Bloodstream

A ward clerk yelled through the doorway, ‘Two more have arrived! They’re wheeling them in now!’

McNally glanced across the table at Claire, and she saw panic in his eyes. ‘You’re it,’ he snapped. ‘Go, Claire.’

With her heart in her throat, she pushed out of the trauma room and saw the first stretcher being wheeled into one of the treatment rooms. The patient was a sobbing red-haired boy, shirt cut away, blood soaking through the bandage on his shoulder. Now a second stretcher whisked in the door – a blond teenage girl, half her face covered with blood.

Children, she thought. These are only children. My god, what has happened?

She went first to the girl, who was crying but able to move all her extremities. At that first glimpse of blood on the girl’s face, Claire nearly panicked, thinking: gunshot wound to the head. She forced herself to pause and take the girl’s hand, to calmly ask her name, even while her own heart was thundering. It took only a few questions to confirm that Amelia Reid was fully oriented, and her mental status was clear. The wound was just a superficial graze of the temple, which Claire quickly cleaned and dressed.

Turning her attention to the red-haired boy, she saw that he was already being attended to by the pediatrician.

‘Are there any others on the way?’ she asked the ward clerk.

‘None en route. There may be more at the scene…’

A second surgeon arrived, trotting in through the ER doors and announcing: ‘I’m here! Who needs me?’

‘Trauma room!’ said Claire. ‘Dr McNally needs to be relieved.’

He was just about to push through the door when a nurse popped out, almost slamming into him.

‘Do we have that O-neg blood for Horatio yet?’ she yelled to the ward clerk.

Horatio? Claire hadn’t recognized the patient under all that surgical tape, but she knew the name, Dorothy Horatio.

My son’s biology teacher. She looked at the clock and saw it was eleven-thirty. Period three. Noah would be in biology – in Mrs Horatio’s class.

Another doctor arrived, another pair of hands – the obstetrician from Two Hills. She took one last glance around the room, and saw that the situation was under control.

She made the only decision a panicked mother could make.

She ran outside to her car.

The twenty-mile drive passed in a blur of autumn fields, the mist rising in wisps, stands of pine trees. Here and there farmhouses with tumbling porches. She had driven this country road every day for eight months, but never at this speed, never with her hands shaking and her heart sick with fear. She took the last rise with the accelerator floored and her Subaru leaped past the familiar sign:

You Are Now Leaving Two Hills. Come Back Soon!

And then, a hundred yards beyond that, a second sign, smaller, paint chipping.

WELCOME TO TRANQUILITY

GATEWAY TO LOCUST LAKE

POPULATION 910

She swerved onto School Road and saw the flashing lights of half a dozen emergency vehicles. Police cruisers were parked in a jumble near the high school’s red brick front entrance, along with two fire trucks – a full-scale disaster response.

Claire abandoned her car and ran toward the school’s front lawn, where dozens of stunned-looking students and teachers had gathered behind a tangle of police tape. Scanning the faces, she didn’t see Noah.

A Two Hills policeman stopped her at the front door. ‘No one’s allowed inside.’

‘But I have to go in!’

‘Only emergency personnel.’

She took a quick breath. ‘I’m Dr Elliot,’ she said, her voice steadier. ‘I’m a physician from Tranquility.’

He let her pass.

She pushed through the front door into the high school. The building was nearly a century old, and inside hung the musty odors of teenage sweat and dust stirred up by thousands of feet trudging up and down the staircase. She ran up the steps to the second floor.

The doorway to the biology classroom was crisscrossed by strands of police tape. Beyond the tape were overturned chairs, broken glass, and scattered papers. Frogs hopped through the debris.

There was blood – pools of it congealing in gelatinous lakes on the floor.

‘Mom?’

Her heart leaped at the voice. She whirled to see her son standing at the far end of the hall. In the dim light of that long corridor, he seemed frighteningly small to her, his blood-streaked face pale and thin.

She ran to him and threw her arms around his rigid body, pulling him, forcing him, into an embrace. She felt his shoulders melt first, then his head drooped against her and he was crying. No sound came out; there was just the shuddering of his chest and warm tears sliding onto her neck. At last she felt his arms come around her, circle her waist. His shoulders might be as broad as a man’s, but it was a child who clung to her now, a child’s grief that spilled out in tears.

‘Are you hurt?’ she asked. ‘Noah, you’re bleeding. Are you hurt?’

‘He’s fine, Claire. The blood isn’t his. It’s the teacher’s.’

She looked up and saw Lincoln Kelly standing in the hall, his grim expression reflecting the day’s terrible events. ‘Noah and I just finished going over what happened. I was about to call you, Claire.’

‘I was at the hospital. I heard there was a shooting.’

‘Your son grabbed the gun away from the boy,’ said Lincoln. ‘It was a crazy thing to do. A brave thing to do. He probably saved a few lives.’ Lincoln’s gaze dropped to Noah, and he added softly: ‘You should be proud of him.’

‘I wasn’t brave,’ blurted out Noah. He pulled away from Claire, ashamedly wiping his eyes. ‘I was scared. I don’t know why I did it. I didn’t know what I was doing…’

‘But you did it, Noah.’ Lincoln lay a hand on the boy’s shoulder. It was a man’s blessing, brusque and matter-of-fact. Noah seemed to draw sustenance from that simple touch. A mother, thought Claire, cannot knight her own son. It must be done by another man.

Slowly Noah straightened, his tears at last under control. ‘Is Amelia okay?’ he asked her. ‘They took her in the ambulance.’

‘She’s fine. Just a scratch on her face. I think the boy will be fine as well.’

‘And…Mrs Horatio?’

She shook her head. And said, gently, ‘I don’t know.’

He took a deep breath and wiped an unsteady hand across his eyes. ‘I – I have to go wash my face…’

‘You do that,’ said Lincoln gently. ‘Take your time, Noah. Your mom will be waiting for you.’

Claire watched her son walk away down the hall. As he passed the biology classroom he slowed down, his gaze drawn, against his will, to the open doorway. For a few seconds he stood hypnotized by the terrible view beyond that police tape. Then, abruptly, he pushed into the boys’ restroom.