Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [91]
I still hadn’t said it.
“You mean you’re going to get old?” Britney asked.
Allyson had tears streaming down her face. “No, dummy. He’s going to get sick.”
“Neither one of you is a dummy,” I said. Britney looked from Allyson’s tears to me and back to Allyson, her lower lip beginning to quiver. This was exactly what I couldn’t bear to watch. “My body will be here and my heart will be here, but my brain will be gone. I won’t be able to talk to you. Or look at you. And after a while, I’ll probably lose weight the way Grandpa did.”
“You don’t love us anymore?” Britney asked.
“Sweetheart, I’ll still love you a hundred years after I’m dead. Anytime anything happens to you and you feel like you need someone, you can know that my love will be there alongside you. I love you both more than anything.”
“Then why are you going to the nursing home?” Allyson asked.
“It’s not for sure. But if it happens, it will be because I don’t have a choice.”
“How did you get sick?” Britney asked.
“Nobody knows. It’s something to do with the fire department. I got sick at the same time Joel McCain and Stan Beebe and some others did.”
“What if you get well?” Allyson asked.
“I’m hoping I will. That’s why Stephanie’s been working on the computer so much. A lot of people want to help. We’re going to be seeing some experts today.”
Allyson leaned her head against my chest. “So, Daddy? You shouldn’t be goofing off with us. You should be with Stephanie.”
“Right now I want to be with you.”
“If you’re not living with us,” Britney said, “how are we going to get to school? And who’s going to take care of us?”
“We’ll take care of ourselves,” Allyson said, knowing the alternative was at that moment registered eight blocks away in a motel.
“We’ll figure something out.”
“I’m going to miss you,” Britney said.
“I’m going to miss you, too. Both of you. More than anything.”
Seconds later Britney was wailing so hard and so loud, Allyson and I thought she was acting. She cried so hard, she went blind with it. A moment later Allyson started up. Then I shed my first real tears in years.
It was fifteen minutes before we ran out of water, another fifteen before we were composed enough to walk to the fire station hand in hand, talking about little things, anything but what was on our minds.
At the station telephones were ringing, firefighters and volunteers rushing to and fro. A few people were there to help out with our research on the syndrome. Most were there for the funeral. It was nine o’clock, and Donovan and Carpenter had not arrived. I was surprised by how much their absence irritated me. Even my alcoholic in-laws were punctual.
Ian Hjorth and Ben Arden had organized a squadron of volunteers to run errands and do the busywork. They’d even recruited children to keep Allyson and Britney company.
When the kids disappeared into the game room upstairs, I located Stephanie at the computer in the officers’ room, Ben Arden’s wife, Cherie, behind her, fiddling with a pot of coffee. “I found some stuff,” Stephanie said.
I sat down, rubbing an ear to clear the ringing. Stephanie looked at me full on. “You told them?”
“Yeah.”
“How’d it go?” When I didn’t reply, she said, “Sure. I know. But you did it, and now you can move on.”
“Right.”
“Try not to be despondent, Jim.”
“Lieutenant? We’re going to stop this right here,” Cherie added vehemently. Just what we needed, a new cheerleader fresh from the wings.
40. DIG UP THE CHIEF, QUICK; HE MIGHT NOT BE DEAD
“You heard from Donovan and Carpenter?” I asked.
“Huh-uh,” Stephanie said. “But I think I’m on to something. For a month now I’ve been on various Internet medical forums asking doctors if they’d had any patients with symptoms matching Holly’s. After we found out about that fire in Tennessee, I narrowed the search to the southeastern United States. This morning a general practitioner from Biloxi wrote back and said he recalled something from a couple of years ago. Two patients. Brain-dead. Waxy hands. Both much younger than your average stroke victim.”
“What’d he say about them?”
“They were patients