by Shawn Inmon
“Who is going to be here with you tomorrow, then?”
“No one, I suppose. I think I’m going to leave this world the way I lived in it—alone.”
“Would you like me to come and sit with you tomorrow?”
A small smile brightened her face and chased away the raincloud that had covered her face. “Would you? The worst part of this was thinking about doing it all alone.”
“I will, but there are other options to consider. I could take this all away from you. Not just the pain, but whatever’s making you sick. You still have time to change whatever parts of your life you don’t like. You could repair the bridges that have been lost with your daughters.”
“Who are you?”
“Nathaniel. Just ... Nathaniel.”
“Could you really do that?”
“Yes.”
Veronica looked at him steadily. “I believe you could.” She stared down at her hands. Her skin was so paper-thin that blue veins traced a pattern across them.
“No. I had strength, but I was too afraid to use it. Now, I have found my will, but my strength is gone.”
Nathaniel nodded. “I’ll see you here, tomorrow.”
NATHANIEL SHOWED UP at Middle Falls Hospital two hours early the next day. He stopped at the nurse’s station and visited with several friends while the attending physician was in meeting with Veronica. After a few minutes, the attending, Dr. Grant, poked his head out of the room and waved at Nathaniel to come in.
“This medication has to be self-administered,” he said. He sat a pill bottle containing two pills on Veronica’s table and took a step back.
“Afternoon, Ronnie. It’s a momentous day.”
“Nathaniel,” Dr. Grant said, “she is feeling much better today, although her long-term prognosis is the same, of course. Would you speak to her about what she is doing?”
“I am here to listen to her, if she has anything to say, but I am not one to try and persuade someone, Doctor. I believe everyone should be allowed to make their own decisions, whether I agree with them or not.”
Dr. Granted nodded curtly, but took a few steps back to give them some small measure of privacy. He was required to stay during the administration of the dose and the aftermath, but he did not like the duty.
“Nathaniel,” Veronica said, and her voice was clear. “Thank you for being here to see me off. I’ve known you less than twenty-four hours, and it feels like you are the only friend I have. I don’t know how I would do this without someone to talk to.”
“I’ve always believed your friends know you instantly upon meeting you, while acquaintances will likely never know you.”
Her IVs had been disconnected, so her hands were free. She caressed the pill bottle and said, “Come, bitter poison, come, unsavory guide!” She uncapped the bottle and without hesitation, put the pills in her mouth and washed them down with water. “I suppose that’s the Shakespeare everyone steals at this moment, isn’t it?” She smacked her lips and made a face. “Well, those taste awful. I should have asked for whiskey to take them with, but I’ve rarely tasted it, and I don’t want to cough them back up. I’m not sure the doctor would give me more.”
She put the back of her hand against her forehead, closed her eyes and fell back dramatically. After two seconds had passed, she opened one eye, looked at Nathaniel, winked, and said, “Still here? Very well then.”
Dr. Grant frowned and didn’t seem to appreciate that she was not approaching the moment with the proper gravity, but he didn’t say anything.
“Doctor, how long now?”
“There is a narcotic included that will ease you off to sleep in the next fifteen or twenty minutes.”
“Plenty of time for a woman with no last words of any import. Thank you, Dr. Grant.”
She turned back to Nathaniel. “Any last minute advice for the departing soul, my wise, young friend?”
Nathaniel sat, scooted the chair close, and said, “Only this. Know that you are safe. You are loved. You are perfect. No harm will ever come to you.”
“If anyone else in this life had ever said that to me, I would have thought ‘bullshit!’ and run away as quickly as possible. Somehow I believe you. And yet, and still, I am afraid.” She reached her hand toward him. “Will you hold my hand?”
Nathaniel took her small hand in both of his.
“There. Thank you. You are a blessing on this world. I am ready now.”
She laid back, closed her eyes, and relaxed.
Nathaniel closed his eyes as well, found her in the darkness and embraced her. “You are free, Ronnie. Free to go to whatever is next.” She smiled and turned away from him. He stayed in the darkness a few moments while he watched her go.
When Nathaniel opened his eyes again, he said, “She’s gone, Doctor Grant.”
Dr. Grant looked at his watch and said, “Can’t be. It’s only been three minutes. She might be unconscious, but I will stay here until it’s time to declare.”
Nathaniel knew better, but he tried to never talk people out of their misconceptions. He stood, laid a hand on the doctor’s shoulder, and said, “Thank you for letting me be here.”
He clocked in an hour early and began his daily routine.
Chapter Twenty-Five
A month later, Nathaniel had a week’s vacation from his job at the hospital. He didn’t really want to take the vacation time, and he didn’t have anywhere in particular he wanted to go, but twice a year, his supervisor insisted that he take a vacation.
So, he spent the time working on his music, reading, hiking, and spending time with the people he loved.
On the Wednesday of his enforced vacation, he was in his basement studio, laying down a keyboard track for his newest composition, when he heard footsteps overhead. Brutus raised his head and cocked one ear and let out a woof.
Jon West came clattering down the stairs. “Something is going on at the school. Can you come with me?” He looked panicked, an unusual state for him.
Nathaniel didn’t bother asking what something going on meant. Katie would be at the school. “Shall we take Brutus?”
“No. Come on, I’ll tell you what’s happening on the way.”
Nathaniel jumped up from the keyboard and he, Jon, and Brutus jogged up the stairs.
Once upstairs, Nathaniel said, “Brutus, stay.”
Brutus’s head dropped, but he laid down to wait patiently for Nathaniel’s return.
Once they were in Jon’s SUV and underway, Nathaniel said, “Okay, you’re freaking out, so tell me what’s going on.”
“Melissa and I both got a text just a few minutes ago. It said that there was an incident at the school, and they were in a lockdown procedure. I was out in the country, looking at a new building site for one of our clients, and I had to drive right by your place on the way to the school, so I thought I’d pick you up. Melissa’s going to meet us there.”
“Okay. ‘An incident.’ That could be anything. Is the local radio station saying anything?”
“I hadn’t thought to check.” He switched on KMFR FM, but it was playing an old Kool and the Gang song. He turned it off. “We only heard from the school a few minutes ago, so they probably don’t have anything yet. The text from the school asked parents to not come to the school but to wait for further updates via text.” He glanced at Nathaniel.
“So here we go,” Nathaniel said.
I’m not going to say, ‘It’ll be all right’ or, ‘I’m sure it’s nothing.’ There’s no way to know, and you know it, brother.
“Into the breach,” Jon said.
They drove the last few miles to the school in silence.
When they were still a few blocks away from the school, they ran into a traffic snarl.
“I guess when you tell a bunch of parents their kids are in danger, but to stay away and wait for news, we don’t listen too well.”
“There’s parking in the city lot up ahead,” Nathaniel said. “Let’s pull in there and walk over.”
“Good idea. I’ll go crazy, sitting in a backup like this.”
They swung into the parking lot and were followed by several other cars with the same idea. They parked quickly, jumped out, and double-timed it toward the school.
Middle Falls Elementary was a single-story brick building, laid out in a “U” shape, with a common area in the middle covered in grass with benches around it. It was an older school, constructed in the early sixties, and had been well-maintained.
When Jon and Nathaniel approached the common area, they saw that a large rental truck had jumped the curb and was sitting at an angle across the grass. The back of the truck was rolled up, but the only thing they could see inside was blue tarps, which covered an unknown mass. There was a man sitting on the back bumper. He had a small, black piece of plastic in his left hand and a bullhorn in his right. He wasn’t doing anything but sitting on the bumper, but he looked nervous and twitchy.
When Jon saw the truck, he said, “Oh, hell no” and broke into a run. In this lifetime, he hadn’t played for the Ducks or the Raiders, but he was still built like the middle linebacker he had been in his previous life. As he approached the common area, a local police officer held out a hand to stop him, but Jon ran right through him. Two other cops standing nearby joined in and were able to stop him before he got too close to the truck.
Nathaniel ran up, grabbed him by the bicep, and said, “Come on, we’ve got to be smart about this.” He turned to the officers who were holding him back, and said, “I’ve got him. He’s not going to go forward. Right, Jon?”
Jon gave a slight nod, but couldn’t tear his eyes away from the truck, and the man sitting on the bumper.
The cop holding his left arm said, “You guys aren’t helping us, you’re making things worse. We’ve got to move you back. We’re clearing this whole area. If that truck goes up, this will be a smoking hole in the ground. Come on, move. Now!”
Jon tensed again, ready to bolt, but Nathaniel put a strong arm around his neck and whispered into his ear, “Come on, Jon. Be smart. Look in the guy’s hand. I would guess that’s a dead man switch. If we do anything to him right now, the whole thing goes up. That won’t help Katie at all. Let’s move back, then we’ll figure out what to do.”
Even as he spoke, more police and fire trucks pulled up and began forming a barricade with their prowlers and trucks.
Jon and Nathaniel fell back several hundred yards to a spot where a few cops were setting up barricades. Nathaniel looked behind them and saw a Middle Falls city truck with more barricade fencing stacked on the back of it.
“Jon. Jon! Let’s help these guys set the barricades up. The sooner they get a perimeter set, the soon we can figure out exactly what’s going on here.”
“I think it’s pretty obvious what’s going on here,” Jon said, pointing in the direction of the truck. “There’s some crazy bastard wanting to blow himself up and planning to take a school full of kids with him. A school that includes my daughter.” Jon’s own eyes had the sudden glint of insanity. “We’ve gotta do something.”
“I know, and we will, but we’ve got to take it one step at a time. Come on, let’s give them a hand.”
The two of them approached the city worker who was standing on top of the truck, handing pieces of the barricade down to other workers who were carrying them and setting them up.
“We’re here to help. What do you need?”
The city worker looked at them, saw the size of Jon, and said, “You bet. I’ll set each piece here, then one of you hands it on to whoever comes to collect it. The other, carry pieces to whoever’s installing the barrier.
They went to work. Nathaniel stood at the truck, receiving pieces of the fencing material, and Jon carried, because it burned a little of his nervous energy and gave him a chance to keep his eye on the truck.
That scene hadn’t changed. The truck sat as an oasis of quiet amid the chaos around it.
When they were waiting for the next person to come to the truck, Nathaniel turned to the worker and said, “Have they tried evacuating the school?”
The worker shook his head. “No go. That guy sitting there said that if one person pops their head out of that building, he’ll set the bomb off and take everyone with him.”
“Has he said what he wants?”
“To talk to the governor. He said he’s not budging until the governor gets here.”
“That could take a while.”
“If you ask me, the governor’s not gonna want to come near this mess.”
Probably right. If he puts in an appearance and the whole place goes up, that’s not good for a political career. But, meanwhile, there are a few dozen teachers in there, trying to keep hundreds of kids calm.
An hour later, the barricade was complete, and the truck was completely surrounded, with several hundred yards of space between it and the thousands of worried parents and spectators who had lined up on the perimeter.
Jon had found Melissa, and they stood at the far left hand edge of the perimeter fence, never taking their eyes off the truck, or the windows of the school. Melissa had brought Jon his binoculars, and he kept them trained on the window of what they knew to be Kate’s classroom, but there were no faces to be seen there.
Two hours after they had arrived, much had changed. With the barriers erected, no one was milling around the area of the potential blast radius. Reinforcements for the local police had arrived in the form of the Oregon State Patrol, and a police officer stood just inside the barrier every twenty to thirty feet, his or her back to the bomb, watching the crowd. News stations from Portland had arrived and were setting up their satellite trucks.
As with so many of these kind of events, the first images came from people uploading videos from their phones to Twitter, Facebook, Imgur, Instagram and half-a-dozen other social media sites. Across America, and around the world, millions of eyes were on the same thing: a panel truck with a small, nervous man sitting on the bumper watching the crowd carefully.
The final addition was a sleek black helicopter that hovered just at the edge of the blast area.
The man on the truck watched the chopper for a minute, then picked up his bullhorn and said, “You’ve got one minute to move that bird the hell away from me, or the whole place goes up.”
It took less than thirty seconds for the helicopter to retreat and disappear over the horizon.
The man used the bullhorn to say, “Thank you,” then sat it down on the back bumper. He reached behind him and retrieved what looked like a brown flask. With his left hand, he loosened the cap, took a deep swig, then replaced the cap and put it back behind him. His right hand held tight to the small plastic device.
Jon watched the man’s every move through his binoculars. “Look at his damn hand. It’s shaking like hell. My daughter’s life depends on some maniac not dropping that switch, and it looks like he’s got the DTs.” He turned to Nathaniel. “Okay. I listened to you. We moved back. We built the barrier. We waited for someone else to do something, but no one is doing anything other than making him famous. So, what’s your plan?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
This is it, then, the point I’ve been waiting for, and dreading. The moment of decision is upon me, and it’s easy to see now. There really is no decision to make.
Nathaniel looked Jon in the eye. He smiled, but it was just a quick flash. “I’ll take care of it, Jon, but I’ll need some help from you.”
“You know I’ll do anything.”
“Let’s step back from the barrier a little.” Jon, Melissa and Nathaniel turned and walked away, and their spots were immediately filled by people who had been standing behind them.
“Look,” Nathaniel said, pointing to a spot a few yards away. “Their gaps aren’t quite right. That officer has too much ground to cover, and he’s standing right where there’s a little room between the fencing. I need you to slip through there, and when he tries to stop you, run parallel to the barrier. Don’t move toward the truck,
and don’t let him stop you. Run toward the cop that’s down there, and make them tackle you, okay?”
Jon eyeballed the somewhat paunchy police officer closest to them. “Yeah, of course, no problem. But, what good does that do us?”
“You just do that, and I’ll do the rest. I hope.” Nathaniel glanced at the truck, then at the school. “Listen, Jon. If this doesn’t go right, I’m sorry. I think I can handle this, but there is no way to be sure. I’ve done my best to see what’s coming, and I don’t think it’s going to end well any other way. So, if I foul it all up, and I’m blown into a thousand tiny bits, tell Mom I love her, and I appreciate everything she did for me. And, if that happens, will you take care of Brutus? He’s going to live a long, long time.”
Jon cocked his head. “Brother, I have no idea what you’re thinking about, but you know I trust you with my whole being. Godspeed.”
Jon and Nathaniel pushed forward toward the small gap in the barrier. Jon had to push a few people aside to get there, and cries of “Hey!” and “Knock it off” were thrown at their backs. A moment later, they were at the barricade, and Jon didn’t hesitate. He turned sideways and slipped through. The officer took a step toward him, but Jon took off at a run. Instinctively, the cop chased after him.
Nathaniel took advantage of the gap to slip through the fence and walked toward the truck. All eyes were on the hubbub Jon had caused, so he was twenty yards past the barrier before anyone noticed him. Nathaniel wasn’t running, but was walking at a steady clip.
“Hey, somebody stop that guy!” one of the cops wrestling with Jon shouted, but no one was near enough to easily intercept him. By the time the officer farther down the barrier noticed him, Nathaniel was already past the point of no return—the area all personnel had been ordered not to cross.