Meredith zipped her last bag shut just after four o'clock, and then sat down to read a magazine and relax, something she did too little of, but she had finished all her work, and even the endlessly revised red herring was complete now. Her briefcase sat next to her packed bags, and she had nothing to do for the next two and a half days except enjoy her husband. He was still sound asleep on their bed, and snoring softly when she heard an odd buzzing sound from the living room, and when she walked into the room to see what it was, she realized that it was his pager. She looked at it suspiciously for a long moment, like an animal that might attack if she got too close to it, but she also felt guilty on his behalf ignoring it. They knew he was off call and if they were paging him, she suspected it had to be important, maybe someone in dire straits needed an expertise that only Steve could offer. She walked slowly to where the pager lay, still on the kitchen counter, and glanced at the display. A flashing red light was going off on it, and the numbers 911 were repeated all across the screen. Whatever it was, there was no question that it was urgent. She picked it up, and stared at it, and then knew what she had to do. She was still holding it in her hand, when she walked softly back into their bedroom and ever so gently touched his shoulder. He stirred after only an instant, and smiled in his half sleep, and then reached out to find her breast with his hand. He was more than ready to make good on the promises he had made earlier, but with a frown, he heard the buzzing of his pager. He opened his eyes to look at her, and without a word, she handed it to him, and he saw the same numbers she had.

“Tell me I'm having a nightmare,” he said, rolling over, and taking it from her. “Lucas is there this weekend, they don't need me.” He groaned as he said it.

“Maybe you should call them,” she said softly, sitting on the bed next to him. “Maybe he wants to consult with you about something important.” He and Steve worked together very closely and had enormous respect and admiration for each other.

Steve sighed deeply as he sat up, and reached for the phone next to the bed, with an unhappy expression. “This better be good,” he said, as he punched in the numbers and waited. As always, in his opinion, they took a little too long to answer, but they were understaffed and always busy. “Dr. Whitman here,” he said tersely when they did. “I just got a 911 on my pager, with red lights. Tell me it was a mistake, Barbie,” he said, recognizing the voice on the other end, and then for a long time he listened, and Meredith couldn't assess what he was hearing. His face looked blank for a long moment, and then he squeezed his eyes shut. “Shit. How many? And how many did we get?” He groaned audibly when she responded. “Where are you putting them? The garage? … are they crazy? What are we supposed to do with a hundred and eighty-seven criticals? It sounds like Gettysburg, for chrissake…. all right, all right…. I'll be there in ten minutes.” He hung up the phone and looked at his wife mournfully. They had not only blown his night all to hell, but his weekend, and possibly his entire week. “You'd better turn on the news. Some fucking crazies tried to blow up the Empire State Building at four o'clock, just in time to get everyone still in their offices, and all the tourists. Nearly a hundred people were killed, over a thousand injured. They're sending us somewhere between two and three hundred critically injured people. They're splitting up the rest of the minor injuries between hospitals all over the city. I have seventy-five trauma beds available, and over a hundred people in the halls now, with paramedics, and another hundred coming in, in the next hour. They're calling in medical personnel from Long Island and New Jersey. There goes our weekend. I'm sorry, baby.”

He looked like his best friend had died, but in fact a lot of people's best friends had died, and husbands and wives, and children. It sounded like the Titanic. Meredith flipped on the TV while he dressed and there were bulletins about it on every channel. There was a gaping hole in one side of the building, from what they could see, and so much smoke surrounding the building, from fires the bomb had caused and the explosion itself, that it looked like a volcano.

They both stood staring at it for a moment, and then the cameras panned to the snarl of ambulances and fire engines on the street below, people still being ushered from the building, some of them having crawled down a hundred flights of stairs in smoke and darkness, covered with blood and lacerations, and then there were some grisly shots of tarp-covered bodies. It was an abysmal example of what the human race was at times capable of, and what gave Steve his business. “How can anyone do something like that?” Meredith asked in a choked voice as Steve pulled the drawstring on his scrub pants, and stuck his bare feet into clogs. At least he had slept for two hours, and felt human again. It was going to be a long haul for him now, and they both knew it. “Can I do anything if I come with you?” She hated the thought of sitting at home, useless. And her heart ached at what they had just seen on the news bulletin.

“I don't think so, sweetheart. Volunteers aren't much help in a mess like this. The city will give us some civil defense people, and Barbie said something about sending us National Guard medical personnel from New Jersey. I'll call you when I get a minute.” She knew it wouldn't be anytime soon, from what they had just seen on television.

He was dressed and gone in the next two minutes, and she sat down on their bed, staring at the TV in disbelief and horror, as they interviewed dozens of victims. She switched to another channel then, and it was even more gruesome. She couldn't begin to imagine what Steve would be seeing at work, especially if they were only sending them the critically injured. It reminded her, but much worse, of the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma.

And for the next twenty-four hours, she heard nothing from Steven. She stayed in the apartment, afraid to miss his call, if he had a free minute to call her, which he didn't. And she went over her materials for the trip again, for lack of anything better to do. He called her finally on Saturday, at midnight. It was thirty-one hours since he had walked out of their apartment. He said he hadn't sat down, slept, or eaten anything but potato chips and doughnuts since he'd last seen her. They had lost fifty-two of the nearly three hundred critically injured that had been sent to them, and the others were still in grave to critical condition. There had been some children, too, inevitably, and an entire day camp group among the tourists.

“Are you okay?” she asked him, sounding worried.

“I'm fine, babe. This is what I do for a living. I could have been a dermatologist if I wanted holidays and weekends. I'm just sorry not to be spending this particular weekend with you before you leave.” But that was the way their life worked, and they both knew it. It was something she had long since accepted. “I don't think I'll get home before you go,” he said, sounding apologetic.

“Don't worry about it. I'll see you next weekend.”

“I'll probably be here till then. I'll call you later. I've got to go now.” He was still doing surgeries, and they were still getting transfers from other hospitals that couldn't cope with the severity of the cases they'd gotten. He knew he'd be dealing with chaos for days, and when he called her again later that night, things hadn't improved much. And she didn't hear from him again after that until late Sunday morning. And by then, he sounded exhausted. He said he'd managed to sleep for a couple of hours the night before, but other than that, he hadn't slept since he left her. He was living on black coffee.

“You've got to get some sleep, Steve.” She worried about him being too tired to make sense, or making poor decisions, but that never seemed to happen. He tried to keep his hours within a reasonable time frame most of the time, but in major emergencies all limits and guidelines went right out the window. And in a case like this, she knew he'd stay at the hospital as long as he had to. He seemed to be able to stay on his feet forever, and in truth, she knew he thrived on it. He didn't like what had happened to his patients to bring them to him, but once they were his, he gave them his all, and would have died for them. It was what made him so good at trauma. He had the stamina of a warhorse.

“I'm going to sleep for a couple of hours now,” he promised her. “I'm scheduled for surgery again in a few hours. But Lucas is here, and he's covering for me.” They were a great team, and Meredith was sure that they had saved countless lives since the explosion. Earlier that day, a group of militant lunatics had taken responsibility for it, but so far, none of the perpetrators had been apprehended. “I'll call you before you leave tomorrow.”

It was hard to believe it was already nearly Monday. Even to her, her trip seemed mundane by comparison, and so shockingly unimportant in the face of this tragedy that had claimed so many innocent people. “You'd better get to the airport early tomorrow, sweetheart,” he warned, “they're going to be tightening security everywhere, and it may take you awhile to check in.” It was a good reminder, and she made a mental note to leave early, although she was only going to Chicago.

“I'll call you from the road, if I can get through to you. Don't worry if you can't call me. I know you're busy.” He laughed at the word, busy didn't even begin to touch it. You could still hardly walk through the halls of the trauma unit. There were people on gurneys, on stretchers the paramedics had left them on, some even on mattresses on the floor. They were filled to the rafters, and the whole trauma unit staff was exhausted.