Andrew Gross - The Blue Zone

Shouts rang out from all directions, people grabbing kids, tables upending. “ Someone’s shooting! Get down! Everyone get down! ”

But Kate just lay there. She knew that her mother was dead. She brushed the hair out of her face. She wiped away a few dots of dark, red spatter from her cheek.

All she could do was hold her close.

“Oh, dear God, Mom…”

The emergency vehicles drove right into the square. Lights flashing. Police pushing the crowd away. A female EMT knelt next to Kate. In a soothing voice, she tried to coax her mother out of Kate’s arms.

Kate wouldn’t let her go. She couldn’t.

Once she let go, it would be like saying it was real.

The police pushed the crowd back to a wide, murmuring arc. Everyone was pointing up at a red building behind them. The Lapierre Hotel. That’s where the shots had come from. Kate didn’t look. She just kept holding her mother. What is it you wanted to tell me, Mom? She looked into the still, green pools of Sharon ’s eyes. What is it the bastards wouldn’t let you say?

Her shoulder ached. But she could barely feel it. A female Asian EMT was still trying to coax her mom away.

“You have to lie back, miss, please. We’re here to help you. You’ve been shot. Just let us check you out.”

Kate kept shaking her head, repeating over and over, “I’m okay…”

It all had the feel of some TV crime show she’d watched a hundred times. Except she was living it. It was her blood pressure they were taking, she they were asking to lie back, her arm now strapped with sensors. It was her mother they were trying to lift from her arms.

“We’re gonna take care of her. You can let us have her now.”

Finally Kate let her mother go. They placed Sharon gently on a gurney. Suddenly Kate felt very alone. And afraid. There was blood all over her sweater. Siren blasts shocked her out of her daze. That’s when she felt tears running down her cheek for the first time.

It was real.

“You’re gonna have to go to the hospital.” The EMT knelt next to her, leaning Kate back. “She’ll be going to the same place. I promise you’ll see her there. What’s your name?”

Kate let them ease her onto a gurney. She looked up at the blue sky. She had a flash of the same blue sky she’d seen from her hotel room.

“Kate.”

Her mind started to drift. To Justin and Emily. Who would tell them? They had to know. Where would they go now? Who would take care of them now? And Greg… Kate suddenly realized she had to call him. Let him know she was okay. “I have to call my husband,” she said. She tried to sit up. She wasn’t sure if anyone had heard.

They started to wheel Kate toward the van. She could no longer fight. She started feeling woozy. She could no longer push back the urge to close her eyes.

Suddenly she was aware she was leaving something-something important-behind.

“ Wait! ” Kate reached out and grabbed the arm of one of the EMTs.

The gurney stopped. The female medical tech leaned in close.

“There’s something there. A photo. It’s of my father.” She tried to point, but her right arm wouldn’t move. And she no longer knew which direction. “I can’t leave it behind. It’s somewhere over there.”

“Wendy, we have to go,” the EMT’s partner put in curtly.

“ Please. ” Kate tried to raise herself. She squeezed the EMT’s arm. “I need it. Please…”

“Give it a second, Ray,” the female med tech replied.

Kate let her head fall back down. She didn’t hear the sirens or the crowd, only the caw of gulls and the sounds of the harbor, which came to her sweetly. It had been a day of hope and promise. The breeze swept across Kate’s face. For a second she forgot why she was there.

The female EMT knelt back down and placed something in Kate’s hands. “Is this it?”

Kate ran her fingers over the photo like a blind person. It had been in her mother’s hands. “Yes.” There were flecks of blood on it. She looked up at the woman. “Thank you.”

“Right now we’ve got to get you to the hospital. We have to go.”

Kate felt the gurney jerk, and she was lifted. A siren blared. She could no longer fight it. There was commotion all around. Hazily, she closed her eyes.

What she saw scared her. Her father, standing beneath that gate, smiling at her.

And four words she wanted to speak. The question her mother never got to answer.

Why are you there?

The wheels of American Airlines Flight 268 landed on the runway at JFK, and the large jet skidded to a stop.

Kate stared out the window from her seat in business class, her right arm cradled in a sling. In the distance she could see the familiar control tower, along with the old saddle-shaped Saarinen terminal that now housed JetBlue.

She was home.

Two U.S. Marshals sat across the aisle. They had accompanied her from the hospital to the airport in Seattle where Kate had spent three days. Her shoulder was okay-the bullet had passed cleanly through. They had treated the wound for infection and put her on an IV sedative for shock until she was ready to make the trip back. For another week or so, she’d have to wear the sling.

But all the morphine and Valium in the world couldn’t dull the real pain.

The pain of reliving the horrible scene over and over, every time she had to go through it for the investigators: Staring blankly at the hole in her shoulder as she turned toward her mom, not understanding. The sight of Sharon ’s head pitched slightly forward, her glassy and unresponsive stare, the ring of blood widening on her sweater. The shock taking over her system. Mom!

And the questions. Kate’s brain was not picking through them clearly. What if she’d never gone out there? What if she’d listened to the warning on the river as Greg had begged her to? What if she’d just gone up to the house on the lake and knocked on the front door? They would’ve had to let her see her family. What if she hadn’t bent to reach for that glass?

Her mother would still be alive.

Justin and Emily had flown home the day before. They were staying with their aunt out on Long Island. The funeral would be Thursday. Then, after that, who knew? Maybe this was it. The damage had been done. The insurance paid.

They’d found something horrible in a plastic bag along with the discarded sniper’s rifle on top of the hotel where the shots had come from.

A severed tongue. A dog’s tongue. This time Mercado’s message was chillingly clear: This is what we do to people who talk.

Goddamn you, Daddy. Kate closed her eyes as the jet pulled up and docked at the Jetway. Look what the hell you’ve done.

A wheelchair was wheeled up to the door. One of the agents got Kate’s bag, helped her out of her seat, and wheeled her down the Jetway. Her heart was almost bursting with anticipation.

Greg stood at the end of the hall. He was in jeans and his Rice University sweatshirt. His hair was mussed, his eyes watery, and he was shaking his head a little sadly.

“Pooch…”

Kate pushed up from the chair and melted into his arms. For a minute they just held each other. She was unable to look him in the face, afraid to lift her head from his shoulder.

“Oh, God, Greg.” She pressed into him. “Mom’s dead.”

“I know, baby, I know…”

He slid her back into the wheelchair. She was still weak. Greg knelt and checked out the sling.

“I’m okay.” The government agents were huddled around. “Tell them to go away, Greg. Please. I just want everything to go back to how it was before.”