Unburying Hope (21 page)

“So we keep walking.”

They passed a bar, its darkened doorway open
to the street.

Something caught Celeste’s eye and she grabbed
Frank’s hand.

In a moment, they were both thrown in the air
with the force of a deafening blast.
 
Crashing into each other, they crumpled against a car at the
sidewalk.
 
Celeste’s arm went into
the already breaking window.

Before she could compose herself, she felt
warm liquid on her wrist.
 
She
lifted herself off the ground and saw blood trickling from her elbow.

Frank was shaking his head back and forth,
looking down at a four-inch shard of glass.

Celeste quickly hunched over him, opening the
buttons of his coat.
 
The glass had
slipped in the fabric sideways, thank goodness.
 
If it had gone straight on, it would have pierced his chest.

She dragged him to his feet and saw that he too
was bleeding.
 
Drips of redness
expanded on his shirt and the top of his pants.
 
He seemed confused, unfocused.

She opened his coat more and the shattered
champagne bottle fell to the street.

“God damn,” she said, patting him down to see
if any glass shards had impaled him.

He stood dazed.

She pulled a few pieces of the bottle’s glass
out of his clothes and found three different puncture wounds on his torso.

“We’ll have to get you to a doctor,” she
said.
 
“I don’t think you need
stitches but we sure won’t be having champagne.”
 
She turned on her cell phone and dialed 911, asking for an
ambulance.

“We’ve sent out several already,” the
dispatcher said.

Celeste followed the line of Frank’s distracted
gaze.
 
They were surrounded by
strangers milling around the bar’s entrance, some running in as though the bar
was a magical cave suddenly opened up.
 
She grabbed for Frank and pulled him close to her, sheltering his
wounded stomach with her arms.
 

Strangers pushed against each other to get in
to the bar, some coming out shoving little white baggies into the darkness of
their coverings.
 
She recoiled as people
whose faces weren’t visible, their heads recessed deep into the hoods of dark
sweatshirts, fought each other, desperate for a high to get them back into any
possible numbness.
 
A drug stash
was suddenly available in ground zero of the explosion, for all those sleeping
zombies forced into withdrawal by poverty and homelessness.
 

As whispered rumors spread, strangers in the
darkness literally clawed and climbed over each other to get into the bar,
crushing Celeste and Frank back against the car until they could barely breathe.
 
They gripped each other in terror.

And then, from the back of the now-jammed building
came another deafening roar, a fire bomb exploded upwards, sucking termite-eaten
upper wooden floors down onto each other, into the basement, the dried out wood
of the dead building then exploded back into the sky through three floors.

The zombies staggered out of the blazing
doorway, their skin melting into their off kilter eyes, burns on their arms and
legs where their clothes had incinerated.

Unbearable heat blew at them, knocking the
strangers onto the ground and, though she knew she should keep her eyes closed,
Celeste was hit with a suffocating blast of chemicals that burned her eyes and
throat.
 
She saw that Frank was now
doubled over.
 
She put one arm over
her own face and the other over his, to protect him from the black billowing
smoke.

As the sounds of sirens wailed, she shoved the
two of them down the sidewalk where arriving fire trucks were racing to park on
the wide-open street.

Her head hurt from the fumes, the impact of
being thrown against the steel of a car door and now the incessant screaming of
ambulance sirens.
 
She lowered her
inflamed eyelids and watched in shock as what looked like phosphorescent moon
men got dressed at the side of a red truck, covering their navy blue uniforms
with yellow puffy suits.

It was surreal, the pain, the care of Frank,
the burning acrid air and now the presence of running hazardous material suits
in and out of the flaming building fifteen feet behind her, the continuing push
of some zombies to get into the active blaze to steal one more hit.

She held Frank as he convulsed on the sidewalk,
his eyes shut from inflammation.
 
Ambulance workers pushed past her to retrieve the dying from the dead
piled up at the building’s door.
 
Their wounds were ghastly.
 

She dragged Frank to standing and held him up,
put her arm around his waist and then his arm over her shoulder, despite his
pained gasps.
 
With all of her
strength, she hoisted him enough to walk, helping him step by step, heading
away from the destruction towards an ambulance, any ambulance not already
dealing with the screams of burn victims.
 

Suddenly they were out of the hordes of city
vehicles, where she let them both drop to the ground.
 
Moments later, she felt herself being lifted onto a gurney,
though she protested about not leaving Frank, and eventually she opened her
eyes in the back of an ambulance, holding Frank’s hand as he lay on the gurney
next to her.

“What happened?” she heard Frank ask,
repeating himself until an EMT who was checking his vital signs said ‘meth lab
explosion but you’ll be okay, maybe broken ribs.
 
Your eyes are seared shut because of the chemicals in the
fire.
 
You’ve got lacerations
around your ribs.
 
No sign yet of
internal damage.”

“And you,” they said, speaking to Celeste,
“those eyes will need an eye wash and you’ll need to have your lungs
checked.
 
You guys are lucky.”

“How?” Celeste asked, confused by a hollow
ringing in her head.

“Those crazy users, they kept going in for
more.
 
They’re either dead or going
to be in a burn ward for a long, long time.”

Celeste felt the scratchiness of the bandages he
put on her eyes, the goopy salve leaked around her eyelids.
 
She fell asleep on the gurney and then awoke
ten hours later, signed release forms and climbed onto Frank’s hospital bed to
nap with him until he too was released after another six hours.

She had to take sick days, the first she’d
taken since she had come to work.
 

Jeannie was worried, but whispered into the
phone that they were going to hire replacements for a week at a time because
they didn’t know how much longer the office could sustain itself.
 
Collections were down, no one had cash
to pay their bills.

When Eddie returned, she could feel his worry
and guilt as she told him the story of wanting to meet Frank at his childhood
haunt, the explosions, the burning air in their lungs.

He stayed home with her, caretaking, laying
next to her for a day or so until she fell deeply asleep from the accruing
painkillers prescribed by the hospital.

Then she felt him leave, from her deep
sleep.
 
But she let him go, her eyes
needed to rest but they wouldn’t.
 
They rubbed against grainy muslin when they jerked back and forth
against her eyelids, trying to see him in her sleep.

Hours passed, two days passed and she opened
her eyes to see him, asleep on the bed next to her, his boyish features
overcome by exhaustion, his body wracked.

On the third day, she rose, famished and
groggy.
 
Eddie was weaning her off
the pain medication, “Too addictive,” he said.
 
He’d gone out to get more groceries, kissing her hands
instead of her face.
 
Her eyelids
had recovered, they were almost back to their normal size and her energy was
slowly returning.
 
There was a tall
glass of ice water on the table next to her bed.
 
Her laptop was on his pillow and as she sat up, she heard
Frank’s voice, “You’re alive, Missy!”

“Frank,” she called out, “where are you?”

“I’m in my box,” Frank laughed sleepily.

She looked at the laptop screen to see his
face rising to the center.
 
He was lying
down in his own bed, white gauze wrapped around his temples, covering his eyes
except for small slits he opened with his fingers.

“Your hot Army boyfriend brought over some
groceries.”

“Eddie did?”

“Yup.
 
He’s stopped in twice.
 
But
I hate him.
 
He’s being a cop with
my painkillers.”

Celeste asked,
 
“How are you?”

“Fine, except for the fact that my gorgeous
six pack abs have a purple, bottle-shaped bruise!”

“Oh my god!”
 
Celeste laughed gently, “You have to take a picture.”

Suddenly, in her laptop screen, she saw his
stomach with a black and blue shape exactly like his favorite expensive
champagne and she couldn’t help it, she broke out laughing.
 
“What were we thinking?”

“I don’t know,” he said, smirking.
 
“This town is so screwed up.
 
Eddie told me that the old bar was a
meth lab.
 
Is there any building in
Detroit that those idiots haven’t taken over?”

“I
think it’s everywhere.
 
At least
that’s what the doctors were saying at the hospital.
 
Fire trucks carry those yellow haz mat suits now.
 
They can’t go into fires without them
if it’s meth.
 
The chemicals are
too dangerous to breathe.”

“When
are you going back to work?” Frank asked.

“Whenever
you do,” Celeste answered.
 
“I
can’t do that job without you.”

“Me
neither,” he said.
 
“I’m going to
wait until Monday.
 
It hurts to sit
up.
 
I had to switch to ibuprofen
because that mean bf of yours is marshalling out my legal drugs.”

“It’s
better for you anyway,” Celeste answered.
 
“The last thing we need is you groggy and addicted.”

Frank
put his head towards the camera.
 
“I’ve been like Rip Van Winkle, sleeping but my hair’s still growing.
 
I’m going to need my roots done.”

Celeste
smirked half-heartedly.
 
It was
tough to see him wounded.

“Seriously,
though,” Frank said, “thank you for getting me out of there.
 
That explosion didn’t get me, hitting
the bottle on the car did.
 
It
knocked the wind out of me, I couldn’t breathe.”

“I
know.”
 
Celeste moved towards her
own screen.
 
“I felt so bad for
you.”

“Aw,
you’re the best non-wifey ever,” Frank cooed.
 
“Twisting hurts my muscles but I’ve got to get back to the
gym or I’ll lose my most valuable assets,” he said, lifting his shirt again to
show his chest and abs.

“How
are you going to explain that bruise?” Celeste asked, pointing at the screen.

“I’ve
already been thinking about that.”

“Of
course you have,” Celeste laughed.

“How
about I say I couldn’t wait for a bar to open, or I had a slip and fall while
carrying champagne to a date.”

“Not
very manly.”

“Um,
I want to date manly,” Frank huffed.
 
“I don’t need to be manly.
 
I think it’s a perfect statement of who I am, more of a playboy.”

“You
are that,” Celeste agreed.
 
“I’d
think that bruise is a good sign, you clearly know how to party.”

“Speaking
of partying,” Frank said, holding his side to take a deep breath.

“Yes?”

“Do
you think you-know-who is taking your pain pills?”

“What?”
 
Celeste bristled.

“I
wonder why Eddie’s being so frugal.
 
As much as I joke, the doc gave me a prescription because a bottle broke
between a metal car and me.
 
I
could have shattered all my ribs.
 
I didn’t, but this hurts so damn bad.”

“He
says they make me too groggy.”

“Me
too.”

“Well,
check your bottle.”

“It’s
in the kitchen.
 
I’m too tired
now.”

“Well,
check later.”

“I
will,” Celeste said.
 
“Did you
check your bottle?”