Abe smiled. “Then you look like you’re wearing a fishbowl on your head.” The jurors laughed. Matt could tell they liked Abe, this plainspoken guy who told it like it was, didn’t act like he was too smart for them. “Then what?”
“Pretty simple. The four of us would breathe normally, and be breathing in one hundred percent oxygen, for sixty minutes. At the end of the hour, Pak would turn off the oxygen, we’d remove the helmets, then depressurization, and exit,” Matt said, and removed the helmet.
“Thank you, Dr. Thompson. It’s helpful to get this overview. Now, I’d like to get to why we’re here, what happened on August 26 last year. Do you remember that day?”
Matt nodded.
“I’m sorry. You have to answer verbally. For the court reporter.”
“Yes.” Matt cleared his throat. “Yes.”
Abe’s eyes squinted a bit, then widened, as if he was unsure whether he should be apologetic or excited about what was to come. “Tell us, in your words, what happened that day.”
The courtroom shifted then, almost imperceptibly, all the bodies in the jury box and gallery moving forward a tenth of an inch. This was what the people had come for. Not just the gore, though there was that—the blow-up photos and the charred remains of the equipment—but the drama of tragedy. Matt saw it every day in the hospital: broken bones, car accidents, cancer scares. People cried about it, sure—the pain, the unfairness, the inconvenience of it all—but there were always one or two in every family who got energized by being at the periphery of suffering, every cell in their bodies vibrating at a slightly higher frequency, woken from the mundane dormancy of their everyday lives.
Matt looked down at his ruined hand, thumb, fourth finger, and pinkie sticking out of a red blob. He cleared his throat again. He’d told this story many times. To the police, to the doctors, to the insurance investigators, to Abe. One last time, he told himself. Just once more through the explosion, the scorch of the fire, the obliteration of little Henry’s head. Then he’d never have to talk about it again.
TERESA SANTIAGO
IT HAD BEEN A HOT DAY. The kind that made you sweat at 7:00 a.m. Full sun after a three-day downpour—the air dense and heavy, like being in a dryer full of wet clothes. She’d actually looked forward to that morning’s dive; it’d be a relief to be sealed up in an air-conditioned chamber.
Teresa nearly hit someone pulling into the lot. A group of six women were holding signs and walking in an oval, like a picket line. Teresa was slowing down, trying to read the signs, when someone walked into her path. She braked hard, barely missing the woman. “My God!” Teresa said, stepping out of her van. The woman kept walking. No yell, no finger, no glance. “Excuse me, but what’s happening here? We need to get inside,” Teresa said to them. All women. Holding signs saying I’M A CHILD, NOT A LAB RAT!; LOVE ME, ACCEPT ME, DON’T POISON ME; and QUACK MEDICINE = CHILD ABUSE—all scrawled in block letters in primary colors.
A tall woman with a silver bob came over. “This strip here’s public property. We have a right to be here, to stop you. HBOT is dangerous, it doesn’t work, and you’re just teaching your kids you don’t love them the way they are.”
A car honked behind her. Kitt. “We’re down here. Ignore the crazy bitches,” she said, and motioned down the road. Teresa shut her van door and followed. Kitt didn’t go far. Just to the next pull-off area, a clearing in the woods. Through the thick foliage, she glimpsed the post-storm Miracle Creek, brown and swollen and lazy.
Matt and Elizabeth were already there. “Who the hell are those people?” Matt said.
Kitt said to Elizabeth, “I know they’ve been saying awful things about you and making crazy threats, but I never thought they’d actually act on them.”
“You know them?” Teresa said.
“Only from online stuff,” Elizabeth said. “They’re fanatics. Their kids all have autism, and they go around saying how it’s the way they’re meant to be, and all treatments are evil and sham and kill kids.”
“But HBOT’s nothing like that,” Teresa said. “Matt, you can tell them.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “There’s no reasoning with them. We can’t let them affect us. Come on, we’re going to be late.”
They went through the woods to avoid the protesters, but it didn’t matter. The protesters spotted them and ran over, blocking them. The silver-bob-haired woman held up a flyer of an HBOT chamber surrounded by flames and 43! on top. “Fact: there have been forty-three HBOT fires, even some explosions,” the woman said. “Why would you put your children in something so dangerous? For what? So they’ll make more eye contact? Flap their hands less? Accept them the way they are. It’s the way God made them, the way they were born, and—”
“Rosa wasn’t,” Teresa said, stepping forward. “She wasn’t born with cerebral palsy. She was healthy. She walked, she talked, she loved the monkey bars. But she got sick, and we didn’t take her to the hospital quickly enough.” She felt a hand squeeze her shoulder—Kitt. “She’s not supposed to be in a wheelchair. And you’re criticizing me, condemning me, for trying to heal her?”
The silver-bobbed woman said, “I’m sorry for that. But our goal is to reach parents with autistic children, which is different—”
“Why’s it different?” Teresa said. “Because they’re born with it? What about kids born with tumors, cleft palates? God clearly meant for that, but does that mean their parents shouldn’t pursue surgery, radiation, whatever it takes to get them healthy and whole?”
“Our kids are already healthy and whole,” the woman said. “Autism isn’t a defect, just a different way of being, and any so-called treatment for it is quack nonsense.”
“Are you sure about that?” Kitt said, stepping up next to Teresa. “I used to think that, then I read that many autistic kids have digestive issues, and that’s why they walk on tiptoes—the muscle-stretching helps with the pain. TJ’s always toe-walked, so I got him tested. It turned out he had severe inflammation, and he couldn’t tell us.”
“The same with her.” Teresa pointed to Elizabeth. “She’s been trying tons of treatments, and her son’s improved so much that the doctors say he’s not autistic anymore.”
“Yeah, we know all about her treatments. Her son’s very lucky that he’s survived them all. Not all kids do.” The woman held the flyer on HBOT fires right up to Elizabeth’s face.
Elizabeth scoffed and shook her head at the woman, pulling Henry close to her and walking away. The woman grabbed Elizabeth’s arm and yanked, hard. Elizabeth yelped, tried to get away, but the woman tightened her grip, wouldn’t let go. “I’m done letting you ignore me,” the woman said. “If you don’t stop, something terrible will happen. I guarantee it.”
“Hey, back off,” Teresa said, stepping between them and slapping the woman’s hand away. The woman turned her way, her hands closing into a fist as if to punch her, and Teresa felt a cold tingle in her shoulders crawl down her back. She told herself not to be silly, this was just a mom with strong opinions, nothing to be scared of, and said, “Let us through. Now.” After a moment, the protesters backed away. Then they raised their signs and quietly resumed walking in a crooked oval.