"God, Kirk, what's going on?" she asked.
"I don't know. It's crazy. I'm going in to find out."
Amy turned to grab his arm. "No, don't."
"I want to. No one will notice one more kid in there. Stay here."
Kirk pushed through the door and it swung shut behind him. Amy stood alone in the hall. She couldn't block out the sound of the sirens and the moaning and crying, although she tried covering her ears with her hands.
She pushed the door open and followed.
Kirk was standing, leaning on his crutches just inside the door. Amy stood beside him. If anything, the scene was even worse now they had entered into it.
"God, let's do something! We can't just stand here and not help," Amy said.
"We can't do anything," Kirk said.
A girl Amy's age was standing against the far wall screaming. A doctor stuck her with a needle and she seemed to crumple almost immediately. The doctor moved on to a boy whose shirt was covered with blood. A nurse stopped and straightened the fallen girl's legs.
There must have been thirty kids in there, all of them bleeding, all of them hurt.
Near where Kirk and Amy were standing, a young girl was sitting in a chair. She leaned forward and held her head in her arms. There were cuts above her elbow, but they were bandaged already. Blood was seeping through the gauze.
Amy went over to her and squatted down next to the chair.
"What happened?" she asked. Kirk moved over and stood behind Amy.
"Oh, God. I don't know. The bus turned over."
"What bus? Where were you going?" Kirk asked.
"On a trip, a trip to a concert from church. The bus went over the side of the road and flipped. God, the glass flew all over. John had his arm through a window. All the bodies crashed down." The girl started to cry.
Amy reached out and put her arm around the girl's shoulders.
"It was so dark. It was all black. I couldn't find the way out. It was so awful. I kept cutting myself. I don't remember..."
"It's all right now," Amy said. "It's all over. Everyone will be all right. Everybody's being taken care of."
"Oh, God," the girl sighed. "I don't know..."
"It's okay. Look, everybody's getting their cuts all fixed up."
The doctors and nurses still rushed like mad people from patient to patient. There was blood on the chairs and blood on the floor.
Amy dabbed at the blood leaking from under the bandage on the girl's arm. Then she noticed a small trickle of thick, half-congealed blood flowing slowly down the girl's hair, along her neck. Amy reached her Kleenex up and tried to wipe that away too.
"It's so stupid, so awful..." the girl said and began to cry again.
Amy started to cry too. She looked up and saw the chaotic rush of doctors and nurses, the hurt and crying kids, the bloodstained bandages.
Kirk put a hand on Amy's shoulder. "Let's go," he said.
Amy looked up at him. Tears were still running down her cheeks, although she made no noise. Kirk was pale.
"Let's go," he said. "We can't do anything here. We'll get in the way. The doctors will do just fine without us."
Amy turned back to the sobbing teenage girl and put a hand out. Kirk tugged persistently at Amy's shoulder.
Amy gazed again across the room. "I'm going to stay. Maybe I can do something."
"We've got to forget it, Amy. There's nothing we can do. No one's hurt bad here. They'll be fine."
He pulled at the sleeve of her bathrobe. Amy gave in and Kirk maneuvered her through the swinging doors. They were silent all the way up in the elevator and down the hall to the room.
The television was off. Brent had put away his sketching materials and was reading again. He looked up when they entered the room. Amy's eyes were red and puffy. Brent could tell immediately that she was upset.
"What was it?" he asked.
"Wouldn't you know, it was a real mess down there," Kirk replied. "Some bus with a bunch of kids going to a concert turned over. There must have been thirty of forty of them, all cut up. It was a real horror scene all right."
"Oh, it was awful, Brent," Amy said. "I felt so sorry for them all. The doctors couldn't seem to get to everybody fast enough. I just felt I wanted to do something to help. There was blood all over and everybody was crying and all. I should have stayed. I could have helped out the nurses or something."
"Right. Just like Scarlett O'Hara during the siege of Atlanta. Listen, Amy, don't let it shake you up. They'll all be fine. We couldn't have done anything much. We just would have been in the way."
Amy turned on him. "You just don't care is all, Kirk. You just close it all out of your safe little world and say, 'No sweat.' I don't care what you say, we should have stayed. Sometimes I wonder whether you'd help anybody, you're so wrapped up in yourself."
"Listen, Amy..." Brent began. He didn't like to hear them fighting. It gave him a weird feeling.
"No, it's all right," Kirk said. "Let her think what she wants. Amy, those kids down there are probably a hell of a lot better off right now than any of us up here, and that's no crap. So don't come on righteous and Florence Nightingale with me. We have enough problems of our own without getting tied in with a lot of cuts and bruises downstairs. The whole thing gave me the crawls."
"Yeah, okay, Kirk. I'm sorry I blew up at you. But I still think we should have stayed."
"No way. You don't need that kind of hassle and neither do I. The screwed-up world out there can go to hell in a bucket for all I care. There's no way we're going to stop it single-handed."
Amy turned to Brent. "Tell me, Brent. Is the world always like that out there? It seems so far away sometimes, I forget, I guess."
"No, Amy," Brent said. "It's not all bad."
"Sometimes it seems safer here with you and Kirk. Sometimes I almost don't want to think about leaving."
"I know what you mean, Amy," Brent said, and he did know what she meant. He almost felt like crying when he thought of leaving Amy and Kirk behind when he went back outside to the other world.
Kirk climbed into bed. The room was silent.
"Well, we missed the end of the movie, I guess," Kirk said. "Tell us, Brent. What happened?"