Page 2 of What is Found

“Because you’re not an asshole,” she said then added, “even if you sometimes act like one. Like now.”

“I see.” He gave a slow, pensive nod. “Is this where I get to say that it takes one to know one?”

“John.”Her voice trembled, though whether from fury or frustration he couldn’t tell. “No matter what you think, I have notbeendoingwhat you think.”

“Oh?” His tone was a lash, and he was pleased when she flinched. “And what is it I think, Roni? You think I’m angry because, as my Yiddisher grandmother might have said, you’reshtuppingDriver?”

You’re not being fair.It was the Jiminy Cricket part of his brain weighing in.You aren’t in an exclusive relationship. You are Harry and Sally, only she’s Harry, who’s suddenly realized that sleeping with you has probably ruined your friendship.

Oh, what a bunch of bull. She had used him. Now she wanted something in return, a sort of paymentfor services rendered. Well, she could sit on it and spin.

“John.” Her cheeks had pinked. “Keep your voice down, okay? I know you’re angry at me. But you’re angry for the wrong reasons…No.” She held up a hand as he opened his mouth. “Let me finish, okay? I just want to say this.”

Against his better judgment, he said, “Which is?”

“I am not the one with secrets, John.”

He gave that same angry laugh. “Oh, no?”

“No,” she said, her voice calm, her posture telegraphing a certain authority. “Iknowothers’ secrets, and I keep them. I’m a shrink; that’s what I do. That’s why I never pressed you after that night at Emery’s. Yes, I asked you to come shooting again. Yes, I hoped you’d trust me enough to talk about what’s eating you, what you’re hiding. Because whatever’s in you…it’s like sand in an oyster. You’re shut up tight, holding onto what gnaws at your guts because you don’t trust that, maybe…just maybe, what has bothered you all these years—what you’ve hidden away—hasn’t smoothed over. That pearl of your past might not be beautiful, but maybe it’s not as ugly as you think.”

He waited a beat and then another—and then he laughed. The sound was brutal, harsh, corrosive: a bark that ripped his throat. He laughed loudly enough to turn a couple of heads, but he was beyond caring.

“Seriously,” he said, shaking his head, “that shitreally works with your patients? Because here’s the problem with that analogy, Roni. To get that lovely little pearl? The one you’re so desperate to wear around your neck?” He drilled her with a look. “You gotta kill the effing oyster.”

Her face smoothed; the color fled from her features leaving her skin the color of bone china. When she stood, she did so slowly. For a second, he thought she might say something, but she didn’t. She only turned and walked away and never once looked back.

There.He shoved in a packet of quick-clotting gauze with far more force than necessary.Take your psychobabble, honey, stick it where the sun don’t shine, and spin on it.

He should’ve felt better. He’d shownher. Trying to manipulate him… His skin fizzed with rage. That would teach her.

And if wishes were fishes…

Finally, at 1000, Abby Gate reopened. Meaning the usual chaos became only more chaotic because now the air was seasoned with panic, a sense of an invisible clock counting down.

Right around 1250, word again came down from intelligence that therewasgoing to be an attack that day, but no one knew what time and yeah, yeah, there had been false alarms before, but no, really, this was legit. Islamic State was coming; they were getting a video ready and everything.

John and the other soldiers ignored the warning and kept working.

Then, at 1400, intel said a bomb was going to go off in ten minutes. The Marines at the Gate sought cover. Work elsewhere ceased. Their CO ordered everyone to hunker down, but John kept seeing patients. What the hell else was he going to do? Wasn’t as if the patients in the tent were going to suddenly gopoofand vanish.

1410 came. 1410 passed. A minute or so later, more staff started to take up their stations. At 1430, things got going again.

Sometime around 1500, word got around that the last planes would leave the next day. This started a general panic. Not a stampede, really, but that was only because there was almost no room for anyone funneled into the one approach road to Abbey Gate to do much more than shift his weight from one foot to the other. Think of a solid, high-walled concrete horse corral topped with razor wire filled with struggling, panicked people instead of struggling, panicky horses, and you’ve got the idea.

When people panic, they’re no different from anyone or anything else struggling to get out of a confined space. They push forward or back or from side to side; they surge en masse the way an ocean wave foams and curls and crashes to shore before dragging itself back to begin the process again.

And people fall. They are trampled. Some suffocate. Others are crushed by the sheer weight andvolume of bodies pressed so closely together, there’s no room to breathe. Often, the victims are small children. Even babies clasped tight to a parent’s chest aren’t safe because, well, crush a parent hard enough and then...

John must’ve seen more than a dozen trampled toddlers and dead babies by 1700.

August 26th was shaping up to be a very bad day.

CHAPTER 3

“Worthy.”

Whoever that was, the voice was muffled enough for John to simply ignore it, though he had a good idea who was there—and that guy could wait his turn. Instead of looking around, John held up a hand, the universal sign forjust hold your horses, closed his eyes, inclined his head, and listened hard, pressing the bell of stethoscope a little more firmly against the mother’s swollen belly. The mom and dad were legit evacuees, or so the Marines who’d brought both parents in claimed. Already woozy and unsteady on her feet, the massively pregnant woman had fainted; the Marine called for a buddy, and the two men had made a seat out of their arms and carried her the rest of the way to the med tent. The heat, John figured, combined with not having anything to drink had caused the woman to nearly black out. She was so dehydrated, it took a med tech, the same corporalfrom the van, three tries to get an IV going. Mom’s heart rate had come down and her color was better, but the dad said the baby hadn’t moved at all for the last hour.

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