Даниэла Стил - Turning Point

Tom talked to her in English all the way to the hospital, as her eyes fluttered, her pulse was thready but she was alive. Two paramedics had ridden with him. The three worked on the child together in perfect unison to keep pressure on the wound. Tom was covered in blood and when they got to the hospital she was still alive. A team from the trauma unit rushed her away and Tom prayed they could save her. She was too young to die. He rode back in the ambulance with the EMTs, and when he got to the school, Wendy was on her knees on the concrete holding a boy whose arm had been nearly shot off and who was in shock. He was an upper class student and bigger than she was, and she helped get him on a gurney and they rushed him away.

Bill and Stephanie were bent over a ten-year-old boy who had just died. Paul was carrying injured children from the building along with the police, and Marie-Laure and Gabriel were helping to get the walking injured into ambulances quickly as Valérie moved among the parents, consoling, hugging, reassuring, helping them find their children. The children who had not been injured were already on buses to be taken to another school where the post-trauma teams were waiting for them, they would spend several hours being counseled and debriefed, then be reunited with their parents.

Valérie suggested to Solange’s grandmother that they remove her from the scene quickly, before the reporters spotted her and surrounded her. They drove away a few minutes later. She had given the grandmother her card, and asked her to call later, and bring Solange to see her in the morning. Solange’s grandmother promised she would.

Once the injured had all been sent to hospitals, the body count began in earnest, and the bodies were removed from the school, as policemen and workers sobbed at what they saw. Some children had been shot in the head, as the gunman had said, but many weren’t and had bled to death in classrooms and in the halls, or in the gym. The final count was horrifying, the worst mass slaughter in Paris ever. A hundred and twenty-nine students had been killed, and thirty-two teachers. A total of one hundred and sixty-one people, a quarter of the population of the school, and more would die in the hours to come. More than fifty children had been injured and even lost limbs due to the assault weapons he used. A single man had done this with a sack of fully loaded automatic weapons, shooting them relentlessly for two hours. He was unpredictable and deranged, no one could have foreseen it. It was a tragedy of mass proportions.

When all of the children and teachers were gone, Marie-Laure suggested that they all go back to her place. Her children were in school and the combined team needed a place to gather and mourn, catch their breath, and cry over the senselessness of it all. They climbed into the van, filthy, bloodstained, and exhausted. Stephanie and Wendy were crying. Tom didn’t even know the name of the child he had tried to save. Valérie had gone on to the other school to meet with parents and students, and teachers and their families, in the post-trauma operation. But the rest of their team was in the van going to Marie-Laure’s, and Bruno Perliot, the captain in charge, had told her he would be in touch later. There would be countless debriefings, press conferences, and meetings in the coming days to analyze what had happened, what had gone wrong, if anything, and what could have been handled differently. They had lost too many lives, but they all agreed there was nothing they would have changed. It had been conducted with the precision of a Swiss clock. But one mad gunman with a sack full of weapons had beaten them soundly and stolen a hundred and sixty-one souls.

They spent two hours at Marie-Laure’s and then went back to their apartments while she went to join Valérie to see how things were going with the post-trauma counseling. They had a huge number of parents and families to console, of the fallen teachers as well. It was overwhelming, but had been handled with the utmost professionalism. The four American trauma doctors had immense respect for what they’d seen.

Andy had called Stephanie on her cell the minute he had seen it on the news. He’d been up late watching TV, and demanded she come home. He said there was no reason for her to be there, and she belonged with her children, not risking her life in France.

“I was never at risk,” she said calmly, in a sad voice. “We weren’t in the school. And there is every reason for me to be here. We have a lot to learn from them, and information to share. I’m here because of situations like this in both our countries.”

“Get your ass home, dammit!” he shouted at her out of his own fears.

“I love you, but I’m staying,” she said quietly, and he hung up on her a minute later. She could hear how frightened he had been for her.

Jeff called Wendy when she was on her way home in the van. She was surprised to hear from him, although she knew he stayed up late. “Are you all right?” he asked in a matter-of-fact voice, as though she were a colleague or an old friend, and she suspected that Jane might be near him, from the impersonal tone.

“I’m fine, but it was heartbreaking,” she said, breaking down.

“I’m sure it was,” he said quietly. “I was concerned about you. I just wanted to check in. I’m glad you’re okay. See you when you get back.” And with that he hung up, and she was left starving for more, and some tenderness and comfort. It would have been nice to hear the words “I love you.” But that wasn’t Jeff. He hadn’t said those words to her in a long time, maybe because he didn’t love her anymore, or didn’t think he had to say them. Or maybe he thought he wasn’t cheating on his wife if he didn’t say he loved her.

Bill had overheard the conversation, and looked over at her. He could see how disappointed she was. “Surgeons are like that. All heart,” he commented and she smiled. She didn’t want to say that his wife was probably with him.

They were all shattered when they got home, and wished that there was more they could do for the injured. Tom wanted to go to the school where Valérie’s trauma teams were working, but he didn’t want to intrude. Instead he knocked on Bill’s door with a bottle of scotch, and they had a drink together, and Stephanie joined them a few minutes later.

“I could use some of that,” she said. Tom poured her a drink, and Bill knocked on Wendy’s door to invite her to join them and she had some too. It had been a smooth operation in many ways, but a hell of a day. And parents would be mourning their children. Bill turned on CNN on the TV and the reporter said there would be a candlelit vigil at Notre Dame that night at 9 P.M., to honor the victims. The four of them agreed to go. And in their own way, they were each glad they had been there to do what they could. It seemed so little with so many children dead, but this was what they had chosen to dedicate their lives to. And all four of them knew that they’d been right to come to France. This was confirmation of it. They were meant to be here, and this grueling, agonizing job was what they’d been born to do, even if it broke their hearts.

Chapter Nine

The team from San Francisco met in the hallway outside their apartments, dressed in warm clothes, at a quarter to nine that night. Stephanie and Wendy were wearing wool beanies, and they’d called a cab to take them to Notre Dame. They had to stop a few blocks away and walked from there. The area was filled with silent people, carrying candles and flowers, walking solemnly toward the cathedral. Their eyes met and then they looked at the army of strangers who had come to mourn the students, young lives cut too short, and the teachers, many of whom were young as well. It was a way of facing it together with people they didn’t even know. They felt a powerful bond, deploring the madness of one lone gunman who had changed so many lives forever, on a mission of revenge spawned in his twisted mind. There was no way to understand it. No one did. He had killed so many.