Даниэла Стил - Turning Point

The school had been shut down, and on the news they had said that it would not reopen until the next semester. The students would be dispersed to other lycées in the area and the teachers put on leave, after being severely traumatized. New tighter security measures would be put in place in all the schools, too late for those who had died and been injured that day. Two more of the injured children had died since the shooting, which brought the death toll to a hundred and sixty-three, more victims than in the November shootings four years before. That tragedy had been carefully planned and executed. This incident had been haphazard, and carried out impulsively, by a man misguidedly mourning his wife and blaming the school for her death. He had made students and teachers alike pay for it. They all knew that his orphaned daughter would never be the same again.

There had been a photograph of Solange in the newspaper that night, as she mounted the steps of the police bus to talk to her father on the phone, but her back was turned and you couldn’t see her face. She looked like any schoolgirl with her backpack and her hair in a braid. If the press chose to single her out, they would be punishing her too.

Gabriel somehow managed to find Stephanie in the crowd outside Notre Dame, which was nearly impossible, but he had combed the crowd until he found her. Thousands of people had lit their candles and left small bunches of flowers on the steps of the church. A priest on the balcony said a blessing over them, as the bells tolled one hundred and sixty-three times, ringing in everyone’s heads and reverberating in their hearts. Gabriel said nothing to Stephanie when he found her, he stood next to her with an arm around her shoulders, and the other holding the candle he had brought.

Marie-Laure and Paul were there as well, and found them by calling Wendy’s cellphone. It felt good to be together, they stayed until eleven o’clock, and then went home. Tom left them afterward and went to find Valérie at the school where she was working, counseling families before they went home, and speaking quietly and respectfully to groups of parents about what to expect from their children and how to help them in the coming days. There would be nightmares and tears, panic attacks and night terrors as the reality of what they’d been through settled in and had to be processed. The meetings with parents and children were poignant and heart-wrenching, and what the children had been through showed on their faces as they clung to their parents, or threw themselves into their arms, seeking some semblance of safety. But Valérie knew it would be a long time before any of them felt safe again. They would relive the horror of that day for years.

Tom waited for Valérie to take a break, and they went to get a cup of coffee at a station that had been set up for everyone, and there was food for those who wanted it. Some of the children weren’t even able to talk, and Valérie told their parents reassuringly that they might not for a while.

“I keep wondering how that little girl is doing,” Tom said sadly, thinking about her again as he sipped his coffee. “She might not have made it. We managed to stop the bleeding in the ambulance, but she’d already lost a lot.”

“Do you know where they took her?” Valérie asked him.

“Necker.”

“We can check on her tomorrow.” She had new respect for him as a doctor and a man after seeing what he’d done, his race to save the child and the others he had helped when he got back from taking her to the hospital. He had been tireless on the scene, ingenious in the methods he used, highly skilled and dedicated. He had done everything he humanly could to save each child he worked on. He wasn’t the buffoon she had thought him to be. She had seen not only his competent side, but the flood of compassion he had emanated. “You’re a fantastic doctor,” she said, as they finished their coffee. And the other three Americans had been impressive too, and the French medical teams as well. “I try to be a decent doctor,” he replied. “But it’s not always possible,” he said simply, hoping the little girl he had run with didn’t fall into the category of those he couldn’t save.

He left Valérie at two in the morning, and didn’t attempt to talk to her counselees or their parents. Valérie knew much better than he what to say to heartsick, broken parents. He went back to his apartment then, and didn’t even bother to undress. He collapsed onto the bed, too exhausted to move, and just lay there and cried until he fell asleep.

—

They all came to the meeting the next morning, looking rough and ragged and worried. As was expected, they felt worse the next morning. Four more children had died during the night, and one teacher. One hundred sixty-eight. It was now officially the worst incident of its kind that France had lived through, with the heaviest losses.

Valérie was at the meeting, but said she couldn’t stay long. She had too many counseling sessions to organize, and programs and counselors to coordinate. She had met with Solange that morning at seven o’clock, who said she never wanted to go to school and face her peers again. But Valérie and her grandmother had convinced her to try it in a few days and see how she felt. There was much healing that had to happen, on all fronts, and Valérie was working hard to orchestrate it.

The entire team talked for hours about what had been handled perfectly, and what fell short. They each had valuable feedback for Marie-Laure, for another incident in the future. Had there been several gunmen, it would have been worse.

Afterward, they visited the hospitals where the victims had been taken. Some of the damage they had sustained was horrifying. And the team suspected that several would lose limbs, after the explosive damage of the shooter’s ammunition. At Necker, Tom had a happy surprise. They inquired about the little girl, but it took them time to match her case up to his description and find her. They asked what color her hair was, but he wasn’t sure because she had been covered with blood. Her parents were standing next to her bed when Tom walked in. They talked for a few minutes in his awful French, and they addressed their gratitude to him in halting English. No one could easily absorb what had happened, and yet they all had to find a way to live with it.

Tom was relieved when he’d seen the little girl he’d saved. She was heavily sedated and had had surgery the day before, but he could see that she was doing well and it was likely she would survive.

Tom met up with Valérie again at the end of the day, and they had a glass of wine at a bistro near her apartment on the rue du Bac. She looked tired, and their guard was down. The events of the day before had brought all of them closer to each other. Their merits and talents as physicians had shown, and Valérie had seen over the walls he surrounded himself with. They were walls of lighthearted fun and laughter but solid nonetheless, and she liked what she saw. He was a serious, good-hearted person, and she understood now what his colleagues in Oakland saw in him and why he was so respected.

“So what makes you do this kind of work?” she asked him directly, as they relaxed for a few minutes. She was going back that night to another school where counseling had been set up for the survivors.

“Moments like yesterday,” he said quietly. “Being able to make a difference in a matter of seconds before it’s too late.” She suspected more than that, but he didn’t volunteer it. They all had a personal stake in it, whether they admitted it or not. “What about you?”

“We lived in Lebanon for two years when I was growing up, during the war there. I lost some friends I was close to. And I thought maybe I could change something in the world. I wanted to be an obstetrician when I started medical school, but I got hooked on psychiatry. The human heart and mind intrigued me more than delivering babies. I think I made the right choice for me,” she said peacefully and smiled at him. Tom didn’t say anything to her for a minute and then she could see something open up as he looked into her eyes and knew he could trust her with the secrets of his past.