was afraid Patty hadn’t heard her. She was speaking to a man who held a pair of broken glasses up to his eyes.
“Keith Weston was just airlifted to New Hanover,” Patty called.
“Oh, no.” Sara grabbed my arm so hard I winced. I thought of the helicopter rising into the sky above me.
“Let’s go,” I said, pulling Sara with me through the sea of people. Tears I’d been holding in spilled down my cheeks as we backed away, letting other parents take our places. “We can drive together.”
“We’ll go separately,” Sara said, already at a run away from me. “In case one of us has to stay longer or—”
“Mom!” Maggie suddenly appeared at my side, winded and shivering. “They told me Uncle Marcus is here somewhere, but I couldn’t find out anything about Andy.”
“He’s at New Hanover.” I grabbed her hand. “I’m parked over by Jabeen’s. Let’s go.”
I took one glance back at the smoking church. The ragged siding that still remained standing glowed red against the eerie gray sky. I hadn’t thought about my former brother-in-law being there, but of course he was. I pictured Marcus inside the church, moving slowly through the smoke with his air pack on, feeling his way, searching for children who never stood a chance. Could he have been hurt when the roof collapsed? Please, no. And for the briefest of moments, I shifted my worry from Andy to him.
Maggie and I barely spoke on the way to Wilmington. She cried nearly the whole time, sniffling softly, shredding a tissue in her lap. My eyes were on the road, my foot pressing the gas pedal nearly to the floor. I imagined Andy trying to make sense out of the chaos of a fire and its aftermath. Simply moving the lock-in from the youth building to the church had probably been more than he could handle.
“Why did you say they moved the lock-in to the church?” I asked when we were halfway there.
“The electricity went out in the youth building.” Her voice broke. “I heard some kids died,” she said.
“Maybe just rumors.”
“I’m so sorry I talked you into letting Andy—”
“Shh.” I reached for her hand. “It’s not your fault, all right? Don’t even think that.” But inside I was angry at her, at how cavalierly she’d told me, Oh, Mother, he’ll be fine!
I tried to pull my hand from hers to make a turn, but she held it tightly, with a need that was rare for Maggie, and I let our hands stay locked together for the rest of the trip.
The crammed waiting area of the emergency room smelled of soot and antiseptic and was nearly as chaotic as the scene at the church. The throng of people in front of the glass reception window was four deep. I tried to push through, carving a space for Maggie and myself with my arms.
“Y’all have to wait your turn,” said a large, wide woman as she blocked my progress.
“I need to find out how my son is.” I kept pushing.
“We all need to know how our children are,” said the woman.
A man in the waiting area let out sudden gut-wrenching sobs. I didn’t turn to look. I wanted to plug my ears with my fingers. Maggie leaned against me a little.
“Maybe it was the electrical,” she said.
“What?”
“You know, how the electricity was out in the youth building? Maybe that’s connected to the fire somehow.”
The woman ahead of us left the window and it was finally our turn. “They told me my son was brought here,” I said. “Andrew Lockwood.”
“All right, ma’am. Have a seat.”
“No!” I wailed, the sound escaping my mouth like a surprise. “Please!” I started to cry, as though I’d been holding the tears in by force until that moment. “Tell me how he is! Let me go to him. He’s…he has special needs.”
“Mom…” Maggie tried to pull me away from the window.
The receptionist softened. “I know, honey,” she said. “Your boy’s okay. You take a seat and someone will come get you right quick.”
I nodded, trying to pull myself together, but I felt like fabric frayed too much to be mended. Maggie led me to one of the seats in the waiting area and when I looked at her I realized that she, too, had dissolved in tears once more. I hugged her, unable to tell whether it was her shoulders quaking or my own.
“Laurel?”
I saw a woman heading toward us from the other side of the room. Her face and T-shirt were smeared with soot, her hair coated with so much ash I couldn’t have said what color it was. Beneath her eyes, two long, clean trails ran down her cheeks. She’d had a good cry herself. She smiled now, though, as she took both my hands in hers. I recognized the slightly lopsided curve of the lips before I did the woman. Robin Carmichael. Emily’s mother.
“Robin!” I said. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” she said. “And Andy’s fine, too,” she added quickly, knowing those were the words I needed to hear before anything else.
“They won’t let me see—”
“What about Emily?” Maggie interrupted.
Robin nodded toward the other side of the waiting area, where I spotted Emily curled up on a chair, hugging her knees and holding a bloodstained cloth to her forehead.
“She’s gonna be okay,” Robin said, “but we’re waiting to get her seen. She cracked her glasses right in two and got a little cut over her eyebrow.” Robin still held my hands and now she looked hard into my eyes. “Andy saved Emily’s life.” Her voice broke and I felt her grip tighten on my fingers. “He saved a load of people tonight, Laurel.”
“Andy?” Maggie and I said at the same time.
“Yeah, I know.” Robin clearly shared our amazement. “But I swear, it’s the truth.”
“Mrs. Lockwood?” A woman in blue scrubs stood at the entrance to the waiting area.
“Yes!” I stood up quickly.
“Come with me.”
We were ushered into one of the treatment areas I remembered from three years earlier when Andy broke his arm at the skating rink. The room had several beds separated by curtains. Someone was screaming behind one of the curtains; someone else cried. But the curtain was not drawn around Andy’s bed. He was bare chested and barefooted, but wearing his now-filthy pants. A woman in blue scrubs was bandaging his left forearm, and he wore an oxygen cannula below his nose. Andy spotted us and leaped off the bed, the gauzy dressing dangling from his arm, the cannula snapping off his face.
“Mom!” he shouted. “There was a big fire and I’m a hero!”
“Andy!” the nurse called sharply. “I need to finish your arm.”
Maggie
