Act of God (3 page)

T
he official name of the building, imprinted on a small brass plaque affixed to the front door, was the Seattle Family Services
Center. But for almost fifty years, it had been known throughout the city simply as Hill House. A spacious three-story Victorian
that dated back before the turn of the twentieth century, it was one on a very short list of elegant dwellings gracing First
Hill to have survived the onslaught of progress. The rest had been systematically gobbled up by the insatiable need of a municipal
medical community for more modern complexes of steel and concrete.

By the early 1950s, the mansion had fallen into serious disrepair. An anonymous benefactor then quietly purchased it, restoring
the gingerbread facade to its former glory with a fresh coat of paint and installing a new roof. The lawn was tilled and seeded,
the front was decorated with little stone benches, the back was fenced around a children’s playground, and the interior was
remodeled into an efficient multipurpose clinic.

Hill House sat quietly on the corner of Boren Avenue and Madison Street, behind a high sculptured iron fence and a
dense border of laurel bushes that had grown up over the past half century to provide an ample measure of privacy. Neither
the people who worked at the center nor those who frequented it had any wish, nor made any attempt, to conceal their presence
there. Nevertheless, they came to appreciate the buffer that the hedge provided from the little knot of protesters who verbally
assaulted them from the sidewalk on a regular basis.

The group had appeared one day, some dozen and a half years ago, pushing and shoving, shouting, intimidating, and even threatening.
Over time, the number of protesters dwindled, and several of their more extreme actions, such as vandalism and stalking, had
been curtailed by the passage of new legislation, but their purpose remained the same.

Many things happened at Hill House, including multilevel counseling, a full range of obstetric and gynecological services,
and comprehensive day care. But the only activity that concerned the sidewalk people, as the center’s employees came to call
them, was what they devoutly believed to be the immoral procedure of terminating pregnancies. Every single day, for almost
two decades, the staff and patrons of Hill House had alternately been damned and prayed over, entreated and spat upon.

“Personally, I would never have an abortion, and I don’t assist at them,” Shelly Weld, one of the clinic’s obstetrical nurses,
informed a member of the group one day. “But I would never presume to tell anyone else what to do.”

“If you continue to dwell in the house of the devil,” came the dour reply, “your soul will burn in hell for all eternity.”

Altogether, some ninety people worked in the nine-thousand-square-foot building. Among them were four physicians who specialized
in obstetrics and gynecology, three family practitioners, two radiologists, two anesthesiologists, one pharmacist and an assistant,
nine registered nurses, eleven nurse’s aides, and seven laboratory technicians. In addition, there were
two social workers, three psychiatrists, eight psychologists, sixteen licensed day care providers, three receptionists, one
administrator and his two assistants, two secretaries, one accountant, two bookkeepers, two clerks, two security guards, and
six maintenance people.

Moreover, at least three hundred others passed through the iron gates every day, seeking one kind of service or another.

The center’s administrative and business departments were located on the first floor, just off the front entrance, and the
laboratories, the pharmacy, and the consultation rooms shared the back of the building with the counseling unit. A surprisingly
well-equipped mini-hospital occupied the entire second floor.

And each morning, some seventy children between the ages of two months and five years found their way to the third-floor day
care center. The vast majority of these children were the offspring of personnel from the surrounding medical community, including
the center itself; parents who prided themselves on having their sons and daughters in the most highly regarded facility in
the city, and who knew how lucky they were. At any given time, as many as fifty other youngsters languished on a waiting list.

At two o’clock in the afternoon on the first Tuesday in February, the sky was overcast, the temperature hovered around fifty,
scavenging crows squawked at one another from their perches in the laurel bushes, and the scent of cinnamon from a nearby
bakery hung in the air.

In addition to the staff and the children, there were six couples and five women in counseling. Seven women were undergoing
a variety of laboratory tests. Three mothers and their newborn babies were rejoicing with family and friends in second-floor
rooms. One woman was preparing for a termination, two women were in labor, an expectant father and grandmother paced the maternity
lounge, and nineteen people were waiting
in the lobby for one type of service or another. At that moment, the building held close to two hundred and fifty people.

On the first floor, psychologist Frances Stocker, a robust sixty-year-old woman, had spent her morning counseling parents
of an autistic son, a woman contemplating divorce, and a pregnant fifteen-year-old. She was just settling into a session with
her next client, Grace Pauley, a frail, nervous woman, who was finally seeking help after years of spousal abuse. If Frances
ever questioned her choice of profession, she needed only a day like this to remind herself of how much what she did mattered,
and how meaningless her life would otherwise be.

In a consultation room just down the hall, radiologist Caitlin Callahan was reviewing the ultrasound recording of a suspected
ectopic pregnancy. The single mother had just come down from the day care center, where it was her habit to lunch with her
three-year-old daughter, Chelsea.

On the second floor, obstetrician Jeffrey Korba, tall and balding at forty-two, was holed up in his office, washing down a
chicken salad sandwich with a soda before his second delivery of the day, and wondering if he would have time to call his
wife. They had parted this morning on an argument about a washing machine, of all things, and he was sorely regretting it.

In one of the mini-hospital’s four holding rooms, Shelly Weld was monitoring Denise Romanadis’s contractions, and estimating
that she could probably give Korba another five minutes to finish his lunch before Hill House’s seventeenth set of triplets
would require his attention. In another room, Betsy Toth had just finished preparing Joyce O’Mara for an abortion, and was
awaiting Joseph Heradia’s return from an outside appointment. As she had quite often during the past two weeks, the twenty-year-old
nurse’s aide found herself wondering, with a little tingle of anticipation, if she and Andy might be pregnant, and hoping
he wouldn’t be terribly upset if they just happened
to jump the gun a little bit. After all their wedding was only a few months away.

At one end of the third floor, whose newly papered walls featured tumbling brown teddy bears amid brightly colored streamers,
Ruth Zelkin, the ebullient, fifty-three-year-old director of the day care center, had finally gotten the last of the toddlers,
towheaded Jason Holman, down for his afternoon nap, and was heading for a much needed coffee break.

At the other end, Brenda Kiley was feeding the adorable four-month-old Gamble twins, Christopher and Jennifer. Fraternal though
they were, the chubby siblings had identical China blue eyes, fuzzy blond hair, and wide, happy smiles.

Outside Hill House, Jesse Montero, the forty-two-year-old head custodian, had just finished stowing several boxes of light
bulbs in the utility shed behind the building. Having taken a moment out of sight for a few puffs on a forbidden cigarette,
he was in the process of securing a padlock on the shed door.

Carl Gentry, one of the security guards, stood at his post on the front porch. He was forty-six years old and recently divorced,
and he was thinking about the woman he had met last night and not left until after breakfast this morning. He was hoping that
she had enjoyed their time together as much as he had, and he was wondering how long he should wait before he called her.

What happened next happened so suddenly that afterward no two accounts of it were identical. One or perhaps several powerful
jolts shook the ground as though a volcano were erupting, or an earthquake were taking place. Walls and windows cracked across
a three-block area. Hill House first appeared to some to shudder and then it shattered, or as others reported, it shattered
almost immediately, sending pieces of debris spewing over the lawn and hurtling over the laurel hedge. Some witnesses later
reported that the mansion seemed actually to rise
with the explosion and then collapse into itself, fire breaking out in one or maybe a number of places directly thereafter.

From an operating suite in Swedish Hospital two blocks to the east of Hill House, Janet Holman heard what she initially thought
was a crash of heavy equipment, and then felt the whole building around her shake.

“What was that?” the orthopedist demanded through her surgical mask. “An earthquake?”

“Sure felt like it,” one of the nurses replied.

“Here, take over for me for a minute,” Janet directed the senior resident who assisted her. “I just want to make sure Jason’s
okay.”

At the Madison Medical Tower just across the street from the clinic, the windowpane blew out of Helen Gamble’s cubicle, raining
shards of glass over the billing clerk’s desk and chair. Ignoring the fact that she was bleeding from several deep gashes
around her head and neck, Helen jumped up to peer through the gaping hole. It was an instinctive action, of course, taken
to reassure herself that whatever might have occurred, the twins were safe at Hill House. Her maternal concern turned to absolute
terror.

“What was that?” Judith Purcell wondered aloud, a piece of bread halfway to her mouth. “Surely, it can’t be a thunderstorm
at this time of year.” The restaurant was perhaps a mile from the corner of Madison and Boren. Still, they both heard and
felt the rumble. “Maybe it’s a bomb.”

The two women stared at each other. Then Dana thought of the train tunnel nearby and shrugged. “More likely an accident,”
she said. At that moment, she had no way of knowing that her friend was right, or that it would have anything to do with her.

Faster than it would have seemed possible, the hundred-year-old mansion was reduced to little more than a pile of burning
rubble.

Frances Stocker was thrown to the floor by the force of the explosion. Her heavy metal desk, overturning on top of her and
pinning her to the floor, crushed her legs in multiple places, but almost certainly saved her life.

Her client, the long-suffering Grace Pauley, was not so lucky. She was tossed aside like a rag doll, landing at an odd angle,
her head almost completely severed from her body.

There was nothing left of the consultation room where Caitlin Callahan had been reviewing an ultrasound. There wasn’t much
left of Dr. Callahan, either.

The right side of Jeffrey Korba was blown away. He lay in a gathering pool of his own blood and was pulled from the wreckage
by rescue workers with barely a moment of life left in him.

Neither Shelly Weld nor her patient, Denise Romanadis, as full with life as the woman had been, were recognizable by fellow
workers. Their bodies had to be pieced together afterward, their identities determined more from a process of elimination
than anything else.

The ten-week-old fetus that Joyce O’Mara had been about to abort did not survive. Joyce barely survived herself. Betsy Toth
sustained a fractured spine that would leave her paralyzed from the waist down.

All things considered, Ruth Zelkin was lucky to lose only her eyesight as the third floor collapsed under her. In the final
count, she would also lose ten members of her staff and fifty-six of her children—among them, two-year-old Jason Holman.

Brenda Kiley saved the Gamble twins. She did so by using her own body to protect them from the major impact of the explosion.
Unfortunately, there was no one to protect her.

Jesse Montero was shielded from the full thrust of the blast
by the utility shed. He began with only minor cuts on his face and arms from flying glass and debris, but later incurred severe
burns on his hands and arms as he tried desperately to save some of those who were trapped inside.

Two-hundred-and-ten-pound Carl Gentry was thrown from his post on the front porch as though he were nothing more than a sack
of flour, his head coming in direct contact with one of the stone benches as he landed. He lay with a fractured skull and
a broken neck, conscious, but unable to move.

Joseph Heradia, returning from the meeting with his attorney just seconds after the explosion, managed to pull the security
guard away from any further harm.

“Oh my God,” the gynecologist exclaimed, as he surveyed the scene around him. “What’s happening?”