into two uniform officers on the porch.
“He’s been hit! No time to wait for an ambulance. Let’s get him to Emmanuel.”
“Over here,” the larger of the two officers says, pointing toward their marked car.
“What’s happening?” the boy’s mother calls out, as another woman guides her hurriedly across the lawn. “Is Jimmy okay?” The friend says something to her and the mother stumbles, dropping to one knee. “My boy? Oh my God! My Jimmy! Is he all right?”
I can’t tear my eyes from the mother. There’s a windstorm in my head, a hurricane. No a twister. Is there that much difference, sound wise? The survivors on the news always describe the destructive wind as sounding like a freight train. They’re right. It does.
“Take Sam and the boy to Emmanuel, Ed,” the big officer says, his hand reaching for my shoulder. “Sam, you don’t look so good. Let Ed take the boy.”
“No!” I say. Maybe I screamed it.
The officer jerks his hand back as if burned. “Okay, okay. Follow Ed, then. I’ll call for another car to take the mother.”
He turns and walks quickly toward the two women as I drop into the passenger seat. “Ma’am, he’s going to be fine,” I hear the big officer say calmly. “We’ll have a car here in a moment to take you to the hospital.”
I maneuver Jimmy so that his back is against my chest, his mop of brown hair below my chin, just as the naked man had positioned him minutes earlier. The boy’s hair smells of blood and shampoo. His mother probably insisted that he take a bath this morning. If he’s like I was at seven, he probably tried to negotiate his way out of it. My mom always won, just as Jimmy’s must have. What is it with boys and baths? Why do kids always—
The side of my head whacks the passenger window, snapping me back to the boy’s limp weight against my chest and the car’s acceleration that’s pressing me back into the seat. My head fills with the awful sounds of squealing tires, the incoherence of the police radio, and the hysterical wail of the siren. I’m not crying but my eyes are tearing so heavily that I can’t see anything clearly.
The driver shouts something into the mic. “Shot boy,” is all I can make out. The words bounce in my skull like a ping-pong ball: Shot boy. Shot boy, shot boy, shotboyshotboyboyboy…
Did the driver just call my name?
I look over at him.
He points at the boy’s chest.
I peer around Jimmy’s head. My forearm, which had been pressing against the bleeding bullet hole, has slipped down a few inches. His blood has filled the space between my arm and his body, and it’s cascading over my wrist and down onto his bare legs. I snatch a pocket notebook off the dash and press it against his chest wound.
“It’s going to be fine, son,” I say into his ear. “You’re okay. Just hold on…”
The boy suddenly becomes heavier. I twist about to better see his face.
“Oh shit shit shit. I think he’s stopped breathing.”
We slide around a corner and the officer literally stomps the throttle, pressing me back into my seat so hard that I have to struggle against the invisible force to turn the boy around far enough so I can see his face. Slack mouth. Partially shut eyes. Chest not moving.
I tilt his head back and breathe into his mouth. I pull away. Nothing. “Come on, son.” I breathe into him again. And again.
Impossibly, the siren screams louder, more desperate. We careen around a corner.
“I think I saw his chest rise,” the officer shouts, fighting the steering wheel as he corners again barely slowing.
“Come on,” I whisper, searching for a pulse on the boy’s wrist. “Comeoncomeoncomeon.” I feel my chest tightening. Hard to breathe. I gasp for a moment… got to get some air… got to give it to the boy. I’m breathing raggedly. Can’t… get… enough… oxygen.
“Half a block, Sam,” the uniform officer yells. He touches my upper arm. “You okay? Hey Sam! Stay with me. Keep working on the kid. Come on; stay focused. One more turn. Okay, we’re here. There’s ER people out front.”
*
“What were you thinking, Tommy?” I shout at the big detective, as I lean over the front of his desk, my hands gripping the edge to keep them from attacking him. He stares wide-eyed at my blood-soaked shirt and slacks as he scrunches himself deep into his chair, holding his heavily bandaged hand and trembling like a fall leaf. It’s all I can do to restrain myself from leaping on him and unleashing my rage. “Gun holstered, stepping in front of Mitch and me like that? What the hell were you doing?”
Tommy’s eyes dart to the other detectives who sit motionless behind their desks. “I… I thought I could talk to the man.” To me, his voice like a child’s, “I’m a good… talker. I…”
“You-fucked-up-my-shot,” I whisper. “You got in the way and you flung blood in my face.” I bellow: “You screwed up my clear shot!” I charge around to the side of his desk, my hands formed into claws.
“Sam!” Mark’s voice. “Sam, get in my office. Now!”
I spin around and see my friend standing outside his office door. “Did the hospital call?” I shout. Every detective turns toward the lieutenant. It’s been four hours since the shooting.
“No. Not yet. Now, get in here.” Mark looks at the others. “Everyone get back to work. I’ll let you know when I hear something.”
I feel every set of eyes on me as I walk toward the boss’s office. Are they waiting for me to go totally nuts? Roll around on the floor, maybe? Wail? Thump the dog shit out of Tommy? Where the hell is Mitchell? They still interviewing him?
I’m teetering on the brink. Don’t know if I want to cry or leap out the thirteenth floor window. I left a message with Tiff at the Public Defender’s office but she hasn’t called back. Why did I call her, anyway? I wish I hadn’t.
I keep seeing the little boy’s ghostly-pale face. The streaming blood. His partially closed, unseeing eyes. His unmoving chest.
My arms felt so empty when an ER nurse reached into the car and took him from me and laid him carefully on a gurney. How small he looked lying there, so fragile. So sad. A moment later, I was half running behind the gurney as the white coats slammed through the double doors into the ER. One of the nurses, a woman, called out “We got a pulse” followed with “But not much of one to brag about.”
But not much of one to brag about?
Just as I thought that those were an unprofessional choice of words to use and that “but not much of one” is better than none at all, which is what I got when I checked his pulse in the police car, my knees buckled. An orderly and a uniformed officer prevented me from curling down to the floor.
They guided my stumbling self to a couch in a small room just off ER; it might have been a little chapel. My memory is fuzzy now, but I vaguely recall hearing the mother screaming out in the hall and an assortment of voices trying to calm her. I started to go
