Trial By Fire

The helicopter took off the moment Ali was belted into her seat. For some reason, the ride back to Phoenix didn’t take nearly as long as the ride out, and not because they were traveling any faster, either. Coming, Ali had been desperately concerned about what was happening to Sister Anselm and petrified that they would arrive too late. Now, with Sister Anselm receiving much-needed medical attention, Ali was able to relax. She closed her eyes and was astonished to find that she dozed off and didn’t awaken until the drop in altitude indicated they were heading in for a landing on the hospital roof.

This time a crew of uniformed ER folks waited on the roof to take charge of the patients. Sister Anselm was wheeled off immediately. To Ali’s chagrin, she was ordered onto a gurney so she could be wheeled down the wide corridor, into the elevator, and down to the ER.

Naturally, that turned into a case of hurry up and wait. She lay in a curtained cubby for the better part of an hour and a half before a young ER doc finally got around to looking in on her.

“It looks like you’ve taken some hard falls,” he said. “We’d better do some X-rays for starters. And I’m going to order an IV. When you’re going to be out in the sun in this kind of heat, you need to be sure to stay hydrated.”

Yes, Ali thought. The next time I’m being held hostage by a crazed gunman, I’ll remind him that it’s his responsibility to provide the bottled water.

She did not expect the kids to be there. She did not want them-Serenity bawling as though her heart was broken even though it wasn’t and Win looking shocked. Devastated. He probably was. He had never been good at making his way in the world. He had always need Mimi to help sort things out for him, and he must be realizing that now he would be alone. On his own. In a way he had never been.

It always surprised her that it was possible to love one child so much more than the other, but she did. Win had needed her in a way Serenity had not. She had been her daddy’s girl, the apple of his eye. Serenity had always had her father. Winston had been his daughter’s be-all and end-all. Serenity probably thought her father had never lied to her. That, of course, was wrong. Winston had lied to everyone. Lying suited him.

And that was when Mimi Cooper finally remembered the terrible words that had been flung at her in anger, in outrage. And that was when she finally understood, too, about the lie. The essential lie. The one that explained everything. Not only the lie Winston had told his wife-one of many-but the lie he had told Serenity as well.

As soon as Mimi remembered, it seemed as though she should have always known. How could she not? The truth had been right there in front of her all this time. And if Mimi hadn’t known, what about Serenity? Most likely she didn’t know, either. If she had glimpsed the truth, it would have been impossible for Mimi’s daughter to go on pretending that Winston Langley was the perfect father. More monster than father.

But if Serenity didn’t know-if she had no idea-it was probably due to the fact that that kind of stupidity was most likely programmed into her DNA.

Like mother, like daughter, Mimi thought.

She needed Hal then, needed him desperately, right that second. Not to push the button. She understood she was beyond needing the button pushed. She needed to tell him what she knew. What she understood. What she remembered.

If only she didn’t have that damned contraption in her throat. If only she could speak. If only she could say the words. Or even one word.

But then Win and Serenity moved from foreground to background, and Hal was with her again, beside her again.

“Do you need me to push the button?” he asked.

Two blinks. No. No button.

“Do you need something else? Is there something I can get you, something I can do?”

Hal’s voice was desperate. He so wanted to do whatever it was she needed; to get her whatever it was she wanted. She could have told him to march off into hell itself, and she knew he would have gone willingly. She loved him for that. And because he had never lied to her. Not once. Not about little things and not about big things, either.

“Mimi?”

He was looking down at her, trying to suss out what was bothering her. Finally she realized that he had asked a yes or no question and she had been so busy thinking her own private, wandering thoughts that she had forgotten to answer.

One blink for yes. Yes, I do need something.

Please!

It took a supreme effort. For a time, Mimi wasn’t even sure it was happening, but then she realized it was. Her arm, her heavily bandaged right arm, was moving. Moving from the surface of the bed where it had lain for hours, useless and unbending. It moved inexorably toward her throat. To the place where the hated ventilator invaded her body and dammed all speech.

Hal was quick to grasp the meaning. “Is it the ventilator?” he asked.

One blink. Yes.

“Is it bothering you?”

Yes.

“Do you want me to have them take it out? If I do, I don’t know what will happen. Sister Anselm isn’t here. If we take it out, you might die.”

But of course she was going to die. Mimi knew that. It didn’t matter if the ventilator stayed where it was or went away, she was going. The ventilator might make a few minutes’ difference, but that was all.

“Do you want me to take it out?”

One blink. Yes.

Somewhere in the background Serenity was yelling at him. “You can’t do that. If you take it out, it’ll kill her.”

Hal turned away from Mimi. “Get her out of here, Win,” he ordered. “Get her out of here now.”

For once in his life, Win Langley did the right thing. He led his hysterical sister out of the room.

Thank you, Win.

Then, just as suddenly, a nurse appeared and the ventilator was gone. It was almost like having the button pushed, only better. Breathing hurt. It hurt worse than Mimi could imagine. It felt as though her lungs were still on fire, but at least Mimi was able to move her lips.

“I love you,” she told Hal wordlessly. She wanted him to know, to remember that he was the love of her life. The only real love of her life.

“I love you, too,” Hal said.

He was crying now. Crying again. Crying still.

She moved her lips again, but she wasn’t sure if what she was trying to say emerged as a spoken word.

But that was all she could do. Mimi had made the effort-the supreme effort. She had tried her best to tell Hal what he needed to know. But now she was gone-gone for good. She heard the steady beep of the machine morph into a squeal.

In an instant Mimi traveled far, far away from him, far from the bed and far from the button, to a distant place where she would never need the button again.

For the next two hours, Ali lay on the gurney in the ER with an IV tube feeding liquid into her arm. In the meantime she took a series of cell phone calls from concerned family members, including Leland Brooks, all of whom had been alerted to Ali’s situation by the ever-helpful Dave Holman. By the time Ali had finished telling the story over and over-to her parents, to Chris, to Athena, to Sheriff Maxwell, and finally to Leland Brooks-she was sick and tired of the whole thing, of telling the story and of hearing what all of them had to say in return.

Edie Larson went on a verbal rampage and wanted her daughter to get into some other, less dangerous kind of work. Bob Larson listened to the whole thing and then wanted to know what models of helicopters Ali had ridden in. Ali had no idea. They had gone up safely; they had come down safely. When they landed, the shiny side was up and the greasy side was down. That’s all she needed to know. Chris wanted to know what a nun was doing ru