Chapter 24 #2
Tuesday looked around for the girls’ mom, and saw a woman panicking, trying to get a toddler into a stroller, and Tuesday ran to her.
“You don’t know me, but that’s my friend talking to your daughter.
Run to them, and I’ll put your blanket and other things in the duffel, and I’ll bring your son to you. What’s his name?”
The woman took about three seconds to decide, and said, “Thank you. His name is Matthew, and if you’ll give him a melba toast from the top of the diaper bag, he’ll be quiet even with me running away.”
She ran to her daughter, and Tuesday listened to Knife calming the mother once she arrived, while Tuesday gave the tiny toddler a melba toast and packed the woman’s things into the duffel.
“I have first responder training, and she’s going to need the arm set.
Good job on putting a helmet on her, so you probably aren’t dealing with a concussion, but they’re going to need to doublecheck that, too.
We can stabilize that arm so it won’t hurt as bad to move her, but you have a decision to make — call for an ambulance, or drive her across the river to an emergency room.
I can carry her to your car if you want to drive her.
Do you have someone who can meet you at the hospital? ”
“Me driving her gets her to people who can make her stop hurting the fastest, so if you know how to lift her without injuring her worse…”
Tuesday made it to them, and Knife glanced at her a second before he told the girl, “I promised not to touch you, but now I need to stabilize your arm and carry you to your mom’s car. You good with that?”
The little girl gave him a tiny nod, and looked at the mom, “Any chance you have a small blanket, or maybe a clean cloth diaper?”
The woman pulled a cloth diaper from her bag, and Knife helped the little girl sit up before wrapping the diaper around her arm and torso, explaining in kid-language what he was doing, and why.
He moved to other side and oh-so-gently picked her up, so her arm wouldn’t be against his body, and he told the woman, “Lead us to your car. You should probably make that phone call while we’re walking. ”
Five minutes later, the woman was backing out of her parking space, with the grandmother on her way to the hospital to get the toddler, and her husband leaving some kind of trade show in Atlanta to drive back.
“You have first responder training?” she asked Knife when the woman’s SUV was out of sight.
“Yeah. I never again want to watch a human die while waiting for the ambulance. The training is specifically designed to show you how to keep someone alive until the professionals can arrive.” A shrug. “Or until you can get them to people with the right equipment and knowledge.”
Before she could think too hard about watching her roommate die while waiting for the ambulance, he looked around, looked back to her, and seemed to be recalibrating. Remembering what had come before the crisis.
“Sorry if I got you off schedule, but I had to try to help.”
“Never apologize for helping someone in need.”
Tuesday felt like he wanted to change the conversation, so she told him some of the history of the Walnut Street Bridge while they walked toward it.
How the steel trusses rising over pedestrians today had done so for horses and buggies back in the 1890s, and for cars and trucks through most of the following century.
Once on the bridge, Knife told her how much he didn’t like the additions to the Hunter Art Museum, and how hideous the new parts looked next to the historic mansion.
She understood what he was saying but opted not to debate the difference between classical and modern art, because she’d always thought that’d been the attempt with the additions.
Still, Knife wasn’t entirely wrong.
They stopped at the center of the bridge and looked upriver, past the Aquarium, to two of the other downtown bridges, toward Lookout and Signal Mountains.
The city spread back from the water in every direction.
Downtown Chattanooga going about its Monday business while two wolves stood on a bridge above the Tennessee River having a better day than most humans would manage in a month.
Knife looked over the railing at the water below, as if he could see the fish, and said, “This is good. It’s the city, but it’s still nature.”
“It is,” she agreed.
They started again, and a pair of joggers passed them. They walked past a woman with a stroller, and then two teenagers on rollerblades zipped past them.
They came off the bridge, and she steered them to the right.
He wandered toward one of the fake mountains when they reached the Aquarium Plaza, and it wasn’t the direction they were headed, but she went with him, and then climbed to the top with him.
A school group was emptying from a school bus, and it seemed safer to be over them, anyway.
At the top, she saw him silently noting the MLK quote engraved in the concrete, Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
“Before they built that hotel,” she pointed to it, “you could actually see Lookout Mountain from here. It meant more when you read the quote and then looked up and saw it.”
Ten minutes later, they were walking down Broad Street, and he looked at the outdoor climbing walls soaring above them with interest. A handful of climbers were scaling up the walls like human spiders, focused on nothing except where to put their hands and feet next.
“That looks fun, doesn’t it?” he said. “Kind of crazy, mountain climbing in the middle of the city.”
“Have you ever climbed an indoor wall?”
“No, just the real thing, and only for necessity.” He rubbed his jaw, still watching them. “Never thought of it as a sport.”
Tuesday couldn’t help her grin, and she told him, “Yay! A virgin!”
He turned his gaze on her with a lifted brow, and she stepped to him, went to tiptoe, and kissed the very bottom of his jaw — and barely managed it, since he didn’t lean down to help.