All We Can Do Is Wait(73)

Remembering that night in Laurie Gomes’s backyard, that charged and revealing moment, Alexa felt a swell of something urgent, demanding rise up in her. She knew that if Kyle was watching her from somewhere, he would be mad if she didn’t make good on at least some of the promises they’d made together. Maybe she wouldn’t own five houses. But she’d go to all those places. For Kyle. For herself. Maybe that’s what Kyle would gradually become: some part of her, an inner voice pushing her, encouraging her along. Eventually she might not be able to tell the difference between his voice and hers, but maybe that was O.K. Maybe that was how you kept moving, day after day, year after year.

Alexa wished she could hug Kyle just one more time, muss his hair and coo “You’re so prettyyyy” in a fake gushy tone. (He’d pretend to blush, but then say “I know.”) She missed her friend. But she also felt herself, there in the hospital, waiting on news of her parents, saying goodbye to him, letting him go. She closed her eyes and pictured him, a year or two older, happy and excited, walking up the stairs from Penn Station. Taking in the city, and then, with one of his satisfied smiles, disappearing into the crowd.

Then Alexa heard her brother, calling her name.

“Alexa! Alexa!”

She opened her eyes and saw Jason by the doors. Two stretchers were being wheeled inside behind him. It was them. She knew, instantly, that it was them. She ran to her brother as the stretchers were swarmed with nurses and doctors.

“Finally got them out of their car thirty minutes ago!” an EMT was saying. “Male has a skull fracture, female has a collapsed lung. Both have internal hemorrhaging.”

“Oh my God,” Alexa said, as she tried to move toward the stretchers but was pushed away by a nurse. Theo and Linda were whisked past Jason and Alexa, a doctor yelling to get them into separate ORs. Alexa managed to catch a glimpse of her mother’s face, her eyelids fluttering, her head in a brace. She saw her father’s feet, only one shoe on, the other foot caked in blood and dust.

The sight was horrific, but they were alive. At least right then, they were alive. Jason gave Alexa a panicked look. She shook her head, said, “They’re going to be fine,” and grabbed his hand. They stood there, the Elsing kids, holding on to each other, as they watched their parents disappear down the hallway, trailed by nurses and doctors. “I’m here,” Alexa kept saying. “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.”

And then Jason was saying it too, clutching his sister’s hand.

“I’m here. I’m here. Alexa, I’m here.”





Epilogue


    Morgan



MORGAN DIDN’T WANT to say goodbye. To have the others tell her they were so sorry again, to have them give her the same look Dr. Koskinen had given her when her father first got his diagnosis. The one that said she was some sad orphan. So she told Skyler she was going to get a soda and left the waiting room, walking down the hallway and then slipping out the door, out into the night, into a new world where her father didn’t exist.

She walked aimlessly for a while, just wanting to put some distance between her and the hospital. She never wanted to go back there again. Never wanted to be reminded of her mother, working there in a happier life, of her father lying on that table.

She thought about going home, but couldn’t face that quite yet. So she walked south, through Beacon Hill, past the Public Garden, into the theater district. The rest of the city seemed to be carrying on like normal, though the streets were emptier than they might have been on a regular night.

There were some people sitting in bars, a group of foreigners, speaking in some Russian-sounding language, stumbling drunkenly down Tremont Street. As she turned down Kneeland Street, Morgan realized that she was near a diner her father used to take her to when things with her mom were bad at home, one of the few twenty-four-hour places in Boston. He and his cop buddies used to get coffee there at late hours, shooting the breeze after patrol, telling war stories. Her father had seemed to know all the waitresses, flirting with them a little, even though they were all mostly old and crabby. Maybe that’s why he did it.

Morgan figured she could go there, sit for a while. Maybe one of the waitresses would remember her. When she got there, a little corner place by South Station, it was mostly empty, a few loners sitting at the counter. Morgan settled into a booth and ordered a coffee, the waitress casting her a suspicious eye, wondering what this teenager was doing there by herself on a school night. But she didn’t ask any questions, so Morgan sat there quietly, sipping her coffee, trying to imagine what her next move might be. She’d been walking for a while, and it was almost midnight. The T would be shutting down soon, and she didn’t have the money for a cab home. Maybe she’d just wait it out at the diner.

She sat there, looking out the window, watching cars rattle by, on their way to South Station to drop someone off for a late bus or a late train, or to pick someone up. It was nice to imagine that there were still people coming and going, the city forever expanding and contracting, even as it was rocked by yet another terrible thing.

When the Marathon bombing happened, Morgan had watched Boston become something she’d never seen, not even when the Red Sox won the World Series: It was communal, bonded, forged together. She thought that whole “Boston Strong” thing was corny, but there was something true about it too. She felt a deep, aching affection for the city just then, even though there was maybe nothing left in it for her. Not her dad’s friends even, not Mike and Pat and the rest of them. They all had their own lives, their own kids and grandkids. Morgan hated the idea of being a burden, so she would probably not ask for their help.