Red Heart Tattoo (11 page)

She saw the logic in his suggestion. “Will you come back?”

“Every chance I get.”

“I love you, Trent.”

“Love you too, babe.”

The room fell silent and she knew he had gone. All she heard were sounds from machines and heat registers and her mother’s light snoring. With her teeth chattering, Morgan snuggled back down under the covers. She felt helpless. She was cold and blind, but knowing that Trent was in the immediate vicinity comforted her. And if he was able to sneak past her sleeping mother, he was pretty stealthy, so she was sure he’d do it again. She sighed and fell asleep secure in that thought.

She awoke to the feel of a blood pressure cuff being tightened on her upper arm. “Just taking your vitals,” a voice said. “I’m Mary Lou, your day nurse.”

“Is it daytime?” Morgan’s world was dark.

“Friday morning,” the nurse said.

“My mother—”

“Ran down to the cafeteria. Said she’d be right back.”

“Is the sun shining?”

“Off and on. Do you need some help with your breakfast? You have a trayful of food.”

The smell of food drifted to Morgan. She was hungry,
but had no idea of how to handle a tray she couldn’t see. Was someone going to have to feed her as if she were a baby? “I’ll wait for Mom.”

The nurse slid a banana into Morgan’s hand. “Good source of potassium. You should be able to handle this on your own.”

The shape of the fruit was familiar, but without seeing it, Morgan had no idea how ripe it might be. She only liked bananas when they were just turning yellow, barely sweet. Without her eyesight, she felt useless. “Maybe later.”

“An occupational therapist will be in later this morning,” the nurse said brightly.

“A what?”

“A therapist. A person who’ll help you cope while the bandages are in place on your eyes. Just some pointers and coping skills. It’ll be very helpful.”

“But the bandages are temporary.”

“True, but you still want to be able to feed yourself and handle personal hygiene, don’t you?”

Morgan couldn’t dispute that. She didn’t like being helpless and dependent, no matter how short the time it would take for her corneas to heal. “All right,” she said, feeling tears rising behind her bandages. “I guess it will help me.”

“Of course it will.”

Morgan raised the banana to her nose, sniffed and discovered the scent strong, full. The skin felt thick and she guessed it was less to the ripe side than the overripe side. Bravely she found the correct end and broke the
skin. She slowly lowered the peel from all sides and ate the perfectly delicious piece of fruit.

She was munching dry cereal when her mother breezed into the room. “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long. The cafeteria line was a mile long.”

“It’s okay. I’m just groping my way through breakfast.”

“You made a joke. You must be feeling better.”

Morgan wanted to say that her nocturnal visit from Trent had made the difference in her outlook, but she kept her promise to him and said nothing.

“You want milk on that cereal?” Paige asked.

“I wasn’t sure I could pour it without spilling. Chewing it dry is fine. I’ll drink the milk afterward. It all goes to the same place, doesn’t it?”

Paige laughed and Morgan liked the sound of it. “Where’s Dad?”

“He’s in the office dealing with piled-up work. He’ll sleep here tonight and I’ll work tomorrow.”

“I guess this is a big mess for you attorneys.”

“Everyone’s scrambling. The only thing the cops are certain of is that a bomb went off. No leads yet on who might have done it.”

Someone set a bomb? At Edison? On
purpose
? “Why? Who would do that?”

“That’s a mystery.”

“Tell me what you know,” Morgan said. “Kids must have been hurt.”

“Thirty-seven were wounded, not all seriously, though.”

Paige was going to back into the statistics, Morgan realized. “And what else?”

“Seven people are still in the hospital.”

“And?” She urged her mother to tell her everything and steeled herself for what might be coming.

“And nine people died—seven students, two teachers.” Paige’s voice caught. “You were so lucky.”

Morgan felt nauseous. “Who?”

“A history teacher. Principal Simmons. He was just coming down the stairs when the explosion happened. The staircase fell.”

Morgan began to tremble. Simmons was a good guy. She saw him in her mind’s eye pushing his glasses up on his nose, as was his habit. “And the kids?”

“Perhaps now isn’t the time—”

“Tell me!” She flung the miniature cereal box across the room. “My friends? Oh my God! Where’s Kelli?” Morgan recalled that Kelli had been sitting, sullen and uncommunicative, farther down the wall from her and Trent.

Paige grabbed Morgan’s hands. “No, no. It’s all right. Kelli was hurt—a concussion, several broken ribs—but she’s going to be fine.”

Weak with relief, Morgan sagged. “Where is she?”

“Upstairs on another floor.”

“I want to see her. I want to visit her. Take me to her.”

“And you will. She’s fine, honey. Really.” Paige paused, squeezed Morgan’s hands. “Unfortunately, though, she lost her baby.”

“S
o how’s the local hero?”

Roth glanced up at Liza as she marched into his living room. He was stretched out on the sofa, bundled in Carla’s quilts, holding a joystick and firing torpedoes at alien life-forms on the TV screen. He pressed the pause button to hold his place in the game. “He’s crazy bored.”

“How are your hands? Look hammered-up to me.”

Band-Aids covered the worst of the deep cuts. He’d torn a fingernail off digging through the rubble and needed ten stitches in one palm. His forehead had taken five stitches to repair. “The scars will give me character.”

The coffee table was laid out with snacks, drinks, books and a pile of game cards. “How can you be bored? Looks like you’ve got everything you need right here.”

“Everything except my freedom. Max took my keys,
won’t let me drive for another few days.” He held up a fruit platter. “Want some health food?”

Relieved that Roth was talking to her after the argument they’d had in her bedroom weeks before, Liza sat in the recliner beside the sofa. She’d had to suck up her courage to drop by unannounced, afraid he might have told her not to come over if she’d called first. She’d been frantic to see him, to know he was all right.

“I want to apologize for what I said—” she started.

He waved her off. “I shouldn’t have gotten so twisted up about it. After this bombing, it doesn’t seem important, does it?”

She agreed with a rush of gratitude. She hated being estranged from Roth. “Max and Carla at the shop?” she asked, changing the subject.

“Yes.” They had gone to work at the Ink Spot for the first time in four days. The whole town was in mourning, but things were beginning to settle down. Life went on, no matter how heavy the losses. “What’ve you been doing now that school’s shut down?” Edison was closed until further notice. Makeup days would be tacked onto the end of the school term.

“I’ve been to two funerals and a memorial service.”

“Sorry,” Roth said. “Were they friends?”

“No. I didn’t know the kids who were buried, but I felt like I should go. Popular kids have lots of kids who attend their funerals, but the not-so-popular ones? Not so much. Crappy way to go out. One girl was buried on her thirteenth birthday.”

Roth spat out a swearword, turned on his game and killed several more aliens before pausing again.

“Feel better?” she asked.

“No.”

“You hear anything … you know, about suspects?”

He put the joystick on the coffee table. He wasn’t ready to say he might be a suspect. “Just what’s on the news. Sick of the talking heads hashing it over. How about you?”

“Drove past the school yesterday. The cops and crime scene people are still crawling all over the place. FBI too. Bombs are taken real seriously.”

Roth recalled his fireworks prank. Stupid of him. Nothing funny about things blowing up. “Were you there the day it happened?”

“I was standing across the street finishing up a cig. I had a note from home, though, so I wasn’t in any hurry to get to class. I saw you running toward the front door.” She almost added,
I didn’t want you to go inside
, but didn’t.

“I was running at first because I was late, and I
didn’t
have a note,” he said. “So you saw the atrium explode from across the street?”

“Boom,” she said. “Scared the crap out of me.”

“What did you do?”

“Just stood and watched the building clear. I wanted to run too, but it was like I was glued in place. Couldn’t move my feet. Kids were running and screaming, but I was in a trance. Nothing seemed real even though I saw all this dust and glass shoot from the atrium. The kids, the ones who got out, well, we all just stood there staring like it
wasn’t really happening. The cops had the place surrounded in no time and finally they herded us all onto buses and drove us to the civic auditorium. Our parents came to pick us up if we weren’t hurt. You were busy rescuing people, so you missed the roundup.”

“It was one hell of a day.” Roth ran his hands through his hair. “You been by the hospital?”

Liza’s radar went up. “I haven’t seen your girlfriend, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Knock it off. Morgan’s not my girlfriend. I’m just trying to keep track of the kids I helped.”

Liza bit her tongue. She didn’t want out of his good graces again. “Okay, sorry. Cheap shot. Just not used to thinking of you as a Rescue Ranger.” She took a deep breath, decided to make a peace offering. “Would you like me to drive you over to the hospital so you can check in on her yourself?”
Please say no….

She saw anticipation spring into Roth’s eyes. “You’d do that?”

Disappointed by his reaction, she shrugged with pretended indifference. “Got nothing else to do.”

“Let me do a couple of things first. Back in a jiff.” He threw back the quilts.

She’d been the one to make the offer, so she had no one to blame except herself for his taking her up on it. “You going to call Max and Carla to let them know we’re leaving the house?”

“Easier to get forgiveness than permission,” Roth said, pushing himself off the sofa.

Liza watched him limp from the room, wondering with all her heart if he’d have gone to see her if she’d been the one hospitalized.

“You want to come up?” Roth asked once he and Liza were in the hospital lobby.

“Don’t want to crash your reunion.”

“Your call.”

“Some other time,” she said, backing away. She grabbed a seat and started thumbing through a three-year-old magazine from a nearby table as if it were just off the rack.

“I won’t take long.”

“I’ll wait here.” She blinked back stinging tears but never looked up.

Roth ducked into the hospital’s gift shop and looked around for some small gift so that he wouldn’t show up in Morgan’s room empty-handed. The store was full of chintzy junk that made him gag, but he finally settled on a small stuffed dog. It was meant for young children, but so what? He knew girls liked stuffed animals. He paid for it, crossed to the information desk and asked for Morgan’s room number. During his elevator ride to the fifth floor, he wasn’t remembering Morgan covered with cement dust and debris from the explosion. He was remembering her at the homecoming dance, twirling on the stadium grass in the moonlight. He was seeing her face turned up to his, her lips moist and soft, her hair spilling around her shoulders and his fingers tugging through the long strands.

When he arrived at her room, he paused, peered in. Morgan was sitting upright in the bed, a tray table in front
of her with an assortment of objects on it. She was fingering each object, carefully defining it in her hands, then putting it down and moving on to the next item. It was then that he saw that her eyes were bandaged. Shock hit him like a wall. For a moment, he teetered, undecided about entering the room. Without warning, her head lifted and her face turned toward the door. “Who’s there? I know someone’s there. Who is it?”

Making up his mind in an instant, he went inside. “It’s Stuart Rothman.”

“Roth?”

“One and the same.”

Morgan held out her hands. This was the person who’d made her emotions go haywire for months, and now here he was. She had no way of knowing what she looked like at the moment, but she was sure that she in no way resembled the girl he’d been with on the night of the dance. “Oh, Roth … I—I didn’t know … I can’t see….”

“Your eyes—”

“Temporary,” she said quickly. “That’s what my doctor believes. I was looking right at the bomb when it went off. I didn’t even have time to blink.”

“But you’re going to be all right?”

“That’s what I’m being told. What about you?”

“Stitches. A few cuts and bruises. Banged up a leg crawling over chunks of concrete. I’m fine.”

She asked, “Do you mind if I hold your hand? It helps ground me, so I’m not floating in a void with voices coming out of nowhere.”

Of course he didn’t mind. “Suits me.”

She took hold of his hand, which was covered with a large gauze bandage. “Mom told me that you were the one who pulled me out. She said that the rest of the staircase fell just after you did. Thank you for saving me.”