LITMIR.BIZ

       8

      Los Angeles, California

      Robert Bowen was alone.

      He was sitting on the table of the examination room. The faint ringing in his ears had stopped. He stared at the large clock on the wall above the eye chart and scales. Outside the closed door he heard the loudspeaker’s muffled dispatches over the bustle in the hall while here, in the quiet, he listened to the whir of the clock’s movement.

      It was only a moment ago that he’d held the baby...

      ...then hands grasp his legs, drag them from the car...clear, the explosion, lift the wreckage, rattle the debris, the flames, heat, hands drag them...the ensuing mayhem, the baby’s cries, the sirens, the paramedics: “Can you hear me, sir? We’re taking you to the hospital... The baby’s going to be okay!”

      Everyone had survived, they’d told him, with no life-threatening injuries.

      A miracle.

      The clock’s minute hand swept time.

      He was still shaky. His few scrapes had been cleaned and dressed. A nurse had said Claire was on her way.

      The room smelled of rubbing alcohol and held a trace of gas. His white shirt, torn, streaked with road grime, along with his pants, was stuffed into a clear plastic bag in the corner. They’d given him a surgeon’s T-shirt and pants to get home in.

      He stared at nothing, contemplating the last few moments. Adrenaline was still rippling through him. He massaged his temples, shut his eyes and again he was cast back to the accident.

      An ominous wave rolled over him then suddenly...the hands that had grasped his legs became talons pulling him into the inferno, dragging him down, down, down, through the burning recesses, through the lava slime of every shame, to the breathing, heaving bubbling pit of every foul, cursed thought, every bestial urge. Every vile desire, until he came to... It calls to him now, demanding he answer: Why did you let the woman and her baby live?

      Bowen said nothing.

      No one knew the battle raging within him.

      The soft buzzing of the clock’s movement filled the silence that passed.

      He continued massaging his temples. For how long, he didn’t know. But he kept rubbing until his heart rate slowed, his breathing slowed, until he heard the clock, the subdued sounds of the loudspeaker and activity in the hallway as the door to his room swung open and Claire entered.

      “Hey,” she said.

      “Hey.”

      She hugged and kissed him.

      “How are you doing?” She brushed his hair lightly, taking quick inventory of his scrapes.

      “I’m fine, how about you?”

      Tears filled her eyes as she nodded and smiled.

      “Good. Let’s get you home.”

      An administration staff member and a nurse helped Claire expedite Robert’s discharge. As they stepped out of the hospital, Claire saw Ruben Montero turn from talking with a half a dozen reporters.

      “That’s him, with that lady, the man who saved my family.”

      Microphones and bright TV lights collected around them.

      “Sir, are you Robert Bowen?”

      “Yes.”

      “Carmen Chow, First Witness News,” said a woman in her twenties wearing heavy makeup. “Sir, this man says you saved his family. Do you consider yourself a hero?”

      Bowen looked at Claire then at Carmen Chow.

      “No, I just did what anyone would’ve done in the same situation.”

      “We’re told a lot of people at the scene were afraid,” one reporter said.

      “Not this man.” Ruben Montero beamed, taking Robert’s hand and shaking it. “This man is a good man, a great hero!”

      A razor-thin line of unease cut behind Bowen’s smile.

      He knew the truth.