Page 47 of Concerted Chaos

The FBI is investigating. They’ve blocked off the site of the explosion and they want to question you and Tanner.

“Have you seen Tanner yet?” I ask, and they all shake their heads. Hank, who is always the last choice for a charades partner, makes a series of odd gestures that I optimistically interpret as an offer to find Tanner, so I send him off. I need to make sure he’s okay, and I trust my stepfather to tell me the truth, even if the news is horrible and scary. I owe Tanner a huge debt of gratitude. If he hadn’t mentioned what he saw, we would have been in the car when the bomb went off. “Powell, Tanner spotted a person under your car. If he hadn’t said anything, I would have kept driving.”

Why’d you get out?Powell asks via text.

“Seriously, Powell? Someone was under your car, doing something to it. There are only two possibilities, tracking device or bomb. Either way, I didn’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity.” Since I can’t hear myself, I can’t tell what I sound like, but apparently I should be more careful with my tone: I’ve made my mother cry.

I’m so glad you did, Mom writes as tears pour down her face. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you. I hope she never finds out how close it was. A few seconds later, they would have been picking up pieces of me, if I weren’t completely vaporized. I don’t know how powerful the blast was, but based on the parts I felt, there couldn’t have been much left from the interior of the car.

Hank returns, followed by our FBI agents. I hope they like writing. But before I’m willing to interact with them, I ask my stepfather what he’s found out. Some of the tension leaves my body as I read the message he hands me:

Tanner says he’s going to be okay, though they’re monitoring him for a possible head injury. He seemed more worried about you. No broken bones, no major injuries, just thousands of cactus spines from landing in a prickly pear. A couple of interns with tweezers are torturing him right now, but it’s for his own good.

Poor guy. He hasn’t lived in Arizona very long; I bet that’s his painful initiation to the injured-by-cactus club. I’ve been a proud member since the day Powell and I went house hunting and a teddy bear cholla proved not to be as soft as it looked. In my defense, my brother touched it too.

Agent Benítez waves to attract my attention and says words I cannot hear. Whatever it was, it caused Hank, Powell, and even Mike to clear out of the room but triggered an argument with my mom. It’s like watching an old-time silent film, especially with my mother’s exaggerated gestures. Finally, Benítez throws her hands in the air, and my mom takes a seat at my side, smiling triumphantly. She types a quick message on her phone: They told me to leave the room. Not happening. I’m here for you DD.

I reach out to grasp her hand, grateful for the strength and support she provides. Only the last two joints of my fingers are exposed, but I’m able to curl them around her palm and take comfort in her closeness. Part of me wants to peel back these bandages and examine the extent of my injuries, but I remember seeing a lot of blood, so perhaps I should leave them alone.

“The doctors warned you I can’t hear, right?” I ask. Both agents nod, and Benítez holds up a note pad. Yay. This is not going to be fun. “Can I start by telling you everything I remember? Maybe reduce the number of questions you need to write down?”

When they agree, I fill them in on the full story, although there’s not much to it. I drove a car, it went boom. Their follow-up interrogation revolves around why Tanner and I evacuated when we did.

“Honestly, it was instinct. Tanner told me he noticed legs sticking out from underneath the car when it was in my parking lot. Powell—this is off the record—doesn’t fix his own cars, no matter what he claims. Don’t tell him I told you. Okay, back on the record. When Tanner said that, I got concerned because I knew it couldn’t have been Mike either, because he would have told me if he’d placed a tracker on the car. That’s what I assumed it was because he’d mentioned someone might have been following them earlier. I was afraid the person might show up with guns or something, and I didn’t want to be kidnapped or murdered. My instinct was to get away from the vehicle. I called Powell so they could send one of Mike’s people to pick us up and arrange a tow truck so that the security team could check it out.”

I slump against my pillows. That barely coherent speech exhausted me; I don’t have the energy to continue this questioning. My fiercely protective mother is now glaring at the agents for doing this to me, and they are trying to ignore the fire burning in her eyes.

Your instincts saved two lives tonight, Benítez writes, with a cautious glance at my mom. You were lucky. The bomb was on a timer, set to go off fourteen minutes from when you started the ignition.

I close my eyes and consider that for a moment. “The drive home from the gym takes about eighteen minutes. If I’d have been going home ...” I wouldn’t have stopped. Anyone following Powell would already know our address; I wouldn’t have been concerned about someone tracking me to my house, because they wouldn’t get past our gate guard. If I hadn’t been going out for drinks with Tanner, I would have died in my neighborhood. And if he hadn’t told me what he saw, we both would have been blown to bits in the car. And if he hadn’t been so admiring of the car, we would have gone straight to the bar, and the explosion would have happened in a crowded area rather than an isolated road. More innocent people could have been killed. Through sheer luck and a photographer’s observation skills we avoided an entire series of deadly possibilities tonight.

The agents clearly have more to say, but the second Johnson opens her mouth, my mom crosses her arms and frowns. I recognize that look from my teenage years. Her expression is the sort to freeze you in your tracks and make you confess all of your sins. Johnson sighs and passes me one last message, assuring me that this incident is staying out of the news, so I won’t have to worry about the media harassing me. That’s a relief. There’s only one member of the media I want to see right now, and he’s not able to leave his bed.

The hospital decided to keep me in for “observation,” which is a fancy way of saying they did a wallet biopsy and want to extract what they found. But after all the tests, mostly to make sure I didn’t hit my head and sustain brain damage, they tell me that I’m fine. Minus the temporary deafness and the dozens of stitches holding the skin on my arms and shoulder together, of course.

While waiting on my discharge paperwork, I insist on visiting Tanner. They only agree to let me if I ride there in a wheelchair, because apparently having a morphine-addled deaf person wandering the halls is too much of a liability.

He’s nearby, only a few doors down. I wish I’d known that before; I would have snuck over without the help of a nursing assistant. When I make my grand rolled entrance, he’s lying on his stomach with his head looking toward the door. His eyes light up when he sees me, but he can’t sit up to greet me. Rumor has it—or rather, Hank reported—that he was thrown into the prickly pear sideways and somehow managed to roll onto his back, making him into even more of a human pincushion.

“How are you doing?” I ask, before I remember he can’t hear either. We’re bandage twins right now, as his head is also wrapped to protect his damaged ears.

He answers by extending an arm and giving me a thumbs down. I stand up from my wheelchair, ignoring the aches in my body and the nursing assistant’s annoyed gestures. My hearing loss provides a convenient excuse for my intentional disobedience.

There’s enough room for me to sit down on the foot of Tanner’s bed. He can’t see me well from that position, but I can see enough of him—he’s wearing nothing but a hospital gown that opens in the back. Nope, I shouldn’t sit here. This is an inappropriate view, so I move to stand awkwardly next to the bed instead. If I weren’t so injured, I’d drag a chair over, but I don’t want to hurt my wounded arms and my surly escort doesn’t appear inclined to help.

Tanner is trying to ask me something, but I point to the thick padding wrapped around my head. Supposedly I should start hearing again soon, but all I can make out right now is a distant roaring. Then he exaggeratedly mouths “How are you?”

Oh. I should have guessed that’s what he would ask. I point to myself and give a thumbs up, then to my ears and give a thumbs down. He responds, but I can’t read his lips sideways. This visit is pointless. We can’t hear each other, and with the way he’s positioned, he’s not capable of communicating via writing.

So I pick up the pad of paper from the bedside table and scribble a note:

I’m so sorry this happened. And I’m so grateful you saved my life. They’re letting me go home today. Text me when you get out.

He reads it and moves his head in an approximation of a nod. There’s nothing else for me to do, so I plop back into my wheelchair for the short trek back to my room.

---