Act of God

of the information on the thing. “What?... I don’t know what you’re supposed to do with it, just make sure you remember it for the police...Right, right. I’ll call you in five minutes.”
    Hanging up the phone, Jorgensen said, “She doesn’t hear from me, my friend’s calling the cops.”
    “Dead battery?”
    “What?”
    “Your friend Janey. Dead battery in her car?”
    Guardedly, “Yes.”
    “And because of your arm, she was supposed to drive you somewhere, right?”
    Still guarded. “Maybe.”
    “Tell you what. My car’s just out front. I’ll drive you, and we can talk on the way.”
    Shaking her head, having to use the good hand again on her hair. “I’m not going to talk with you, now I’m supposed to take a ride with you?”
    I took out my wallet and started doling things out to her. “Driver’s license, with photo. Permit to carry a concealed weapon, also with photo. My passport would take a while, but I can give you the names and telephone numbers of three or four Boston cops who’ll vouch for me.”
    Jorgensen caught herself smiling. “And for your driving?”

    “If I didn’t have this doctor’s appointment, there’s no way on earth I’d be doing this.”
    I nodded. “Given the reason you need the appointment, I hope the airline’s picking up the tab.”
    She turned in the passenger’s seat to look at me. “What do you mean, ‘the reason’?”
    “I read some newspaper articles about the crash. One profiled how you broke and burned your arm.”
    Jorgensen looked back out the windshield, not saying anything.
    We stopped for a red light. “It must have taken a lot, going back inside that plane after the little girl.”
    Nothing at first. Then, “She had braces.”
    “Braces?”
    “Not on her teeth, on her legs. Like from polio, only I guess it couldn’t have been polio she had, this day and age.”
    “Probably not.” The traffic light changed. “Do you remember another passenger with a limp?”
    “Just from preboarding.”
    “You mean helping some people onto the plane before you let everybody on it?”
    “Yes. The little girl, somebody else helped her on, but I kept track of her.” Jorgensen suddenly seemed to want to talk, her face still straight ahead. “We were a lifeguard flight, so I was thinking about sick people.”
    “Lifeguard?”
    “Yes. When a plane is carrying donated organs—for transplanting into somebody else—the air traffic controllers add ‘lifeguard’ to the flight number. So we’d be like “Flight four-zero-five Lifeguard.’ When you’re carrying organs, speed is of the—what’s the expression?”
    “Speed is of the essence?”
    “Right. Once we were airborne, the captain used that, talking to the passengers. To tell them how... lucky they were to be on the plane, because the tower would give us expedited consideration for routing and landing. Anyway, since we were a lifeguard flight, I was thinking about sick people, and when the little girl wasn’t in my section, I switched off with one of the other attendants, so I could be near her. She was only seven or eight, had the cutest little face, dimples to drive the boys wild. When the... when we went down, we only had a few seconds warning from the cockpit, not even enough time for most of the passengers to panic or anything, unfasten their seat belts. The cabin... the fuselage just split apart and burst into flames. It was… unbelievable, really. One second, you’re on this approach, everything just fine, smiling with relief that you have only the return hop back to Logan, and the next minute it’s like… some kind of nightmare in hell, everybody screaming, the walls opening up, the section behind you just... just not there, not there anymore.”
    Jorgensen was speaking more to the windshield than me.
    I made a left turn. She said, “The second right after this one.”
    We slowed down for it. “You said there was another passenger with a limp?”
    Jorgensen’s head came back to me. “What?”
    “You said there was somebody else who needed help preboarding?”
    “Oh. Oh, right.” Eyes front. “A blond woman, with a limp. She was kind of crying, almost didn’t make the preboarding, like she was... preoccupied, thinking about something.”
    “Did you get a good look at her?”
    “Pretty good. I would have tried to help her, too, when we... when we hit, but she was in the section that... was gone.”
    I reached into my suit pocket to get the photo I’d been