Lost Boy (2 page)

“Focus on school.” She had glared at him. “Those people aren't the ones you need to look up to. Look at A-Rod. It's a bad business, that sports. I don't care how much money there is in it.”

Ryder shrugged to himself, remembering her words to him as she dragged him now along the sidewalk toward the
corner where they crossed 110th Street. The sirens on the street matched his mood—angry, desperate. Ryder wanted to break free from her grip. He was nearly as tall and as strong as she was now, and it didn't suit him to be manhandled by a tiny woman who looked like his sister. All he needed was a reason to fight back and tear himself free.

The sirens and blaring fire truck horns gave him a sense of urgency and strength. He stopped in his tracks.

She turned and glared, her feet just at the edge of the curb. “What are you doing?”

“I'm going back to the field. Play some catch with my ‘friends.' You want me to have friends, right?” He removed her hand. “And I need the work if I'm going to be a pro.”

“You're talking nonsense.” She grabbed his arm again by the coat sleeve.

The noise of emergency vehicles grew so loud, it was deafening.

“No, I'm
not.
” He snatched his arm free from her grip.

She stumbled backward off the curb, and tripped out into the street and in front of a roaring truck. He saw a blur, that's all, a blur. He opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out.

She was just gone, and time floated like a dying balloon in a warm, empty room.

The truck that struck her swerved and ran the red light, crashing into the slow-moving stream of traffic and one of the fire trucks racing by. Tires shrieked. Metal smashed into metal, crunching human parts like chicken bones in the mouth of a pit bull.

“Mom?” Ryder whispered, in shock. He stood, blinking, his jaw hanging slack. He staggered, a zombie with feet dragging, arms crooked and swinging without rhythm. One of the vehicles in the pileup was a fire rescue truck, and in the corner of his mind something said that had to be a good thing.

A crowd quickly gathered, but they let him through. On the street in a dark puddle of yesterday's rain his mother lay looking at the sky.

“Oh, Lord. Don't you take her home, Lord,” an older lady cried.

Ryder looked back to where the words had come from. An old lady in a gray wool cap that matched her long shabby coat poked her tongue out from the gap in her teeth in a grimace of pain. He wanted to tell her that everyone knew his mother was beautiful and—in his fog—that seemed an important thing to
say, but his own tongue had no feeling.

A groan drew his attention back to his mother. The sound came from a fireman with the name “Raymer” sewn into his jacket. There were two firemen, and they knelt on either side of her, Raymer touching her neck, the other—whose coat said “McDonald”—with a hand on her bright yellow down coat and an ear to her lips. She lay still with her arms straight out and her long legs crooked and crossed at the ankles in their tight jeans. She'd been knocked right out of her Timberland boots. Ryder saw one lying crooked under a truck tire, yellow orange and new and unlaced the way she liked.

Her head lay in a glossy halo of silky black hair. Her enormous dark eyes stared wide and empty.

The fireman named Raymer removed his fingers from her neck and looked at his partner.

“Get the AED, Derek!” Doyle McDonald screamed before blowing into Ryder's mother's mouth and starting chest pumps, up and down, back and forth. Muscles jumped beneath the skin in his arms. It was a crazy dance that didn't end until the other fireman returned with a white plastic box and a pair of scissors.

“Mom?” Ryder repeated, a little louder now. Panic boiled over in Ryder's brain. He began to cry, knowing he'd caused it, desperate to take it back. Willing her to get up. If she did, she could drag him up and down the street all day and he'd never pull away.

Derek Raymer unzipped the jacket, then cut her black sweater up the middle and it fell away, baring Ryder's mother's honey-colored skin and her ribs to the cold sunshine and the crowd of strangers. It didn't seem to matter. Doyle already had
two hand-sized paddles he'd removed from the box. The wires stretched across Ryder's mother and Doyle held the paddles up on either side of her chest, one high, one low.

“Everyone clear!” Doyle shouted.

Derek held his arms out and gave a nod. “Clear.”

Doyle pressed the paddles into her chest. Her neck arched and her body went rigid. The shock ended. Doyle removed the paddles and looked at his partner. Derek felt her neck and shook his head.

Ryder choked and sobbed. “Mom!”

“Again!” Doyle bellowed. “Clear!”

“Clear,” Derek said.

Doyle shocked her again. Derek felt her neck.

“Got something.”

Even in his fog, Ryder felt his own heart clench with hope. Doyle was blowing air into her lungs again and did so until Derek returned, this time with an oxygen mask. A siren screamed as an ambulance screeched to a stop on the street. Two EMTs appeared. Doyle shouted for a stretcher. The men barked at each other, urgent and direct. Their words were a scramble.

“Internal bleeding.”

“Heart stopped.”

“Breathing.”

“Irregular.”

“Hurry.”

“Go.”

They loaded her in. Ryder wandered close, but was lost, speechless among all the chaos. Doyle stood with one hand on
the ambulance door and looked back. “Anyone with her?”

Everyone took a half step back except Ryder. He still couldn't speak, but his hand came partway up and Doyle found his eyes.

“Come on.”

Ryder took the fireman's hand and was packed into the back of the ambulance like a suitcase, tucked into the corner while Doyle and the heavy EMT with a goatee slammed the doors shut and bent to work over his mother. Ryder hooked his fingers under the lip of the seat with one hand; on his other hand he still wore the baseball mitt. He bumped along and leaned into the turns to keep from falling over. It wasn't far to the hospital and when they stopped, the doors flew open and people in pale blue scrubs and masks and caps reached for his mother as the EMT and the fireman slid the gurney out to them.

In a flurry, she was gone. The EMT climbed down and disappeared around the front of the ambulance. The fireman straightened and his thinning brown hair brushed the ceiling. His face was wide and red and made for smiling, even though much of his mouth was hidden by a mustache big as a push broom. He turned to Ryder with glistening eyes and he sniffed and wiped them on his sleeve.

“Okay, bud. Let's get you inside and get someone to take care of you.”

Ryder sat still until the fireman named Doyle took his arm. Ryder stood up and Doyle helped him down from the ambulance. Doyle put a hand on his shoulder and they walked inside together. They stopped in front of a desk where an orange-haired woman behind the counter chewed gum. A scary green-and-yellow dragon tattoo curled around the side of her
neck, but her smile was cheerful.

“Hey, little man. Do you have a dad?”

Ryder opened his mouth to answer that question, but it wasn't an easy one to answer under the best of circumstances, so nothing came out.

Doyle kept his hand on Ryder's shoulder and leaned over to study the confusion on his face. “Is there anyone else we should call? Does your mom have a boyfriend? Maybe you got a grandma or an aunt or a friend?”

Now Ryder's eyes began to water, so he clamped his lip between his teeth and shook his head before he gave the answer that was so big and so awful it crushed him.

“No. We got no one.”

“What's your name, hon?” the lady behind the desk asked.

“Ryder. Ryder Strong.”

“How about your mom's name?” she asked.

“Ruby.”

“Ruby Strong?”

“No, her last name is Shoesmith. Ruby Alice Shoesmith.”

“But you said you don't have a father? Is she your real mom?” The woman was trying to stay patient. “Who can we call to come get you?”

“I'm Doyle McDonald,” the firefighter interrupted. “Look, he's upset.” Doyle gave the lady behind the counter a serious look and pointed to the FDNY patch on his sleeve. “I got him.”

The lady stopped chewing her gum. “We're also gonna need insurance information from someone.”

“Let me settle him down and find out who else there is and
I'll get back to you.” Doyle offered a smile of strong white teeth beneath the bushy mustache. “Promise.”

“Sure,” the lady said, nodding. Ryder wasn't surprised that the lady accepted the promise of a fireman like a gold coin. Firemen were heroes. Everyone knew that.

“Who can we talk to about his mom? How she's doing?” Doyle asked.

“Someone will be out soon. You can have a seat over there to wait.” The lady pointed to a waiting room before she returned to her computer.

“Okay. Thanks.” Doyle nodded and steered Ryder to a plastic-covered chair bound together with others in a long row against the wall. They sat down in the two seats that were closest to the double doors where Ryder's mom had gone in.

Ryder couldn't hold still. “I have to see her. I
have
to.”

Doyle looked sympathetically at Ryder's tears. He studied the reception desks for less than a minute before he mashed a finger to his lips, stood, and silently waved Ryder toward the double doors, which hissed open automatically. Inside the doors was a hive of activity—a series of hallways stuffed with medical equipment, patients on gurneys, and nurses and doctors hurrying to and fro.

Doyle stopped the first nurse he saw. “I need to see the female trauma who just came in. I was at the scene.”

The nurse took a quick look at his uniform, hesitated when she saw Ryder, but pointed down the hall anyway. “You better hurry, they've got her in EOR 3 and they're gonna open her up.”

Doyle nodded, took Ryder by the arm, and headed in the
direction of the operating room.

They passed a room guarded by two policemen. Inside, a young man with a bandana around his head screamed in pain while a handful of hospital people tried to hold him down. His lower leg flopped around on its own like a fish and blood was everywhere. Ryder swallowed and felt Doyle's tug.

They stopped outside the operating room and its double doors. Ryder was tall for his age, but the windows didn't let him see in. Doyle studied whatever was going on. His tan face lost some color and his grip tightened on Ryder's arm. He tugged Ryder aside as a young woman in scrubs emerged with blood spatters on her pale blue mask and hat.

“How is she?” Doyle asked.

The doctor looked at Ryder. “He can't be here.”

“I know,” Doyle said. “I got him, though.”

“You should not be here, either,” she said.

Doyle pointed to the firefighter patch on his sleeve, which everyone knew was as good as a key to the city. “How is she?”

The doctor shook her head and started off down the hall. “Not good.”