Chapter Twenty-Two Kami
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kami
I couldn’t help but feel disappointed when I found out the person they’d rescued from the roof was Kate.
They brought her into the same tent as me.
She looked terrified, and all I could do was scream on the inside.
Nothing else could be done by that point: I’d told them everything I knew, everything I’d seen, everything I thought was going to happen.
“What’s your name?” the captain asked her when they sat her next to me, wrapped in a blanket.
Thiago’s mother looked at her with pleading eyes, as if she might have all the answers.
In a desperate voice, I asked Kate, “Did you see them? Did you see Thiago or Taylor?”
The captain cut me off: “Miss Hamilton, let me be the one—”
“He saved me,” Kate said, looking at her hands.
“Who?”
“He told me there was a way out. He asked me… He asked me to tell you…”
“Who, Kate?!”
“Thiago.” She looked me in the eyes. “I’m so sorry, Kami. I didn’t want—I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”
She looked at Thiago’s mother, who was listening in silence, and started crying and trembling, on the verge of a panic attack.
“Call a medic!” the captain shouted.
“Wait!” Kate said, wiping her face. “He asked me some stuff. He said he needed to buy some time, stretch things out for as long as possible until the police could get inside.”
“I told you!” I said to the captain. “They have to hurry!”
“Kamila,” she replied, “I already gave the order. Did he tell you where they’d be?”
Kate nodded. “They’re in the principal’s office. Second floor on the right, behind the staircase that leads to the laboratories.”
The captain stood, walked over to her agents, and picked up a walkie-talkie, saying, “We’ve confirmed the perps’ whereabouts. They’re on the second floor.”
“They won’t get there in time,” Kate observed.
“Why?” I asked, grabbing her arm and forcing her to look at me.
“I told him. I told Thiago. My brother doesn’t care about me. Using me to threaten Jules so he’ll give up Taylor would never work.”
“Was that Thiago’s plan?”
Kate nodded.
“Oh my God,” Ms. Di Bianco said, trembling and stifling her sobs.
“I told him to come with me, Kami, I promise I did, but he refused. He said there was no way he’d leave his brother there. He told me—he told me to tell you he loves you, and please forgive him.”
I could barely see through the blur of tears rolling down my cheeks, and that was when we heard the shots. First there were just two, sounding much farther away than the shooting had when we were still inside the building.
“No!” I screamed, running out of the tent toward the school I’d attended since I was a little girl, but that was when someone grabbed me and held me back.
“Get her out of here; it’s too dangerous,” one of the cops yelled.
I could hear Ms. Di Bianco screaming to get through. All she wanted was to feel closer to her boys, but there was nothing we could do except wait. It was like a war zone, with police holding pistols, shotguns, assault rifles.
I heard a voice coming through a walkie-talkie. “They’re down. We got all three of them, sir.”
Finally, I could breathe. I could breathe a little better knowing it was over. They had gotten them.
“You’re confirming, the premises are secure?” one of the cops asked.
“That’s affirmative, sir.”
The police chief motioned for the other officers to move in, then shouted, “Get that ambo over here. We have two boys in serious condition, one with a gunshot wound!”
My whole world seemed to come to a halt. My life was on the line.
“No,” I whispered. “No…”
The officer who had been holding me loosened his grip as he felt me go slack. My strength was gone. I heard the radio. I heard the words of the officer inside, telling his boss what he saw.
“There are bodies everywhere, sir. This is…” The police officer’s voice trailed off, and I felt like I was dying.
I kept my eyes glued to the front door. Thiago’s mother was crying, but I could barely hear her. I didn’t care about the parents trying to push through the line of police, demanding to go in and look for their children.
That’s when I saw the paramedics pushing two stretchers through the front door, rushing toward the ambulances. I saw Thiago, shouted his name, and ran up to him, jerking away from the officer behind me. Then I screamed, “Oh my God!”
He was bleeding, badly. His eyes were closed, his body was slack, I would have sworn he was dead, but if so, why was he still bleeding?
“Is he all right?” I asked. “Is it serious?”
“Stand aside!” a paramedic ordered me.
Thiago’s mother reached us and screamed, “No!”
He’d been shot. In the head. He wouldn’t make it. There was no way he would make it.
“That’s my son! That’s my boy! Let me through, I need to see him!” Ms. Di Bianco shouted. And finally, they let her through. As she climbed into the ambulance with her older son, she looked back and said, “Kami, you have to look after Taylor.”
I nodded, half blind with sorrow, my heart beating out of my chest.
“Bullet wound to the left side of the cranium. Pulse is weak,” I could hear the paramedic shout right before the ambulance door closed.
Bullet wound to the left side of the cranium.
How could this be happening?
I almost jumped in front of the ambulance, I was so desperate to get inside, but that was when I heard my name—someone calling out to me in a weak and desperate voice. I turned and saw another stretcher, this one with Taylor, beaten so badly I hardly recognized him.
“Taylor!” I ran toward him, crying.
“Kami, my brother… My brother…”
“He’s alive, Taylor.” That was all I knew, the one thing I could hold on to, and Taylor needed to know that, too.
The medics hurried Taylor into another ambulance.
I begged them to let me go along, but they insisted, “family only.” “He’s alone!
” I screamed, but they ignored me, leaving me there.
I took a deep breath to try and control my thoughts and turned around to see what was going on.
I heard screams—screams everywhere. Crying.
Sirens. Ambulances coming and going, journalists, photographers, cameramen trying to get comments.
“How many other survivors are there?”
“Did you know the killers?”
“Was that kid your boyfriend?”
My head was spinning, and at one point I looked up and saw helicopters filming. They were already making a story out of it. Trying to be the first to put our tragedy out there in the world.
Paramedics carried the wounded out, and people in hazmat suits were going in. How many people had lost their lives? Everything started spinning…
I heard a shout: “Kami!” I turned and saw Cameron. Something happened inside me: My bones seemed to melt, something told me now you can rest, and darkness clouded my eyes as I hit the ground and my body took the rest it so sorely needed.
Please, God, I thought. Please, God, don’t let me wake if he’s not here with me.
After that, I remember nothing else.
* * *
I woke up in the hospital. My brain played a trick on me. For a moment, I thought I was in my bedroom with the same silly problems as always: Did Taylor still hate me? When could I hang out with Thiago again? How would I do on my physics exam?
Then I saw where I was. I scanned the room, recalling everything that had happened, and I felt my chest clench with the same pressure as earlier, but more intensely now, because I knew Thiago’s life was on the line, and Taylor was badly wounded.
I sat up and felt a sharp pain in my arm. An IV. I tore it out and started to get up.
“What are you doing?” my mother asked, walking in. “Kamila, you can’t do that!”
“Where is Thiago? Where’s Taylor?” I asked desperately, ignoring my mother’s efforts to pacify me.
“They’re being operated on—both of them,” she replied with concern on her face.
She looked like she’d aged ten years. Her eyes were red and swollen, and that meant she’d been crying. I couldn’t help but assume things were worse than she was letting on.
“Mom, I need you to be honest with me. What’s going on?”
“Nothing, Kami. Just relax, OK? I was with Ms. Di Bianco. A neurosurgeon is working on Thiago. The bullet didn’t pass directly through the brain, and that’s good news, but the operation will take hours.”
“Where is he? I want to talk to his mom,” I said, now standing face-to-face with her.
She must have known it was pointless to stop me, so she led me to the waiting room.
Katia Di Bianco, whose own daughter had died in her arms years before, was sitting there, praying that a couple of deranged murderers hadn’t taken her two sons’ lives.
When she saw me, she called my name and stood to hug me tight. I could feel her body trembling against me. “Are you all right, honey? I saw you pass out.”
“I’m fine. How’s Taylor?” I asked, despising the world for being a place where hatred, evil, and violence existed. My voice was bitter—how could a tragedy like this happen?
“They’re operating on him. He has two broken ribs and a hematoma, but they said he’s going to be fine in a couple of weeks. Thiago, though…” She burst into tears and let out a deep sob.
As a reflex, my eyes filled with tears, too, but I managed to reassure her: “He’ll be all right, Ms. Di Bianco. Just you wait.”
“God willing,” she said, looking over my shoulder. “Your mother’s so lucky to have both kids alive and well.”
I felt terrible, almost ashamed that I had made it through unscathed, and I wanted to run away, flee that terrible reality. It felt like I was on a train, speeding faster and faster, and the only thing I wanted to do was get off before it crashed.
My mother was holding my brother, who had fallen asleep in her arms. It was a crime for a boy so little to have to see the things he’d seen.
Ms. Di Bianco couldn’t lose another child. We couldn’t lose Thiago now, not when there were still so many reasons to live, so much for me and him to share…