The Bridge (9 page)

“Christa.”

“We didn’t die,” she says.

I grope for her hand. “The others?”

She shakes her head. “A cop. And the mother of…of that family. She pushed the little one behind her and—” Her left hand tightens in mine.

My throat is sore, like after I had my appendix removed. I was queasy then, too, from the anesthesia. They must have had to do surgery, an intubation. I pull aside my hospital gown. There’s a heavy bandage just under my ribcage, sealed tightly behind plastic. It hurts to breathe.

“You got hit in the stomach with some shrapnel. It was…imbedded in the bomb. The couple beside you was hit in the legs. They each had amputations. Everyone else—it was burns mostly, smoke inhalation.”

I reach for her right hand, run my finger along the gauze. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. It’s a burn. It’ll heal. I’ll have a scar on my face. Who cares, Henry?” Her dark eyes well up and she swipes the tears away with her free arm.

“Christa.”

I think of the boy’s shoe, lying bloody on the pavement. What made him think his life was so fucking cheap? That ours were?

And yet he only tried to do to me what I had every intention of doing to myself. It’s barbaric that I get to live, when those other people died. Those innocent people, who will never get a chance to do what they intended with their lives.

If Christa had been hurt…if he’d killed her…

Another wave of nausea sweeps over me and I have to lean forward, to rest my head in my hands.

A resident comes over to check my vitals and tell us that the police will arrive soon. They’ve already questioned Christa. They don’t know yet that I saw the boy’s face.

“Your parents are on their way,” Christa says. “They were in France, I think? They should be here by morning.”

I’d planned to be back on the bridge tower in the morning.

I’m not going back to that tower.

It might be brutal, this life. It might hurt so bad I think I can’t take it. But I’m not leaving Christa here to fend for herself. There is a bridge between one chasm of despair and another, and I can cross it if I choose to. It’s full of beauty that hurts just as deeply as pain. It’s full of the force and faultiness of my own heart. It’s full of loss.

It’s full of love. It’s full of her. It’s full of hope, which is the cruelest thing of all.

I might love her, and she might die anyway, and evil might win, and there’s nothing I can do, and that is the risk I take by living.

“Henry,” she says. “Stay with me.”

I pull her onto the bed beside me. It hurts like hell. I don’t want it to end.

“I’m here,” I say.