suggesting is that you not draw any conclusions without having all the facts.”
To which Sara, quite unusually, chuckled.
To which Malik, quite naturally, asked what could possibly be so funny.
“The irony of it! I’m supposed to keep from drawing conclusions because my husband may or may not be dead, and the reason my husband may or may not be dead is because some homegrown white supremacist Islamophobes have attacked a mosque, and why did they attack a mosque? Because they have drawn the conclusion that we are a threat to their way of life. A conclusion drawn, I might add, without having all the facts!”
“Whoever did this has all the facts they need,” Malik responded. “That’s the problem with zealots. They think they already know everything.”