“I can’t see her anywhere!” Hatfield’s wife cried, combating a noise so loud she had to scream directly into his ear to be heard. An idea came to him—not a great one, but they were out options. “Come here!” he said, turning her away and gripping her waist. He tugged her up until she landed on his shoulders, then held her legs.
But with no free hand, his bloody nose couldn’t be plugged. He tried to lift his left hand to raise his shirt to it, but the tide of bodies around him had shifted enough to send him tumbling to the floor, bringing with him Jess and a host of others. “You okay?” he asked his wife, unable to see her through the clump.
No answer. With Justin’s help, he cleared out a lane to see her pointing fifteen, maybe twenty feet ahead of them. She turned to him, struggling for words. “That’s her!”
“Where? I don’t see anybody?”
But he was looking in the wrong place, scanning those on foot. She stabbed her finger downward, emphasizing the floor. Finding a girl of fifteen splayed in front of the bleachers, the three of them raced forward.
They knelt at her side, trying to nudge her back to life. “Tami!” Are you okay, honey?”
She turned quickly, eyes very much awake and alert, but with her teeth clenched in a pained grimace. “My arm!” she screamed. “I hurt it really bad!”
Hatfield lightly touched it, but Jess took his wrist and moved him away. “Come on, honey. Who’s the nurse here?”
“Sorry.”
With a slow, cautious touch, she pressed it along various points. “Besides,” she said to her husband, “you need a free hand to stop that nose from bleeding.”
He lifted his shirt and clamped the bleeding again, watching his daughter’s face. He’d never seen agony like that from either of his kids. He looked up to Justin to see him holding her uninjured hand. Probably the first time they’d ever done that voluntarily.
“Does that feel tender?” Jess asked, pressing against the muscle.
She nodded, sucking air into her teeth sharply.
“Can you ball your fist up, honey?”
Tami tried, but this only brought more pain. “Owww!”
“She’s got a broken wrist,” Jess said.
“Does she need to go see a doctor?” Justin asked, his face more worried than his father had ever seen it.
Jess raised her eyes to her husband as if weighing her words before speaking. “That’d be great if she could, but it may not be an option right now.”
“Why not?” he asked his mother.
His wife struggled for the right words, so Hatfield took the question. “We know you guys have been in here all day, so take our word for it. Things are getting chaotic out on the streets.
Jess asked, “You know of any place we can go that has some medical supplies we can use?”
“How soon do we need them?”
“What we need right now is to put ice on it. For the rest, the sooner, the better, but worst-case scenario, we need to get her there in the next few hours.”
“I know where we can get some ice!” Justin called, springing to his feet. “The cafeteria’s right across the hallway.”
Hatfield raised his daughter up to wobbly legs. “Let’s get her there. While we’re at it, we all might as well bug out of here!”
Justin cleared the way, with Hatfield close behind, holding Tami near his body so she didn’t get bumped and bruised too much along the way. Jess cradled her daughter’s face.
“Out of the way!” Justin yelled. “My sister needs to get out!”
The savage clash of those in the gym brought a scowl to Hatfield’s face. They seemed unmoved by the plight of a fifteen-year-old, tussling against her wounded body, jockeying through the sea of people, throwing elbows, fists and hips at grown-ups and kids alike in their path to get out.
The obnoxious man from the steps chimed in again. “Ladies and gentleman, I’m afraid I must insist you all remain here by order of the National Guard. Please close the doors, guys!”
The guards at the door tried to yank the doors shut, but a flood of bodies fought against it. A few slipped out, but most didn’t. When the doors clanked shut, a collective groan echoed throughout the gymnasium. Soon the groans turned into hisses and loudly-shouted obscenities.
The uniformed guards dragged everybody back, but the Hatfield family approached them. “Do you guys have any idea what you’re doing!” Hatfield yelled.
“I’m really sorry,” one guard answered. “It’s not up to me. I was given orders—”
“Not good enough!” he said, his gaze like granite. “My daughter needs medical attention, and if she doesn’t get it, you are going to answer for it. Not the person who gave you the orders. Not your commanding officer. I am going to find out who you are and make sure you regret it.”
The guard’s face wilted. “Yes, sir.” He eased the door open just beyond a crack. “If anybody asks, tell them you got through before they could—”
Hatfield kicked the door the rest of the way open, then followed his son down the hallway.
“This way!” Justin yelled, leading them to a closed door. The twelve-year-old tried to push it open. “I think it’s locked.”
Hatfield kicked it. Nothing. He tried a few more times. It didn’t open, but it gave way a little. “It’s not locked. They just put something against it.”
Justin and his father kicked it simultaneously a few times, finally getting it to open—not all the way, but enough to squeeze through one by one.
8
Once they got in there, the family was stunned by what they saw. A gathering of vagrants stared up at them, caught in the act of reaching into a large glass-doored refrigerator.
Hatfield looked back and saw they had placed a large machine at the door in a clumsy effort to barricade it. Then he took a second look at the vagrants. With tattered clothes and worn faces, they kept staring as if afraid of what would happen to them next.
“What do we do, Dad?” Justin asked.
Hatfield stepped forward. “Look, guys, we’re not here to hurt anybody. We just need some ice, and then we’ll be on our way.”
In spite of his kind words, they scattered out of the way as he approached the freezer. Jess scooped up a handful of ice, placed it in a napkin, and wrapped it around her daughter’s wrist. “This will be enough for now,” she said. “But we’re going to need to get a cast on it soon.”
Looking at the urgency on his wife’s face and horror on his daughter’s, Hatfield’s mind spun in a million directions. A trip to the emergency room seemed impossible for the moment, maybe forever. He needed a new option.
Holding up her daughter’s wrist, Jess ripped a tablecloth from a nearby table, folding it in half and putting it around Tami’s wrist as a makeshift sling. She brought heavy eyes to her husband as if silently asking, “What are we going to do?”
He pondered more. “We need to find someplace, but we can’t do it on foot.”
“Do we have another choice?” Tami asked.
“So the minivan won’t work, right?” Jess asked.
“The make is too recent. Plus, it hasn’t been in storage.”
Tami started to sob, prompting the family to share a group hug.
The answer hit Hatfield. “The Hummer!”
“Did you leave that at work?” Justin asked.
“Yes, it’s in storage and has no electronics in it. All we have to do is get there. Once we get it, we can focus on covering more ground as we look for a place to go.”
They started to scramble from the cafeteria, but an eruption in the gym startled them. They heard more screaming, cries for mercy. They also heard the gym doors rattle open and a throng pouring into the hallway.