Chapter Thirty-Seven

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

COUNTDOWN TO ZERO HOUR 27 MINUTES

THEY WERE RUNNING out of time in the control room—but how do you rush a conversation in which it’s being decided which one of you will die? Joss leaned over the blueprints while Ethan laid out the task at hand.

“There are three levels of operation for the scenario of a flooded subbasement,” he said. “First option for pump activation is electric. That has clearly failed. The second is a switch inside a panel in the subbasement.”

“What are the chances the switch still works?” Maggie asked.

“Virtually zero,” Joss said. Ethan didn’t disagree.

“The third and final way to activate the pump,” Ethan said, “is to open a sluice gate to release the water.”

“How?” George asked.

“There’s a wheel inside the subbasement. You turn it. Now,” he said, standing up and crossing his arms. “Before you all start getting brave and raising your hands to volunteer, you need to understand this water. It’s… it’s like the water at the bottom of the pool.”

Steve stared at the floor in the silence that followed. Ethan’s point was clear.

Whoever went in wouldn’t come back. It was a suicide mission.

George was the first to speak.

“This is the only way?”

“Yes,” Joss said. “It’s the only way.”

The firefighter nodded solemnly for a moment before standing. “I will—”

“No,” Vikram said. “It’s time for the engineers to share the risks. I’ll go.”

Before George could respond or Vikram could further plead his case, Maggie said she’d go. Then Dwight. Then the others in the room began to step forward or raise their hands. Just as one person finished explaining why they should be the one, someone else jumped in.

Earlier in the day, when faced with the similar situation of deciding who would go in the pool, there had been some hesitation. A natural, understandable pause as people searched inside themselves to see if they were truly built from the right stuff. The moment now was different. There was no hesitation. Everyone was sincere. Every person in that room was ready to lay down his or her life for the cause. They’d been through too much, gone too far down the road together, for any of them to turn back now.

“Okay, enough,” Joss said, straightening up. “We don’t have time. Everyone, write your name on a piece of paper. We’ll draw.”

No one objected.

Paper was ripped into small pieces, pens were shared, a wastebasket was emptied and passed around, and one by one, people put their names in. Almost all the slips of paper had been added when Matt stepped forward.

Ethan regarded the boy with deep respect. “That’s very brave of you, Matt,” he said. “But you can’t—”

“Not me. My dad. It has to be my dad.”

No one knew what to say at first, but quickly, murmured variations of refusal went around the room: No. Steve’s given enough. He physically can’t. Matt, you’ve given enough. You two need to be together now. All the while, Matt and Steve just looked at each other.

After all they’d been through, they needed to make it right, together, with what little time Steve had left. They needed time. To fix the fishing pole. To be together. To set things right for Matt’s future, to resolve what had already passed. But here now, in the present, in all there really was, father and son communicated without saying a word. They both understood.

“I’m the reason he’s not volunteering and I’m the reason you’re not asking him to,” Matt said. “No one else should die if they don’t have to. My dad can do that. My dad can make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Everyone in the room was stunned. They looked to Steve, not knowing what to say, taking their cues from him. The father’s eyes brimmed with sadness and regret, but he beamed with pride. Steve held his chin up.

“When you hug your children tonight, know that it is because of him,” he said with a nod to Matt. “My son. The bravest, most selfless person I know.”

It was decided. Steve would open the sluice gate.