Turning Point(37)
He left Valérie at two in the morning, and didn’t attempt to talk to her counselees or their parents. Valérie knew much better than he what to say to heartsick, broken parents. He went back to his apartment then, and didn’t even bother to undress. He collapsed onto the bed, too exhausted to move, and just lay there and cried until he fell asleep.
* * *
—
They all came to the meeting the next morning, looking rough and ragged and worried. As was expected, they felt worse the next morning. Four more children had died during the night, and one teacher. One hundred sixty-eight. It was now officially the worst incident of its kind that France had lived through, with the heaviest losses.
Valérie was at the meeting, but said she couldn’t stay long. She had too many counseling sessions to organize, and programs and counselors to coordinate. She had met with Solange that morning at seven o’clock, who said she never wanted to go to school and face her peers again. But Valérie and her grandmother had convinced her to try it in a few days and see how she felt. There was much healing that had to happen, on all fronts, and Valérie was working hard to orchestrate it.
The entire team talked for hours about what had been handled perfectly, and what fell short. They each had valuable feedback for Marie-Laure, for another incident in the future. Had there been several gunmen, it would have been worse.
Afterward, they visited the hospitals where the victims had been taken. Some of the damage they had sustained was horrifying. And the team suspected that several would lose limbs, after the explosive damage of the shooter’s ammunition. At Necker, Tom had a happy surprise. They inquired about the little girl, but it took them time to match her case up to his description and find her. They asked what color her hair was, but he wasn’t sure because she had been covered with blood. Her parents were standing next to her bed when Tom walked in. They talked for a few minutes in his awful French, and they addressed their gratitude to him in halting English. No one could easily absorb what had happened, and yet they all had to find a way to live with it.
Tom was relieved when he’d seen the little girl he’d saved. She was heavily sedated and had had surgery the day before, but he could see that she was doing well and it was likely she would survive.
Tom met up with Valérie again at the end of the day, and they had a glass of wine at a bistro near her apartment on the rue du Bac. She looked tired, and their guard was down. The events of the day before had brought all of them closer to each other. Their merits and talents as physicians had shown, and Valérie had seen over the walls he surrounded himself with. They were walls of lighthearted fun and laughter but solid nonetheless, and she liked what she saw. He was a serious, good-hearted person, and she understood now what his colleagues in Oakland saw in him and why he was so respected.
“So what makes you do this kind of work?” she asked him directly, as they relaxed for a few minutes. She was going back that night to another school where counseling had been set up for the survivors.
“Moments like yesterday,” he said quietly. “Being able to make a difference in a matter of seconds before it’s too late.” She suspected more than that, but he didn’t volunteer it. They all had a personal stake in it, whether they admitted it or not. “What about you?”
“We lived in Lebanon for two years when I was growing up, during the war there. I lost some friends I was close to. And I thought maybe I could change something in the world. I wanted to be an obstetrician when I started medical school, but I got hooked on psychiatry. The human heart and mind intrigued me more than delivering babies. I think I made the right choice for me,” she said peacefully and smiled at him. Tom didn’t say anything to her for a minute and then she could see something open up as he looked into her eyes and knew he could trust her with the secrets of his past.
“I grew up in a rural area of Montana. I was in a car accident with my parents and brother when I was eleven. The paramedics took a long time to come because everything is so spread out there. I stood there with them, and watched them die. I wanted to help them and didn’t know how. Everything and everyone I loved disappeared that night. I knew that if I’d been a doctor, I could have saved them. I knew after it happened that I wanted to be able to save people one day. I went to live with my aunt and uncle in Oklahoma. They weren’t kind, but they took me in. They didn’t have much money. They were simple people, and they used what my parents had left to pay for what I needed. There was enough for medical school when I finished college, so I went.” What he told her explained everything to Valérie and her heart went out to him.
“Is that why you never married and don’t want kids?”
“Probably. It’s pretty classic. You can lose everyone you love in a matter of minutes. Destiny can take it all away. I think I decided early on not to take that chance, so I try to keep it light instead. No ties, no losses, no heartbreaks. You can’t lose what you don’t have and tell yourself you don’t want. It seems to work for me.” But beyond the fun and games it was a lonely life, and she could see it in his eyes. “And why don’t you want marriage and kids?” He turned the tables on her and she smiled.
“My parents had a hateful marriage, it didn’t look like fun to me. I was the weapon they used against each other, the child that neither of them ever wanted or loved. They felt obliged to stay together for me, and hated me for it. I had no desire to do that to a child, or to live a prison sentence like the one they imposed on themselves, for my sake. It seemed much too unpleasant and complicated to me. I’ve lived with two men in my life. The relationships eventually played out, and I never wanted their children. I think some people aren’t cut out to be parents, and I’m one of them. But I turned what I learned in my childhood into something useful for other people, and a wonderful life for me.”