“I’m okay,” she said to him. The others were so much more seriously injured than she was. He left her then and promised to come back later. All anyone knew was that several bombs had gone off in the hotel. No one knew who had done it or why. There were dead and dying everywhere. She was alone in Pakistan, with no way to tell anyone at home that she was alive.
* * *
—
William had been working on a new chapter all day. It had been going well, and he was happy with it. He watched the fog roll in at four o’clock and decided to take a break. He’d been so intent on his work that he hadn’t eaten all day. He was starving and foraged in the fridge for something to eat. He needed to go to the store and was too lazy, he didn’t want to leave the book for that long. He found a package of sliced chicken and some lettuce, a tomato, and a jar of mayonnaise, made himself a sandwich, and turned on the TV to watch CNN and see what was happening in the world.
There was a building in flames on the screen, and he watched it collapse as people ran screaming through the street, some of them on fire, as soldiers tried to help them and Red Cross ambulances arrived on the scene. It was horrifying but not unfamiliar, and then he saw the banner running below the image “Hotel bombing in Pakistan at this hour.” It was four A.M. in Pakistan. His heart pounded as he watched the live feed. He put down his sandwich and stared at the screen. She was there. He knew she was. They said the name of the hotel and it was where she was staying. The reporters covering the story for CNN had to move back to avoid the intense heat and a hail of debris. He sat mesmerized, and all he could do was pray that she was alive and not injured or dead. Not now.
He didn’t leave his TV until midnight that night, when they started running the same film clips again. It was noon there by then. He wanted to call Penny but it was 3 A.M. in New York.
He stayed up all night and called Penny at Maddie’s house at six in the morning in California, nine A.M. Eastern time.
“Penny, it’s William,” he said in a gruff voice. All he’d had was coffee since the bombing, and he’d smoked a pack of cigarettes someone had left at his house months before, although he’d quit years ago. “Have you heard anything?”
“No,” she said, he could hear that she’d been crying. So had he. “She always lists me as next of kin on her documents, so her kids don’t hear bad news first. So if they call anyone, they’ll call me,” Penny explained. There was no way to reach her. The hotel was gone and her cellphone didn’t work there. He had an idea. “Call me if you hear anything,” he said.
“You too.” They both hung up and he called a friend in the State Department to ask if he would call the U.S. Embassy and see if they had casualty lists of any Americans that had been injured in the blast. He didn’t dare say the word “killed.”
“It looks pretty chaotic over there right now, Bill. I’ll see what I can do. But we may not know anything for a day or two.” He could only imagine what Maddie’s kids were going through, but the only one he’d met was Deanna and he barely knew her, so he couldn’t call to offer comfort or share information he didn’t have anyway.
Ben had stayed home from work and was glued to the TV. He didn’t call Milagra, since he didn’t think she’d know about it. She lived in a bubble. He and Deanna talked all night but knew nothing.
William’s friend in the State Department called him at 5 P.M. Eastern time, and said they’d had no casualty list yet.
For three days, William, Deanna, Ben, and Penny sat at their respective television sets with their phones right next to them, waiting for news, and there was none. And then a list of victims was issued, and Maddie wasn’t on it. But the injured weren’t included, and all four of them realized that she could have been unconscious in a hospital with no papers on her. They might not even know she