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Authors: Charles Atkins

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BOOK: Best Place to Die
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With her eyes adjusted to the dark, Lil turned, catching the outline of Ada's close-cropped silver hair, and glints of moonlight through high transom windows reflected in her blue eyes. Ada's hand reached under the covers and found hers. She squeezed.

‘Must be a fire,' Lil said.

‘Oh, God,' Ada whispered, clearly frightened.

‘I know,' Lil said, the two of them having recently survived a devastating fire. ‘It's close, but not that close.' She let go Ada's hand, and got out of bed. Her heart pounded as she went to the sliding glass doors, and drew back the green silk drapes that Ada had just sewn. The moon was near full and dawn – because of the recent shift forward to daylight savings – was still a good hour away. The backs of their adjoined condos in this carefully planned retirement community in the rolling hills of Litchfield County Connecticut faced east and had tremendous privacy on account of acres of protected wetlands.

‘Can you see anything?' Ada asked.

‘No.' Lil pulled up the latch on the sliders, and bent down to pull out the safety bar. Stepping into the cool and dewy dark morning she caught glimmers of flashing red lights over the condos and sloping hills to her right, and the sounds of sirens wailing from the north.
Something big
. She shuddered, while from behind her Ada had turned on the TV and was flipping through the channels.

A light went on in Ada's condo, her nearly seventeen-year-old grandson, Aaron, was up. He opened the bathroom window and yelled out, ‘Lil, what's going on?'

‘Has to be a fire; I'm trying to figure where it's coming from.' She stood still, imagining a map of Grenville and the surrounding towns. This is where she'd lived her entire life – all sixty-one years – with the exception of four at Smith College in North Hampton, Massachusetts where she'd gotten an English degree with a focus on journalism. ‘It's coming from the north.'
Not Grenville proper
she thought,
but heading out on Old Farm Road
. Her mind ran scenes of the
old
Old Farm Road of her childhood. Harrington's idyllic orchards with apple picking in the fall, berries in late spring and summer and a corn-stalk maze for Halloween. Theirs had been the only pies her mother would buy, and then the Harringtons died and their fourteen hundred acres of mature orchards had been sold. As she mentally traveled down Old Farm, trying to pinpoint the sirens, she realized there wasn't a single patch of farmland left. Instead, it was strip malls, with jumbo-chain drug stores that had killed the two local pharmacies. There was an office-supply megastore, a cluster of old brick municipal buildings that housed the police and fire departments, the spanking-new library whose board she sat on, more strip malls, the supermarket that had recently changed owners again, and many empty stores, some quite massive, victims of the recent recession, which was supposedly over. And finally, with her gaze focused over a copse of white pine and budding hickory and maple she saw what could have been a blossoming cloud, and it wasn't coming from the sky but from the ground.
Dear Lord,
she prayed,
let it be one of the empty stores and not . . .

‘Lil,' Ada called from inside the condo, backlit by the flickering screen, her voice cracked . . . ‘It's on Channel Eight. What have I done? Oh, God!'

‘What? Where's it coming from?' But she already knew, and it filled her with dread.

‘It's Nillewaug. My mother. We have to go. Oh Lil, what if?' And Ada's short, spry frame dressed in blue silk pajamas bolted from bed and vanished into the walk-in closet.

‘Don't even think it,' Lil said as she ran back in and stared at the flat screen, where a news crew was filming a nightmarish scene. The central building of Nillewaug Village – the one where Ada's mother, Rose Rimmelman, had recently moved to a first floor apartment – was on fire. Bright orange flames shot over the roof and smoke obscured the upper floors, while on the ground frail residents in nightclothes and underwear were being herded by EMTs and firefighters, their glimpsed expressions confused and frightened. Lil stared at the screen, searching for Rose Rimmelman's short, stocky frame.

A knock at their bedroom door. ‘Grandma, Lil, you guys decent?' Aaron had let himself in with his key.

‘Give us a second,' Lil shouted back, and heading toward the closet pulled off the thin nightdress, one of several Ada had made out of a bolt of unbleached Egyptian linen she'd found at the flea market. In the closet – the right side being mostly Ada's, as was readily apparent from the lush and vibrant colors, and the left being mostly Lil's, a symphony of conservative grays, blues, dark greens and browns – the two women dressed hurriedly.

Ada turned, her expression wide eyed and scared. ‘Oh, Lil.'

Without pause, they hugged. Ada's heart beat too fast and she was fighting back tears.

‘Lil, what have I done? Oh, God . . .'

‘We don't know what's going on. We have to find out,' Lil said, holding her tight, wanting her to know that everything would be OK.

They threw on whatever seemed quick and right. For Lil it was a pair of flannel-lined LL Bean jeans and a dark gray pullover. And with no time to braid her long, still mostly blonde, hair, she grabbed a seldom-used scrunchy and yanked it back into a messy pony tail. Ada grabbed her favorite robin's-egg-blue fleece sweat suit and zipped up. With rubber-soled walking shoes in hand they headed back toward the bed.

‘OK to come in?' Aaron asked from outside the bedroom.

‘Sure,' Lil said.

‘Are you going to be warm enough?' Ada asked, as her tall and handsome hazel-eyed grandson entered in jeans and a black zip-up hoodie, his sandy hair as badly mussed as hers. Aaron's father, Jack, or, as Ada referred to him, ‘That right-wing Nazi', had essentially kicked the teenage boy out of the home for being gay. He'd sought shelter with his grandmother who loved him beyond words. And to this point, he was the only one who knew about Ada and Lil, and that they were more than just good friends.

‘I'm fine,' he said. ‘Who's driving?'

‘We'll take my car,' Lil said, and, grabbing her brown leather satchel, made for the front door. On the way she spotted her Canon digital camera/camcorder – the one she used for her weekly columns about antiques in the
Litchfield Sentinel.
She unplugged it from the laptop and dropped it in the bag.

The trio moved fast down the steep walk Ada had dubbed the ‘goat path' that separated their adjoined condos from the others in the cul-de-sac. At the bottom of the hill were a few guest parking spots and the garage. Lil hit the button on the side of her bay and waited as the door rose, revealing her new pearl-white Lincoln Town Car – an absurd gas-guzzler, but a brand and make that held too many good memories for her even to consider something different. Plus, as they piled in, the thing was damn comfortable, reliable as a Swiss watch and if some crazed psycho decided they wanted to ram you – repeatedly – as had happened to her last fall, it was built like a tank.

As she drove, taking the right out of the Pilgrim's Progress gate, she sensed Ada's panic, her gaze fixed out the side window. As the crow flies, Nillewaug Village is less than a mile from their condos, but the drive is more than twice that on account of the swamp that separates the properties. From Pilgrim's Progress a couple of rights brought them to the four-way intersection with Old Farm. But as soon as she'd made that final turn she had to pull to the curb as a caravan of screaming emergency vehicles barreled past – a hook and ladder from two towns away, the Grenville Fire Marshall in a bright red blazer, two ambulances, and a Grenville police cruiser. Behind them other sirens were rapidly approaching, and, rather than lose more time, Lil got back on the road, and sped the rest of the way.

As the widow of Dr Bradley Campbell, Lil was far from squeamish. At least she didn't used to think so. She'd helped deliver babies, applied pressure to gaping wounds that should have gone to the emergency room, but because everyone trusted Bradley – and his discretion – they'd come to their front door, typically in the dead of night. She'd calmed grieving parents, and distracted children as Bradley had set bones or popped dislocated shoulders back into place. But as they drove to Nillewaug Village, the largest assisted-care facility in Western Connecticut, she knew that she'd never encountered anything so horrifying.

Still dark, the morning pulsed with hundreds of flashing lights, but it was the flames – bright orange and clearly not under control, shooting stories high into the sky that made her breath catch and triggered memories of another fire, not so long ago in which Ada and she had nearly died.

‘They're not going to let us through,' Aaron fretted, as they approached the drive for Nillewaug. State troopers were setting blue wooden barriers across both lanes of Old Farm. On the wrong side a news crew – likely the one that had filmed the footage they'd seen on the news – had cameras trained on the unfolding tragedy. Behind them, more sirens, and Lil made a quick decision. Pulling into the right lane she headed toward the barriers and lowered her window.

A trooper in gray and blue, who couldn't have been more than twenty-five came over. ‘Ma'am, I'm sorry, but you're going to have to turn back this road . . .'

Lil interrupted, and, using the same take-no-prisoners tone that had gotten her entry into countless emergency rooms and operating suites in the past, said, ‘I'm Lillian Campbell – Doctor Campbell's wife and assistant.' She didn't want to say more, and hoped this young trooper, whose attention was now being pulled by advancing ambulances and fire trucks, wouldn't ask questions such as, ‘
Didn't Doctor Campbell die nearly three years ago?
'

‘OK, fine,' he said, and pulled back the barrier, as an ambulance laid on the horn wanting to get through.

Without pause, she drove past. Knowing the starfish-shaped layout of Nillewaug, with its wide hedge-lined drive, sprawling central structure and outer buildings, which included an Alzheimer's unit, rehab facility, adult day care, and others whose purpose she didn't know, she steered toward the access road that ran around the periphery.

‘Lil, please just park,' Ada said, her hand on the latch. ‘I've got to find her.'

‘OK.' She edged off the road not fifty yards from the burning building.

Before they'd made a full stop, Ada was out with Aaron jogging behind her. Lil stayed back at a distance, keeping them in view and remembering something Bradley often said: ‘
The first thing to do at the sight of an accident is check a pulse . . . your own.
' Sound advice, as she surveyed the chaotic scene, more than a dozen fire trucks – Grenville only owned two – ambulances, cruisers, and more arriving. The smell of smoke, but not like a wood fire; this was acrid and laced with burning vinyl siding and something else, like gas or oil. She thought of the hundreds of residents, many of whom she knew.
Please, God, let everyone be OK, let them make it through this night.

And then she pulled her camera from out of the bag. She looked at it, a part of herself questioning her motives, so much chaos.
Is this really what you should be doing now?
She started snapping. Zooming in and watching through the LED screen. Looking up as Ada and Aaron disappeared down a walking path dangerously close to the burning structure. ‘Wait,' she shouted, and ran after them. This was crazy, feeling a spike of terror – Ada wouldn't try to go in . . . would she? The saga of the past several months of trying to pry Ada's mother, Rose, out of her rent-controlled apartment in the Lower East Side, the bitter mother-daughter exchanges. And finally, after yet another fall where Rose had been left lying on the floor for more than an hour before emergency personnel were able to break down her door, she'd finally acquiesced to the move. Thank God she'd had her call button around her neck, but even with that . . .

‘Ada!' Lil shouted, clearing the edge of the rehab building, and getting an unobstructed view of the fire. With camera in hand, she couldn't help herself, the scene both horrifying and spectacular. She framed and captured vivid images as hoses, braced by pairs of firefighters, shot pressurized streams of water through shattered windows. She zoomed in close as a female firefighter, her face blackened, exited the building, with one arm around the waist of a confused-looking woman in a filthy pink robe, her other hand pressing a mask to the woman's face. A pair of paramedics raced toward them with a stretcher, its green oxygen tank and bright-red metal kit strapped on top. As the firefighter released her charge to the medics, the elderly woman looked back. With a shock, Lil recognized her – Gladys Hendricks, her face was contorted in anguish, as the medics placed a new mask over her nose and mouth and strapped her to the gurney. Lil's thoughts tumbled.
Where's Ada?
Turning in place. ‘Ada!'

‘Up there!' a male voice shouted, an arm pointed toward the roof.

Lil looked up and saw a lump at the roof's edge. Impossible to make out, and she pressed the telephoto button as far as it could go. In the screen the lump took on form . . . human form. As the resolution sharpened she saw it was a woman –
oh God, no
– with thin gray hair, her scalp visible through the fine strands. She wasn't moving and, ignoring tears that spilled down her cheek, Lil sidled to the left, not wanting to impede the firefighters and medics ferrying Nillewaug residents to a string of ambulances that had coalesced into a kind of taxi line on the access road. Staring at the camera's LED screen, she kept the focus grid on the woman's head, all the while praying that some movement would show she was alive, that they'd get up to the roof, bring her down and all would be well. Nearly banging her knee on a small bench, she moved a few steps forward, and had a clear shot of the woman's face, as she lay with her eyes closed, her head resting on the brick edging. ‘Betty . . .' Lil's breath caught as she recognized Mrs Grasso, a retired first-grade teacher at Pond Elementary. She stared at the screen –
please be alive
– willing her to breathe. Tears spilled as she tried to steady the camera. A ladder with a firefighter in a cherry picker telescoped up the side of the building, and while Lil knew that recording this was ghoulish, she shifted the camera to video mode and followed him.

BOOK: Best Place to Die
5.98Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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