Page 46 of Bad Enough

October 25-30th, 1994

Micah

“I found him inside the restaurant, hiding in a supply closet. Tried looking for his parents, but no luck. I wasn’t sure what else to do.”

Standing in the entryway of the dilapidated building, Micah’s eyes were round in fear. He held the hand of the man in the police uniform. The din of what sounded like hundreds of children in the building was overwhelming. Where to look? He couldn’t focus. His eyes drifted up toward the ceiling as he stood in the center of a vertical tunnel of stairs that rose what felt like thirty stories. Those same noisy children were staring at him over the rails and through the spindles. He wanted out of here. The last six days had been confusing enough with the boom, the fire, the smoke, the ground shaking, the building walls tumbling, the screams of people, and the sirens. Then the shuttling back and forth between the police station and the man’s home.

When the explosion occurred, he and his parents had been sitting at a table in a restaurant on Dizengoff Street having a late breakfast. A bus had pulled up just outside the window, and Micah had been watching when it burst into flames and flew straight up in the air. The shock blew out the windows of the restaurant, and debris blew into the building. Years later, he would still be haunted by his first memory after the explosion—lying stunned on the floor next to his mother, her eyes wide but otherwise unresponsive to his cries and his small hand touching her face. His tiny fingers had come away slick with the blood that covered the side of her face.

He rolled over in the chaos, seeing people attempting to crawl from the wreckage. Finally, his eyes fell on a brown dress shoe. His father’s shoe. Micah crawled on his belly to where his father’s body sprawled awkwardly. A large shard of glass protruded from his chest, and several smaller pieces were embedded in his face. His father also did not respond to Micah’s attempts to wake him.

His ears hurt, and he was frightened by the muffled sounds that made it sound like he was underwater. Micah crawled to a table in the back of the restaurant that had somehow remained intact and set for the next guests to sit at. Crouched as tight as he could to the wall, hands covering his ears as if that would reduce the pain, he watched as people picked through the rubble, helping loved ones and strangers from beneath the debris. After a while, rescuers arrived to assist the injured. Micah watched those same rescuers examine his parents on the floor beside their window table and then cover them with tablecloths.

No one noticed him.

Much later, Micah watched as the rescuers removed the bodies of his parents from the restaurant in what looked like garbage bags with zippers. He stayed hidden under the table. Somehow, he remained unfound. When people came to investigate the restaurant, he hid in a supply closet behind a tower of boxes. At night, he crept out and raided the cupboards for food. On the third day of his hiding out, he was finally found by a nice man who tried to ask him questions. Micah stared into his eyes, but he refused to answer.

The nice man took him to the police station, but that was more overwhelming than the restaurant had been. There were so many people rushing here and there. At the restaurant, he had been invisible because he’d been hiding. Here, he was invisible even though he was in plain sight.

A lady in a navy blue dress with a briefcase came to visit him. He just looked at her as well, refusing to answer her questions. The lady talked to the man about him, and there seemed to be a disagreement about what to do with him.

For two more days and nights, he traveled back and forth with the man between the police station and the man’s home. The man had a pretty wife and two children who were older than Micah. They were all very nice to him, but it wasn’t home. They weren’t his family. He wanted his mother and father.

On the third day after he’d been found, the man took him in a police car to the building they stood in now. All Micah could do was look around in confusion. In six days, he hadn’t cried, hadn’t spoken. Somehow, he knew his life had changed irrevocably, and not for the better.

The man crouched down to Micah’s level. “Are you sure you can’t tell me your name? Where you live? I don’t want to leave you here. I’d like to get you back to your family.”

Micah simply stared at the man’s face.

The man sighed. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a little card. “This has my name and phone number on it. If you change your mind, or if you remember anything about yourself or your family, have the orphanage call me.” He put the card in Micah’s jacket pocket. When he rose, he also handed a card to the woman he had been speaking to when they arrived. “Hopefully, someone will come forward for him soon.”

The man ruffled Micah’s hair. And with that, he turned and left.

The woman took him by the hand, and they began to climb the stairs. It felt like they had been climbing forever before she made a left turn and took him down a long hallway to a room that had four beds in it. Each bed had a small table next to it with a big drawer and a single cubby space. She brought Micah to the farthest bed in the room and sat him on the edge of the bed. She removed his jacket and shoes, then tucked him in under the scratchy sheets and thin blanket. “Get some sleep, young man. You’ve had a rough time of it. Hopefully, the police find your parents, and this is only for a few days.”

Even at seven, Micah knew that no one would find his parents. It would be eleven long years of living at the orphanage before he could leave its walls legally and make his own way in the world.

TB shook himself free of the past. Within ten minutes, his team leader found him.Leaning against the door jamb, hands in his pockets, Waters quipped, “I didn’t know you remembered you had an office.” He looked around at the bare walls, bare desktop, and the computer monitor that wasn’t turned on and likely never had been. “Do you even have anything in those cabinets and drawers?”

TB rolled his eyes.

Clearing his throat, Waters entered the office, closed the door, and sat down on the couch against the wall, stretching an arm across the back of it. “We were just discussing how you are going back to your side project.”

“We?”

“Well, God and I were. The twins were snickering and reverting to middle school girl behavior, Demon fell asleep, and Steel looked like he was plotting ways to kill everyone in the room, so I kicked them out to continue angles on the Ka-Bar project.”

TB grunted. “So, I’m guessing this isn’t a social call.”

“Nope,” Waters replied.

I hate it when he pops that “p” when he says that word. Fuck. Now what?

TB rubbed the back of his neck and stared at the dark computer monitor as if it was going to magically hold answers to his dilemma. After a few moments, he decided to just rip off the duct tape. “Going back to that project might be tougher than we originally planned. I cut her loose when we went to Egypt looking for Zahra and Ka-Bar,” TB admitted.

Waters tapped his fingers along the back of the couch as he scrutinized him. “Why?”

TB rolled his eyes. “What I’m about to tell you does not leave this room, or I walk, and you’ll never find me in order to kill me.”

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