The Secret Letters (11 page)

“My father lived in the west.”

“Oh, not the literal west. Do you know what your totem animals are?”

“I don't know, maybe buffalo? How do you find out what they are?”

“We'd have to do the Medicine deck. We can do that next time you come.”

“Okay.” Maybe I would end up seeing her regularly like she was my psychiatrist, and every week she'd tell me how lucky I was going to be.

The next card was a tepee. “South. You need to be more introspective,” she said, and gave me a definition of the word “introspective,” though I already knew what it meant. “You need to go inside yourself and think about what's there.”

I'll bet that's just what a real psychiatrist would say, I thought. “This is really interesting,” I said. “I never thought about needing to be more introspective, but I'm sure it's a good idea.” At the same time I was saying this, I was growing anxious to wrap up the fortunetelling and head back to work. I thought about Ricky and Ray in the kitchen, and the lunch rush about to start, although I still hadn't gotten any information about my father, or really found out much of anything apart from the great, unspecified things that were about to happen. There were still a lot of cards on the table. “What about the future? I'm not trying to rush you or anything.”

“The future looks bright,” she said, turning over a card without looking at it. She had tilted her head and seemed to be listening to something. The card had a picture of a pissed-off wolf.

That was when I heard the sirens.

The air had turned to water and I fought through it in slo-mo. Before I could make it all the way across Main Street, three fire engines shot into my path, and firefighters jumped out of them like clowns from a clown-car, waving their arms and yelling at everyone to stand back. I tried to shove through the crowd to my restaurant, but three huge guys in yellow uniforms stood in my way, and when I tried to push past them to the front door, one of them blocked me. “Step out of the way, ma'am.” He looked ready to slug me.

“Hey, it's my building! What's going on?”

He gave me a pitying look and quit trying to tackle me. “There's a fire in the back.”

“Where are the people who were inside?”

“Everyone has been evacuated.”

“Thank God.” I let out the breath I had been holding. “How bad is the fire?”

“I don't have that information.” He turned away and started yelling to another guy in a yellow uniform. I was relieved to hear everyone was out of there, but I was still so filled with panic I couldn't breathe. As I stood behind the yellow sawhorse barriers the firefighters had put up and scanned the crowd, I didn't see Pam, Ricky, or Ray anywhere. I wondered where they were. People huddled beyond the barricades, enjoying the drama, and as the firefighters tried to move everyone even further out of the way, I spotted Heidi and my two daytime waitrons behind another sawhorse halfway down the street. I figured maybe Pam, Ricky, and Ray were with them, but I didn't see them.

Before I even knew what was on my mind, I started to taste fear in the back of my throat. I ducked to the edge of the crowd and began wrestling my way to the front
door of my restaurant. Everything looked normal, so I felt reassured for a moment, but then I glanced up and saw flames shooting out of the roof. It wasn't until much later that I thought about my apartment and all the Native American items I had bought at the fudge store over the past few months. All I could think about was where Pam, Ricky, and Ray were.

I ran up to the firefighter I had talked to before, still blocking the front door and talking on an oversized phone, and tugged on his heavy yellow sleeve. “Are you sure no one is in there?”

“We've cleared the dining room.”

“What about the kitchen?”

“We're investigating the circumference. Stand back, ma'am. You need to get out of the way. The building might come down,” he added matter-of-factly, like he didn't care if it did. He went back to shouting into his weird phone, and when he wasn't looking, I strolled casually over near the building next door, moving very slowly so no one would stop me. I could see smoke pouring out of its second-floor windows.

“Where's Pam?” a voice yelled behind me. I turned around and saw Milo. He looked as scared as I was, and that wasn't good.

“I don't know.” I sounded like I was strangling. “They told me everyone's out of there, but I don't see her, or Ricky or Ray. The firefighter said the building might collapse.” I choked on that last word.

“What if they're still in there?”

These were the exact words my brain was starting to scream to me.

While the firefighters were busy investigating the circumference, whatever that meant, we crept along the wall to Falling Water and peered through the front window. A thick shelf of smoke hung across the dining room, but apart from that, it looked the same as ever. All the tables were still set up, their napkins fanned the way Pam had
taught all the waitrons, and a few had half-eaten meals on them. The room looked clean and pretty except for the black cloud on top.

I looked around. The firefighters were off to the side, shouting for people to move as they unloaded long ladders and hoses from their big trucks. They didn't seem to notice us.

“Let's roll,” Milo hissed, shooting past me and through the front door. I was right behind him. In the few seconds we had been watching, the shelf of smoke had gotten even lower, and as we made a dash for the kitchen, we had to stoop so we could see where we were going. When Milo tried to push open the kitchen door, it stuck like it was bumping into something. He put his shoulder to it and shoved until it opened enough for him to squeeze through. I went in after him, dropping to my hands and knees where there was still some air. The power was out, and the smoke was so thick above me that I couldn't see anything except fire coming through the back wall, and a streak of light where the back door had burned through. The thick air was like an asthma attack only worse, but I held my breath and crawled toward the back door until I felt something warm under my hand. Someone's arm. I thrust myself forward and dug my shoulder into their armpit, yanked them onto my back as best I could, then turned and started to crawl in what I hoped was the right direction, dragging whoever it was behind me, since they were much too heavy to lift. As I turned, I thought I felt something else brush past me, maybe a leg. I struggled toward the dim, smoky light of the diamond-shaped window in the kitchen door and on my way, bumped into Milo. The fire was loud, but I could hear him talking to someone in a low, comforting voice and saying everything would be all right. I kept slogging past him, almost paralyzed by the heaviness of whoever I was dragging behind me, till I rolled us both out through the swinging door into the dining room.

Now the shelf of smoke was even lower, but I could still make out the front
door. I crawled between tables, struggling with the weight I carried, and was almost there when some firefighters in masks burst in, saw me, and pointed like they couldn't believe their eyes. One of them rushed forward and scooped whoever it was off my back, then another pulled me to my feet and yanked me out of the building. I could hear crashing sounds behind me as he let go and I fell down hard on the pavement. I was about to black out, but somehow I lifted my head and screamed that there was still someone in there, and some more firefighters took off running. I could hear loud, weird sounds, like some kind of animal, then realized I was making them. Tears were running out of my eyes and I could barely see, but I heard shouting behind me. Some guys in uniforms grabbed my arms and tried to put me in an ambulance, but I screamed at them until they let me go. I saw another ambulance just pulling away as I turned and spotted Milo crouching on the pavement with someone in his arms. They were both covered with soot, but I could tell it was Pam.

I tried to stumble toward them, but more uniformed people pushed me out of the way, grabbed her from Milo, and raced toward another ambulance at the curb. “I'm her sister,” I shouted, and they motioned for me to come along, maybe because I was covered with soot, too, and having trouble breathing. As they rolled Pam onto a stretcher and lifted her into the ambulance, I kept wheezing her name over and over while I climbed in after them and fell onto a long bench against the wall. Milo was right behind me. He was filthy, too, and stank of smoke. They let him kneel next to Pam while they slammed the door behind us and took off. Someone stuck an oxygen mask on my face and that seemed to help, but after a minute I yanked it off and told them I had asthma. A paramedic gave me an inhaler, but my lungs felt like I had breathed fire, and they burned when I put the mask back on. Through the ambulance's back window I could see Madame Rosa standing next to her blue neon sign, watching us drive away. I tried to look back at my restaurant, but I could only see giant arcs of water with clouds
of rainbow mist hanging from them.

“Gun it,” one of the paramedics called to the driver as we drove away. “That whole damn street could go up. All those old buildings, they're just wood.” The Wild Hare was right across the street from my restaurant, but if Milo heard, he didn't seem to care. He was on his knees, holding Pam's hand, brushing singed hair away from her face, and I could hear his low, soothing voice saying, “It's okay, sweetie, stay with us. Everything will be fine.” Her eyes were closed and she didn't respond.

Finally, the ambulance jerked to a stop and its doors shot open. The paramedics slid Pam's stretcher out of the back. I yanked my mask off and tried to follow but found I couldn't stand up. “Where are they taking her?” I croaked. No one answered me. “Where are we?”

“Shock Trauma Center,” one of the paramedics said.

“I'm her sister.”

“You need to go do her paperwork, then,” he said. “Go to the front desk.” Then he eyeballed me. “You don't look good. Tell them to check you out, too.” Before I knew it, I was in a cubicle where a nurse gave me another oxygen mask and told me to breathe into it. I tried to get up and leave, but a male nurse came in, stuck an IV in my arm, and ordered me to stay put. I tried to make him promise he would bring me any news of Pam, but he refused to commit to this. Somehow he reminded me of my ex-husband Brandon, not in a good way. I wondered if they knew each other, though nowadays, Brandon lived in Iowa with his new wife and a couple of ugly kids (Pam showed me their pictures on Facebook).

“Don't move,” he commanded as he left me there alone. I never saw him again, which was probably just as well, since in my woozy mind, I had already married him and had ugly kids with him, if only to get back at Brandon.

Lying there was torture. I had no idea why I couldn't breathe, maybe smoke
inhalation, asthma, or panic, but my lungs were shutting down. I tried taking the mask off and standing up, but the room started to spin, and I fell back down again. With the mask on, I forced myself to take long, even breaths, and after a while, the air started to feel like air again, like the first real air I had ever breathed. I guess I passed out then, and when I opened my eyes, a doctor was standing over me with a stethoscope. She listened to my chest and said I was okay, though I didn't feel okay.

“I need to see my sister.”

“She's in our hyperbaric chamber.” She explained a bunch of stuff about that, but I didn't understand it. “The other two went to Bayview. They have the best burn unit.”

“Is there a phone I could use?” I asked. She handed me her cellphone. I called the only person I could think of.

“Where the hell are you?” Norma sounded hysterical. “I've been watching the fire on TV and I'm about to lose my mind. They said five people were injured but they didn't give their names. Are you okay?”

“I'm fine. I'm at Shock Trauma,” I managed to choke out. “Pam's in here, too. They put her in this special chamber thing.”

“Where's Ricky?”

“Bayview Medical Center. Can you go over there? I'm going to stay here with Pam.”

“On my way. I'll call you when I get there.”

“I don't have a phone. I left it at work.” In fact, apart from my car keys and the tiny buffalo in my jeans pocket, I had nothing. When she hung up, I handed the doctor her phone, then lay down on the gurney and tried to catch my breath while my brain filled up with the nothingness. My building was on fire. My car was parked on Main Street, so maybe it was on fire now, too. I had nowhere to live. I had no kids, no
husband, not even a goldfish, and now the restaurant I had put my whole heart and soul into was burning down. And I didn't even have a fucking phone.

And I was stuck in a hospital. The night Donny had his motorcycle accident, we all sat in the county ER for hours not saying anything until finally the doctor came in, and we could see from his face what had happened. My mom fell on the floor screaming, all 400 pounds of her, and Frank rushed to her side and held her, rocking her like a baby, though he could barely get his arms around her. Norma was screaming, too, while Ricky, who was ten at the time, cried his eyes out, Tim punched a wall and stormed out, while Pam sobbed, and I sat there paralyzed, unable to cry or even move because part of me was gone. We needed Donny to come in and make clown faces, tickle my mom till she smacked him, tell us bad jokes, do a moonwalk, mess up our hair, then laugh at us, with his big goofy face that looked just like mine.

I hated hospitals, just hated them.

“Are you all right?” the doctor was asking me.

I was about to say sure, fine and dandy, when I started seeing spots. When I opened my eyes, I was in a wheelchair back in the goddamn ER, being steered through waves of people. I had no idea why the ER was so crowded. While I had been out there living my ordinary life, all these people were in crisis. I felt a crushing pain in my chest, and for a moment I thought I was having a heart attack, but I was just feeling sorry for the whole damn world.

In a new cubicle, I started puking my guts out at the same time as I was having another asthma attack. It took hours before they let me out of there, but finally, I talked a guy in scrubs into wheeling me up to the hyperbaric chamber, where I found Milo in the waiting room. I had no idea how much time had passed since the fire, but just judging from his appearance, it was centuries. He was normally clean-cut and preppie, like someone from Annapolis, but now he looked like one of those guys who tries to
clean your windshield when you stop at a light.

“Julie, thank God,” he said when he saw me. He leaned over the wheelchair and put his arms around me carefully. I hugged him back, hard, burying my face in his jacket, though it reeked of smoke. It had been a while since I had hugged a man, and it felt amazing. I could have stayed like that forever, but he peeled me off him and asked, “Are you okay?”

“Oh, sure, fine. How is she?”

“They don't know yet. She has to stay in the hyperbaric chamber for a while.”

“Did you see her?”

“They let me stay with her in ICU, before they put her in the chamber. I told them I was her husband so they'd let me in.”

There was something incredibly sad about this. I didn't know much about his wife, but I knew she had died of cancer, and it had taken a long time. I figured he had spent some serious time in ICU and knew the ropes. “Is she awake?”

“Not yet.” He sounded so hopeful that I was almost able to stifle the voices of doom in my head. For me, hospitals meant death and destruction, but he seemed upbeat, telling me about the chamber and how great it was, how it housed twenty-three people and was the only multi-chambered hyperbaric unit in the state, and other facts I wasn't interested in. I only wanted to hear him say that Pam would be okay.