TWENTY-TWO

 

DAY 6. MONDAY, 9/25—NOON

The door on Lafayette Street swung open quickly, almost striking Noah in the face, and Sasha, the dour Slavic boy with the pock-marked face, burst out. The boy looked up at him for a moment, glowered, then hurried past and down the street. Every errand these people run they think is urgent, Noah thought.

Noah walked up the stairs to the second floor. Just before he reached New Visions’ door, a series of odd events occurred in rapid sequence.

The glass on the door seemed to bulge out and then break; the hall seemed to lose its orientation to the horizontal; Noah felt pressure on his chest, as if he had been caught in some great wave at the seashore; and, most frighteningly, he could no longer hear. Just after these singular phenomena, the hall went black.

Noah opened his eyes. His lungs were choked with dust. Glass and plaster littered the hall. The door to New Visions was gone, as was a good deal of the wall. His vision was blurred, and the scene floated in front of him, as if in a dream. He still could not hear, although a buzz of background seemed to ring in his ears. He was confused. He was aware of where he was, yet unaware at the same time.

He tried to stand but pitched back to his hands and knees. Sounds had begun to penetrate the buzz. Sharp sounds, although they seemed to be filtered through liquid. Then Noah knew. They were screams. Awareness returned, slowly at first, then faster.

Bomb. The offices of New Visions had been bombed. The vision of Sasha running away from the building stuck in his mind for a moment, then was replaced.

Miriam.

Noah tried once again to stand, but once again fell. Finally, he succeeded in forcing himself to his feet. He began to stagger through the plaster and glass to the destroyed offices. He realized his clothes were torn, his jacket almost shredded. Warm liquid flowed down his forehead. His own blood. He continued through the hall, his steps still unsteady. The screams became clearer, louder, more persistent.

He reached the yawning opening in the wall and braced himself against a stud. The devastation inside was staggering. Plaster, broken furniture, hanging wires, torn papers, twisted metal, shards of glass and wood were everywhere. Interspersed with the inanimate wreckage was the wreckage of men and women, sometimes whole, sometimes in parts. A man’s leg, still in its trouser, was at his feet. He scanned the room but could not see her. He continued to hear the screams but could make out no one screaming. To his left, he saw that Mauritz Herzberg’s office was completely blown out.

Noah began to make his way through the room. The first three people he encountered—two women and a man—were dead. One of the men was the owner of traumatically amputated leg. Another man was unconscious with a fractured humerus. Noah propped him up and placed his arm on a piece of desktop. A woman, her clothes in tatters, lay muttering to herself. Noah sat her up as well. Both would survive until ambulances arrived. A bit farther on, Noah saw the door to Mauritz’s office. It had been blown, almost intact, halfway across the main room. Noah was about to keep searching when he saw a foot protruding from underneath. He reached down and flung the door to the side.

Miriam.

She was lying half-turned to one side. She seemed conscious. Noah knelt by her and reached for her wrist. Pulse was weak and rapid. Thready. Difficult to palpate. Her skin was pallid; her gaze unfocused. Hemorrhagic shock. Blood loss. Internal or external. If the former, he would be unable to save her. Like Isobel.

Noah rolled Miriam over. Blood underneath her. As large as a rain puddle. Leg wound. Not pulsing. Venous, not arterial. Warm. Elevate. Pressure. He grabbed for the door that had pinned Miriam to the floor—and very possibly had shielded her and saved her life. Her father’s door. He rolled Miriam onto it and placed one end on some debris, forming an incline. Trendelenburg position. Head below the heart. Maximize blood flow to the brain and lessen it to the wound. He covered her torso with whatever was available. Her eyes—those wonderful eyes—were glazed.

Noah ripped off his vest, folded it into a compress, and held it to the wound as tightly as he could. Pressure. More effective than a tourniquet, even with major trauma. Would not present the danger of cutting off blood flow completely and mortifying tissue.

After a few seconds, the bleeding was under control, but Noah dared not release the compress. Miriam’s eyes had cleared slightly. Her brain was getting more oxygen.

“Noah?” she whispered. “Is that you?”

“Yes. Be still.”

“Where’s Daddy?”

“In the other room.”

Noah sensed movement and looked up to see a man in the doorway, likely from one of the other offices in the building. “You! Come here!” Noah yelled. For the first time, he noticed that his shirt front was covered in blood.

The man did not move at first, so Noah yelled again. The man finally began to pick his way through the rubble, looking back and forth in disbelief, as if he had entered the Ninth Circle of Hell.

“Hold this tight right here!” Noah commanded when the man arrived. Noah showed the man how to keep pressure on the wound. The screaming had stopped, replaced by a soft moaning emanating from many quarters at once. He must help the others.

“Don’t leave.” Miriam’s voice was still weak, but her articulation had improved.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be right here.”

As he stood to look around the room, Noah heard bells in the distance. Ambulances. As he combed through the rubble, he located three more dead. He made comfortable another four whose injuries could wait until medical personnel arrived in force, removing shards of glass, supporting broken limbs. He discovered one man bleeding from multiple cuts whom he also placed in the Trendelenburg position. A number of men had begun to appear at the scene. Noah employed them, one after another, directing each to perform whatever emergency function might keep the injured in stasis until professional help arrived. As he moved back and forth through the room, he checked on Miriam often. She seemed no worse. Lacking internal injury, she would survive.

Finally, when he had done all he could for the living, Noah made his way to Mauritz Herzberg’s office. The room had been reduced to a pile of odd sizes of wood, glass, plaster, and paper, piled together as if at a town dump. The window was gone, completely blown out. What remained of Herzberg’s desk, half a top and one leg, rested against what once had been a side wall.

Noah saw a right hand protruding from the pile. Although his own head wound seemed to have stopped bleeding, he suddenly felt light-headed, dizzy, vaguely faint. He lowered his head between his knees for a moment, then pushed forward through the debris. Throwing off the larger pieces of flotsam and scraping off the smaller, he uncovered a head and torso. Mauritz would have been unrecognizable to a stranger. His face was largely gone. His left arm had been torn off at the elbow, and massive thoracic trauma was apparent. At least he would be able to tell Miriam that her father had died instantly. The concussion had been so close, so severe, that Mauritz would not have had even a second’s recognition.

Noah’s fatigue was returning quickly. He staggered out into the main room to see that ambulance attendants had begun to fill the room. His legs suddenly felt like jelly, and the room was moving before his eyes. Voices lost distinction, became hollow, distant. Noah tried to move to where Miriam lay, to instruct the ambulance attendant precisely what care to take of her wound. After his first step, his other leg could not follow. The room began to spin. He was vaguely conscious of a man in white gesturing in his direction. The man seemed to be yelling something, but Noah could not hear him.

The effort to stand had become overwhelming. Noah leaned backward, coming to rest against a denuded joist. He slid slowly to the floor. He felt his eyes closing, as if drifting off into a deep sleep.