L.A. She hadn't lingered that time, but now she had nothing but time on her hands. And the memories didn't frighten her anymore. After fifteen years, they were too far back to do her any harm. Or maybe she was just ready now. Having lost Sean, she could face other losses in her life. Sean had taught her that.
She was lost in thought as they drove into the tunnel just before the Louvre, and got stuck in traffic. She didn't care. Carole was in no hurry to go anywhere. She was tired from the trip, the time difference, and her long walk. She was planning to eat an early dinner in her room, and work on her book before she went to bed.
She was thinking about the book as they advanced in the tunnel a few feet, and then came to a dead stop. It was rush-hour traffic, with people going home, others going out. At that hour Paris traffic was always bad. She glanced into the car next to her, and saw two young men in the front seat, laughing, and honking their horn at the car in front. Another young man stuck his head out of that car, and waved back at them. They were having a ball, and laughing hysterically about something, which even made Carole smile. They looked Moroccan or North African, and were dark skinned in a beautiful café au lait color, and in the backseat of the car next to her was a boy in his late teens, not sharing in their laughter. He looked nervous and unhappy about something, and for a long moment, his eyes met Carole's. It was almost as though he was frightened, and she felt sorry for him. The traffic in her own lane stayed stationary, but the lane next to her moved forward finally. The boys in the front seat were still laughing, and as they pulled away, the boy in the backseat jumped out of the car and began running. Carole was watching, fascinated by him as he ran backward through the tunnel and vanished, and just as he disappeared, she heard a truck backfire somewhere ahead of them. As she heard it, she saw both cars with the laughing young men turn into fireballs, as the entire tunnel reverberated with a series of explosions and she could see a wall of fire move toward them. Her mind told her to get out of the car and run, but almost as she thought the words, the cab door flew open and she could feel herself flying over cars, as though she had suddenly grown wings. All she could see was fire around her, the cab she had been in had disappeared, pulverized into oblivion along with other cars near them. It was like being in a dream then, she could see cars and people disappearing beneath her, other people were flying just like she was, and then she drifted gently down into total blackness.
Chapter 3
There were dozens of fire trucks outside the tunnel near the Louvre for hours. The CRS, the riot troops, had been called in, in full battle dress, with shields and helmets, carrying machine guns. The street had been closed off. Ambulances, the SAMU, and fleets of paramedics had arrived. The police were controlling onlookers and pedestrians, while the bomb squads looked for more bombs that had not exploded. And inside the tunnel there was a raging inferno, as cars continued to explode from the fire, and it was almost impossible to get people out. Bodies littered the tunnel floor, survivors moaned, and those who could walk, run, or crawl emerged, many with their hair and clothes on fire. It was a total nightmare, as news teams arrived for coverage of the scene, and to interview survivors. Most were in a state of shock. As yet, no known terrorist group had taken responsibility for it, but from everything people who'd been in the tunnel had described, it had clearly been a bomb, and more likely several.
It was after midnight when firemen and police told reporters they believed they had gotten all the survivors. There were still bodies trapped in vehicles, or among the wreckage and debris, but it would be several more hours before they could put out the fire, and extricate the bodies. Two firemen had died in the blaze, trying to rescue people, when yet more cars exploded, and several rescuers had been overcome by fumes and flames, as had paramedics who were trying to assist people, or tend to them where they were trapped. Women, children, men had died. It was a spectacle beyond belief, and many were brought out alive but unconscious. Victims were being sent to any of four hospitals, where additional medical personnel had been brought in to help them. Two burn centers were already overcrowded, and people burned less severely were being sent to a special unit on the outskirts of Paris. The rescue efforts had been extraordinary and impressively coordinated, as one of the newscasters said, but there was only so much they could do in the wake of an attack of that nature. It had presumably been done by terrorists, and the force of the bombs used had even taken out sections of the walls of the tunnel. It was hard to believe that anyone had survived, when one saw the fierce blackness of the smoke, and the fire still raging in the tunnel.
In the end, Carole had landed in a little alcove of the tunnel, which, by sheer luck, had protected her as the fire advanced. She had been one of the first to be found by the firefighters who went in. She had a gash on one cheek, a broken arm, burns on both arms and near the cut on her cheek, and a major head injury. When they brought her out on a gurney and turned her over to the SAMU, manned by doctors as well as paramedics, she was unconscious. They rapidly assessed her injuries, intubated her to keep her breathing, and sent her to La Pitié Salpêtrière hospital, where the worst cases were being taken. Her burns were far less severe than many of the others they'd seen. But the head injury was life threatening. She was in a deep coma. They checked her for some kind of identification, and found none. She had nothing in her pockets, not even money. But her pockets would have been emptied by the force of her flight through the air. And if she'd had a handbag, she'd lost it when she was blown out of whatever vehicle she was in. She was an unidentified victim, a Jane Doe in a terrorist attack in Paris. There was absolutely nothing on her to identify her, not even a key to her room at the Ritz. And her passport was on her desk at the hotel.
She left the scene in an ambulance, code blue, with another unconscious survivor who had come out of the tunnel naked, with third-degree burns across his entire body. Paramedics tended to them both, but it seemed unlikely that either patient would be alive when they got to La Pitié. The burn victim died in the ambulance. Carole was still alive, though barely, when they rushed her inside to the trauma unit. A team was standing by, waiting for the first casualties to arrive. The first two ambulances had already shown up with dead bodies.
The female doctor in charge of the trauma unit looked grim as she examined Carole. The cut on Carole's cheek was a nasty one, the burns on her arms were second degree, the one on her face seemed minor compared to the rest of her injuries. They called in an orthopedist to set her arm, but it had to wait until they assessed the damage to her head. CT scans had to be done immediately, and her heart stopped before they could even start them. The cardiac team worked on her frantically, and got her heart going again, and then her blood pressure dropped dramatically. There were eleven people working on her, as other victims were brought in, but for the moment Carole was one of the worst. A neurosurgeon came in to examine her, and they were finally able to get the CT scans done. He decided to wait to do surgery, she wasn't stable enough to survive it. They cleaned up her burns, her arm was set, she stopped breathing on her own, and they put her on a respirator. It was morning before things calmed down in the trauma unit, and the neurosurgeon evaluated her again. Their main concern was swelling to her brain, and it was difficult to assess how hard she had hit the wall or pavement in the tunnel, or how great the damage would be later on, if she survived. He still didn't want to operate, and the head of the trauma unit agreed with him. If surgery could be avoided, they preferred it, in order not to add to her trauma. Carole was holding on to her life by a thread.