Survivor Song(62)
Ramola asks, “Are you all right?”
“I’m peach,” Natalie says. Not “peachy.”
The bus rocks from side to side as it crests the elevated lip of the lot exit. It turns left, goes straight through the Five Corners intersection, following one police car, blue lights flashing. A low murmur ripples through the bus’s passengers now that they are moving. Across the aisle from Ramola are two young pregnant women. They are both staring ahead, faces frozen in worried expressions, hands folded on top of their swollen bellies. The one by the window mutters something that makes the other woman laugh nervously.
Ramola has put these women and all the others sitting in front of and behind them at risk by getting Natalie onto the bus. She has compromised her pledged medical ethics and knowingly broken federal and state quarantine protocols and laws. She’s sick with worry, fear, grief, and disappointment at how easy it was to lie and to actively endanger the well-being of others. And for what, ultimately? Natalie cannot be cured, and they are at least twenty-five minutes away from an operating table, assuming this next hospital will even admit them. Ramola takes out her phone to send a text to Dr. Awolesi. She writes, “Per your instruction we arrived at the Ames Clinic.” Ramola rescans the text, says it in her head so it reads as Look at what you made me do, should someone else get hurt it’ll be your fault too. She erases the text and starts again. “Arrived at the Ames Clinic. All patients being transferred via bus to North Attleboro. Natalie has not been seen by OB/GYN yet.” She hits Send, then types, “I don’t know what else I can do for her.” She erases that one too.
“Hey, Rams?”
“Yes, I’m right here.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know.”
“Thank you for knowing.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Everyone in here knows about me.”
“No, they don’t.”
“They do. And they’re not going to bring us where they’re supposed to. I can almost hear them thinking about what they’re really going to do. They think in small voices. They hide their small voices behind smaller hands. Baby hands, but not hands that belong to babies. But I stopped listening hard enough. I don’t want to hear them.”
“Natalie—”
“Sorry. Can you say yes again? I need to hear it.”
“Yes?”
“No, a real one.”
“What am I saying yes to?”
“I need to hear the yes you gave me back on the road. It has to be the same exact one, or it won’t work. I’m worried I’ll forget it and I need it to get me through to the end. Right, remember? When you said yes, I said I’d go all the way to the end. I need to hear it one more time.”
“Yes.”
“Please. Again.”
“Yes.”
The driver shouts and the bus slows. Not quite a slamming of the brakes and tire-screeching halt, but the rapid deceleration is enough to propel everyone forward, hands grasping the seatbacks in front of them. Passengers gasp and the pneumatic brakes hiss. Once the bus comes to a full stop, Dr. Kolodny and another person wearing a white coat rush up the aisle to the front. The bus idles in a residential, wooded area. A large white house is directly across from Natalie’s window. Ramola looks at her watch. They’ve been riding for about five minutes.
Ramola and Natalie are four rows back from the driver. The clinicians obscure most of Ramola’s view through the windshield, but the police-escort car has stopped perpendicular to another vehicle, a mammoth white SUV, parked across the middle of the road.
The chatter up front is clipped, agitated, and sets off a chorus of “What’s going on?” and “Why did we stop?” throughout the bus.
Ramola stands, one foot in the aisle. It does not improve her vantage. She asks Natalie, “Can you see what’s going on?”
“The Tree’s buddies are here. Whole bunch of trees.”
Ramola leans across and over Natalie. From her angle she can’t see the police car or the SUV in front of the bus, nor does she see any people initially. Then a crouched man runs out from behind the white house’s garage. There are gunshots, rapid small-caliber pops mixing with loud, singular explosions. Ramola dives back, away from the window. Screams and shouts fill the bus, along with shrieks from newborns. Ramola almost forgot there are babies on the bus too. Everyone leans away from the windows, tries to make themselves smaller in their seats, everyone except Natalie. She sits tall and has her hands and face against the glass. Ramola grabs her right arm and pulls her away. Natalie’s complaint is subverbal, a growl.
It’s unclear if the driver is given an order from Kolodny, from police on the two-way radio, or acts on his own. The engine revs and the bus lurches forward, titling left as its passenger-side wheels climb the elevated shoulder. There’s more yelling, more gunshots, and stomach-dropping moments of weightlessness as the bus leans farther left, and Ramola is sure they’re going to tip onto their side, Natalie and her window mashed into the pavement. The police car and SUV roadblock roll by Natalie’s window, the scene dreamlike, as though contained within a terrarium, and the odd, elevated and angled view vertiginous as they float by. Men wearing dark or camouflage clothing hide behind another SUV stashed in a driveway. Others are positioned behind trees or flat on their bellies at the stone walls. They fire at the policemen huddled behind their car and they fire at the buses. Bullets thud into the side panel but none hit the windows. Another moment of weightlessness, lifting Ramola out of her seat as the bus comes off the shoulder, then all tires are back in contact with the pavement. The cabin shakes like a wet dog, straightening as the bus accelerates. People in the back rows yell about the gray bus left behind, not moving, windshield shattered. Clinicians run up and down the aisle checking with patients, reassuring them. The bus driver speaks over the intercom but the babies are crying and other patients are shouting, talking over him; no one is listening. Ramola attempts to slow her breathing and still her shaking hands. She watches out Natalie’s window and through the windshield for more roadblocks and men with guns.