Chapter 18: Believe in Me

October 9th, 1995, 6:20 AM MST, St. Joseph’s Hospital, Pheonix, AZ

Akilah experienced some weird stuff. She had been showering, deeply in thought about the fact that she might be pregnant. She had decided that while she would prefer not to be, she accepted that she might be. In accepting that she might be, she had concluded that if she had Josh’s baby growing inside of her, she wanted it to be there. She knew, in revelation, that she wanted to have his kid. She wanted to raise his kid.

As she thought about that, she had also reached another conclusion: that she wanted to marry him. She had already agreed to that, of course, but as she had been thinking of it over the past few days, she realized she wanted to marry him as soon as possible. She wanted to be married to him before her parents found out she even had a boyfriend. She knew what she wanted, and she didn’t see a reason to delay it; it was one of the things she had decided to tell Josh when she got back to the room.

She felt relieved in her decision. She had been unsure about how to proceed with all of it. She was scared of so many things about their long term relationship; she had just been very confident they would resolve it. For instance, she had been raised in Islam, and while she certainly rejected a lot of the radicalized hogwash, she generally believed in many of its teachings, accepting Allah as her god and Mohammad as the last prophet. She wasn’t a particularly strict observer of it, but she did believe in it, and did not want to give it up for somebody who was Jewish.

She had intuitively understood that Josh was Jewish in roughly the same pattern: he was not what some would call ‘Orthodox’, nor was he a strict observer, but he believed in the tenets of his religion, and considered himself Jewish for reasons other than his parents being so. She could accept that, too. She could accept them being a couple of not only mixed race, but mixed religion, as well. She believed he could understand these things, because she sensed his surprising wisdom of fairness.

She wasn’t sure about raising their child, what religion they should be. But she was sure that he would be willing to have a long and fair discussion on the subject, respecting her beliefs. She was completely confident that they could reach a decision of mutual comfort on that subject. She was nervous about having the discussion, but was confident that it would be resolved amicably.

She was nervous on the subject of parents, of her family. She had not told Josh that her brother had been an anti-Israel terrorist. It wasn’t just that Josh would consider him so; rightly; but she considered him so, too. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict had a lot of genuine grievances, and both sides had a degree of merit to their arguments. She wasn’t against her own people on that, either. But she was against trying to solve the conflict by killing, especially the killing of relatively innocent civilians. She felt confident that Josh would accept this about her, too.

But her parents supported her brother. She loved her parents, but detested their stance on this subject. Her parents would never allow for her to marry a Jew. She didn’t care about that; she would marry him, and then tell her parents that she was a married woman. She didn’t need to ask permission in the United States. If they chose to come to terms with that, then that would be great. If they didn’t, that would be their problem.

As she was finishing her shower, she heard the KACHISSSSSS of the brakes dumping; not knowing what the sound was, she wasn’t even bracing for the train slowing down. The sudden deceleration threw her against the front wall of the shower; the next few moments were foggy, but she got a sense of being thrown around, and then she was out to the world.

She had a few moments of fuzzy awareness. She remembered somebody taking her out of the shower and wrapping her up. She remembered a few moments being carried around. She distinctly remembered being in searing pain during each of these moments of semi-awareness. She remembered a moment where Josh kissed her while she was being transported in a noisy room.

She remembered almost nothing of the hospital check-in process. She didn’t remember the blood transfusion, or the tests. She didn’t remember the doctors working on her and her wounds. All of that was blank.

She started coming to partial lucidity hearing Josh talk to her. She couldn’t really respond to it, but she fuzzily heard him saying “ ... yuh tuh marry me becawze I wantcha fawh de rest of my life. I hope yuh are ok. I hope yuh remembuh me. I hope yuh still love me. Please don’t fawhget me. Please.”

She wanted to scream, to yell, to cry out, “Of course I remember you, I love you, Josh.” But she couldn’t talk, as if in a dream. She faded out a bit again.

When she drifted into it again, she heard him again, “ ... gonna lose huh, I can’t lose huh!”

Then he bent over her and wrapped his arms tightly around her, which hurt with searing pain that brought her almost fully into awareness, followed by a kiss on her lips that emotionally set her on fire.

Jill argued with Josh, “You aren’t going to lose her, I just told you-”

Akilah tried to talk, and finally started to get her lips moving, her eyes opened. But she was having trouble talking. The most she could get out was a mild croak sound.

Josh continued talking, and couldn’t hear her croak: “My parents are probably gonna come here, too, angry dey will be wit’ me, put a stop tuh dis, dey will. Ya’ dig? My mudder tinks dat Palestinians aren’t even human. I have tuh marry Jew people only, dey have told me since a kid I was. Right?”

Akilah tried again to make a noise, but it was hard. She worked to get some saliva down her parched throat. She got some, and tried to croak again, and it came more easily; she swallowed some more.

“Wrong,” Jill repeated, “I know a lot of people are going to disagree with me, but Queens is not a foreign country. You can marry who you want, Josh.”

As George and Jill say, Damn skippy, Akilah thought to herself, and finally felt like she had some control over her vocal chords.

“Being hit on the head will into her sense knock,” Josh continued, facing away from Akilah and towards Jill, “She’ll not even want me. She’s so beautiful, much better than a little nebbish like me, she can do-”

She couldn’t stand him saying that. She tried to talk once again. It came out in a sickening croak, scratchy and as if she was full of phlegm. It hurt so much to talk, but she needed to say this. She hated him talking himself down like that.

“You are right, being hit on the head did knock the sense into me, I know I can not do better than you, Joshua. I do not want to wait until after college. We should get married right now.”

They turned to look at her. She felt relieved; they had heard her.

Relief poured out of Josh, relief beyond belief. Relief better than sex, almost. She was alive; she was aware, she was here. She was not in a coma. Her brain was not a soon to explode mess of fluid. She remembered him. She still loved him. She still wanted him. She was the girl he wanted still. They could get past all of that. The big humps were over.

“Acky! My Acky!” He squealed.

He raced to her as fast as he could, he practically galloped to the bed. He threw his arms around her, and she winced. He recoiled at her wincing.

“Hurts,” she croaked. Saying what she said before had taken almost all her ability to talk.

“Sorry,” Josh said, “I love you, of course we can get married as soon as possible.”

“Water,” she croaked.

Jill poured her a glass of water, and handed it to Josh so that he could try to help her drink, which she did, albeit with a lot of trouble. She then went out to the nurses’ station and told them that she was awake. Which should have been redundant with Josh’s squealing, but they had a full load of trauma patients from the wreck on their hands.

The last news report she heard on the television had said that 78 passengers had been injured, 12 of them seriously, with only one fatality- she knew that to be Mitchel, the car attendant. Akilah and Sharon would be among the seriously injured. The doctor had told her that Akilah had an injury Josh didn’t know about. There was no reason to worry him with it; he would have just been even more upset, and they would be immaterial if Akilah had died or never woke up.

The first was that the doctors suspected the trauma from the accident had terminated a pregnancy that was no more than a few days old. Its presence in her body was limited and hard to detect, but the doctor she had talked to was fairly confident she had been. It had probably happened the first time they had sex. It had been just on the cusp of being able to be detected by a pregnancy test; whatever it was, it had terminated in the accident.

She didn’t know how Josh would react to it before Akilah woke up; possibly even try to convince himself it wasn’t his. Which of course it was. Hell, she wasn’t sure how he’d react to it now; how they’d react to it. It could be relief, it could be searing anger. It could be that they would be happy they wouldn’t have to worry about it and be more careful with birth control in the future. It was also possible they would see the people who derailed the train as murdering their child. Either one made Jill very circumspect about telling them.

These were relatively minor things compared to her not waking up, so she had chosen to keep them to herself. But she had woken up. It was time for the doctors to talk to Akilah about her own medical conditions. She would, of course insist that Josh be present for this; Jill would have to be there in case Josh lost it again.

She hoped that Josh would be more together because Akilah was there and able to reassure him that things would work out OK in the end. But she was quite nervous.

October 9th, 1995, 7:05 AM MST, MM 138 I-10, Phoenix, AZ

George was tired as hell. He had a lot of work to do and a lot of things to do, but at the moment he was stuck on an Arizona Trailways bus being driven from the scene of the wreck to the Holiday Inn at the Phoenix airport. He was with a bunch of other passengers; there were several busses. He was with Sharon’s kids; he had arranged with an Amtrak representative to get them two rooms at the Holiday Inn.

He didn’t want to get a hotel room and go to sleep. He wanted to get to the fucking hospital. He wanted to go see Akilah and find out how she was. He wanted to relieve Miguel and find out what was happening with Sharon. And then he wanted to figure out who the fuck derailed the train he was on, find them, and kick their ass into next Tuesday.

And that was if Akilah and Sharon were totally alright. God help whoever was responsible for this if they had killed or seriously injured his friends. He wanted to know who came up with the harebrained scheme to derail a freight train on a line that hosts passenger trains. That person deserved to end up in jail, but he suspected that they wouldn’t be found by conventional law enforcement.

The bus arrived at the Holiday Inn; it was a full service Holiday Inn, and so George’s first order of business, after acquiring the rooms and taking the kids there to settle them in, was to take them down to the hotel’s restaurant and get them breakfast. It was a Holiday Inn, so it was the very blandest of foods offered by an American chain hotel, but it was edible, and the kids were quite hungry.

After eating, George took the kids back to the rooms, which were connecting, and tried to separate them by gender. However, Jackie and Jeff hopped on a bed together and refused to move from it.

“Don’t bother,” Jimmy said.

“I’m sure your mother would object-”

“That’s how they sleep at home,” Jessica replied, “Unless you want a big fight on your hand, not to mention them just sneaking back together when you’re not looking, just leave it.”

“I’ll blame you if your mother complains.”

“She’ll understand, trust me,” Jimmy replied.

George looked at his watch; it was 8:30 in the morning, meaning it was 6:30 in the morning back in New York. He decided to risk waking his dad up, and picked up the phone and dialed their number. It rang several times, before finally being picked up.”

“Huhwow?”

“Mom?” George was shocked, his mom was impossible to wake up this early in the morning.

“George,” Gretel replied, “Why are yuh callin’ me dis early, or what?”

“Did you hear about the wreck?”

“Jill called me earliuh,” Gretel replied, “Yuh aren’t wit’ huh yet, or what?”

“No,” George replied, “I need to get to the hospital, do you have any news? Also, where is dad?”

“Nuttin’ yuh don’t know, I don’t tink,” Gretel replied, “But it was two and a half hawhs ago, so a lot might of changed. Yuh got me so fahr? Your fadder got on de Lake Shawh Limited as soon as Downs called him and told him about de wreck. Yuh with me? Like it stopped by our house.”

“I’ll be heading to the hospital, do you want updates?”

“If its impawhtant. Ya’ dig? I’m up already ovuh here! Okay?”

“Love you mom.”

“Love yuh, too, Geawhge,” she hung up the phone and shuffled over to make some coffee.

George hung up the phone and turned toward Jimmy.

“Can I trust you to watch the kids?”

“Yes,” Jimmy replied.

“I am going to head over to the hospital, then.”

October 9th, 1995, 9:15 AM MST, Cigar’s Warehouse, Phoenix, AZ

The entire crew of the robbery were back at Cigar’s personal place of business; the business he ran when he wasn’t committing crimes. It was a tidy little business, and a fairly successful one. It made him enough money to live comfortably but not lavishly. He wanted more than that out of his life. Or he had. After this screw up he wasn’t so sure about the order of the world and life he had laid out for himself.