The trip from the apartment to Grand Central took us damn near three hours. The ferry terminal was a mess — National Guardsmen in full camo manned security checkpoints, frisking every passenger before boarding, and slowing the line to a crawl. What's worse, the city'd suspended all subway service north of Thirtythird, which meant a nine-block hike against a bitter northern wind. By the time we arrived, my leg wound had begun to seep, and a cold, acrid sweat had broken out across my face and chest.
The scene itself was one of utter panic. Nothing I'd seen on TV had prepared me for its scope. The streets were flush with people — many fleeing, although most, like us, pushed ever closer to the terminal. News choppers thudded overhead, and over their incessant din I heard a woman shrieking for her child, while behind her, a street preacher atop a milk crate shouted that the end was near. Since we'd left the apartment, a portion of the terminal's roof had collapsed, sealing shut the southern entrance to the station. Rescue workers struggled to clear the debris and reach those still trapped inside, while just outside the perimeter, the city pressed close — watching, waiting. The sheer volume of people had halted traffic for blocks before we'd even reached the barricades, and dozens of car horns sounded again and again in a futile attempt to break the jam.
We shoved our way through the crowd, me in the lead, and Kate trailing behind, her left hand gripped tightly in my right. Though the fire had long been out, thick dark smoke still poured out of the ruined windows of the terminal and hung over the crowd like an impending storm. The afternoon light was reduced to a trickle, and the acrid smoke burned my eyes, my nose, my throat. With every face that passed, I felt a flutter of anticipation, and I scanned them all in turn — each time dreading that flicker of recognition that would mean that we'd been made. I kept telling myself that there was no way for Bishop to know where we'd gone, that he was probably half a city away, but it did nothing to stop my heart from thudding in my chest, nor to quell the anxious tremors in my hands.
A knee connected with my injured thigh, and I stumbled. Pain radiated outward from the wound in nauseating waves, and my vision went dim. Eventually, I got my feet back under me, and we continued through the crowd, but my leg was once more slick with blood, and my head grew foggier with each mutinous heartbeat.
The barriers were a surprise. One moment, the crowd seemed to go on forever, and the next, I was expelled into a sawhorse with enough force that I nearly toppled over it. Kate's hand slipped free of my sweatslick grasp, and I teetered for a moment, doubled over the grimy, yellow thing — my feet no longer touching street, my fingertips just inches from the pavement on the other side. A uniformed hand grabbed a fistful of my shirt, none too gently, and hoisted me upright.
"Easy, mac," said the cop. "Where the hell you think you're going?"
I confess that in my dazed and injured state, I didn't really have an adequate reply. Turns out, I didn't need one.
"My uncle, he's hurt. From the blast, I mean. He was walking past when it happened, and I think he mighta caught some shrapnel or whatever. It won't stop bleeding."
I stared at Kate for a moment like she had a second head. Then I broke into a smile when I realized what she was doing. Kate nudged me, her face set in a scowl. I followed suit, replacing my smile with a grimace of pain that wasn't just for show. The cop didn't see any of that, though — he was staring at my blood-soaked jeans.
"All right, come on," he said, yanking the barrier aside enough to admit both Kate and me.
Between the two of them, they managed to wrestle me to the medical tent, one under each arm, with my bum leg trailing out behind. For a while, I tried to hop along, but by then even my good leg was pretty shaky, and I think I was more hindrance than help. They dropped me onto a stretcher, soot-smudged and flecked with blood, and the cop disappeared into the fray to find a medic.
"That was some good thinking back there," I said, once the cop was out of earshot. I couldn't help but notice I was slurring my speech.
Kate replied, "Thanks."
I tried to swing my legs off of the stretcher, but I wasn't having much luck. "Help me get off of this thing, would you?"
"Sam, I'm not sure that's the best idea. I mean, your leg's in lousy shape — you might want to let them take a look at it."
"Jesus, Kate, listen to yourself! Do you even realize where we are? The last thing we need right now is attention! Now for God's sake, help me up!"
Just then, a woman emerged from the crowd, clad in dirty scrubs, a stethoscope draped around her neck. She carried with her a tray stacked with medical implements — gauze, needles, surgical thread, and the like. She couldn't have been more than thirty, and she was thin as a rail, her mouse-brown hair pulled into a no-nonsense bun above a face that looked as though it hadn't seen sunlight in weeks.
"I understand we've got a leg injury? A puncture of some kind?" said the doctor.
I tried to protest, but Kate cut me off. "That's right. He got it walking past. I tried to dress it myself, but it won't stop bleeding."
"Let's have a look, then, shall we?"
I watched as the doctor cut through my second pair of pants in a day, this time following upward along the inseam and peeling back the fabric like a denim banana. Her brow furrowed. "You got this here?"
"Yes," both Kate and I replied, doubtless a little more forcefully than was required.
"You're sure."
"Yes," I repeated, more casually this time. "I was in line for a pretzel when it happened. Next thing I knew, I was flat on my back, a hunk of metal sticking outta my thigh. I know I probably shoulda stuck around, but I was scared. I hobbled home, and my niece here patched me up, only it didn't take."
The doctor jabbed a needle into my thigh, and soon the wound went blissfully, disconcertingly numb. "No, I wouldn't expect it would have. Probably the worst thing you could have done was removed the shrapnel on your own — as it stands, you've lost a lot of blood. Speaking of, where is it?"
"Where is what?"
"The metal fragment," she said, her hands expertly drawing the nylon thread through the meat of my thigh and closing the wound tightly. "The police have requested that any shrapnel be saved and cataloged, so they can better reconstruct what happened."
Kate and I shared a glance. No doubt the doctor noticed. It was Kate that answered. "We, ah, left it at home."
"That's fine," the doctor replied, though her expression was not as light as her tone implied. "An officer will be by to take your statement, and I'm sure they can send someone along to collect it." The stitching done, she began wrapping my leg in layer upon layer of gauze.
"Our statement?" asked Kate.
Her wrapping stopped. The doctor sat there, roll of gauze in hand, and met both our gazes in turn. "Yes, your statement. Like it or not, you are both material witnesses to a federal crime — the police are going to want to know where you were when the blast went off, as well as what you saw. If I were you, I'd cooperate, and that means you'd better get your facts straight."
"Meaning what?" I asked, feigning offense.
"Meaning there's no way that wound was made by a flying hunk of twisted metal. The surrounding flesh is too clean, the borders too discrete."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"I'm pretty sure you do." The doctor finished wrapping the wound and taped the gauze in place. "This," she said, "is a knife wound."
25
I said, "Listen, lady, I think you've got this all wrong."
The doctor raised her hands, a placating gesture. "I'm not the one you should be talking to," she said. "I'm just here to patch you up — I don't much care what happened. But if you know something about what happened here, they will find out. You two don't look like terrorists to me — make things easier on yourself and cooperate."