The Seat Beside Me (14 page)

A white-haired man tapped on the door. “May I come in?”

Sonja nodded and used her good hand to push herself up. The man hurried to assist her. “Here, let me do that.” He pressed a button on the bed and it lifted her torso to a seated position.

She saw a cross on the lapel of his suit. “You’re not the doctor.”

“No, she’ll be here in a few minutes. In the meantime I thought I’d keep you company. I’m Pastor Rawlins. And you’re Ms. Grafton?” He held out a hand.

“Sonja.” She lifted her right hand, showing the cast. He dropped his arm and gave her left hand a pat.

“Glad to have you with us, Sonja.”

“What about the others?”

“They rescued seven survivors from the water.”

“That’s it?”

He nodded. “I’m afraid so. And sadly, two of those have since died.”

“Two? Which ones? Who?”

“Belinda Miller and Justin Cavanaugh.”

She realized the names meant nothing to her. “What did they look like?”

“You need to concentrate on getting better, on—”

“Which ones were they?” Sonja was adamant.

Pastor Rawlins looked to the ceiling, then down. “Ms. Miller was in her fifties and had very long hair.”

Sonja thought back. “Was she wearing a magenta sweater?”

“Magenta?”

“Bright pink?”

He nodded. “Yes, I guess she was. She died of cardiac arrest in the ambulance.”

“And the other?”

“Justin was a little boy.”

Sonja closed her eyes and saw the young woman clutching the boy to her chest being lifted into the sky. She’d touched that boy. Held him for a moment while the life vest was put on. And now he was gone.

She did a mental count of the survivors in the water. “There were eight of us, but you say only seven were pulled out?”

The pastor nodded again, but this time his eyes filled with tears.

“Who didn’t make it?”

“We don’t know his name.”

She nodded, trying to think logically. “There were four women, the boy, an old man separate from us, a handsome man, and the guy who gave me the line.”

The pastor nodded.

The implications assailed Sonja like a blast of cold air. She sucked in a breath. “
Him?
The man who gave me the line instead of taking it himself? He didn’t make it?”

The pastor took Sonja’s left hand in his. He had difficulty swallowing. “That man handed off the lines three times, letting the rest of you go first. When they went back for him, he was gone.”

Sonja ripped her hand away from the pastor’s comfort. “Why’d he do that? Why didn’t he take his turn?”

“I don’t—”

“I wouldn’t have taken the line from him if I’d known he was going to do a stupid thing like that.”

“It wasn’t stupid. It was a wonderful—”

“What’s wonderful about it?” She shook her head, remembering the line being handed to her and the man’s kind but determined face urging her to take what he had to give. “Now I’m going to go through the rest of my life thinking I shouldn’t have gone. I should have said, ‘It came to you; you go first.’ ” She looked at the
pastor and suffered a torrent of panic. “I don’t want to live with that guilt. Why didn’t he take it? He had blood all over his face. He was hurt. Why didn’t I let him go?” Amid her ramblings, the bottom line surfaced: “I shouldn’t have taken the line!”

“No one blames you for living, Sonja.”

She turned her face away from him, clamping her eyes shut. “Go on. Get out of here.”

“Sonja—”

“Go!”

He slipped quietly out the door, but his words lingered in the air.
No one blames you for living, Sonja
.

They didn’t need to. She blamed herself.

Tina felt a presence in the room and opened her eyes. A white-haired man stood in the doorway as if deciding whether or not to come in.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m Pastor Rawlins.”

She removed an oxygen mask and tried out a breath. “Where am I?”

He moved to the side of her bed. “You’re in a hospital. You’re safe. But we almost lost you. They say your body temperature was way below normal. A few more minutes …”

Tina looked past him into the air where her memories could find a screen. “I remember being pulled through the water, trying to hold on to ice.” She looked at him. “I lost the line. My hands wouldn’t work.”

“They were frozen.”

She looked to the window. The shades were drawn, and there was no light coming between. “Is it night?”

“Yes.”

“Did they get them all out?”

“Not all.”

“How many?”

“They saved seven.”

Tina’s throat constricted. “Out of that whole plane?”

He nodded. “It’s a tragedy.”

“Mallory wasn’t one of them, was she?”

He thought a moment. “No, I’m sorry; there wasn’t a Mallory. Was she your daughter?”

Tina let the tears come. “No, she was a stu—” She stopped herself, her throat constricting, then started again. “She was my seatmate.”

Anthony opened his eyes and within two breaths made a self-diagnosis:
I’m alive
. It was a good start.

He was glad to see he was in a hospital room—a private room. He checked his body. His injuries—multiple gashes and bruises, and perhaps some cracked ribs—were not life threatening. If he could reach the chart, he would know for sure. He hit the switch on the bed, and it hummed to life.

There was a tap on the door.

“Yes?”

“My, my, you’re alert,” said an old man in a suit.

“A condition I intend to maintain.”

The man smiled and entered the room. Anthony saw the cross pin on his lapel. “You’re the chaplain.”

“Guilty as charged.”

Anthony adjusted the sheets around his legs. “Well, I’m fine—or I will be.” He pointed above the bed. “Hand me my chart.”

“That’s not for you to look at. That’s for the doc—”

“I
am
a doctor, and I am very capable of reading my own chart.”

The chaplain nodded, his smile gone. “Sorry. It’s not here.”

“When will the doctor be in?”

“Soon.”

“Tell him I want to see him ASAP.”

“Her.”

“Whatever. How many made it?”

He hesitated. “Five, including yourself.”

Anthony shook his head. “Too bad.” The man raised an eyebrow like he disapproved.
Hey, you want a sideshow? Go to a circus
. “I suppose you’re here to comfort me?”

“Do you need comforting?”

“Not really.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Anthony suddenly realized it was in his best interest to keep the hospital staff on friendly terms. “So … how are the others? You having a busy day with them?”

“They feel a lot of guilt.”

“For what?”

The chaplain cocked his head as if it were a dumb question. “For living. It’s a normal reaction. Guilt … and questioning, ‘Why me?’ ”

Anthony touched the bandage on his head. The skin felt tight, as if there were stitches. “You won’t need to go that route with me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I know why I lived.”

He raised an eyebrow again. “And why is that?”

“Because my life is worth more than theirs.”

The chaplain jerked his head as if he had been slapped.

“Don’t look so shocked, Father or Pastor or Reverend or whatever you call yourself. I always knew I would live. I have a lot left to do with my life.”

“And those who died didn’t?”

Anthony shrugged, and the movement hurt his shoulder. “I’m not one to judge—”

“But that’s exactly what you’re doing. Raising up your life as more worthy than theirs.” The chaplain shook his head like a bobbing dog in the back window of a ’68 Mustang.

“I refuse to go on a guilt trip just to fall into your handy-dandy post-tragedy package. I’m a doctor. I—”

“So you said.”

They looked at each other a moment. “You can move on, your holiness. I’m sure you’re needed elsewhere.”

The chaplain headed toward the door, then turned back to Anthony. “By the way, we don’t know the name of the hero yet.”

“What hero?”

“The man in the tail section who handed the line to the rest of you. They went back for him, and he was gone.”

“Really.”

“They don’t know his name yet.” He smiled smugly, reminding Anthony of a professor he once had in biology class. “Perhaps you can help identify him? Give the man the honor he deserves? Especially since you took a line that was meant for someone else. That
he’d
given to someone else. A woman.”

“Hey, it was every man—and woman—for himself. Besides, you can’t blame me for going when I had the chance. You don’t know what it’s like to be in a position like that. You have to make split-second decisions. She lost the line; I took it. Self-preservation takes over.”

“It didn’t take over for the hero.”

“Maybe it should have.”

The chaplain took a step back, then lowered his jaw, his eyes taking on a decidedly nonchaplain-like glare. “Well, then. I guess since the hero’s dead, you’d say his life wasn’t worth much, right?”

Anthony opened his mouth to reply, but before he could think of a response, the chaplain left him alone.

So be it.

Dora hit the send button on her article, then sat back in her chair, drained. And though she felt as if she didn’t have the energy to type
another word, in many ways it was the easiest article she’d ever written. Actually, two articles. Although her boss had not approved it ahead of time, Dora had to find a way to release her feelings. So in addition to her news story of the crash and rescue, she wrote a first-person essay entitled “That Could Have Been Me.” She hoped it would be printed, but she truly didn’t care if it wasn’t. It was therapeutic just writing it.

Actually, her initial title had been, “That Should Have Been Me,” but
should
pulsed on the page, demanding attention like a black speck on a white dress. At first she couldn’t understand why that one word bothered her so, but then she realized that her choice of that particular word was an affront to what had happened. And a lie.

She shouldn’t have been on Flight 1382. The miraculous event of her mother’s recovery had prevented her from going.
Prevented
her, not enticed or nudged. Once that event had fallen into place, she never even considered going. The strength of the facts behind her decision not to go made it clear that God had not wanted her on that flight; He had taken care of circumstances to make sure she wasn’t on it. Which meant, for whatever reason, God wanted her alive.

It was heady stuff that found no place in her jumbled brain to land and take root. And so the
should
was changed to
could
. Yet even the weighty possibilities of
could
made her thoughts play bumper cars and sent shivers up her arms. She wondered how long it would be before she stopped thinking about what-if.

What if she had died? Or maybe harder to take, what if the hero had saved
her?
What if—?

The ringing of the phone startled her. “Hello?”

“What’s this essay you sent me, Dora?”

It was her boss, Clyde. “I know it’s extra and you didn’t expect it, but I’d really like you to include—”

“Hey, you won’t get an argument from me. Why didn’t you tell
me you were supposed to be on that flight?”

“I didn’t know until I was at the scene and found out the plane’s destination. And then—” She changed the phone to the other ear—“then I had to live with it a while. Get used to the idea. Get my feelings down on paper.”

“Well, it’s good. Real good.”

Dora warmed to the praise. Praise from Clyde’s lips was as rare as chocolate on a lollipop. “Actually, what I’d like to write next is something about the hero. My chest is heavy with thoughts about him. And soon, those thoughts will need to come out.”

“Good. Get on it.”

“I can’t. Not yet.”

“Why not?”

It was hard to explain. “I’ve given you an article highlighting the hero’s actions; you’ve got the facts. But the deeper aspects of one man saving others … I haven’t worked through that yet.”

“The story’s hot now, Dora. It won’t wait for you to psychoanalyze the world.”

Not the world, just one man
. “I know that. But we don’t even know his name yet, so there’s still a chance for it to be timely.”

A moment of silence lingered. “Tell you what. You get in and talk to the survivors. See what they think about being saved by the guy, and then you’ll have some fuel to feed your story.”

“But the hospital … so far they’ve allowed no visitors except family.”

“But you’re nearly family.”

“How’s that?”

“You should have been on the plane with them. That’s a bond. Use it.”

“But I
wasn’t
on the plane. They might resent how God saved me from the experience they had to endure.”

“And God saved them from death. That’s a link. Go with it. Be their friend.”

“That sounds so cold. As if I’m using my experience to get a story.”

“You are. So what?”

She didn’t have a ready answer for his flip question.

“Dora? Will you do it? Or do I have to assign it to someone else?”

Low blow
. “I’ll try.”

“You do that. You’ve done good, Dora. Don’t stop now.”

She hung up but kept the phone in her lap. She wasn’t sure she could do this. How could she combine being a good reporter with being a decent human being who respected the survivors? For whatever reason, she
hadn’t
had the same experience they had. And only they knew what it felt like to live when their savior died.

Dora took a cleansing breath. Then she looked at the phone and realized something she could do to help move past the emotions that threatened to pull her under. She dialed a number she knew by heart. It rang and was answered.

And then Dora let herself stop being the reporter, the survivor of a close call, or even a grown-up. Dora Roberts became a kid again and let herself be comforted.

“Mom?”

Hugh and Floyd entered the warmth of the River Rescue office. The next shift had come on and looked to them expectantly.

“Hey, you two. That was some flying you—”