She glanced over at Wren. The girl had her eyes screwed shut as if she was trying to will this into a nightmare, instead of reality. She must still be holding the scalpel. Izzy had known she had to get rid of it as soon as she saw the shooter doing full body checks before and after each woman went to the bathroom.

She blotted Dr. Ward’s forehead with a strip of gauze. On the pretense of ministering to him, she said loudly, “Ssh, it’s all right. It will help if you focus on something else right now …” Izzy looked up, as the other women turned at the sound of her voice. She made eye contact with each of them in turn. “Think of a nice beach maybe. Down on the Gulf Coast. I don’t get down there very much myself, but my boyfriend and I, we keep talking about taking a trip.”

If the shooter noticed that she stressed that last word, he didn’t show it.

There was a charged moment of silence. They had all read the missive in the bathroom, but there hadn’t been an explicit plan of action.

Suddenly Joy grabbed her belly and jackknifed forward. “Ow,” she moaned. “It hurts. It hurts like crazy.” She began rocking back and forth.

“Shut her up,” the shooter commanded. He turned to Izzy. “Do something.”

Izzy moved toward Joy. “Do you still feel the pain?”

“Yes,” Joy said, squeezing Izzy’s hand three times. A sign. “Right now.” She screamed.

“Shut her up,” George said. “Shut her up or I’ll …”

He stepped forward, either to threaten or to coldcock her, but as he did Janine stretched out a foot.

Just like that, George Goddard went sprawling.

—

NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW.

Wren watched him trip, and when he did, he dropped the gun.

When she was very little, she used to imagine what it would feel like to fly. On windy days she would unzip her raincoat and spread her arms and leap into the air and know, just know, that she was airborne for an extra heartbeat.

Now, she flew.

She leaped off of the couch and dove for the gun at the same time George did. Her hands were still tied so she went down like a stone and wriggled on her elbows. It was a tenth of a second and, at the same time, an eternity. She felt her fingertips graze the barrel of the gun and he knocked it away from her.

Wren raised her bound hands and slammed them down as hard as she could into his outstretched palm.

He howled, and the scalpel stuck deep in his flesh, sliding from between Wren’s palms.

“You bitch,” he cried. He yanked the blade from his hand and then grabbed the gun.

Wren couldn’t get up. Her hands were still tied—the angle of the scalpel, when she had held it, had made it impossible to cut the tape, although she had tried like hell. She scooted backward on the carpet, slipping in the fresh blood from Dr. Ward’s injury. In that moment all she could see was the shooter’s red, red eyes and the twist of his face and his thumb pulling back the trigger. She wondered if it would hurt, when she returned to stardust.

—

WHAT WE KNOW, OLIVE COULD tell you, is not what we think we know.

One year, she had run a psychological study in which she told her collegiate subjects that scientists had discovered a chemical that had antiaging benefits. When told that the scientists didn’t really know how that worked yet, the students reported not understanding how the antiaging effects occurred. But when told that scientists had figured out the methodology, the students reported an understanding of the process—even without being given the details.

It was almost as if knowledge was contagious. People constantly claimed to “know” something when they didn’t have the facts and tools to uphold their claims.

Maybe for this reason, she’d thought that at this moment, she would be reliving the high-water marks of her life, the memories of love and joy and justice. She thought she would see her first kiss with a girl made of moonlight in a lake at summer camp; or her last kiss with Peg, when each put a bookmark in her reading material and curled toward the other like parentheses before they turned out the light.

Olive thought, and therein lay the mistake.

When it came down to it, at the end, you did not think. You felt.

What did she feel?

That you will never cease to underestimate yourself.

That love is fleeting.

That life is a miracle.

That the reason she had come to this clinic, on this day, at this hour, was this.

Acting purely on instinct, Olive LeMay threw herself in front of the bullet.

Two p.m.

THE SUNLIGHT WAS OVERWHELMING.

Izzy watched it glint off the silver bars of the wheelchair. She was temporarily blinded and then forced herself to put one foot in front of the other, to push the wheels over the threshold of the clinic door.

It wasn’t just the sunlight, though—it was cameras and shouted questions as someone emerged from the belly of the beast. Izzy froze, unsure of where to go and what to do.

She was supposed to wheel Bex outside, and then walk back through those doors. But it would be so easy to save herself.

She could lean forward, low and dynamic, and run. She could bring Bex to the ambulance and leap inside and really, what could the shooter do?

Her vision cleared as a man stepped forward. In silhouette he was tall and broad-shouldered, and for just a moment she thought: Parker. But Izzy was not the one being rescued now, and anyway, in her fairy tale, she was still afraid that any moment the prince might realize she was just a poor villager, posing as a princess.

The hostage negotiator held out a hand and beckoned her forward.

She felt like she was suspended between what could be, and what was. Just like always.

It was that way for all people who grew up poor, she imagined. Izzy had vivid memories of her birthday being celebrated two weeks after the fact, because that’s when they could afford a box of cake mix. Of always adding water to the milk to stretch it. Of being giddy when the food stamps came in and you could go to the grocery store; and being ashamed when you had to actually use them to pay.

When Izzy was in first grade, her family couldn’t afford school supplies, so she pretended that she had forgotten them at home. Then one day, when she opened her little flip-top desk, there was a brand-new box of Crayola crayons. They were still pointy at the top and smelled like wax and had a sharpener on the back. Izzy had no idea if it was her teacher who’d given them to her, and she never found out. But she did realize, then, that her family was different from other families. Most kids didn’t go to Sam’s Club for lunch when you weren’t even a member, because you could make the rounds for free samples. Ketchup sandwiches, with packets stolen from McDonald’s, weren’t normal. Her mother rummaged through her brothers’ backpacks and threw out the flyers for the Scholastic Book Club, for field trips, for dances, for anything that was an additional expense. When they ate dinner, Izzy would pretend to be full because she knew her mother wouldn’t have any food if she didn’t leave some behind on her plate.

As she worked through high school, she was determined to have a different life. She couldn’t afford an SAT prep course, so she asked another student for the syllabus, and then got books through interlibrary loans and taught herself. She applied for more than a hundred scholarships that she found online using the library’s free Internet. She didn’t get them all. But she got enough for a free education.

She went to nursing school on student loans and she scrimped and saved.

And then she met Parker—who had taken her on her first vacation.

Who couldn’t believe that she’d never gone to a doctor growing up—only the school nurse, who didn’t require insurance.

Who had found her adding water to the shampoo so it lasted longer.

Who had proposed, in spite of all this.

If she had told Parker about the pregnancy, he would have been thrilled. He would have used it as leverage, to make her say yes, instead of I need more time.

But then she would never stand on her own two feet financially. Or pay off her own nursing school loans. Or buy a house, just because she had the credit to do it. And she could not get him to understand why that was so important.

The man who was beckoning to her was waving his arms, trying to get her to start moving again. If she ran, now, she could save herself.

Izzy felt Bex reach for her hand. She could imagine the effort and pain that cost the woman, and she gently laced her fingers with Bex’s and squeezed. She leaned down. “You’re going to be fine,” she said. She drew a deep breath, and took another long step forward.

Once, when her brothers had been fighting over who got more spaghetti for dinner, her mother had said, You don’t look at another person’s plate to see if they have more than you. You look to see if they have enough.

Izzy thought of Dr. Ward, bleeding on the floor, still inside. She let go of the handles of the wheelchair, turned, and ran back to the gaping mouth of the clinic door.

—