BEFORE OLIVE HAD RETIRED FROM the university, the dean had handed down a protocol for a school shooting. Mississippi allowed concealed carry of weapons, and even if you weren’t supposed to bring one onto a college campus, that didn’t mean it wouldn’t happen. However, as she had told Peg that night, she didn’t want to have to go to work every day wondering if today would be the day she had to Run-Hide-Fight. It was the first time she had ever felt weary of her work, and it was the first seed planted in her mind that perhaps it was time to stop teaching, and to take up gardening or bread making. The world was changing; maybe it was time to step aside for someone else, who could not only talk about neural plasticity, but do so while escaping a maniac with a semiautomatic rifle.
It hadn’t sounded like a shot. That was all Olive could think as she swam up from the gauzy tunnel of her thoughts. It was like popcorn in a microwave, like balloons bursting. It wasn’t until she heard a scream that she even looked up and saw a pink-haired girl race past her and out the front door.
Then she looked down to find a woman bleeding on the carpet with a teenager huddled over her.
There was a crash in the back of the clinic.
The teenager turned, her eyes enormous. “Help.”
Run.
Olive stood and glanced around wildly. She could see an arm flung bonelessly past the base of the reception desk, a dark arm with a festival of gold bangle bracelets, swimming in a pool of blood. Sweet Jesus; that was Vonita.
Olive grabbed the girl’s wrist, pulling her toward the front door, but the girl was steadfastly clinging to the woman who’d been shot. “We have to get out of here,” Olive said to her.
“Not without my aunt.”
Olive grimaced and tried to pull the other woman up, but even with Wren’s help, they couldn’t move her more than a few inches. The cry that tore from the woman’s throat was a red flag that would draw the shooter again. “If we leave, we can get her an ambulance.”
That convinced the girl. She scrambled to her feet as Olive pulled on the door handle, but it was locked. You had to be buzzed into the clinic, was it possible you had to be buzzed out? She threw all her slight weight into the mechanism, even pounding on the door, but it didn’t give.
“We’re stuck here?” the girl asked, her voice shimmying up a ladder of panic.
Hide.
Olive didn’t answer. She opened the first door she could find. It was a supply closet, filled with boxes on one side and cleaning supplies on the other. Olive crouched down, pulling the girl in with her, and shut the door.
This was where her knowledge of the shooting protocol got fuzzy. She had left her purse in the waiting room, and with it her phone. She couldn’t call 911. Should she try to barricade the door? If so, with what?
She couldn’t help but note that had she not been sitting in a waiting room contemplating mortality, her life would not be in danger right now.
Beside her, the girl’s teeth were chattering. “I’m Olive,” she whispered. “What’s your name?”
“W-Wren.”
“Wren, I want you to listen to me. We can’t make a sound, understand?”
The girl nodded.
“That’s your aunt out there?”
She jerked her head. “Is she … is she going to die?”
Olive didn’t know how to answer that. She patted the girl’s hand. “I’m sure the police are already on their way.”
In truth, she was not sure about this at all. If she had thought that the gunshots sounded like bubble wrap being stomped on, why would anyone outside the clinic even assume anything was wrong? Fight, she thought, the last step of the protocol. When your life is in imminent danger and you cannot run away or hide, take action.
The directive seemed particularly relevant today.
Suddenly in the dark there was a small rectangle of light.
“You have a phone,” Olive whispered with wonder. “You have a phone! Call 911.”
In the reflection of the screen, Wren’s face was set, determined. Olive watched her thumbs fly. “I can do better than that,” she said.
—
IZZY HEARD WHAT SOUNDED LIKE books dropping, and then a cry for help. She opened the bathroom door and saw a woman bleeding on the floor of the waiting room.
She was conscious, and clearly in pain. “What happened?”
“Shot,” the woman ground out.
Izzy pressed down on her chest. “What’s your name, ma’am? I’m Izzy.” The bullet had gone in the right side, which was good, because it most likely meant her heart was not affected.
“Bex,” the woman gasped. “Need to get … Wren …”
“Let’s take care of you first.” Izzy reached onto a side table, scrabbling by feel for a box of tissues, and wadded them up to press into the wound.
Within seconds, they were soaked through. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and she stood up. From this angle she could see a second victim—Vonita, the clinic owner. Izzy started toward her and then saw the open, vacant eyes, the blood pooled beneath her head. There was nothing she could do.
Izzy ran into the bathroom and pulled the little decorative shelf from the wall. She smashed it into the paper towel holder so that it cracked open, and the wad of towels fell like an accordion around her feet. Gathering them, she rushed back to Bex, using these to soak up the blood.
With every subsequent gunshot she heard, Izzy’s limbs became more liquid. It was only by doing something rote—taking care of a patient—that Izzy was able to keep herself from falling apart. She needed to get out of here, and it needed to be now. But Bex was a large woman, and Izzy couldn’t lift her alone. She could save herself, but that would mean leaving Bex behind.
Or she could help Bex—stabilize her wound with bandages. But if she went to get those, she was risking her own life and Bex’s, because someone had to stay and apply pressure to the wound.
What she needed, really, was someone to help.
—
JUST AS JANINE TURNED the corner and saw the mecca of the Center’s front door, she saw a dead woman. The clinic owner. She gasped, scrambling away from the body, and when another hand gripped her she screamed like a banshee. She opened her eyes and saw a woman with a frizzy red braid and blood streaking her scrubs. “Listen to me,” she said. “I’m a nurse and I need your help. This woman needs your help.” She nodded toward another lady lying with a pool of blood staining the floor beneath her right shoulder.
Janine could barely force out the words. “B-but … there’s a s-shooter …”
“I know. I also know that she could bleed out. I need to get supplies to help her. Please, just press down where my hand is. I promise it will only take a minute, and then you can go.”
Janine looked at the door; the nurse followed her gaze.
“You could save your own life,” the nurse said, “or you could save hers, too.”
If the only lives Janine cared about were those of the unborn, that would make her a hypocrite. She got to her knees beside the nurse, who positioned her hands against the wound.
“I’m Izzy. What’s your name?”
“Janine.”
“This is Bex,” she said. “Press hard.” Just like that, she was gone, leaving Janine with her hands pushing hard on the chest of a stranger.
Bex was staring up at her. “Am I hurting you?” Janine asked.
The woman shook her head. “You … should go.” She jerked her chin up toward the door.
Janine realized that this woman was giving her a literal out, a way to rescue herself. If she left now, she’d survive. She just might not be able to live with herself.
She settled more firmly, covering one of her hands with the other, the way Izzy had shown her. Blood welled between her fingers. “Bex?” Janine asked, smiling as if she weren’t terrified. “Do you pray?”
—