Before the Storm. Diane Chamberlain

sound escaping my mouth like a surprise. “Please!” I started to cry, as though I’d been holding the tears in by force until that moment. “Tell me how he is! Let me go to him. He’s…he has special needs.”

      “Mom…” Maggie tried to pull me away from the window.

      The receptionist softened. “I know, honey,” she said. “Your boy’s okay. You take a seat and someone will come get you right quick.”

      I nodded, trying to pull myself together, but I felt like fabric frayed too much to be mended. Maggie led me to one of the seats in the waiting area and when I looked at her I realized that she, too, had dissolved in tears once more. I hugged her, unable to tell whether it was her shoulders quaking or my own.

      “Laurel?”

      I saw a woman heading toward us from the other side of the room. Her face and T-shirt were smeared with soot, her hair coated with so much ash I couldn’t have said what color it was. Beneath her eyes, two long, clean trails ran down her cheeks. She’d had a good cry herself. She smiled now, though, as she took both my hands in hers. I recognized the slightly lopsided curve of the lips before I did the woman. Robin Carmichael. Emily’s mother.

      “Robin!” I said. “Are you all right?”

      “Fine,” she said. “And Andy’s fine, too,” she added quickly, knowing those were the words I needed to hear before anything else.

      “They won’t let me see—”

      “What about Emily?” Maggie interrupted.

      Robin nodded toward the other side of the waiting area, where I spotted Emily curled up on a chair, hugging her knees and holding a bloodstained cloth to her forehead.

      “She’s gonna be okay,” Robin said, “but we’re waiting to get her seen. She cracked her glasses right in two and got a little cut over her eyebrow.” Robin still held my hands and now she looked hard into my eyes. “Andy saved Emily’s life.” Her voice broke and I felt her grip tighten on my fingers. “He saved a load of people tonight, Laurel.”

      “Andy?” Maggie and I said at the same time.

      “Yeah, I know.” Robin clearly shared our amazement. “But I swear, it’s the truth.”

      “Mrs. Lockwood?” A woman in blue scrubs stood at the entrance to the waiting area.

      “Yes!” I stood up quickly.

      “Come with me.”

      We were ushered into one of the treatment areas I remembered from three years earlier when Andy broke his arm at the skating rink. The room had several beds separated by curtains. Someone was screaming behind one of the curtains; someone else cried. But the curtain was not drawn around Andy’s bed. He was bare chested and barefooted, but wearing his now-filthy pants. A woman in blue scrubs was bandaging his left forearm, and he wore an oxygen cannula below his nose. Andy spotted us and leaped off the bed, the gauzy dressing dangling from his arm, the cannula snapping off his face.

      “Mom!” he shouted. “There was a big fire and I’m a hero!”

      “Andy!” the nurse called sharply. “I need to finish your arm.”

      Maggie and I pulled Andy into a three-way hug, and I breathed in that horrible acrid scent from the fire in great gulps. “Are you okay, sweetie?” I asked, still holding him tight. He fidgeted beneath my arms, and I knew they’d given him something for the asthma. I could tell by the spring-loaded tension in the muscles of his back, that’s how well I knew my son. Still, I wouldn’t let go of him.

      Maggie came to her senses first, pulling away from us. “The nurse still needs you, Panda Bear,” she said. She lifted his arm and I saw the angry red swath that ran from his wrist to the bend of his elbow. First degree, I thought with relief. I led him back into the cubicle and looked at the nurse as Andy climbed onto the bed.

      “Is that the worst of it?” I asked, pointing to his arm.

      She nodded as she fit the cannula to his nostrils again. “Check it tomorrow for blisters. We’ll give you a prescription for pain. He’ll be okay, though. He’s a lucky fella.”

      “I made a new friend,” Andy said. “Layla. I saved her.”

      “I’m glad, sweetie.” I dusted ashes from his hair until its nutmeg color showed through.

      The nurse carefully taped the gauze to his arm again. “He doesn’t seem to feel pain,” she said, looking at me.

      “Not when he’s wired like this.” Maggie boosted herself onto the end of the bed.

      “He’ll feel it later.” I remembered the swim meet last year when he hit his head on the side of the pool. He swam lap after lap, blood trailing behind him, not even aware he was hurt until the adrenaline had worn off.

      “Did you hear me, Mom?” Andy said. “I saved Layla.”

      “Emily’s mother told us you saved several people.” I smoothed the elastic strap of the cannula flat behind his ear. My need to touch him, to feel the life in him, was overpowering. “What happened?”

      “Not several,” he corrected me. “Everybody.”

      “You need to talk to him?” The nurse was looking over our heads, and I turned to see a man in a police uniform standing a few feet behind us. He looked at Andy.

      “You Andy Lockwood?” he asked.

      “Yes,” I answered for him.

      The man took a few steps closer. “You’re his mother?”

      I nodded. “Laurel Lockwood. And this is my daughter, Maggie.”

      The nurse patted Andy’s bare shoulder. “Give a holler, you need anything,” she said, pulling the curtain closed around us as she left.

      “I’m ATF Agent Frank Foley,” the man said. “How about you tell me what happened tonight, Andy?”

      “I was the hero.” Andy grinned.

      The agent looked uncertain for a moment, then smiled. “Glad to hear it,” he said. “We can always use more heroes. Where were you when the fire began?” He flipped open a small notebook.

      “With Emily.”

      “That’s his friend,” I said. “Emily Carmichael.”

      “Inside the church?” Agent Foley asked, writing.

      “Yes, but she’s my friend everywhere.”

      Maggie laughed. I knew she couldn’t help herself.

      “He’s asking if you and Emily were inside the church when the fire broke out,” I translated.

      “Yes.”

      “Where in the church were you? Were you standing or sitting or…”

      “One question at a time.” I held up a hand to stop him. “Trust me,” I said. “It’ll be easier that way.” I looked at Andy. “Where were you in the church when the fire broke out?”

      “I don’t remember.”

      “Try to think,” I prodded. “Were you by the front door or closer to the altar?”

      “By the baptism pool thing.”

      “Ah, good.” The agent wrote something on his notepad. “Sitting or standing?”

      “I stood next to Emily. Her shirt was inside out.” He looked at me. “She used to do that all the time, remember?”

      I nodded. “So you were standing with Emily near the baptism pool thing,” I said, trying to keep him focused. “And then what happened?”

      “People yelled fire fire fire!” Andy’s dark eyes grew big, his face animated with the memory. “Then they started