A Spark of Light(63)
Izzy stared at her. She knew what it felt like to go without; it had been the guiding premise of her childhood. But she had never been what was missing. Once she told Parker it was over, she would be, though. Breaking someone’s heart, it seemed, caused equal damage to your own.
She didn’t know anything about Bex, except for the fact that she was an artist, and that she had a niece who was somehow still miraculously hidden. Bex’s life was a thread in someone else’s tapestry, and that was really all that mattered.
Izzy stood up and approached the shooter. “This woman is going to die without medical help,” she said.
“Then fix her.”
“I’ve done what I can, but I’m not a surgeon.”
She looked around the waiting room. It had gotten painfully silent since he had smacked Janine across the brow and knocked her out. Joy was sitting with her. Janine had stirred a few times, so Izzy knew she wasn’t dead. “I heard you on the phone,” Izzy blurted out.
“What?”
“You know what it’s like to lose someone you love.” She stared into his empty eyes. “All of us, we have families, too. Please. We have to get her to a hospital.”
Before she could wonder if he would listen or shoot her, the phone rang.
—
THE FIRST TIME GEORGE REALIZED he was a superhero, Lil was only six months old. They had both gotten sick with the flu, and exhausted, George let her sleep next to him. But her fever had broken sometime before his, and she woke up and started to roll off the edge of the mattress. Even though he would have sworn he had still been asleep, George’s hand snapped out and grabbed the baby by her foot before she could fall.
He supposed that all fathers were like that. There was the time she was a toddler and got her foot stuck in the narrow slats of a fence in the pastor’s backyard. Earlene had been babysitting while George had gone to get some fertilizer for the church gardens, and when he came back for Lil, he’d heard her hysterical cries. George was out of the car before he’d even finished slamming it into park. Earlene had tried everything and was in tears herself. “I’ve called 911,” she told him, trying to soothe the baby.
“Fuck 911,” George said, and he smashed through the slats with his fist, grabbing Lil and cradling her against him even as his bleeding hand stained her dress.
Some of the hurts in the world weren’t even physical. When Lil was eight, some little shit of a boy in Sunday School told her she couldn’t play pirates with them because she was a girl. He had done for Lil what Pastor Mike did for him when he thought he was worth nothing.
He began by pretending he had forgotten how to turn on the stove to boil the water for the spaghetti. “Dad,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You just turn the knob!”
“Can you show me?”
And she did.
Then he pretended that he couldn’t remember how to use a hammer correctly. She curled her hand around his and patiently explained how to hit the nail, just a few taps at first, so that you didn’t hurt yourself.
He pretended that he didn’t know how to replace a lightbulb, how to clean the fishbowl, how to mix plaster, how to fly a kite. A few months later, they went to a church fair. “I don’t think I remember the way back to the cotton candy,” he told Lil. He held out his hand, but this time, she shook her head.
“Daddy,” she said, “you have to try. I won’t always be here.”
Her words had struck him so hard that he couldn’t move, and panicked as she walked off and was swallowed up by the crowd. But she made her way to the cotton candy, just like he knew she would. It was one of the few times since he had come to the Eternal Life church that he truly doubted the existence of God. What twisted deity would grant you the superpower of fatherhood to protect someone who, one day, would not need you?
—
ON THE TWELFTH RING, GEORGE picked up the phone again. “Hello,” Hugh said calmly. “Everything okay in there?”
“Don’t act like you’re on my team.”
“I am, though,” Hugh replied. “I’m gonna make sure everyone listens to what you have to say, so that this ends well for all of us.”
“Oh, I know how this ends,” George said. “You call in your SWAT team and wipe me out like a mosquito.”
“There’s no SWAT team here,” Hugh said, which was actually true. They were still assembling; they had only been called forty-five minutes ago.
“You think I believe that you’re the only cop out there?”
“There are other policemen here. They’re concerned, but no one here is going to hurt you.”
“I bet you have a sniper trained on the door right now.”
“Nope.”
“Prove it,” George said.
A shiver went down Hugh’s spine. Finally. A bargaining chip. “I can prove it to you, George, and give you peace of mind. But I think you should have to give me something, too.”
“I’m not coming out.”
“I was thinking of one of the people inside.” I was thinking of my daughter. My sister. “It’s true they are pressuring me, George, to have a SWAT team assembled. But I said that you and I are having a rational conversation, and that we should wait. If you send out a hostage, that’s going to go a long way to convincing my chief that I’m right.”