Journey (34 page)

The voices continued to approach until they sounded only inches away, and she identified herself to them. She described the cave they were in, as best she could, and Annie's circumstances, without terrifying her completely, and she said she was okay and holding the baby.

“Is the baby hurt?” another voice asked, wanting to know what kind of rescue team they needed.

“I don't know. I don't think so. And I'm not either,” except for a ferocious bump on the head and a whopping headache. The baby's mother was another story.

But even once they knew where they were, it took them another hour and a half to free them. They had to move the dirt away inch by inch, and the concrete just as slowly. They were afraid that the whole structure would collapse on them if they moved too quickly, and Maddy gave a scream of relief and pain when they shone a powerful beam into her eyes through a hole the size of a saucer. She couldn't stop herself from sobbing and she told Annie what was happening, but she didn't answer.

The hole grew bigger as Maddy watched and they talked to her, and five minutes later, she passed Andy through it, and she saw how filthy he was when they
shone the flashlight on him. There was dried blood on his face from a small cut on his cheek, but other than that, his eyes were wide and he looked beautiful to Maddy. She kissed him as she handed him through and a pair of powerful male hands took him and vanished. But there were four others left to work on freeing her and Annie, and in another half hour they had made a space big enough for Maddy to crawl through, and she turned before she left and touched Annie's hand. The girl was silent and sleeping, which was merciful. It was going to be ugly work to free her, and Maddy slid past the men at the entrance to the hole they'd made, and two of them moved in to work on Annie, as one of the men led Maddy back through the crawl space they'd made, and she crawled on her hands and knees back to the entrance. From there, powerful hands lifted her up and she was carried over concrete and debris and steel pilings that were twisted everywhere like an evil forest, and before she knew it, she was in bright daylight.

It was ten o'clock in the morning, almost fourteen hours after the mall had collapsed and she had been trapped there. She tried to ask someone if the baby was okay, but there was so much chaos around her that no one seemed to hear her. Others were still being pulled out, and there were bodies under tarps, crying people waiting for news of their families, rescue workers shouting to each other, and suddenly in the midst of it all, she saw him standing there, waiting for her. It was Bill, and he was almost as filthy as she was, from his efforts to help the others. But as he saw her, he was wracked by sobs, and grabbed her from the man who was holding her. All he could do was cling to her and cry, as she did. There were no words to tell her what he had felt, how
vast his fears had been, how terrible her terrors. It would take years to explain it to each other, and all they had now was the single instant of love and relief of this unforgettable moment.

“Thank God,” he whispered as she clung to him, and he handed her gingerly to a team of paramedics. But she appeared miraculously undamaged, and then forgetting Bill for an instant, but still holding tightly to his hand, she turned to one of the rescue workers.

“Where's Annie? Is she okay?”

“They're working on it,” he said, looking grim. He had seen too much that night, as they all had. But each survivor was a victory. Each one saved a gift they had all prayed for.

“Tell her I love her,” Maddy said fervently, and then turned back to Bill, her eyes filled with everything they felt for each other. And for one terrible instant, she wondered if this was her punishment for falling in love with him, if she had no right to this. But she pushed the thought away as though it had been a boulder trying to crush her, and she wouldn't let it, as she hadn't let the walls of their tiny cave crush Annie or the baby. She was Bill's now. She had a right to be. She had lived for this. For him. And for Lizzie. And with that, they put her in an ambulance, and without hesitating, Bill climbed in with her. And as he looked out the window at the back of the ambulance as they drove away, Bill saw Rafe, watching them, and crying. He was happy for both of them.

Chapter 21

W
HEN
M
ADDY GOT TO THE HOSPITAL
, they put her in the trauma unit where the others were who had been rescued from the mall, and she asked instantly about the baby. She was told he was doing fine. And the doctors were amazed to find she had no broken bones, no internal injuries. She had a concussion, a few scrapes, and minor bruises. Bill couldn't believe how lucky she'd been, and as he sat with her, he told her what he knew of what had happened. All anyone knew so far was that a group of militants had exploded the bomb. In a message to the President only an hour before, they had said it was their statement against the government. They sounded like lunatics. And they had killed more than three hundred people, almost half of them children. The sheer horror of it made Maddy shudder.

She told Bill what she'd seen as the ceiling collapsed, and what it had been like being trapped with Annie and the baby. And all she hoped now was that they would both survive it. She was worried about Annie, but not
nearly as worried as Bill had been about Maddy. It had been just as bad as what he had gone through with Margaret, and Maddy told him sympathetically that no one should have to go through that twice in a lifetime.

They talked for a few more minutes then, and the doctors wanted to do some more tests on her, just to be thorough in their evaluation, and she and Bill agreed that he should leave, in case Jack came to see her. Bill didn't want to cause her any trouble at this point.

“I'll come back in a few hours,” he said, as he leaned over and kissed her. “Take it easy.”

“You too. Get some sleep.” She kissed him again, and could hardly bring herself to relinquish his fingers. As soon as he left, the doctors took her away and completed their examination. And when she was brought back to her room, Rafe came in with a news crew. Jack had sent them. Rafe didn't tell Maddy what a bastard he thought Jack was for not coming to see her himself, and he didn't ask her about Bill. He didn't need to. Whatever else might have been happening between them, it was obvious to the producer of her show that the guy really loved her, and just as obvious to him now that Maddy loved him.

She told them what she could about what had happened, from her perspective, and told them, on camera, how brave Annie had been. “She's sixteen years old,” Maddy said, impressed and proud, and then she saw an odd look in Rafe's eyes, and when they turned the camera off, she asked him a question.

“She's okay, isn't she, Rafe? Did you hear something?”

He hesitated, wanting to lie to her, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. She'd find out anyway, and it
didn't seem fair not to tell her. “The baby is going to be okay, Mad. But they couldn't get his mom out.”

“What do you mean, they couldn't get her out?” She was almost shrieking as she said it. She had kept her alive for fourteen hours and now they were telling her they couldn't free her? That was impossible. She refused to believe it.

“They'd have had to use dynamite. She was in a coma when they took you out, Maddy. They gave her life support, but she died half an hour later. Her lungs were crushed, and she had bled so much internally the rescue docs said they could never have saved her.” Maddy made a sound like an animal as she heard him. It was a keening, groaning sound, as though the girl had been her own child. She couldn't bear to think of it. And what was going to happen to her baby? Rafe said he didn't know anything about that, and they left her to rest shortly after. But not before he told her, choking on sobs himself, how glad he was that she had made it.

Everyone was. Lizzie cried hopelessly when Maddy called her in Memphis to tell her she was all right. Lizzie had stayed up all night to watch the news coverage and when she didn't see Maddy on camera with the news crews, she called her at home, but no one answered. She had sensed somehow that Maddy was trapped there.

And Phyllis Armstrong called her and told her how relieved she and Jim were, and what a tragedy it was, particularly the deaths of all those children. They both cried, thinking of it, and after she hung up, Maddy asked a nurse about the baby. Andy was still at the hospital, being observed, as he would be for the next few days. The child protection authorities hadn't picked him
up yet. And after the nurse left the room, Maddy got up quietly and went to the nursery to see him. He barely looked like more than a newborn, and Maddy asked a nurse if she could hold him. They had bathed him and combed his hair. He was blond and had big blue eyes, and they had wrapped him in a blue blanket. He looked immaculate and Maddy could see how pretty Annie must have been as she looked at her baby. And as she held him, all she could think of was Annie, asking her to take care of her baby. And soon he would be left to the same fate her own had been, going from orphanages to foster homes into the hands of strangers, with no real parents to love or claim him. It made Maddy's heart ache as she held him.

And as she did, he looked at her intently and she wondered if he recognized her voice as she crooned to him. He seemed to lose interest after a while, and drifted off to sleep in her arms. And Maddy cried as she thought of Annie. It had been an odd turn of fate that had left them together in the rubble. She set the baby down gently in the hospital bassinette and went back to her own room, still crying over Annie.

Maddy was stiff and achy, and incredibly tired, but she didn't have any serious injuries and she realized how incredibly lucky she had been. She was staring out the window and thinking how odd it was that life spared some, and took others, with no seeming rhyme or reason. It was hard to guess why she had been one of the lucky ones, and Annie wasn't. She had had so much more life left to live than Maddy. And as she thought about the mysteries of life, Jack walked into the room with a solemn expression.

“I guess I don't need to ask where you've been all
night for once.” The “for once” was unnecessary, but typical of him. “How are you doing, Maddy?” He looked and felt awkward. He had never really believed she was in the wreckage in the first place. It sounded like hysteria to him, and he was surprised to learn she had been, but relieved to know she had survived. “That must have been pretty rough,” he said, as he leaned over and kissed her, and a nurse brought a huge vase of flowers into the room, from the Armstrongs.

“Yeah, it was pretty scary,” she said thoughtfully. He was the master of understatement, and dismissal. But this was a tough one to belittle. Being trapped in a bombed building for fourteen hours definitely qualified as a major trauma, however Jack called it. She thought about telling him about Annie and the baby, and how much it had touched her, but she decided not to. He wouldn't have understood.

“Everyone was worried about you. I figured you were out somewhere. I just didn't think you were in there. Why would you be?”

“I went to buy wrapping paper,” she said simply, eyeing him. He had retreated to the other side of the room, as though he needed to keep his distance, and so did she now, for her own safety.

“You hate malls,” he said, as though that would change it all now, and she smiled at him.

“I guess now I know why. They're fucking dangerous,” she said and they both laughed. But the tension was high between them. She hadn't sorted it all out yet after the night before, but she had even thought about it while she was trapped in the debris, trying to keep Annie going. It occurred to her that if she ever survived what she'd just been through, she would have faced the
greatest terror in her life. She didn't need to face any more than that, or impose it on herself, or risk herself again. She would have faced the greatest enemy, looked death in the eye. She didn't need to punish herself anymore, and she had promised herself she wasn't going to. And seeing him there, sitting awkwardly across the room from her, she knew she couldn't. He couldn't even have enough love in his heart to walk across the room and hold her in his arms and tell her he loved her. He couldn't. He probably loved her as much as he could, she realized, but that didn't say much. And as though sensing something strange happening between them, he stood up and walked over to her, and handed her a gift-wrapped box. She took it without a word, and opened it, and there was a narrow diamond bracelet inside. It was very pretty, and she thanked him. What she didn't know was that he had bought two of them at the Ritz Carlton when he checked out that morning. One for her, for what she'd gone through at the mall, and the other for the girl he'd spent the night with. But even without knowing that, Maddy handed it back to him with a serious expression.

“I can't accept it. I'm sorry, Jack,” she said, and his eyes narrowed as he watched her. He could sense the prey slipping slowly away from him, and for an instant she thought he was going to grab her, but he didn't.

“Why not?”

“I'm leaving you.” She stunned herself with her words, but not as much as she stunned Jack. He looked as though she had hit him.

“What the fuck is that all about?” As usual, he covered up his own sins and weaknesses by being nasty to her.

“I can't do this anymore.”

“Do what?” he asked, pacing the room, unwilling to simply accept it and leave her. He looked like a tiger stalking his prey, but he didn't frighten her as he once had. And she knew she was safe here. There were people all around them, just beyond her doorway. “What is it that you can't do? Live a life of luxury? Go to Europe twice a year? Travel on a private jet? Get jewelry whenever I'm dumb enough to buy it for you? What a tough life to put up with, for a slut from Knoxville.” He was at it again.

“That's the trouble, Jack,” she said, sounding tired, and leaning back against her pillow as she watched him. “I'm not a slut from Knoxville. I never was. Even back then when I was poor and unhappy.”