Did you hear the shooter say anything? Did he mention any names? When was the last time you heard the gun go off? How many injured did you see before you went into hiding?
Her father’s questions rolled in like thunderclouds, fast and thick. Wren closed her eyes and pressed the power button to darken the screen and save some of the limited juice she had left. She thought, instead, of all the questions he wasn’t asking her.
Why are you in a women’s health center in the middle of the school day?
Why is your aunt with you?
Why didn’t you tell me?
Her earliest memory was when she was four years old, when she still had a mother and a normal nuclear family. She was at nursery school, and a boy on the playground kissed her smack on the lips underneath the jungle gym that looked like a pirate ship and announced that he wanted to make babies with her. Wren had drawn back her fist and punched him right in the mouth.
Her parents were called to school. Her mother was mortified and kept saying that Wren didn’t have a violent bone in her body, which made her wonder if other people had violent bones, and if they were tucked in among the ribs or pressed down under the foot when you stamped it. “Wren,” her mother said, “what did youdo?”
“I did what Daddy told me to,” she answered. Her father laughed so hard he couldn’t stop, and her mother told him to go stand outside, like he was the one in trouble.
Her mother wanted to punish her. Her father took her out for the biggest ice cream sundae, instead.
Dad,she texted,are you still there?
...
...
...
Always,he wrote, and she exhaled.
—
THE SHOOTER HAD TAKEN EVERYONE’Scellphones and thrown them into the trash. He barricaded the front door with the couch and seats and coffee tables. Breathing hard, he turned around, leveling the gun at the others. “Do what I say,” he muttered, “and no one will get hurt.”
“No oneelse,” Izzy corrected under her breath.
She knew that he was watching her; his eyes felt like lasers. But Izzy didn’t care. She had kept up her end of the bargain, and there were people here who were hurt. She’d be damned if she sat back and let them suffer.
Janine still had her hands pressed on Bex’s chest. Izzy bent down, trying to see how much the wound was still bleeding. The woman’s whisper fell into her ear. “My niece. Closet.”
Izzy thought of the two faces, pinched and terrified, that had been staring up at her when she opened those doors at the gunman’s directive. She leaned over farther on the pretense of listening to Bex’s labored breath. “She’s okay,” Izzy murmured.
Bex’s eyes fluttered closed. “Need to tell Hugh.”
“Tell me what?”
Bex coughed, and then cried out from the pain that must have shot through her lungs and ribs. Izzy tried to distract her, because there was damn little else she could do but keep the woman comfortable. “What do you do, Bex?”
“Artist,” the woman whimpered. “Hurts.”
“I know,” Izzy soothed. “The less you can move, the better.” She glanced at Janine, and silently directed her to maintain her position. “I’m going to tend to someone else,” Izzy said, “but I promise I’ll be back.”
She inched across the carpet to Dr. Ward. The tourniquet that Joy had tied needed to be tighter and more durable.
“Vonita,” he said softly. “She’s gone?”
Izzy nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” he murmured. “So am I.” He looked over his shoulder, as if he could see past the barrier of the front desk, where the body lay. “These women, they were all the daughters Vonita never had. Drove her husband crazy, how hard she worked at this place. He used to say they’d carry her out of here in a coffin.” His voice broke on the last word. “She would hate knowing that he turned out to be right.”
Izzy rolled the fabric from Dr. Ward’s pants leg around his thigh and tied it just above the wound. “Hold still, Doctor,” she said.
