The Price of Fame - KJ1 (3 page)

Kate’s lips were almost directly behind the blonde’s ear; murmuring
soothing words, she tried to comfort her, wishing with her whole heart
that she could take this woman’s pain away. To distract her, she began
asking questions.

“What’s your name?”

“J-jam-mison P-p-p-p-parker.”

“Is that five p’s or six?”

“V-very funny,” Jay said, rolling her eyes. But she smiled just the
same, a fact that warmed Kate to the core.

“That’s a pretty name.”

“M-my f-friends call me Jay.”

“Ooh. Are you including me in that number?”

“S-sure.”

“Boy, you’re easy.”

“D-don’t let it g-get around.”

“Hey, your secret’s safe with me. You’re a student, right?”

“Y-yes, a sophomore.”

Kate looked around impatiently; where the hell was the team? As
brave as this young woman was being, she was in shock and hurting, her
leg was clearly broken, and it was vital to get her off the mountain and
taken care of. She took out her radio once again and asked what the
holdup was.

“Almost there, Kate; we’re doing the best we can.”

At that moment, Robbie skied up. “Whatcha got, Kate?”

She jerked her head in the direction of the big gorilla and explained
to Robbie, who actually made the guy look small, what had happened.

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The Price of Fame

“Get him out of my sight,” she hissed. Hearing the tone in her voice,
Robbie
did just that.

Kate turned her attention back to her patient, whose lips were
starting to turn blue, and whose skin was very pale.

“Is my leg broken? It h-hurts s-so much.”

“I think so. No dancing at the Winter Carnival Ball for you, I’m
afraid.”

“D-darn. And I was s-so counting on b-bringing F-fred Astaire as my
d-date.”

“Um, isn’t he dead, Jay?”

“Is he? See, there’s another r-r-reason I c-can’t g-go.”

Kate was utterly charmed.

Just then a snowmobile came over the rise, instantly heading for the
crossed skis in the snow. Behind it was a litter with all manner of
medical equipment and four more members of the ski patrol. As soon as
they pulled up, Kate apprised them of the skier’s condition, noting
possible frostbite, exposure, shock, a likely broken leg and dislocated
shoulder. As they worked to get her leg stabilized and her arm
immobilized, the older woman swathed her in blankets and grasped her
good hand, leaning over so that Jay could see her face.

Softly she asked, “Is there anyone you want me to call for you? Your
parents?”

Jay hesitated and her face took on a far away look; for a second,
Kate wondered if she had heard her. Quietly, the younger woman said,

“N-no, there’s no one.”

Something about the way she said it made Kate want to ask more
questions, but she didn’t want to push her just then. Instead she said,

“How about a friend? Someone to meet you at the hospital?”

“Thanks. I’ll c-call my friend S-sarah when I get there; she’s got a c-car. Thanks for taking c-care of me; you m-make a great t-toaster oven.”

Kate smiled at her, gave her fingers one last squeeze, and assured her
that she was in great hands just before the sled started moving down the
mountain.

Sighing, Kate zipped her jacket back up, put her sunglasses and
gloves back on, and stepped into her skis. For the rest of her shift, which
lasted another five hours, she couldn’t stop thinking of Jay. Finally, when
she couldn’t stand it anymore, she made her way to the base patrol hut,
signed herself out, and drove to the hospital.

Going to the emergency room, she talked to the nurse on duty, asking
after the young co-ed’s condition. She was told that the patient was
treated for a dislocated shoulder, a severely broken leg, and some minor
frostbite on her fingers; she had been released only half an hour earlier
21

Lynn Ames

and
left with a friend. Satisfied that Jay had been well cared for, Kate
headed back to her dorm for a hot shower.

Kate shook her head to clear it. Gene zoomed in on the child as the journalist first took the time to comfort the girl and then began leveraging her weight to try to move the pillar off of her. With a monumental effort, she was able to shift the marble just enough to slide the youngster’s body out from underneath. She hugged the girl to her briefly and called for a fireman who was speaking into a two-way radio nearby to come and carry the child to safety. Then Kate moved on to the next victim.

At 2:45 p.m. Jay walked back into her hotel room after her run. She grabbed the remote and flicked the TV on to CNN as she peeled her sweaty running clothes off on her way to the shower. She had a little over an hour before her interview with the governor, and her run had, as always, helped her to focus on the questions she wanted to ask and the ground she wanted to cover in the piece. She turned the shower on, adjusted the temperature, and stepped in, sighing with pleasure when the hot spray hit abused muscles.

A half-hour later, she emerged from the bathroom wearing a hotel bathrobe and toweling her hair, freezing in mid step on her way to the closet when she heard the familiar voice. Jay checked the logo in the corner of the screen; yep, it was CNN. What was Katherine doing on CNN? Then her mind registered the words.

“To recap, then...” the anchorwoman was saying. Jay sat down heavily at the foot of the bed, her eyes riveted to the TV; the scene unfolding on the screen was bedlam. She watched in horror as the camera shook violently but somehow remained focused on Kate, who was being tossed in the air like a mannequin. Jay gasped out loud and clutched a pillow to her chest.

At that moment, her hotel room phone rang. “Hello,” she said numbly.

“Ms. Parker, this is Ms. Winston from the governor’s office.

Unfortunately, something has come up and the governor is going to be unable to keep his appointment with you this afternoon.”

The writer marveled at the woman’s power for understatement as she watched the images of the capitol on her TV screen.

“We will be in touch with either you or your editor later today or tonight to reschedule. We are very sorry for the inconvenience.”

Inconvenience,
Jay thought.
That’s what you call it when the capitol
is destroyed by a bomb?

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The Price of Fame

“That’s quite all right, Ms. Winston, though I would like to reschedule as soon as possible.”

“Of course, we’ll be in touch sometime later today. Thank you for your patience.”

Jay was already refocusing on CNN. When Kate came back into view following the explosion, she seemed unfazed, despite the fact that half the building behind her was now missing. When she turned and ran toward the building, Jay jumped up from the bed, screaming at her to get back. “No, Katherine. No!” The younger woman buried her head in her hands. This was like some bad suspense thriller; it couldn’t be real. But it was.

Jay’s first reaction was to go to her, but as she started to throw off her robe and pull on jeans, she realized the impossibility of the task. There was no way, with all that chaos, that she was going to be able to get anywhere near where the anchorwoman was at the moment. She growled in frustration and began pacing the room while she watched.

The CNN anchor was overlaying his voice over the footage of Kate running into the capitol. “You’re watching dramatic live video of reporter Katherine Kyle of WCAP-TV in Albany, New York, where two explosions have just rocked the capitol building. Let’s listen in...”

The audio switched back to Kate just as she reached the little girl. Jay smiled wistfully at the woman’s efforts to comfort the child; it reminded her of the events of that day on the ski slope half a decade earlier.

Jay lay on her bed, her leg propped up on a pillow and her arm
resting on yet another pillow. She was groggy from pain medication and
tired from her daylong ordeal. She had been completely dazed by the
impact that had blown her off her skis. All she remembered was her
rescuer’s face, full of concern, as she had leaned over her on the trail.

Jay knew that she must have died and gone to Heaven, because she could
swear that the woman bending over her was the same one she had seen
on campus the previous autumn.
My God,
she thought foggily,
what unbelievable eyes.
They were such a vivid shade of blue and so
incredibly intense.

Jay had been in so much pain, but the low timbre of that voice
whispering soothing words in her ear and that warm, solid, comforting
presence holding her was enough to make it bearable and to make her
want to be strong. She could have stayed in that cocoon listening to that
woman forever. In truth, she had felt a certain sense of loss when the
jacket was unzipped and the warm body slid out from behind her. And
then it occurred to Jay that she hadn’t even gotten the woman’s name.

How stupid was that?

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Lynn Ames

Jay sighed, turning her attention back to the coverage. CNN stayed with Kate live as she rescued the child, and then began interspersing images and audio of the reporter assisting other victims with the footage shot earlier of her interviewing the senate majority leader, anchoring a newscast, background information about her, commentary about the capitol, and speculation about how many people might have been in the building at the time of the explosions. They interviewed experts about the type of incendiary device that might have been used, other experts about the hot issues in New York state politics at the moment, still more experts about what person or groups might have been behind the attack, and everything else CNN could think of to round out the dramatic story that was unfolding less than ten miles from Jay’s hotel room.

When she got tired of CNN’s experts, Jay flipped the channel to WCAP. There was the dark-haired journalist, crawling on her stomach in what appeared to be a very unstable area of the capitol, trying to reach a middle-aged man who was partially buried under a piece of the ceiling.

Although the image was dark, Jay could see that Kate’s once immaculate suit was shredded and covered in blood, her face and hands streaked with ash and small cuts. Her voice sounded tired and strained as she talked to the man and began digging at the rubble. The sight made the blonde’s guts clench. “Oh, Katherine,” she sighed sadly.

At 11:45 p.m., when Jay couldn’t stand it anymore and it looked as though the station was about to end its coverage, she called the front desk and hailed a cab to take her downtown in the vicinity of the capitol. The closest the cabbie could get her was two blocks away. He pointed out the direction in which she needed to go and shook his head at her; everyone wanted a piece of the action, he reasoned.

Kate had just emerged from the wreckage that was once the capitol.

Knowing she was off the air, she spoke into the microphone to Phil, thanking him for hanging with her and assuring him that she was fine. He scolded her affectionately for ignoring his orders, then told her she’d done a fantastic job; take the rest of the night off. She laughed at him as she unclipped the microphone, effectively severing their audio connection. Turning to Gene, she gave him a huge bear hug and a kiss on the cheek; his blush was visible even in the moonlight. She thanked him for his dedication and professionalism, and for his friendship. Handing him her earpiece and microphone, she told him to take the satellite truck and head home.

And then Kate walked off alone, moving over to a marble bench in front of the fountain on the Empire State Plaza just across the street from the capitol, where she sat down heavily, putting her head in her hands.

24

The Price of Fame

From some thirty yards away, Jay watched as the reporter hugged her cameraman and then walked off by herself. Part of her resisted going further, not wanting to intrude on this heroic woman when she seemed to want to be alone. Jay could plainly see that the anchorwoman was exhausted both physically and emotionally. But a bigger part of her was desperate to offer comfort, so she followed her heart.

As Jay got closer, she began questioning what she was doing; she couldn’t believe how nervous she was.
What if she doesn’t remember
me? Or what if she does remember me but she doesn’t want to see me?

Heck, the last time she saw me I was pretty much catatonic.
She recalled with a painful jolt that awful night nearly four months to the day after her skiing accident when the compelling stranger had saved her once again, this time from being raped.

Jay was heading back up the hill from the library after a long night of
studying for her Art History final. It was a nice early May evening; the
stars were out in abundance and the moon shone brightly. She looked up
to the night sky to enjoy the view and was startled when she was tackled
from the side, pulled off the path, and slammed to the ground.

Jay struggled, trying to escape, but her attacker was much bigger and
stronger than she. He pinned her arms to the ground with his knees and
smashed his fist into her jaw. It was then that she saw the knife and the
fact that he was wearing a stocking mask. Her eyes reflected her terror
as, without saying a word, he ripped her blouse open with his free hand
and cut her bra off with the blade. She screamed once before he
backhanded her again across the face, his hands roughly twisting her
nipple as he reached down lower to unbutton her blue jeans. Jay tried
once more to squirm free and was rewarded with a punch to her
midsection. She grunted as the air exploded from her body, closing her
eyes and willing it to be over soon.