My ears started roaring, and not from the nearby surf. Something bounced around in my soul, clamoring to escape, just at the edge of my consciousness.
Maybe it was being back at this place again, being at the scene of all the events of that day, and the fact I still couldn’t remember my own experiences during the Great Quake. Stupid memory loss.
I gave a tight smile to Ashley and her husband, and then got up. At the top of the amphitheater, I paced back and forth on the grass, pulling at my hair.
Sheridan—she’d been in a wheelchair in high school? And she’d had to learn to walk again? Wow. Moreover, it seemed like her peers had not been kind. Good grief. She’d never said anything about that. Well, she was Sheridan. She wouldn’t go splashing her problems on the world.
But she could have told me.
What a secret to keep.
Just like I wasn’t telling her everything, either.
McVail introduced Sheridan, briefly praising her career, and then said, “I won’t steal her thunder. Please welcome Sheridan Allen Chandler.”
The crowd clapped, and I found a new cement step to sit on, but my knees didn’t stop bouncing.
“I don’t usually speak in front of others, but today, I was asked to come and share a message of hope and healing.”
A warm hand landed on my shoulder. “She’s gorgeous.” It was Dr. Cook, and beside him a young woman—presumably his daughter. Oh, and she had the unmistakable features of Down syndrome. She smiled at me and waved.
I should have been like Sheridan and bought out all his keychains, each and every time I saw him. “You must be Carlton’s daughter.”
She waved again. “I’m Gigi.”
“What a beautiful name. I hear you’re the one who makes cool keychains.” I pulled mine out of my pocket, glad once more that I’d been granted driving privileges again. “See?”
“I made that,” she said in a heavy, thick voice with a bright smile. “It’s red.”
“Red’s my favorite color.” I was missing Sheridan’s speech, but Cook put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed.
“Thanks,” he hissed into my ear. “Really.”
“I owed you.” Big time. And I still did. But I was missing what Sheridan had to say! I turned away from Cook and listened intently.
“When I was trapped in the old library,” Sheridan was saying—I’d missed too much of the narrative already—“I couldn’t move beneath the heavy steel beam lying across my hips.”
Her hips! No wonder she’d needed to be in a wheelchair.
“Not only were they crunched into shards like potato chips at the bottom of a bag, I was stuck. Completely. I had no idea what to do. I’d heard of a man whose arm was stuck under a boulder in the wilderness, and he’d cut it off with a pocket knife to free himself.” She paused while the audience reacted. “But this was my body from the waist down. I couldn’t cut that off, and I only had my house key, not a knife.”
What evidence of her indomitable spirit that she was thinking of her own responsibility to escape, even in hopeless circumstances.
The crowd murmured. Some wept openly. She held them spellbound.
“I kept a journal while I was in the hospital and wrote down the events that altered my life and the thoughts I had at that time. I’d wanted to run track in high school, and I figured that dream was over—whether or not I figured out how to get out of the building, and even more so if the rest of the library fell on me.” She gave a half-laugh.
How she could view it with any humor was beyond me. I was sick for her, and I would have doubled over and held my gut if I had been watching this alone and not with a crowd.
“But then, a voice called to me. I don’t know who he was, but he found me in the clouds of dust.”
Dust. Dust? Dust.
“‘Is anyone in here?’ he asked, and I tried to answer, but I choked on the dust. Fortunately for me, he had super hearing, and came when I answered the third time. ‘The building’s coming down,’ he said. ‘You have to get up and get out of here.’ But then, when I told him I couldn’t move, he saw why I was lying there, disobeying his orders. ‘Oh.’ He bent down beside me. ‘You’re trapped.’ I was, but he looked around, called for help, heard none. ‘It’s heavy,’ he said. ‘I know,’ I said—because I did know. It was unbelievably heavy.’”
The story in her speech played out like a movie in my head. I heard the creaking of the building above, tasted the acrid air, choked on the ever-increasing billows of dust from the collapse, felt the ache in my own knees as I imagined myself crouching beside her—pushing the hair off her forehead. Holding her hand. Telling her it was going to be all right.
Man, my imagination had kicked into high gear ever since that knock on my head from Mr. Filer and his pipe wrench. I almost thought I was the one who’d been there, helping her.