Turning Point(20)
They drove through the city, and the driver took them down the Champs-élysées so they could see it. There were barricades where the bombs had gone off, and riot police in combat gear and soldiers with machine guns patrolling the street. They crossed the Pont Alexandre III onto the Left Bank with the Seine beneath them, and the Bateaux Mouches tied up at the dock, which reminded Bill that he wanted to take his daughters for a ride on one of them to see the sights. Then they drove down the Boulevard St. Germain to the rue du Cherche Midi, to the address they’d been given. The concierge was sweeping the street, and they used the access code to enter the building.
There was an ancient elevator that looked like an open birdcage big enough for two people. All four of their apartments were on the third floor, French style, which would have been fourth in the States. They decided to walk up the stairs, which slanted severely, rather than trust the elevator, and they each had a set of keys for their apartments.
As they opened their doors, they could see little bits and pieces of what must have been beautiful rooms a long time before, but had been chopped up into tiny apartments. The apartments were almost identical, with wooden floors that were original to the two-hundred-year-old building. Wendy’s had a small marble fireplace, and there was one wall with beautiful moldings, the other walls had been put up more recently, and there were elegant windows. Each apartment had a small bedroom, a tiny bathroom with an old-fashioned bathtub, a toilet, sink, and a bidet, and each kitchen had a small two-burner stove, a narrow refrigerator, a sink, a minuscule oven, and a kitchen table for two that dropped down from the wall like an ironing board. They looked like student apartments. When you looked out the window, you saw the streets of Paris and in the distance the Eiffel Tower, which had recently been saved before a bomb could go off in the last terrorist attack. Paris had been a city under fire for several years now, but France had lived through worse before, during the German occupation in the Second World War. The current attacks were more insidious and of a different nature, but the Parisians were banding together to defend their homes and their city. Wendy noticed that there was a French flag at almost every window on their street.
The doctors left each other to unpack, set up their computers, and get organized for a full day of meetings the next day. They all wanted to explore the neighborhood, buy some groceries, and check out the restaurants where they might want to have dinner. They decided to meet that night at the Café Flore, which wasn’t far away. It was a famous old writers’ bar, one of the oldest in Paris.
Wendy and Stephanie agreed to go out walking together in a few hours. Bill had emails to answer, he wanted to call his daughters that afternoon, and Tom wanted to check out the nearest bars, so he’d know where to go after dinner, hopefully to pick up women. He didn’t conceal how he intended to spend his evenings, and he was still trying to enlist Bill as a cruising partner but hadn’t convinced him yet. Tom had mischief in mind and made no bones about it. He could hardly wait to get started and had a pickup phrase book in his pocket and an app on his phone to translate whatever he wanted to say. He could have been offensive, but he wasn’t, and both Wendy and Stephanie found him funny, since he didn’t try to hit on them. He wasn’t obnoxious, he was just exuberant, like an overgrown high school kid or a college boy away from parental supervision for the first time. He had been that way all his life.
The two women bought cheese, paté, a baguette, and some fruit that afternoon at a nearby grocery store, and a bottle of wine for each of them. They bought another bottle for the two men, and then wandered back to the apartment building, and were going to meet at eight for dinner. Wendy said she’d text Bill and Tom to meet them downstairs, and they set out together a few minutes before eight. They had a delicious meal of bistro food at the Café Flore and talked about where they’d been that day. They had all gone out and done some exploring and loved their lively St. Germain neighborhood. It was full of activity, people, stores, bars, restaurants, galleries, and things to see.
They went back to their apartments at eleven. Even Tom looked tired by then, and decided to wait a day before beginning his pursuit of Parisian women. They were all being picked up at nine the next morning, to be taken to the offices of the emergency services. They had a day of introductory meetings and orientation scheduled, and would be meeting their French counterparts.
They each settled into their beds that night with a sigh, thinking with pleasure of their first day in Paris. Stephanie called Andy again, but he didn’t answer. It was three in the afternoon for him, and he was probably busy with the boys. It was midnight by then. She sent them a text and said she’d try them later, and as soon as she sent the text, she fell sound asleep. The others were asleep by then too. All four of the American trauma doctors had enjoyed their first day, and couldn’t wait to see what was in store for them. They were becoming friends and for the first time in years, they felt like students on an adventure, and it was all going to begin the next day.
Chapter Six
The van picked them up on time, and traffic was heavy, but the ride to the office they’d been assigned to gave them a chance to look around and see other parts of the city. The office was in the Eighth Arrondissement, and it was a combined office of the COZ, the Centre Opérationnel de Zone, the operations center for the Paris zone. It was under the direction of the Ministry of the Interior, and the COZ was in charge of an arm of emergency services called CODIS, the departmental center for fire and rescue operations. The division of power was very different than in the United States.