A Spark of Light(85)

When Louie finished his sandwich, the old lady was waiting for him. She followed him across the street, shouting the whole time. You should be ashamed of yourself. You’re not a real doctor. You’re a butcher.

Louie realized two things that day: that the waitress might not be an abortion doctor or even go to a pro-choice rally, but she was an activist all the same. And that you could not underestimate an anti. Had that sweet old grandma wanted to, she had been close enough to shank him.

When he had gotten inside the Center that day, he had broken out in a sweat. For the past ten years, he had never been careful. He didn’t leave the building until the end of the day. He ordered food in. As long as he stayed in the Center, it was a safe space.

Until now.

Harriet was crying. Her hand shook as she reached for her phone and typed out a text. To her husband, maybe? Her kids? Did she have kids? Why didn’t Louie know that?

Louie’s phone was locked up in Vonita’s office, along with his wallet. Who would he contact, anyway? He had no family left, no significant other—for this very reason. Because it was enough that he put himself on the front lines every day, doing the work he did. It wasn’t fair for someone else to suffer by sheer proximity. Dr. King’s words floated into his mind: If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live. Would he die, today, for his principles? Or had he already died years ago, by pledging himself to his work and cutting himself off from others who might get close to him? If his heart stopped beating today, would it just be a belated announcement of a death that had already happened?

Sometimes, at bars or conferences or weddings, he met women who were impressed by his bravado. They asked if he was worried about violence at clinics, and he shrugged it off. He’d say, Life is fatal; none of us are getting out of here breathing.

It was easy to make that joke, in response to a hypothetical question. But now?

He did not want to die, but if he did, he hoped it would be swift and not lingering.

He did not want to die, but if he did, he believed he’d been as good a man as he could have been.

He did not want to die, but if he did, he would have gotten more time than Malcolm or Martin had.

And yet. Goddammit. He wasn’t finished yet.

A high-pitched whine wheezed out of Harriet; Louie was sure she didn’t even know she was making the sound. He grabbed her hands and forced her to meet his gaze. “Harriet, you all right?” She shook her head, tears running. “Harriet, look at me.”

Louie could see over her shoulder into the hallway. He flicked his glance away from the nurse, scanning for movement, for shadows. Five minutes passed. Or fifteen. He couldn’t tell.

“Dr. Ward,” Harriet whispered, “I don’t want to die.”

He squeezed her hands. “Harriet. You just keep your eyes right on me, you hear?”

She nodded, swallowed. Her eyes fixed on his, wide and brown, trusting. He held her faith tight, even as he saw through his peripheral vision the silhouette that rose behind her in the doorway; the twist of the pistol; the grim slash of a mouth as the man’s features came into focus.

Louie’s leg exploded in pain. The world narrowed to the throb of his thigh and the fire licking through the muscle. Then Harriet fell on top of him. He sucked in the smell of gardenia on her skin, tasted the copper of blood.

Footsteps. Closer.

Louie pretended to be dead. Or maybe he wished it to be true.

—


IZZY CREPT DOWN THE HALLWAY, certain that she had fallen into a mirror universe of chaos and discord and gore. The shooter had left macabre breadcrumbs—shattered windows, smears of blood, empty shells. Every instinct told her to turn around and run in the other direction, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t heroism that drove her toward the supply closet but the fear of learning that she was not the woman she had always believed herself to be.

The procedure room door was ajar and she could see the rows of glass cabinets filled with gauze and tape. She could also see two bodies.

She fell to her knees, rolling the nurse over, feeling for a pulse and finding none. She did the same with the doctor, who moaned, unconscious. He had been shot in the leg and someone had tied plastic tubing around his thigh, a makeshift tourniquet. It had probably saved his life. “Can you hear me?” she asked, as she tried to tighten the tubing.

She was attempting to gauge whether she could drag him to safety when she heard the click of the hammer.

The shooter stepped out from behind the door, where he had been concealed. Izzy froze, angry at her own stupidity.

He was older than she was—maybe in his forties. He had brown hair with a neat part. He was wearing a buffalo plaid fleece jacket, even in this infernal heat. He looked … ordinary. The kind of man you let cut in the supermarket line because he only had a few items. The kind of man who sat next to you on the bus, said hello, and then left you alone for the rest of the trip. The kind of man you didn’t really notice.

Until he stormed into a clinic holding a gun.

There had been several times in the past Izzy believed she might die. When there wasn’t food for a whole week. When the heat was cut off and the temperature dipped into the teens. Yet she had known, as a kid, that there was always something you could do: eat from the neighbor’s trash; sleep in layers of clothes, nested between your siblings. As a nurse, she had cheated death on behalf of her patients, reminding a stopped heart of how to beat or breathing for someone with her own lungs. Nothing had prepared her, however, for a situation like this.