Chapter 82
THE PHONE VIBRATED inside my fist. The faceplate read 7:04. Incoming call: T. Morgan.
I put the phone up to my ear, said to my brother, “Did you call here a minute ago?”
“I called last night. Didn’t you get my message? My shrink wants to see us together. This morning at nine.”
“Today? Are you kidding? I have a business, you know?”
“Sure. It used to be Tommy Senior’s business,” he said. “It’s important, but hey, suit yourself.”
Now I was sitting in a reception pod at Blue Skies Rehab Center, a pale blue windowless room with a wraparound ceramic tile mural of birds in flight and discrete groupings of streamlined Scandinavian furniture.
I was upset that I’d been summoned the morning of the meeting, but I’d be damned if I’d give Tommy any excuse to fail at recovery. With luck, I’d be in the office by 10:30. Schoolgirl was bubbling—and so was the NFL.
While I waited, I joined a conference call with one of our clients in the London office, then signed off as one of a half dozen doors down the hallway opened. A man stepped out and came toward me. He was lanky, gray-haired, wearing a yellow cardigan and pressed chinos, had reading glasses suspended from a chain around his neck.
He was also smiling. I stood to shake his hand, and he lurched and was literally thrown to the floor.
Suddenly everything was sliding sideways. I grabbed for my chair and fell into it, hard.
What the hell?
Light fixtures swung overhead, and shadows swooped over the pale carpeting. There was a roar, like wind—but there was no wind.
The floor rippled like the surface of a river.
I clutched the arms of my chair, which bucked as if it were alive and trying to shake me off.
The man in the yellow cardigan had covered the back of his head with his hands. The mural cracked up the center, and red flowers shot out of a vase like rockets. Glass shattered—and then the power went out.
A herd of people ran helter-skelter through reception, shrieking in the darkened room.
I hung on to the chair. It was as if I were paralyzed, but my terror was lashing around inside me like a downed power line in a storm. The room spun, and I was there again. The helicopter whirled in a death spiral, dropping out of the sky. I couldn’t do anything to prevent the crash and all those deaths.