I gave her a big hug before she climbed into Dad's car for the trip to the airport.
"Take care of yourself." I told her, "And be careful."
"You too." She answered.
She climbed into the car and a minute later it backed out into the street. As I watched it go I felt a tear running down my face. Tracy was still alive.
My senior year began. Because Cindy had graduated and enrolled in college that meant that I was without a ride to school. Though Mike had improved in many areas over the last few months his driving was not one of them. I attempted to mellow him out a bit by letting him know that the fire department would not hire him if he had too many points on his driving record. I suppose this did some good, he never got any points put on, but I still was not going to get into that Volkswagen with him. Strangely enough, though this subject had prompted our long estrangement, he seemed to understand. The subject was never brought up. But this still left me without a lift to school and I'd been driven so long that I'd lost my taste for walking. Nina came to the rescue here. Her Mom, who was a housewife and who thought I walked on water, had always been in the habit of driving Nina to school all through high school. It didn't take much convincing on Nina's part to persuade her Mom to run by my house in the morning and again in the afternoon. Her Mom, who was considerably older for a parent, Nina had been a late child, drove like an eighty-year-old grandmother in her Lincoln. But that was just fine with me. I felt there was little chance of getting killed with Mrs. Blackmore at the wheel.
The reason I'd known so much about our school's ROP program was that I'd taken it as a senior my first trip through. I hadn't taken fire technology but health careers where I'd been assigned to the emergency room at one of the local hospitals as an ER tech. It was this part of my life that had seduced me into my eventual job as a paramedic. I took the health careers once again, as did Nina. I tried to remember if she'd been in it with me before and I couldn't. She had been such a forgettable person back then. Nina planned to sign up for emergency room assignment since she figured, as I had all those years ago, that would be the most exciting. Though I was tempted to do the same, I missed the thrill of the unknown that came with working in emergency situations; I chose central supply instead. Those that chose central supply were sometimes hired by mid-semester if they showed some responsibility. I planned to show lots of it. Central supply techs were paid six dollars an hour.
Mike was accepted into the fire tech ROP program. Like with our health careers program, it was required that you spend the first two months in a classroom learning the finer points of your career assignment. He grumbled about having to spend three hours a day in a class instead of in a fire station like he'd thought but he stuck with it. I knew his grumbling was good-natured and offered only because it was expected of him. He was actually finding the classroom lectures on the basics of firefighting interesting, perhaps the first thing besides marijuana and pussy stories that had ever interested him. I began to feel that Mike was going to be okay.
I perhaps suffered the worst through the classroom portion of ROP. They were teaching us how to take blood pressures, temperatures, pulses, and how to respond to various hospital emergency situations like fires or floods. This was all stuff I knew not just intimately but genetically it seemed. There was however some interesting perks to the classroom. It was made up of mostly girls. I had a fresh hunting ground to pick from and an additional challenge thrown in since most of the girls did not know who I was because ROP classes were made up of students from all the regional high schools.
As I went to work on a few of the more attractive students I noticed that Nina, who was in the same class, would become morose and even throw some dirty looks my way. What was up with her? I wondered. Was Tracy right? Was Nina in love with me? I hoped not. She was my best friend and I was her best friend but I'd never done anything to encourage her to love me. If it was true, how could it have happened?
In deference to her feelings I tried to keep my flirtations discreet when she was around. There was no since hurting her. And if she did have some love-like feelings for me they would eventually fade, wouldn't they?
I was troubled by these thoughts but not too troubled. By my second week there I enticed a girl named Susan Kelly, a breasty brunette whose ambition was to someday work as a registration clerk, to my house after school. I was glad to find that I still had the touch after the long summer.
In September of that year the United States sent a force of Marines to Beirut as part of a peacekeeping force. I knew that tragedy would befall 240 of them at the hands of Muslim extremists. With their deployment came the opportunity for some experimentation on my part. I knew what was going to happen. Could I, in good conscience, simply let it occur without trying to stop it? I could not.
The question was, how could I stop it? I put some thought into the matter while I read as much on the peacekeeping force as I could. A plan developed in my mind by the end of September.
Using plain paper and pen I drafted a letter to the commanding general of the American forces there. I stated that I was an American Muslim and that I'd received information about an impending attack upon the forces there by way of relatives in Lebanon that were part of the extremists but not as radical as their friends. I explained exactly what was to take place and on which day. I made twenty-five copies of the letter and dropped each copy into a separate envelope, all of which I addressed and labeled CONFIDENTIAL.
I put stamps on all of the letters and then borrowed my father's car one Saturday morning, telling him that I was going to an all-day party. I promised him I wouldn't drink and he gave me the keys.
I left the house at 9:00 that morning, getting onto Interstate 90 and heading west. Four hours later I was in Seattle; a large, anonymous city that I'd never lived in. Careful was my watchword and if any feds tried to find the deliverer of the message, as I was sure they would, I wanted no trail leading them to Spokane. I dropped the letters into a mailbox in one of the suburbs. I had a quick lunch and then headed home. I'd taken my shot. My conscience was assuaged.
Of course I had no way of knowing if my letters had reached their destination and, if they had, if they would be taken seriously. I hoped that they were enough to at least take simple precautions. I listened to a news station on the radio all day on October 15, the day the attack was to take place. Nothing came across about a tragedy in Beirut. But towards the end of the day something else came across.
"U.S. Marines," Said the ABC announcer, "Have captured a group of Muslim extremists that were setting up heavy caliber mortars near the Marine Barracks, apparently with the intention of shelling the soldiers inside. A source tells us that the Marines were acting on information they received via an anonymous tip that the attack was to take place. General…"
I'd done it! I had prevented a tragedy! The Muslims that had been about to shell the barracks, destroying it and killing 240 Marines had been captured before they could do it. I had changed history!
I walked around in a state of elation for the next seven days, beaming with pride at what I'd done. What else could I change? The Challenger disaster was coming up in a few years. I could probably stop that also. In the course of that week I had myself believing that I could prevent the Persian Gulf War.
And then came October 23. I awoke to the news that a suicide bomber with a truck full of explosives had rammed into the Marine Barracks, killing many inside. My elation died the instant I heard that.