Waltz of Her Life

"Officer," she started. "I've driven all the way from Illinois. Five of my friends were at this concert. I have to make sure they're all okay. Do you know where they took the injured?"

"Most of them were rushed to University hospital," he murmured.

"I have to go there! Can you tell me where it is?" She instinctively had grabbed hold of the man's jacket lapel. He looked down at her hand.

"Miss, I really…" he said, straining to remain calm and patient.

A calm, black woman dressed in a tan business suit and overcoat, her hair tucked under a fashionable fur hat, walked up to them. Linda assumed that she might be a reporter or an official. "Pardon me, I don't mean to intrude," she said, quickly and efficiently, "but I couldn't help overhearing."

Linda perked up. "That's right! I'm desperate to find my friends. I have a bad feeling some of them might have been hurt."

The well-dressed woman nodded. "My name is Stella. I'm with the news crew. We're just on our way over to University Hospital now. You're welcome to ride along."

It meant that she would somehow have to find a way back to Myrtle, on the riverfront.

But that was later. By this time, her heart beat quicker and she breathed rapidly, the frosty air assaulting her lungs. "Sure," she said.

Linda piled into a van with Stella and a bunch of guys who carried cameras or lighting equipment, talking amongst themselves about the horrors of the evening. The driver of the van aggressively worked the gas pedals and slung the steering as if he was transporting a heart attack patient to the hospital. The van careened from the concourse across a ramp to the parking lots beneath the baseball stadium on the other side.

All of the parking employees, in dark brown pants with a stripe down the side and fur lined jackets, most of them male, but some female, waved the van around the zigs and zags of the ramps in the lot. The wheels chirped when they rounded a corner at the bottom and burst out onto a city street. "We'll be there in just a few minutes, now," Stella reassured her, patting her hand. "The hospital is just north of the city."

Linda watched vacantly out the window as the van drove through city streets past tall buildings. It roared through a slummy looking area with run-down buildings with a few boarded-up windows. They climbed a hill, and passed nicer buildings that looked like they could have been part of a college campus. They arrived at a brightly-lit hospital parking lot which was a beehive of activity, Linda knew they had arrived at the hospital. Once the driver parked the van, all of the camera crew leaped out and ran toward the crowds of people gathered around one of the emergency entrances.