Miracle (2 page)

“Oh, Megan,” she said again and behind her I saw a bright burning, knew that just past it—my mind went blank, frozen with something I didn’t have a name for, and I stared at her, hoping she’d let me know why I was here. Let me know what had happened.

She put her hands on my shoulders, gently, touching me like I was made of glass. I could feel her fingers shaking. I could see that she was shaking. “George,” she said, sobbing now, and then my father was there, his face creased with sleep.

“Meggie?” he said, and then he was hugging me so tight I could hardly breathe, squeezing me while he muttered, “It’s a miracle. You’re a miracle,” over and over again.

I didn’t know what was going on. Mom and Dad were
both crying, which scared me because Dad never cried. The day he and Mom first brought David home from the hospital his eyes were red and he kept clearing his throat, but he didn’t cry. I did, and I was only seven and didn’t even know what was wrong with David. Dad did, and he still didn’t cry.

A doctor came in while Mom and Dad were still hugging me. I didn’t recognize him and I should have because I knew every doctor in the Reardon Emergency Clinic. David practically lived there, first because he was sick all the time and then because he was always unable to ignore a tree that shouldn’t be climbed or a patch of ice Dad hadn’t scraped off the driveway.

The doctor didn’t act like a doctor. He acted . . . strange. Too nice, and he kept saying my name like it was more than a name, like it meant something. “How’s this light, Megan?” “Is it too bright, Megan?” “I’m going to take your blood pressure now, Megan, okay?”

I couldn’t even focus on what he was doing, I hurt so much. I just kept hearing him say my name, over and over until it didn’t even sound like a word.

“Remarkable,” he said when he was done, smiling at me, and then turned to my parents. “She’s in great shape. Some contusions, some bruising, and of course she’s going to be sore for a while, but other than that—well, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Was he crazy? “I don’t feel like I’m in great shape.” My voice still sounded almost as bad as I felt.

Mom laughed, a strange high-pitched giggle that sounded like it was hiding a scream. “Sweetheart, you’re in amazing shape. Just a few cuts and bruises—nothing worse than you’ve gotten during a soccer game.”

She looked at the doctor. “I told you she’d be fine.” Her voice sounded sure but brittle, and in her eyes I saw something that looked almost like fear.

The doctor nodded, looking at me and then at my parents again. “Well, Mr. and Mrs. Hathaway, while it does appear that her injuries from the crash are minimal, I’d like to consult with some specialists before making any decisions.”

Crash? I was in a car accident? Oh God, Jess. She must have come to pick me up at the airport. I didn’t remember it at all. Why didn’t I? Was Jess—? I looked at my parents’ tear-streaked faces and felt my heart clench.

“Is Jess okay?”

Mom blinked, the expression in her eyes shifting to something even more frightened for a second before it was smoothed away. “She’s fine, sweetheart. Why wouldn’t she be?”

“Can I see her? What about her car? Is it totaled?” Jess loved her car.

“Megan,” my father said, taking my hand as the doctor
peered down at me, shining a light in my eyes. “Sweetheart, you were in an accident. But not with Jessica. Your plane crashed. You remember that, right?”

“What?”

The doctor clicked off the light. “In the Round Hills,” he said. “In the forest. I hear you’re real familiar with it, living out in Reardon. I guess that helped get you through it.”

“Through what? I don’t remember being on a plane that—I don’t think I was in a . . .”

I rip open the tiny bag of pretzels with my teeth and stare out the rain-wet window at the clouds, which are gathering thick and dark. I saved the pretzels till now because the last part of the flight is so boring. Once you cross into Clark County it’s all trees. The only reason Reardon even has an airport is because of the Park Service. Stupid forest. I remember how, on the flight out, when we took off the trees seemed so close to the plane, kind of like they are—

I shook my head. And then I started to cry.

Three

I’d been in the hospital for almost two days, and I wasn’t in Reardon at all. I was all the way upstate in Staunton, in the LaMotte Memorial Medical Center, which I’d heard of because Rose from church went there after she got diagnosed with breast cancer. She died there too, last winter, and getting her body flown back to Reardon took days because of snowstorms. I didn’t know why I kept thinking about that, but I did.

I couldn’t remember the crash.

I said I did, though.

I said I did because I got tired of the doctor asking me if I did, of Mom and Dad looking worried, fear in their eyes as they clutched at me and smiled, wet-eyed. I thought about David and how they already worried so much about him.
How they kept saying I was fine like they needed it to be true.

I thought saying I remembered would make things better.

It didn’t. The doctor came in less but Mom and Dad kept looking at me, kept smiling so much and so hard I was afraid they’d strain something. Every time I moved, Mom would let out a little sigh and then squeeze my hand. Dad kept hugging me.

It started to freak me out because they were acting like I’d become someone else, like I wasn’t just Megan, their daughter, anymore. And they wouldn’t leave me. Not to call David (“He’s fine! We talked to him while the doctor was with you!”), not to get something to eat (“We’re fine! We grabbed a sandwich earlier! The hospital cafeteria is very nice!”), not even to get some fresh air (“We just want to be here with you! Our (pause for smile and/or tears) miracle!”). I finally told them I wanted to go to the bathroom just to get some time away from them.

They had to help me walk there, and I was surprised at how far away it seemed, but kept going as they both peered anxiously at me while smiling and telling me how well I was doing. How fantastic I was.

The bathroom itself was small and a strange industrial yellow but the door locked, and I was finally alone.

Mom and Dad had both been in there. Mom had her makeup bag sitting on the back of the sink, and Dad had propped a razor and a can of shaving cream on top of it too. He’d also left a folded newspaper on top of the toilet tank. I picked it up, and my face stared back at me.

Girl Survives Plane Crash, Walks To Safety

By Gina Worshon

In what can only be termed a miracle, a survivor of Flight 619 somehow walked out of the Round Hills National Forest and then flagged down a passing motorist.

Megan Hathaway (pictured right), a rising senior at Reardon High and star soccer player who was returning from training camp when the plane crashed, waved down Joyce Johnson on her way to work.

“I don’t normally stop for hitchhikers,” Mrs. Johnson said, “but this girl was standing in the middle of the road. She didn’t even have shoes on. I thought maybe she’d been attacked.”

Miss Hathaway was pronounced dead by the Sheriff’s Office over thirty-six hours earlier, and her parents, arriving in Staunton to learn of their daughter’s final moments, instead found out she was alive. Miss Hathaway is currently at LaMotte Memorial Medical Center, where she is being held for observation. She is expected to make a full recovery.

Flight 619 crashed in Round Hills National Forest shortly after it began its descent toward the Reardon airport. Rescue crews were sent out but ran into problems battling a thunderstorm. It took them over twelve hours to reach the plane and when they did, according to the party leader, Staunton’s own Sheriff Andrew Green, they found no survivors.

“We did all we could,” Green said when asked how Miss Hathaway hadn’t been found. “No one should have been able to walk away from that crash. Miss Hathaway truly is a miracle.”

Right below that was another, smaller article.
Memorial Service Unites Families in Grief.
I started to look at it, but my eyes froze as soon as I read:

Family, friends, and members of the community all turned out to remember Flight 619 victims: Park Service employees Walter Pelt, 24, and Sandra Lee, 27, as well as Clark resident Carl Brown, 52, and pilot Henry Roberts, 65.

Victims.

The dead.

I dropped the paper on the floor. I opened the door. Mom and Dad were right there, waiting for me. After they helped me back into bed I asked them what happened to the clothes I’d been wearing.

Mom looked at Dad. Dad looked at Mom. At first I thought they didn’t want me to see them but as they looked at each other, then at me, I realized they’d been waiting for this. That they wanted it.

Dad went over to the far side of the room and picked up a plastic bag. He carried it just like he did the Bible when he was the lay reader at church and it made my skin crawl. He put the bag on my lap.

It was open, and inside were my shorts and my shirt. They were filthy. I didn’t want to touch them.

I looked at Mom and Dad. They were watching me, waiting. I pulled the shirt out of the bag. It smelled like forest, like dirt and the sharp bite of the pines that grow around here, and there was a dark brown-red stain on it, dried blood. I wondered how deeply I’d been cut, and where. I looked down at myself but I was just a blur, hospital gown, toes tucked in tight under blankets. I tried to remember my face, my neck, myself in the bathroom mirror, but it wouldn’t come.

“It’s not your blood,” Mom said, her voice high, nervous. “We saw you, when the ambulance came in, and at first we thought . . .” She shook her head. “But you were all right. You were fine. Just fine.”

“We made it,” I tell him, “we’re all right,” but he doesn’t blink, doesn’t move, and when I go back to him there is nothing to feel in his throat and his skin is wet and cooling. The rain smells like metal, like blood, and keeps pouring into his open eyes, making tears. I lean over his face, covering him from the rain, watching his eyes as I wipe his mouth with my shirt. He doesn’t blink. His chest doesn’t rise and fall. He doesn’t see that we have lived.

“Come on,” I say, pleading, but he doesn’t answer.

Mom’s hand cupped my chin. “Meggie, you’re fine,” she said, and her eyes welled with tears. “You’re a miracle.”

“I’m really tired,” I said, and pushed the clothes away. “Do you think it would be okay if I slept for a while?”

I didn’t think I’d sleep but I did. The last thing I remembered was opening my eyes to see if Mom and Dad were still there. If they were still watching me.

They were.

Four

In the morning I was released from the hospital. Someone came in to talk to me first. A counselor. Her name was Donna, and she had the whitest, brightest smile I’d ever seen.

She sat down next to me and said, “I’ve been looking forward to speaking to you,” in a voice so bright and interested that I flinched, yet another person eager for me. She wanted to know what I was thinking about and when Mom said, “She’s thinking she’s glad to be going home,” Donna asked her and Dad to leave, said they should come back in an hour.

When they were gone she asked me again how I was feeling (“Fine”), how I was sleeping (“Fine”), and if I had anything I wanted to “share.” I thought about telling the truth, that the visit wasn’t necessary since I couldn’t remember anything, but
she was leaning forward, staring at me like whatever I was going to say would change her life.

It freaked me out. Her questions, her staring, and I wished—

I wished Mom and Dad would stop looking at me like Donna was.

“Are you sure there’s nothing you want to share?” she asked again.

“I’m tired of Jell-O,” I said.

She smiled and said, “You seem very calm, Megan.” It didn’t exactly sound like a compliment and I don’t think it was one because then she asked me about the memorial service and said, “Would you like to have gone?”

I nodded. She asked if I wanted to talk about the crash and when I shook my head she said, “Sharing the experience will help you heal.”

And then she just sat there. She was still leaning forward, still staring at me, and it was like she wanted to eat everything I said. Like she was hungry for what was inside my head and I didn’t like that. I didn’t like her.

I didn’t like any of this.

Mom came in then, looking tense. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, “but we’re anxious to take Megan home and you seem to be—she looks upset.”

“Megan and I have only spoken for a few minutes,” Donna
said. “I was just going to ask her about her walk through Round Hills.”

“Her walk?” Mom said, voice rising, carrying, and Dad came in then. He said, “Meggie has been through enough and we don’t need you bothering her. We’ll be leaving now. Thank you for your time.”

Donna looked at my parents and then at me. “I think you might benefit from talking to someone,” she told me. “Where do you live?”

“Reardon.”

Donna blinked. “Oh,” she said. “I can give you the name of someone in Derrytown.”

Derrytown is eighty-five miles away and I think we all knew that wasn’t going to happen. She gave me her card as she left anyway and said, “Please know you can call me.”

I held it like it hurt my hand and Dad threw it away, then hugged me hard. “We’re gonna take you home, baby girl,” he said. “Everyone’s waiting to see you.”

We left in a car that wasn’t ours, Mom and Dad and me hidden behind the tinted windows of a minivan. The driver, who worked for the hospital, told us we were heading to a rest stop out on the highway where we’d pick up Dad’s truck so no reporters would follow us.

As we drove away, I saw reporters standing outside the
hospital, leaning against vans painted with television station logos. There were so many of them.

Some of them were giving reports, lights shining on them as they smiled.