Amazing Grace Read online

  Sister Maggie was already on her feet, moving into the crowd rather than out of the room. “What are you doing?” Father Joe shouted after her—they could see dimly now in the light from the hall beyond. The enormous urns of roses had fallen over, and the scene in the ballroom was one of total chaos and disorder. Father Joe thought Maggie was confused as she made her way deeper into the room.

  “I'll meet you outside!” she shouted, as she disappeared into the crowd, and within minutes was on her knees next to a man who said he thought he'd had a heart attack, but had nitroglycerin in his pocket. She reached in unceremoniously and helped him find it, took out a pill, and put it in his mouth, and then told him not to move. She was sure help would come soon to assist the injured.

  She left him with his frightened wife, and moved along a littered path wishing she was wearing her workboots and not the flat pumps she had worn. The ballroom floor was an obstacle course of tables lying on their sides or even upside down, with food, dishes, and broken glass everywhere, and some people lying amid the debris. Sister Maggie made her way systematically toward them, as did several other people who said they were doctors. There had been many of them in the room, but only a few had stayed to help the wounded. A crying woman with an injured arm said she thought she was going into labor. Sister Maggie told her not to even think about it until she got out of the hotel, and the pregnant woman smiled as Maggie helped her stand up and start moving out of the ballroom holding tightly to her husband's arm. Everyone was terrified of an aftershock, which might be even worse than the first quake. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that it had been greater than seven on the Richter scale, maybe even eight, and there were groaning sounds in the room all around them as the earth settled again, which was anything but reassuring.

  At the front of the room, Everett Carson had been next to Melanie when the quake hit. As the room tilted crazily, she had slid right off the stage into his arms, and they both fell to the floor. He helped her up when the shaking stopped.

  “Are you okay? That was a great performance, by the way,” he said lightly. Once they opened the ballroom doors and light filtered in from the hall he noticed that her costume had torn, and one of her breasts was exposed. He slipped his tuxedo jacket on her to cover her up.

  “Thank you,” she said, sounding dazed. “What happened?”

  “About a sevenor eight-point quake, I believe,” Everett said.

  “Shit, now what do we do?” Melanie looked scared, but not panicked.

  “We do what they're telling us, and we get our asses out of here and try not to get trampled.” He had been through earthquakes, tsunamis, and similar disasters in Southeast Asia over the years. But there was no question, this had been a big one. It had been exactly a hundred years since the last big San Francisco earthquake in 1906.

  “I should find my mom,” Melanie said, looking around. There was no sign of her or Jake, and no way to recognize people easily in the room. It was too dark. And so many people were shouting, and there was such pandemonium going on around them that you couldn't hear anyone except the person standing next to you.

  “You'd better look for her outside,” Everett warned her, as she started to make her way to where the stage had been. It had collapsed, and all the band's equipment had slid off. The grand piano was teetering at a crazy angle, and fortunately hadn't fallen on anyone. “Are you okay?” Melanie looked a little stunned.

  “Yeah…I am…” He headed her toward the exits then, and told her he was staying for a few more minutes. He wanted to see if there was anything he could do to help the people in the ballroom.

  A few minutes later, he stumbled over a woman helping a man who said he'd had a heart attack. The woman moved away to help someone else, and Everett helped get the man outside. He and a man who said he was a doctor put him on a chair and lifted him up. They had to carry him up three flights of stairs. There were paramedics, ambulances, and fire trucks outside, helping people pouring out of the hotel with minor injuries and reporting on others who were hurt inside. A battalion of firemen rushed in. There was no evidence of fires around them, but electric lines were down, and there were sparks shooting into the air as firemen with bullhorns shouted at them to stay clear, and set up barricades. Everett noticed quickly that the city all around them was dark. And then by instinct more than design, he reached for the camera still slung around his neck, and started taking pictures of the scene, without intruding on the gravely injured. Everyone around him looked dazed. The man who had the heart attack was already on the way to the hospital in an ambulance, along with another man who had a broken leg. There were injured people lying on the street, most of whom had come out of the hotel, and others who hadn't. The stoplights were no longer functioning, and traffic had stopped. A cable car at the corner had jumped the tracks, and at least forty people were injured, as paramedics and firemen ministered to them. One woman was dead and had been covered by a tarp. It was a grisly scene, and Everett didn't even notice till he got outside and saw blood on his shirt that he had a cut on his cheek. He had no idea how it had happened. It appeared to be superficial and he wasn't worried about it. He took a towel when a hotel employee handed it to him and wiped his face. There were dozens of them handing out towels, blankets, and bottles of water for the shocked people all around them. No one could figure out what to do next. They just stood there, staring at each other, and talking about what had happened. There were several thousand people crowded into the street as the hotel was emptied. Half an hour later the firemen said that the ballroom was clear now. It was then that Everett noticed Sarah Sloane standing near him with her husband. Her dress was torn and covered with wine and the remains of dessert that had been on their table when it tipped over.

  “Are you all right?” he asked her. It was the same question everyone was asking each other again and again. She was crying, and her husband looked distressed. So was everyone else. People were crying all around them, in shock, fear, and relief, and worried about their families at home. Sarah had been frantically calling on her cell phone, which didn't work. Seth had tried his too, and looked grim.

  “I'm worried about my babies,” she explained. “They're at home with a babysitter. I don't even know how we'll get there. I guess we'll have to walk.” Someone had said that the garage where all their cars were parked had collapsed, and there were people trapped inside. There was no way to access their cars, and everyone whose car had been in it was now stranded. There were no cabs. San Francisco had become a ghost town in a matter of minutes. It was after midnight, and the quake had hit an hour before. The Ritz-Carlton employees were being wonderful, wandering through the crowd, asking people what they could do to help. There wasn't much anyone could do right now, except the paramedics and firemen trying to triage those who had been hurt.

  A few minutes later, the firemen announced that there was an emergency earthquake shelter two blocks away, and gave them directions. They urged people to get off the street and go there. Power lines were down, and there were live wires on the street. They were warned to steer a wide berth around them, and to go to the shelter rather than try to go home. The possibility of an aftershock was still frightening everyone. As the firemen told the crowd what to do, Everett continued taking pictures. This was the kind of work he loved. He wasn't preying on people's miseries, he was discreet, capturing this extraordinary moment in time that he already knew was a historical event.

  There was finally a shift in movement in the crowd, as they walked on shaking legs toward the earthquake shelter down the hill. People kept talking to each other about what had happened, what they had thought at first, and where they'd been. One man had been in the shower in his room at the hotel, and said he thought it was some kind of vibrating feature in the tub for the first seconds. He was wearing a terrycloth robe and nothing else, and his feet were bare. One of them was cut, from glass lying in the street, but there was nothing anyone could do. And another woman said she thought she had broken the bed as she slid
toward the floor, and then the whole room rock-and-rolled like a carnival game. But this was no game. It was the second-biggest disaster the city had ever known.

  Everett took a bottle of water from a bellman handing them out. He opened it, took a long swig, and realized how dry his mouth was. There were clouds of dust coming out of the hotel from structures inside that had broken, and things that had collapsed. No bodies had been brought out. The firemen were covering those who had died with tarps in the lobby as a central location. There were about twenty so far, and there were rumors that people were trapped inside, which made everyone panic. Here and there, people were crying, unable to find the friends or relatives they had been staying with in the hotel, or still hadn't located in the group from the benefit. They were easy to identify from their torn and soiled evening clothes. They looked like survivors of the Titanic. It was then that Everett spotted Melanie and her mother. Her mother was crying hysterically. Melanie looked alert and calm, and was still wearing his rented tuxedo jacket.

  “Are you okay?” he asked the familiar question, and she smiled and nodded.

  “Yeah. My mom is pretty freaked out. She thinks there will be a bigger one in a few minutes. Do you want your jacket back?” She would have been nearly naked if she'd given it back to him, and he shook his head. “I can put on a blanket.”

  “Keep it. It looks good on you. Everyone accounted for in your group?” He knew she'd had a large entourage with her, and he saw only her mother.

  “My friend Ashley hurt her ankle, and the paramedics are taking care of her. My boyfriend was pretty drunk, and the guys in my band had to carry him out. He's throwing up somewhere over there.” She gestured vaguely. “Everyone else is okay.” She looked like a teenager again now that she was off the stage, but he remembered her performance and how remarkable it was. So would everyone else after tonight.

  “You should go to the shelter. It's safer there,” Everett said to both of them, and Janet Hastings started pulling on her daughter. She agreed with Everett and wanted to get off the street before the next quake came.

  “I think I might stay here for a while,” Melanie said softly, and told her mother to go on without her, which only made her cry harder. Melanie said she wanted to stay and help, which Everett thought was admirable. And then for the first time, he wondered if he wanted a drink, and was pleased to realize that he didn't. This was a first. Even with the excuse of a major earthquake, he had no desire to get drunk. He broke into a broad grin as he thought it, while Janet headed toward the shelter, and Melanie disappeared into the crowd as her mother panicked.

  “She'll be okay,” Everett reassured Janet. “When I see her again, I'll send her to you at the shelter. You go on with the others.” Janet looked uncertain, but the movement of the crowd heading toward the shelter and her own desire to get there swept her away. Everett figured that whether or not he found her, Melanie would be fine. She was young and resourceful, the members of her band were near at hand, and if she wanted to help the injured in the crowd, that didn't seem like such a bad idea to him. There were a lot of people around them who needed assistance of some kind, more than the paramedics could provide.

  He was taking pictures again when he came across the small redheaded woman he'd seen help the man with the heart attack and then move on. He saw her assist a child, and turn her over to a fireman to try and help her find her mother. Everett took several photographs of the woman, and then dropped his camera again as she moved away from the little girl.

  “Are you a doctor?” he asked with interest. She had seemed very confident in her treatment of the man with the heart attack.

  “No, I'm a nurse,” she said simply, her brilliant blue eyes locking into his briefly, and then she smiled. There was something both funny and touching about her. She had the most magnetic eyes he'd ever seen.

  “That's a good thing to be tonight.” Many people had gotten hurt, not all of them severely. But there were a multitude of cuts and minor injuries, as well as bigger ones, and several people had gone into shock. He knew he'd seen the woman at the benefit, but there was something incongruous about her plain black dress and flat shoes. Her coif had vanished in the aftermath of the quake, and it never occurred to him what she was, other than a nurse. She had an ageless, timeless face, and it would have been difficult to guess her age. He figured her for late thirties, early forties, and in fact she was fortytwo. She stopped to talk to someone as he followed her, and then she paused for a bottle of water herself. They were all feeling the effects of the dust still billowing from the hotel.

  “Are you going to the shelter? They probably need help there too,” he commented. He had thrown his bow tie away by then, and there was blood on his shirt from the cut on his cheek. But she shook her head.

  “I'm going to head out when I've done all I can here. I figure the people in my neighborhood can use some help too.”

  “Where do you live?” he asked with interest, although he didn't know the city well. But there was something about this woman that intrigued him. And maybe there was a story in it somewhere, you never knew. His journalistic instincts came alive just looking at her.

  She smiled at his question. “I live in the Tenderloin, not far from here.” But where she lived was worlds apart from all this. In that neighborhood, a few blocks made a huge difference.

  “That's a pretty rough neighborhood, isn't it?” He was increasingly intrigued. He had heard of the Tenderloin, with its drug addicts, prostitutes, and derelicts.

  “Yes, it is,” she said honestly. But she was happy there.

  “And that's where you live?” He looked startled and confused.

  “Yes.” She smiled at him, her red hair and face streaked with dirt, and the electric blue eyes grinning impishly at him. “I like it there.” He had a sixth sense about a story then, and knew intuitively that she was going to turn out to be one of the heroes of the night. When she went back to the Tenderloin, he wanted to be with her. For sure, there was going to be a story in it for him.

  “My name is Everett. Can I come with you?” he asked her simply, as she hesitated for a minute and then nodded.

  “It might be dicey getting there, because of all the live wires on the street. And they're not going to rush to help people in that neighborhood. All the rescue teams will be here, or in other parts of the city. Just call me Maggie, by the way.”

  It was another hour before they left the scene outside the Ritz. It was nearly three in the morning by then. Most people had either gone to the shelter or decided to go home. He never saw Melanie again, but wasn't worried about her. The ambulances had left with the critically injured, and the firemen seemed to have things in good control. They could hear sirens in the distance, and Everett assumed fires had broken out, and water mains had broken, so they were going to have a tough time fighting the fires. He followed the little woman doggedly as he accompanied her home. They walked up California Street, then down Nob Hill, heading south. They passed Union Square, and eventually turned right and headed west on O'Farrell. They were both shocked to see that almost all the windows in the department stores on Union Square had popped out and broken on the street. And there was a similar scene outside the St. Francis Hotel to the one they had just left at the Ritz. The hotels had been emptied, and people had been directed to shelters. It took them half an hour to reach where she lived.

  People were standing around on the street, and looked markedly different here. They were shabbily dressed, some were still high on drugs, others looked scared. Store windows had shattered, drunks were lying in the street, and a cluster of prostitutes were huddling close together. Everett was intrigued to note that almost everyone seemed to know Maggie. She stopped and talked to them, inquiring how everyone was doing, if people had gotten hurt, if help had come, and how the neighborhood was faring. They chatted animatedly with her, and eventually she and Everett sat down in a doorway on a stoop. It was nearly five A.M. by then, and Maggie didn't even look tired.

  “Who
are you?” he asked, fascinated by her. “I feel like I'm in some kind of strange movie, with an angel who came to earth, and maybe no one can see you but me.” She laughed at his description of her and reminded him that no one else was having a problem seeing her. She was real, human, and entirely visible, as any of the hookers on the street would have agreed.

  “Maybe the answer to your question is a what, not a who,” she said comfortably, wishing she could get out of her habit. It was just a plain, ugly black dress, but she was missing her jeans. From what she could see, her building had been shaken up but not damaged dangerously, and there was nothing to stop her from going in. Firemen and police were not directing people to shelters here.

  “What does that mean?” Everett asked, looking puzzled. He was tired. It had been a long night for both of them, but she looked fresh as a rose, and a lot livelier than she had at the benefit.

  “I'm a nun,” she said simply. “These are the people I work with and take care of. I do most of my work on the streets. All of it, in fact. I've lived here for nearly ten years.”

  “You're a nun?” he asked her with a look of amazement. “Why didn't you tell me?”

  “I don't know.” She shrugged comfortably, perfectly at ease talking to him, particularly here on the street. This was the world she knew best, far better than any ballroom. “I didn't think about it. Does it make a difference?”

  “Hell, yes …I mean no,” he corrected himself, and then thought about it further. “I mean yes … of course it makes a difference. That's a really important detail about you. You're a very interesting person, particularly if you live here. Don't you live in a convent, or something?”