Chapter 5 Jesse
Jesse
I met my buddy Gavin at a polygraphers’ conference about ten years ago. Back then, he was running tests like I was, but he missed being out in the field too much. A New York City firefighter, he went back to the job, trained as a paramedic, and has been happy as a clam ever since.
Gavin’s station is about a half mile from where we’re staying, and I text him to see if I can stop by to say hi. So after Molly gets back from the cathartic trip to the memorial, I pass the baby to her and go visit my friend.
His fire station brings back memories of my childhood, when my dad used to bring me down to his station, and he or Red or Paulie would whip up pancakes and serve them to the miscreant teenager who was lighting the fires they’d get called out to later that night.
Gavin introduces me around, and we make a fresh pot of coffee, and then we sit and shoot the shit.
It’s like old times, except I’m showing Gavin the 492 pictures of Adie I took this morning, and he’s reciprocating with his own slide show of his nine--year--old twins. “I can’t even,” I say, shuddering. “One is hard enough.”
“And she’s not even talking back yet.” Gavin laughs. “Wait till she decides you’re dumb as dirt.” He settles into a battered leather lounger and puts his boots on the coffee table. “If you’d told me you were coming to the city, I would have had you all over to meet the family.”
“Kind of a last--minute decision,” I tell him. “My wife’s mother wanted to go to the 9/11 Museum.”
Gavin winces. “Still hard for me to go down there, man.”
He was only nineteen, and hadn’t been on duty that day, but like everyone in New York City, he knows firemen who died.
I remember him telling me about the parades down Eighth Avenue, ladder trucks and fire engines and firefighters and paramedics in full dress uniform, each station paying tribute to someone who’d fallen. These went on daily, for months.
“Yeah, I imagine it was hard for Georgia, too,” I say. I’m unsure whether I want to open this can of worms, but given the scope of the media, he may already know. “She, um, she was presumed dead after 9/11 but recently . . . resurfaced.”
I watch Gavin put the pieces together in his head. Since he’s never met Molly and wouldn’t have recognized her on the 60 Minutes interview, there’s no reason that he’d connect Eloise Ambrose to me. “That’s . . . that’s your mother--in--law?”
“Yup.”
Gavin is speechless. He just shakes his head. “And I thought my mother--in--law was a handful.”
I burst out laughing right as a siren sounds. The phone Gavin is holding starts buzzing, too. A few of the guys who were lounging around moments before are suddenly on their feet and scrambling downstairs to get into gear.
“Gotta go,” Gavin mutters. “Sorry, man. Some asshole ran a red light, hit a pedestrian, and crashed into a Jersey barrier.”
“No problem,” I tell him. “Catch up soon.”
I watch the flurry of emergency response, and just as quickly as it begins, it’s over—-the engines and the ambulances screaming away from the station. I rinse my coffee cup and take out my phone to text Molly.
But before I can finish typing, the phone begins to ring. Molly’s profile picture glows on the screen.
“Jesse.” Molly’s voice is wet, hitched, incoherent. “They’re taking her to the hospital.”
Everything in me goes very still. “Adie?” I force out.
“No,” she sobs. “My mother.”
I have been here before.
It was another state, another car accident, another hospital.
When I finally get to Mount Sinai West and see Molly’s face, she crumples in front of me. I manage to grab Adie with one arm before wrapping the other tight around my wife.
Her face is pressed into my neck, her words tattooed onto my skin. “The car, it just kept going through a stoplight,” she weeps. “I saw her, Jesse. I saw her go flying like she was . . . like she was a doll or something . . .”
She dissolves into tears again, and I tighten my hold on her. I rub my hand up and down her back until she runs dry.
I am afraid to ask Molly the question that matters most. But then she draws back, her face a hot, swollen mess. “She’s in surgery,” she says hoarsely. “They’re trying to stop the bleeding in her brain, but they said . . . they said . . .” I can finish the sentence for her: the odds are not good.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” I whisper.
Her eyes, jewel--bright against the reddened scleras, blink up at me. “I can’t lose her again.”
It will hurt so much more, because now she will know what she’s missing.
I press a kiss to her temple. “You won’t,” I say. It’s a lie, because that’s not something I can promise. A lie, because sometimes, the truth is too painful to speak out loud.