Chapter 8 –
Aftermath
I don’t know how large the medical staff is at Green Bay’s main hospital, but half of them must have been waiting for us when we arrived. President Jolliet was loaded onto a gurney and wheeled out of sight. It was pretty clear we would be getting nowhere near him for some time. Elise and I were taken into two examination rooms, despite our protests. Yes, we had cuts and scrapes from running through the woods, and mud had been rubbed into all of them, but couldn’t we just go home and clean up ourselves? Apparently not. We got swiped by disinfectant, covered by bandages, and handed a small bottle of antibiotics. Oh, and some thoughtful woman gave Elise a spare nurse’s uniform.
A half hour later we were cleared to go, and I thought that meant we could catch a cab back to our house, but the ministry had other ideas. Half a dozen senior people from the Interior Ministry had taken over a conference room, and they wanted to huddle with Elise, no matter what the hour. Meanwhile two investigators from another agency wanted to talk with me. They needed a statement, and no, it could not wait until tomorrow. They gave me enough coffee to keep me coherent for about an hour, but I was fading fast after that. It was deep into the night, and I had done and seen things I could barely understand. At some point my statement must have lost some coherence, since they finally decided maybe this could wait until tomorrow after all.
I left them and went to the conference room for the ministry people. There was a guard at the door, but I gave him my name and he let me in. As soon as the door opened every head turned in my direction and the conversation stopped.
“Did you want something, Doctor Murphy?” I had met Etienne Marchant several times before and he struck me as a nice enough old man. Tonight he just struck me as old.
“I have come for Elise.”
“We have a few more things to discuss.”
“Not tonight.” I stood just inside the door. I made no other move. I had nothing more to say. There was a long pause and I began to wonder if I was going to have to fight for her. But then I saw a couple heads nod. Maybe they wanted to get home too.
“Yes,” Marchant finally agreed. “ Maybe it would be best to resume tomorrow after we know more about this attack. “Elise, thank you for your help – and for your bravery.” And they applauded. Elise got up, gave me one of her bandaged hands, and we walked out of the room and out of the hospital. A ministry car was waiting to take us home.
We woke the next morning around noon. I have no idea where we found the energy to walk from the cab to our door, or climb the stairs to our bedroom, but we did. After that, we just collapsed and slept. We woke to a knock on our bedroom door. It was Elise’ mother. She sat on the bed next to Elise, then took her in her arms and cried. This started Elise crying. I covered myself as best I could and went into the bathroom for a shower. By the time I was done dressing, Elsie had stopped crying and was hugging her mother – who continued to cry.
I went downstairs for breakfast, cursing every stair. My body was so stiff I could barely move. Every motion hurt. Walking, sitting, reaching, it didn’t matter – it hurt. I also felt angry. I am not sure why I was angry, there was no special focus to my anger. I just didn’t like anything that morning. All that anger fell on some poor policeman who happened to be assigned to our house. I came around the kitchen and found him standing by the back door.
“Good morning, sir,” he said as pleasantly as you imagine. My response?
“Who the hell are you, and why are you in my house?”
“I have been assigned to guard the minister. My name is Gustav. I am sorry to startle you.” He had to be the nicest policeman on the planet. I didn’t care. I ignored him and worked in the kitchen. I made some American coffee, and mixed some eggs and cheese. We still had croissants from the previous day (although eating day old croissants is a crime in many French lands). Do you think I offered any to our guard? Nope. I made a plate for myself, a plate for Elise, and started back up the stairs, cursing every stair. Today would be a real good day to stay away from me.
Back up in the bedroom, Elise and her mother were now sitting next to each other, hands moving through each other’s hair – some kind of mother -daughter ritual. Elise said nice things about the food I brought, and her mother smiled at me and mentioned how thoughtful I was. I kept my mouth shut and drank my coffee. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, but I was pretty sure silence was my ally for the moment. Eventually Elise decided to shower, and her mother went down stairs, no doubt to cook something far better than what I had managed. I drank my coffee, looked out the window, and tried not to punch things.
Elise came out of the bathroom partially dressed and I helped her put on fresh bandages. She had gotten cut up far worse than I had. Her legs were especially bad where she had pulled up her skirts so she could run. There seemed to be no end to scratches and punctures that needed covering.
“Have they called about Uncle Claude?” she asked as we worked on the cuts.
“I haven’t checked my phone. Sorry.” I reached around to where my phone sat on my dresser. Elsie grabbed my hand.
“Shawn, I love you.”
“I love you. Last night… That was so awful. I don’t want to think about it. I just want to be with you.”
“And I want to be with you. Just hold me, and we will stay here.” And I did. And we stayed in that room holding each other for over an hour. Her mother, brilliant woman, stayed down stairs, and the phone collected calls in silence. I am not sure we said ten words in that hour. We just held each other. Near the end, we both started crying. I have no idea why. Some kind of catharsis? Whatever the reason, we just sat and cried. Then we dried our tears, stood up, finished dressing, and went downstairs. The stairs still hurt, but I was less angry. I have no idea why.
Our downstairs was getting crowded. Now all of Elise’ family was there. Her father hugged her, as did her sisters. Her mother put out dishes of food, which I thought was odd, but what was even odder was that I was hungry. I had just eaten an hour ago, but I was hungry again. So I sat down with all of them and we had an odd collection of whatever Marie had found in the kitchen. And it felt good. The food was good of course, Marie is a fabulous cook, but it was sitting around a dining room table like a normal family that felt the best.
The conversation took an interesting turn. Thankfully, no one wanted details on the shootings and such, but Elise’s youngest sister did want to know about her cuts and scrapes.
“How did you get so cut up?” she asked.
“We had to run through the woods down to the lake, and there were lots of branches and briars that we could not see in the dark.”
“What happened to your dress?”
“Oh, I took that off down by the lake.”
“You took off your dress. You were naked?” Little sister was now wide-eyed.
“Shawn gave me his dinner jacket.”
“You were naked. Whoa...” The whole table erupted at that. And it was pretty funny in retrospect. Leave it to a high school girl to put a whole new perspective on things.
“By the way, Shawn,” Elise’s mother said, after the laughter died down. “Your mother called this morning. I told her you were fine, but I think it would be good if you spoke with her. Mothers worry.”
“Why would she worry? How does she know something happened that involved us?”
“Apparently you were on the news back in the U.S. There were cameras at the hospital when President Jolliet arrived, and they saw you get out of the truck with him.”
“Oh. Then I better call and explain.”
“I should probably call into the office too,” Elise announced. That was taken as a general signal for Elise’s family to finish up the meal and head out the backdoor to their home across the yard. I was sorry to see them go. The meal had been a great delay in the inevitable effort to return phone calls and meet whatever other obligations were looming. I
could see Elise felt the same way. With her family gone, we puttered around the kitchen taking eons just to scrape plates and fill the dishwasher. Neither one of us wanted to move on to the next stage of whatever was coming.
“We should visit Uncle Claude,” Elise said as we stood in the kitchen. All the clean up was done, but neither of us had made a move for the door.
“Good idea. How about this. We make the phone calls we need to make, but stop all calls at three so we can go to the hospital. Okay?” Elise agreed and we both grabbed phones and headed to separate rooms. Three o’clock was about forty-five minutes away. Making calls for that amount of time seemed manageable.
I discovered my mother was fairly comfortable about my safety. Having talked with Elise’ mother, she no doubt felt she was getting a more candid description of my condition than she would get from me anyway, and it appeared Marie had reduced her worries. I explained I had just been at the hospital to accompany President Jolliet, and any blood she saw on me was just scrapes and such. Had I been near the shooting? Hmm. What did I say to that? I decided to go with a gloss that was truthful in a general way. We had been at Jolliet’s house for dinner, but had left. As we drove down the road we heard shooting back at the house, so we stopped the car, and cut through the woods to see what was going on. We were there when the local troops responded to the attack, and we sat with Jolliet after he had been rescued. All true in a general sort of a way. We ended the call with me promising to come home for a visit in a week or so. In truth, I liked the idea. After last night, a visit home with the family sounded pretty good.
I decided that was the only call I would make. My email box was packed, and I had lots of texts and calls waiting for replies, but I decided all of them could wait. Instead, I decided maybe I owed Gustav an apology. He was standing by the front door watching the street.
“Thank you for watching. It was a long night, and it is comforting to know someone was here to protect us.”
“It’s an honor sir. What the minister did last night was incredible.”
“Yes, she was very brave.”
“I would say more than that. My director says she killed four of them and wounded two others. Thanks to her, the attack was delayed enough to prevent the security detail from being overrun.”
“Thanks, but I am not sure I would tell her that unless she asks. Last night was pretty hard on her. And on me, for that matter.”
“Do you want to know about the man you shot?”
“No, I really don’t. We aren’t soldiers or policemen. Doing what we did was very hard on us, and I think we would both like to just move on.”
“I can appreciate that. But like I said, sir, it is an honor to be here.”
“Have they told you how long we might need a guard?
“I will probably be here a week while they install the security equipment that has been ordered by the ministry.”
“Well, if you are going to be here a week, I am not “sir”, I am Shawn. Okay?”
“Okay, Shawn.” He held out his hand and we shook. I noticed his hand was much harder than mine, and I have to admit I was glad of it.
Elise finished her calls a few minutes later and Gustav brought the car around. Apparently he was guard and chauffeur for the time being.
“It just occurred to me,” I said as we rode to the hospital, “I am probably going to lose the damage deposit on my Citroen. I have no idea what form I would fill out for the rental agency, but I bet no one in the office buys my story.”
“Odd, I was just thinking about my dress. Some fisherman is going to wonder what was going on at that beach.” You get the idea, we were sort of in the giggles phase of whatever we were going through. Sitting in the back seat, holding hands, and making silly jokes -- it felt good while it lasted.
The mood changed when we got to the hospital. With Gustav at the wheel we were able to make it through the first layer of security, but the only way to go through the next was to get out of the car, walk around the blast barriers and through the metal detector, and wait while a visual scan was done to ensure we were who we said we were.
Unfortunately, that was not the worst part of the visit. Jolliet was not doing well. As you can imagine, there was a substantial crowd of government people and family members and notables occupying much of the wing where he had been taken. I felt sorry for any other patient in that area. There was noise, and there was crowding, and there was lots of crying. I was puzzled and annoyed by the crying. Had he died? We walked down the usual antiseptic hallway to Jolliet’s room, pausing here and there to talk with people we knew. We probably had ten conversations before we got to a desk where a nurse and three security people waited as a final barrier to entry. None of them looked happy to see us. Who knew how many hours they had been pulling sentry duty, and how many times they had been asked to admit people who really had no business bothering the President. So I expected trouble, but it turned out our names were on whatever magic list they were using. The nurse even stood up to take Elise’s hand and guide her into the room.
As for the room, why do they do that with flowers? The French are just as bad as we are. You take a bare room and fill it to overflowing with flowers. Are they supposed to cover the antiseptic smell? Hide the pastel walls? Distract from the rows of monitoring machines that made small noises and scared the hell out of everyone? All they did for us was obscure Jolliet, who was already hidden behind a nurse, a doctor, and two more security guards. I gave one of the flower stands an inappropriate push and got it out of the way. If the window had been open, it would have been moved even farther.
“My heroes,” Jolliet said when he saw us. At least he tried to say it. His voice was so weak it hurt me to hear him talk. And he waved a hand, motioning us closer, but had he lost fifty pounds over night? His arm was so skinny. The guards never moved a muscle, but the nurse moved away from the bed so we could get closer. Elise took his hand in both of hers and immediately started crying.
“We were so afraid for you.”
“You saved me.” He paused, and he was suddenly tearing up too. “They told me what you did. A woman should never have to do that.”
“When the Iroquois attack, everyone is a warrior,” Elsie said through her tears, and seemed to stand a bit taller.
“Yes,” Jollier replied. “An old saying, but unfortunately still true.”
“And Shawn, you helped as well.”
“My contribution was to give Elise my coat when she took off her dress.”
“She took off her dress?” The guards tried really hard to appear not to be listening, but I saw them both sneak a look at Elise when I said that.
“Shawn,” Elise gave me an elbow in the side.” You can stop telling that story right now.”
“Oh, but it makes the story even better. The terrorists were beaten by a naked woman,” replied Jolliet. He didn’t quite have the breath left to laugh, but he was certainly trying, and the smile on his face was refreshing to see.
“I was not naked. I was wearing Shawn’s dinner jacket.”
“Now I recall. You were wearing it when you joined me after…” There was a long pause as a funny look came over Jolliet’s face. Then he continued. “Did I tell you they killed almost all the servants? And all the security guards. The last two died at the door to my safe room. I could hear it…” he started crying again, as did Elise. I held Elise and we waited for Jolliet to continue, but he didn’t. We waited a moment, and then the nurse took charge.
“I have to ask you to leave now. He is overdue for some medication, and some rest.” Elise kissed his forehead. He looked up at her while she kissed him, and there was a look in those eyes. The despair he could not speak was in his eyes. I started tearing up too, and we left the room with our arms around each other.
Out in the hallway we ran into Elise’ father. I kept forgetting he was a physician. To see him now, wearing his clinical white coat,
it suddenly occurred to me he might be involved in Jolliet’s care. It was apparent he had been waiting for us. He motioned us into a room and closed the door behind us.
“It was good he got to see you. I am not sure if he will have many more visitors.”
“How badly is he hurt?” I asked.
“The terrorists were using explosives to get into the house. He was hit by multiple shock waves. The guards got him into the safe room, but even there, he would have experienced major compressions. Concussions always create brain damage. Right now he has lost some control over his limbs, and he has some nausea. The real risk is later. His brain has been injured, and it will respond.”
“He’ll live?” Elise asked.
“Yes, but we don’t know how well. He is a strong man, but he is seventy eight. Old age makes every injury worse.” Neither of us had anything to say after that. What do you say? A great man was fighting for his life. “The hospital will have regular press conferences and announcements,” her father continued. “But they will want to protect his privacy and help the family keep their spirits up. So I ask you to not repeat what I have just told you.” Elise nodded and gave her father a long hug. I shook his hand and we left the room and the hospital as quickly as we could.
I
Chapter 9 –
Escape to Portage