The smoke was so dense now he could hardly see. He could sense his attention waning. Smoke inhalation was getting to him, poisoning his system, robbing him of his final moments of unclouded thought.
The sea of bodies had become too dense, the flames too intense. He could move backward no farther. He pushed himself toward what was once the left side of the bus, toward the only unobstructed windows. Flames were everywhere. The screams and shrieks of terror were becoming less frequent—for the worst of all possible reasons.
He glanced behind him and saw the still-slumbering face of the woman he had invited onto the bus. Her eyes were still closed; her face was caked with blood and soot. But she was still beautiful.
“Forgive me,” he whispered, and all at once, tears filled his eyes.
He turned toward the windows above him, suddenly consumed with rage. He tried to lower the sash, but the buttons were unbearably hot, and even when he forced himself to keep trying, they didn’t work. Clutching the back of a seat with each hand, he swung himself upward, kicking the windows with all his strength.
“Safety windows,” he muttered under his breath. They were supposed to be safety windows. Kick them and they pop out. But as hard as he kicked, nothing happened.
“Break, damn you!” he screamed. “Break!”
Five minutes later the police and firefighters arrived at the scene—less than ten minutes after the crash. But by that time, there was nothing they could do. The fire had consumed the bus to such a degree that the policemen could not initially tell what it was. Flames were everywhere, radiating from all points, surging twenty feet into the sky.
Now
BILLY’s MOMMY FIGURED HE probably had the flu. There wasn’t that much to it at first—just coughs, runny nose, congestion. She went through the usual drilclass="underline" rest, lots of liquids, and occasional doses of Tylenol. After a week, though, he still wasn’t any better, and his fever was climbing. His appetite had disappeared; he had to be forced to eat and even then ate precious little. He seemed pale, and this was a twelve-year-old boy in the midst of an Oklahoma summer. He moved more slowly, although he still wasn’t willing to curtail his social life.
“Gee, Mom, I gotta go out. Gavin’s got a new computer game. They say it makes Doom 2 look like sissy stuff.”
Cecily Elkins, Billy’s mother, checked the reading on the thermometer. “You’re not going anywhere until your temperature comes down.”
“But Mo-om—”
“Don’t Mom me. You’re staying in bed.”
“Oh, all right. Great.” He glanced back at her. “What about you?”
“What do you mean, what about me?”
“You look kinda tired yourself. You’ve been workin" too hard.”
Come to think of it, she was rather tired. Having a sick child at home for a week was a major strain, no two ways about it. But how many twelve-year-olds would’ve noticed?
“Tell you what, pardner,” she said, fluffing his pillow. “If you’ll stay in bed, I’ll go take a short nap.”
“Make it a long one, Mom. You need your rest.”
She put her hands on her hips. “Now wait a minute. Who’s the parent here?”
Billy laughed.
“I think I’m supposed to be in charge, buster, remember?”
“I think we should take care of each other, now that it’s just the two of us.” Billy’s expression was innocent and without guile. “Isn’t that right?”
She wanted to hug him, but she resisted, since she knew he would complain about it.
More days passed and Billy still did not get well. Cecily became most concerned, however, when she noticed the bruises. There were several of them up and down his arms. When she removed his shirt, she found them on his chest as well. That was when she began to suspect they might be dealing with something other than the flu. She made an appointment for Billy to see his pediatrician that afternoon.
Dr. Harlan Freidrich tried to mask his concern, but it was obvious to Cecily that he was alarmed by Billy’s appearance. He said words that were calming and reassuring, but Cecily ignored the words and focused on the doctor’s eyes. The eyes were worried.
Yes, he had some upper respiratory congestion. Yes, there must be an infection of some sort. The bruises might be an indicator of some sort of anemia, he explained, a deficiency of blood platelets. Billy’s lymph nodes were also slightly swollen. Eventually, in his calm, there’s-nothing-to-worry-about voice, Dr. Freidrich told Cecily that he suspected Billy had some sort of blood disorder. That hit her hard, but what struck even stronger was the creeping sensation she got from peering into the doctor’s eyes. What he had told her was horrible. But she sensed there was something more, something he suspected but dared not tell her—yet.
If Cecily had not looked at the chart left behind in Billy’s hospital room, two weeks later, she might not have been prepared for the worst. But she had looked—and why shouldn’t she? She knew it shouldn’t have been left on that desk, that it was an accident that resulted when the nurse tried to do too many things at once. But Billy was her son, damn it. She had a right to know anything there was to know. Even things the doctors were not yet prepared to tell her.
Much of the gibberish on the chart meant little or nothing to her. “Underweight, lethargic, twelve-year-old. Normally active, but not of late. Easy bruisability.” She skipped to the analysis of the now dozens of blood tests that had been performed. “Results indicate generalized lymphadenopathy, although no petechiae. The spleen was not palpable.” It didn’t sound good, but she didn’t really know what it meant.
She continued flipping through the pages. The day before, the doctors had performed what they called a bone marrow aspiration. Decoding the doctor’s atrocious handwriting, she read the results. “Thirty-eight percent blast cells.” Next to the results, the doctor had drawn an arrow and written in: “Definite signs of leukemogenesis.”
That afternoon, Dr. Freidrich called Cecily into his office. He had also wanted Billy’s father to be present, but when Cecily called him, he said he was in the middle of an important project at work and couldn’t get away. So Cecily was alone when she received the bad news she already knew was coming.
“Your son has leukemia,” the doctor said. He cleared his throat, then walked around his desk and sat in the chair beside her. “There’s no doubt in our minds. It’s acute lymphocytic leukemia.”
Cecily steeled herself, tried not to react. After all, she had known it was coming. She was proud of herself, in a strange way, proud that she wasn’t behaving like a typical weak-kneed mother. She would show the doctor that she had strength. That she had what it took to weather this crisis.
“The next few weeks will be critical for Billy,” the doctor continued. “We’re going to try to induce a remission through a combination of radiation and drug therapy. I believe the chances of remission in this case are good. But I have to be honest with you. There’s also about a ten percent chance that Billy will… pass away. In the next few weeks.”
Cecily heard his words, but she felt oddly distant, as if she wasn’t really there at all. Her eyes focused on the window behind the doctor’s desk. She watched the cars racing up and down Maple, shoppers headed for Wal-Mart, diners going to the Blackwood Bar-B-Q. She focused on the glints of sunlight that streamed through the window, refracted, and formed miniature rainbows on the wall. She wasn’t really there. She wasn’t really there.
“The greatest potential hazard we face in the upcoming weeks is not from the leukemia itself but from the risk of infection. The chemo will kill the cancer cells in Billy’s blood and bone marrow, but it will also damage his immune system. The simplest infection—a cold, even—could cause him to … pass away.”