Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [53]
The thought paralyzed me.
For many long minutes I found it difficult to follow the discussion, unable to move or speak.
The fire department had been my life, as well as the source of a great deal of good in our family. It had given us the money to pay our bills and put food on the table, a roof over our heads. Now I was forced to confront the possibility that it might also be the worst thing that ever happened to us.
By the time I’d regained my senses, the discussion was waning.
A study group was formed consisting of Steve Haston, myself, a captain from Eastside Fire and Rescue, Ms. Mulherin, Dr. Brashears, and one other to be named later. Our first committee meeting would be on Monday.
By Monday I would be strapped into a wheelchair.
They could wheel me in as exhibit number one.
I don’t know what I had expected. These people all had jobs and lives to go back to. I didn’t have anything but waxy hands, a headache, and the dilemma of how to tell my daughters they were going to be fatherless. It was clear I was on my own here. These people weren’t going to save me.
Steve Haston closed the meeting with a lengthy speech, the longest of the day, and it was while he orated that I began to suspect he had preselected himself as the next head of the fire department. Why not? All the rest of us would be over at Alpine Estates sucking mush. This was all speculation on my part, but it was so like Haston, who seemed to reinvent himself every five to ten years. He’d been a cop. A musician in a string band. An accountant. A cuckold. A mayor. Why not fire chief?
The syndrome seemed to have given me a sixth sense. Yesterday I’d known what Stephanie Riggs was going to say several times before she said it and had actually completed a couple of sentences for her. This morning at Continental Freightways I knew exactly how to terrorize Cleve. Now I knew Haston was angling for the chief’s job.
As the meeting disbanded, Brashears motioned that he wanted to talk to me in private. After the room emptied, he said, “What day are you on?”
“You think anybody else noticed?”
“Not that I could tell.”
“Day three.”
“You seeing a doctor?”
“Yes.”
“You need anything at all, get in touch. I mean that.”
“I will.”
The thought that he was speaking to a dead man made Brashears look at the walls, the carpet, anything but me. Then, without another word, he left.
25. WHAT WE GOT HERE IS A NICKEL HOLDING UP A DOLLAR
Outside on the sidewalk, Ms. Mulherin cornered me. She stood so close and was so short that she had to look almost straight up at me, her neck cranked back at an angle that reminded me of a worm on a hook. For a moment I thought she’d made the same observation Brashears had and was going to talk about it here on the sidewalk in front of God and everybody.
Ms. Mulherin said, “Organophosphates. Have you thought about that?”
“I’ve been kind of—”
“Because they’re everywhere. If you think about it. Parathion. Malathion. Pesticides are everywhere. And if you think about it, organophosphates are readily translocated in living organisms. Have you thought about this?”
“I’m sure that’s more in line with your expertise than mine.”
“Yes, well, uh-huh. Hmmm. I’m sure you know generally with organophosphates you see symptoms within two hours. Difficulty swallowing, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, and even diarrhea. Was any of this reported?” She had a face that had seen too much sun, lines around her eyes, even around her ears. Her lips were almost nonexistent, as if she were trying to suck a straw some jokester had put a pea in. “You think I could visit your fire station with some of my grad students? We might be able to pick up traces of—”
“Be my guest. Show up whenever you like.”
“Maybe at the end of the week?”
“Fine by me.” She was going to write a paper on this. I could see it. She was going to gain prestige in the academic world standing on our