It was two days before the final death toll was announced. 240 Marines had been killed. 240! That number put an icy finger of dread upon my heart.
In my previous life the Marine Barracks had been shelled from outside the base by Muslims armed with Russian made eighty-millimeter mortars. 240 had been killed by the attack. In this life I'd prevented that from happening but a week later a suicide bomber had hit instead. 240 had been killed by that attack. I wondered if the death list of those 240 was the same in both lives. Instinctively I knew that it probably was. I had prevented nothing.
240 Marines had been killed, as if they were fated to die. As if they were fated!
I had prevented Tracy's death in this life. Was she too fated to die? Was she just going to be killed in some other manner now that I'd changed her original destiny? Was there anything I could do? Could I really change anything here? Was I fated to end up a paramedic in debt again? Was Mike fated to end up an unemployed loser? Was Nina fated to end up a bitchy emergency room doctor? If so, what had been the point of coming back? What had been the point?
I was depressed and edgy for the next week as news of the bombing in Beirut was swallowed up by news of the successful invasion of Grenada a few days later. Nina, who knew me better than anyone, picked up on my mood and tried to discover the source of it in her gentle, probing way. I told her nothing, claiming that everything was just fine. What else could I say? How could I possibly tell her what was bothering me? That I feared my sister had a death sentence hanging over her head. That I feared that everything I'd done over the last eighteen months had been meaningless.
"Do you believe in fate?" I asked her as we rode the bus to our ROP classroom one day.
"Fate?" She asked, looking at me. "What do you mean?"
"You know, that everything is pre-destined. That we have a schedule that we follow in life and that we're powerless to change anything?"
"No." She said. "You don't believe that do you?"
"I didn't used to." I said. "But lately I've been wondering."
"Are you okay Bill?" She asked tenderly. "You've been kind of, well tense the last few days. What's bothering you?"
"Nothing I can put into words." I told her. "I guess I'll get over it."
I turned my head to look out the window and as I watched the traffic pass by outside the bus I felt her hands on my shoulders. They began squeezing and kneading the muscles there, forcing them to relax. It felt wonderful and I leaned my head back and sighed.
"That feels good." I told her. "Where'd you learn to do that?"
"I've been reading on massage techniques." She told me. "Am I doing it right?"
"Perfect." I said, closing my eyes and letting the sensation take me away.
As I felt her squeezing and caressing me a thought occurred. Nina had put her hands upon me completely uninvited. She had simply reached over and done it. Nina, who'd been so shy once that she wasn't even capable of smiling in front of someone, who couldn't even bring herself to answer questions in class, who wouldn't have dreamed of touching someone with or without permission the day I'd first approached her in the cafeteria.
Nina had changed. She was no longer the mousy butt of everyone's jokes. She had friends now. Me, Tracy, Cindy, even Mike. She had learned to socialize with people even to the point of taking some bonghits at a party. I didn't think it possible that she would evolve into the Dr. Blackmore that I would one day know. She would become Dr. Blackmore but she wouldn't be the same person. She couldn't become that person at this point, the psychology that had formed her future personality had been altered. Was it possible that maybe things COULD be changed? That maybe they tended to fall into pre-destined patterns but that rule was not absolute?
In Nina's comforting hands I found some hope.
We graduated from the classroom portion of ROP and were given our assignments. Nina went to the emergency room at one of the smaller hospitals as an ER tech. I went to the supply room in the basement of the regional trauma center and was put to work sterilizing and packaging medical supplies and instruments. Mike was assigned to Spokane Fire Station #3 near downtown.
It took me only a few days to be trained in the routine that I would be following. Central supply was a little more challenging than making pizzas, but not by much. My work mate was Julie Salinas, a cute Mexican girl that had been in my training class. I'd tried once to initiate some intimate conversation with her but she'd shot me down without a second glance, stating in no uncertain terms, that she was engaged to be married after graduation. I'd shrugged her off. That kind of thing happened from time to time and there were plenty of other targets in the class.
When I walked in and saw her there the first day I assumed it was not going to be pleasant. She had been a little snotty in her rejection of my advances. But I was surprised to find that she was friendly to me as we spent three hours together each day. With our bodies covered by baggie scrubs, our shoes covered by paper coverings, our hair covered by paper nets, we would chat easily as we went about the tasks of putting forceps and scalpels and syringes and little bottles of medicine into sterile packaging and then labeling them for the appropriate departments within the hospital. It was a fun relationship. She was pleasant to talk to and since I already knew that she wasn't interested in me I was releived of the sexual tension that usually went along with being next to someone like her. Or so I thought.
As the first few weeks went by I couldn't help but notice that Julie was always there when I got there. I knew she had her own car which allowed her to drive to the hospital instead of taking the bus but why in the name of God would she show up earlier than she had to? Finally, when our relationship matured to the point that I could ask such things, I asked her.
"Because." She told me. "I intend to get hired here at mid-semester. Can you imagine? It's a dream job. If they hire you, you get paid for your time here and still get the school credits. You also get another three hours on the clock at $6.00 an hour. So if I get noticed by showing up a half an hour earlier than everyone else, so much the better. They only hire three or four of us each year you know and there's more than twelve of us working down here."
"That's a pretty good idea." I said with complete honesty. After all, I was counting on getting hired also. To do so would nearly double my current income. "I wish I had a car so I could do it too."
I meant nothing by this statement. I was merely speculating out loud, wondering in my mind if I could break loose some of my portfolio to purchase a cheap car. If it helped me get a job it would be a sound investment, wouldn't it?
"If you want," Julie said, looking at me thoughtfully. "I could give you a ride. I have to drive right by your school to get here and right by it to get home. I'd rather work with you then some of the other losers they got around here."
"Really?" I asked, looking at her, trying to gauge her intentions. Usually when girls asked me something like that what they wanted was sex. I wasn't so sure about that with Julie though. After all, she'd already told me she was engaged. She in fact talked quite a bit about her fiance, who was in his second year of junior college where he was learning the finer points of drafting. She was also a practicing Catholic; a religion which most definitely frowned upon pre-marital and extra-marital sex.
Finally I decided it was a genuinely innocent offer that a friend makes to another friend. "I'll take you up on that." I told her. "Thanks."
"No problem." She assured me.
Nina and I had arranged our school schedules that year so that we shared the last two classes before lunch and ROP. We always sat together in the classroom during those classes and then walked together to the lunchroom where usually we would sit with Mike and eat lunch prior to heading off to our job sites. Mike had had the same idea as Julie. He drove his Bug to the fire station, getting there earlier than he was required. He also tended to stay a little later than was required. He talked repeatedly of his experience at the firehouse, continually and obviously inflating his stories of what they allowed him to do. For instance he told me once that they'd allowed him to don breathing gear and go into a burning building to help fight a fire, something that they would NEVER do. But I was gladdened by his exaggerations. It meant that I'd hit upon just the right thing when I'd suggested firefighting as a career.