theprettybeta (theprettybeta) wrote in multifariousic, @ 2015-12-29 22:23:00 |
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Isaac was proud of what he had built, and that was saying a lot for him. He found it hard to be proud of anything he had personally accomplished, but the Lahey Home… he was proud of that. After it was handed to him when he had raised so much money, Isaac did everything he knew needed to be done for the kids. New mattresses, new bedding, healthier food, bigger play areas, safer security systems, everything that a child should have to live comfortably before they got to go home to a permanent family. He took his job seriously, he knew what it was like to grow up in a place that felt scary, and unsafe. Isaac wanted to make sure that no child ever felt like that under his watch ever again. He was in his office signing off on Jeremy’s adoption papers, the process having been a long one, but Isaac had decided that he liked the family that was trying to bring Jeremy home and he’d allow the family to advance to the next step. He had been so distracted with the work at hand that the smell of smoke didn’t register for him until a couple of minutes passed, and his pen froze over the pile of papers on his desk before his head snapped up and he inhaled deeply through his nose. The smell of burning… something, rubber, or plastic, filled his lungs, and as if on cue the scream of the fire alarm started to pierce the air, causing Isaac to wince and cover his ears with his hands. His pen dropped to the desk forgotten and Isaac sprang to his feet, tearing his office door open to still clean air before following the smell down the hall to the large kitchen. Thick smoke was billowing out of the traffic doors, and when Isaac pushed them open he could barely see the stove that was completely engulfed in flames through the blanket of blackness in the air. “Out! Get out, get out, get the kids! Get the kids!” He started to scream over the sound of the alarm, running in, his eyes watering as his sensitive senses were pummeled with the burning air that was filling his lungs. He reached out, his eyes glowing a bright gold as he tried to see if there was any other volunteers in the kitchen, and he began to grab them and lead them toward the doors. “Go! Get the kids, get them outside! Now! Go!” He did one last sweep of the kitchen before he noticed the fire spreading closer to the door, and he made sure no one else was in there before running out himself and down the hall, now filled with smoke and soot. He went directly for the play rooms, making sure that all of the kids had been evacuated before hearing a deafening creak from above. The roof was going to cave in. Satisfied that everybody had gotten out safely Isaac turned and ran back down the hall to burst out through the back doors, coughing heavily as he tried to suck in fresh air while approaching the large group of volunteers and children that were standing on the playground. “Get back,” he managed to choke out, waving his hand to gesture for all of them to back away further from the building. “Further, go, get them away from the building, call 911, I need a head count. Someone get me a head count.” He looked back at his orphanage, all of his hard work and their safe place crumbling before him, and the tears that were in his eyes weren’t solely from the burning air anymore. “We’re okay.” He turned back to the group, rushing forward to start calming the closest kids. “We’re okay, we’re alrigh- ...Where is Joy?” He noticed as soon as he saw the group again, his eyes scanning over little heads and missing one of the taller kids there. “Joy?” He looked between the faces of the volunteers, all of whom began to look around in confusion, and they looked back at him with fear in their eyes as they all came to the same conclusion. Isaac’s heart jumped into his throat. “Joy!” He called out for her once again, looking around the playground frantically before doing the only thing he could do. He turned back to the building. “Isaac! Fire!” Jeremy called out to him through tears from where he was clinging onto Emmy, and Isaac turned back to him quickly to take him by the shoulders and squeeze them. “I’ll be right back, I promise. I promise, I’m just going to get Joy, alright? I have to go get Joy, you stay here, be good, I’ll be right back!” He took the little boy by the cheeks and planted a lingering kiss to the top of his head before turning and running back into the building, physically stumbling back when he opened the door from the unexpected assault of smoke and heat to his senses. “Joy!” He called out to her although he knew it might not do anything. The sound of the fire was roaring now mixed with the sounds of cracking and falling ceiling, and he went to the first place he could think of; her bedroom. If she didn’t have hear hearing aids in, she didn’t hear the alarm, and she only took them out when she was sleeping. The doorway to her room was blocked with burning debris and Isaac didn’t even think before trying to kick it out of the way, climbing over it and feeling the flames lick at the exposed skin on his hands and arms. “Joy!” He called out for her again, barely seeing a figure in the smoke, and he quickly approached her through thick smog. “Joy, is that you?” It almost definitely hadn’t happened as fast as it felt like it had. There was no way it could’ve. After second Hanukkah with Luli, Joy had finally relented and just started staying at the home. It was easier to spend time with Luli when she was already there, and she didn’t have to think about how to ration the little pay Isaac gave her in spite of the probable illegality of paying a minor for services. So, she’d just sort of moved in and Joy wasn’t stupid; she suspected that was what Isaac had wanted all along, but without her mom or Aunt Elle or Bruce or Grandma Audrey to bail her out financially, she hadn’t really had much of a choice. It wasn’t so bad, really, living in the home, because she knew she already had a family and it wasn’t the same for her as it was for the other kids there, which was probably incredibly selfish on Joy’s part, but she supposed being a teenager meant that she was bound to be a little selfish sometimes. She’d gone to bed that night a little bit earlier than the others because she hadn’t been feeling very well and hadn’t wanted to draw any attention to it. Isaac and his staff were great, but they weren’t her mom. They sure as heck weren’t her dad. Joy didn’t want their coddling, so she’d gone to bed with the hopes that she could wake up feeling better than she’d felt when she’d gone to sleep. With her hearing aids on the side table, she’d passed out cold once her head had hit the pillows and she barely remembered thinking to herself that it was her body’s way of telling her she needed to slow down and rest before she’d completely konked out. The sound of the fire alarm had only barely stirred Joy. She heard it in her sleep, but it was so distant that it had registered itself in the dream. Her alarm clock had gone off before her mother could make it to her bedroom to wake her. In the dream, just like she had so many times before her dad died and things got bad, Joy had gotten out of bed, taken her shower, blow-dried and flat ironed her hair before gathering her makeup to hide in her backpack to put on in the bathroom at school. Then, she’d been crawling back into bed to pretend to be asleep for when her mother came to wake her for breakfast and the dream took a weird turn. Instead of coming to get her for breakfast, her mother was nowhere to be found. Her father came, instead, dragging her out of the bed. “We have to get out, your mom’s already outside!” he’d said and he’d been frantic and the wild fear that had run through her in the dream of the unknown threat was what had ultimately pulled her back out of it. By then, the room was smoky and it was hard to breathe. Joy was coughing and groping around for her hearing aids on the table blindly through the thick darkness when a piece of the floor across the room broke away and the room lit up with the ominous orange of danger below. Joy gave up on the hearing aids, stumbling out of bed and hurrying toward the door. She scurried back again when she reached out to turn the handle and it burned her hand. “Luli!” she cried out, sleep- and smoke-choked in addition to the low rasp of her natural voice. Luli’s room was across the hall. “Luli! I can’t open the door!” If her friend could hear her, then she could get Isaac or one of the volunteers and they’d get her out. The muffled sound of crashing outside the door and the way she felt the floor shake beneath her feet startled another warbly cry out of her and Joy scurried back toward the bed and away from it. She knocked over the table beside the bed to try to get to the window and remembered her mother’s voice during a discussion about fire safety in the family room saying that even if she broke her legs jumping, she’d still be alive and that was the important part; broken legs would heal eventually. Joy was grunting and crying as she tugged on the window she’d never bothered with before, knowing by the feel of it that it was painted shut and she wasn’t going to be strong enough. She could break the glass, she thought, but the table was rickety and wooden; that wouldn’t do the job. Joy let go of the window and, pulling the collar of her nightshirt up over her face as she coughed, she started to look around the smoky room for something that would hold up when thrown against the glass. That was when the door flew open and she whirled, mouth open to scream and only a hacking cough escaping in its place. She recognized the voice as Isaac’s and started to move toward him when another piece of the floorboard gave way, this time, beneath her left foot. Joy’s left leg dropped, it felt like, from under her, leaving her lopsided and stuck with one foot through the floor and the other bending at the knee in an awkward, unsolicited lunge, reaching out for him and not daring to try to speak again for fear that she’d choke on the smoke and end up coughing herself out of consciousness or something. Was that a thing? Could that even happen? Joy didn’t want to know. Isaac had just gotten close enough to see Joy try to step forward and her leg drop through the floor, and he had to side step when a burning piece of ceiling tile fell to the left of him. “Joy! I’m coming,” he called out to her through his coughing, his voice choked and quiet, and when he reached her he tugged off his shirt to tie it around her mouth and free up her hands. “I need you to pull!” He noticed now that he was closer that she never got her hearing aids back in, and his fingers moved close to her face in a rushed sign language that he had started to learn after she had showed up as a displaced person. Isaac reached down, carefully grabbing her knee to keep her foot from sinking lower and tucking his other hand between the floor and her ankle to keep her from harming it. He pulled, giving her the signal to try and loosen her foot. The sound of the ceiling coming down around them was starting to fill the room, and Isaac could have sworn that he heard sirens of fire trucks far in the distance, although that could have just been wishful thinking. It took a couple of tries, but Isaac didn’t want her pulling her leg out all at once and breaking it. Eventually he just started hitting at the floor, making it crumble further to give her leg more space, but in the process of trying to free her he wasn’t aware of the large beam that was holding up the ceiling directly above them giving way. The piece of ceiling, smoldering when it fell, landed right in front of him and Joy gasped reflexively only to have to cough — more accurately, hack — the breath back out again. She could hear him, but only because he was close enough, then, for her to read his lips and match the sound. Once he was covering her mouth with his shirt, Joy grabbed at his arms just to hold onto something, scared that at any second the floor could really give way and then she’d be screwed. When he started to sign at her, it took Joy a minute to process what he was saying, because she’d learned ASL when she was a kid, of course, but she hadn’t used it in nearly as long and he was signing faster than she and her mother ever had. Belatedly, she got it and she started to pull at his arms until she could grab his bare shoulders. Joy had been scared before. Getting lost in LAX by herself after having stolen her mother’s credit card and flying out to meet her grandfather against her mother’s wishes, for one, but nothing like this. Never anything like this. Joy worked her foot with Isaac’s help and, after a few tries, they got her loose and as if on cue, the next obstacle came crashing down, the beam dropping heavily down and crushing her fingers into his shoulder, knocking them both off kilter. “Isaac, oh my gosh!” she managed, muffled through his t-shirt. “What do I do?!” she squeaked, signing it along once she’d managed to pull her fingers free. The falling beam probably wouldn’t have hurt so much if he had been expecting it. Isaac was so distracted with getting Joy free that he didn’t realize the ceiling directly above them was going to collapse until he felt the crushing weight fall on his bare back, scorching him as he collapsed forward. His hands shot out to plant themselves on the quickly weakening floor, trying to keep the beam from pushing him down directly on top of Joy, and his eyes flashed gold as his fangs elongated in his pain. The wind was knocked out of him and he couldn’t even cry out, but Joy’s voice brought him back, and he tried to organize his thoughts despite the immense pain that was coursing through him. The ache of the weight was manageable. The burning wasn’t. “Keep the shirt over your mouth, don’t breathe this in,” he gasped in response, and he could feel himself getting light headed. Between the ceiling on his back, the burning, and the smoke filling his lungs, Isaac was almost positive that he was going to pass out. His arms began to buckle, weakening beneath him as he started to sink lower, eyes getting heavy only to snap back open when the sound of one of the walls collapsing filled the air. “We’re gonna get out of here,” he promised her, unsure if she could hear him with his obstructed lungs, and he looked down at Joy for a moment before he started to push with everything he had. She needed him, and Isaac was going to be damned if he allowed one of his kids die because he wasn’t strong enough to save her. His kids were all he had. When Allison disappeared, and when Camden was gone, he would still have his kids. Letting them down would never be an option for him. He pushed harder, slowly rising again as he tried to push the beam off of his back, and Isaac wasn’t aware that his golden eyes were starting to flicker, and darken into a deep, blood red color. He didn’t know what was happening but he knew something was going on. He felt a surge of adrenaline and power shock its way through his system, and with one last effort he pushed himself up all the way, the burning wood and drywall scraping down his mangled back to fall and crash through the floor behind him. He grabbed Joy as he sat up, pulling her up to her feet with a new sense of clarity. “Grab onto me, we’re going out the window!” Joy belatedly noticed the way his eyes lit up and even more belatedly noticed the fangs, her vision obscured by the smoke, but her eyes widened and, for the first time since she’d met him, she felt a flicker of fear toward Isaac. But he was trying to help her, which conflicted with that fear and she whimpered a little behind the t-shirt, but she tried to focus on the words and not the fact that his eyes were glowing and he had fangs like a freaking movie monster...and that he was suffering; he had to be. And then the eyes changed and went a demonic sort of red that scared her even more and Joy coughed in her attempt to point it out before giving up and hanging onto him as he scooped her off the floor. She’d never say a word. She’d never ask what happened, she decided, but she wanted to know. Something had just happened to the man who owned the building and helped so many kids; something was wrong with him and it was more than a little frightening. But Joy promised herself that if he got her out of that building alive, she would never, ever bring it up. “It’s painted shut,” she said as she hung on and closed her eyes, willing away the things that she’d just seen from the ceiling dropping onto him up to the freaky change in his eyes. “I couldn’t get it open, it’s painted shut.” “I’ve got it.” He kept his response short, his head still light from the lack of fresh air, and he carried her over to the window before setting her down so that he could smash his bare elbow through the glass. He felt it digging into his skin but that didn’t matter right now. What mattered was that the fire was moving across the walls, and if they didn’t move quickly their new escape would be engulfed, along with them. The air that was coming in from outside didn’t seem to help, and the fire started to burn hotter around them with the fresh oxygen in the air. “We’re going to fall out backwards, come on!” He grabbed her before she could protest, wrapping her up in his arms and making sure to keep her head tucked against her chest. He didn’t have time to think. It was two stories, he’d probably break his spine, but Isaac could heal. She couldn’t. He held her close and kept his head up to make sure that the part of him her head was tucked against wouldn’t hit the ground immediately, that his torso, back and legs would take most of the impact. Without warning, or counting, Isaac let sat on the glass strewn window sill and fell back, plummeting two stories until he hit the asphalt beneath them. his head spun, pain tore through him, he was pretty positive he broke something, but he looked up at Joy in his arms as he sucked in clean air, dragging the shirt from her mouth. “Breathe. Breathe, are you alright?” That time, everything did happen as fast as it felt like it had. Isaac told her what his plan was and didn’t give her any time to point out that he could break his neck and die that way; that it was better if they just jumped and tried to land on their feet because broken legs would hurt, but it wouldn’t kill them...and then they were falling. Somehow Isaac survived it and Joy was shaking as she looked back down at him, gasping for breath between coughing fits as she scrambled to get off of him. “Holy crap...holy crap, holy crap…” she murmured more to herself than in response to Isaac. Joy looked up at the broken window through which they’d fallen only to see flames licking their way out of it and up the side of the building. She could have died in there… Her eyes shifted back to Isaac and she moved back to his side, shaking hands hovering over him as if she wasn’t sure whether she should touch him or not. She knew she shouldn’t try to move him. “I’m fine, are you? Are you? You just...holy crap, are you okay?” She didn’t notice the tears that had started falling just from the sheer overwhelming panic and fear that was finally bubbling up and spilling over now that she was safe outside the burning building, albeit in her torn pajamas and covered in soot. “Shh, it’s alright, it’s okay,” he tried to comfort her through his coughing, reaching out for her hand and squeezing it gently. “I’m fine. ...I think that I broke my back, but I’m alright, it’ll heal. I’ll heal, I promise, I’m not like you. Just breathe, okay? I need you to breathe and calm down, you’re safe now.” And with that, all of the weariness and exhaustion hit Isaac at once. His head fell back against the asphalt and he stared up at the sky, feeling exceptionally cold in the mild air after jumping from the burning building. His back felt like it was covered in burning skin and blisters, which it probably was, and he looked at Joy with heavy eyes before speaking as calmly as he could. “The fire station should be here soon, I need you to do something for me.” He wet his lips, because he could already feel that he wasn’t going to be able to get up. “I need you to go around back to the playground. Make sure that everybody is safe, and I need you to find one of the volunteers. They have Camden’s phone number, he’s the emergency contact. My phone was inside, I need you to have one of them call Camden so he can come get me.” The last thing he needed was a slew of doctors and his insurance company wondering how he recovered from a broken spine over a two day period. “Joy, look at me,” he said louder, making sure she could see his mouth as he spoke. “Go find a volunteer with a phone. Have them call Camden. I can’t go to a hospital.” Joy could barely see through the tears welling in her eyes that she wasn’t willing to let keep falling once she’d realized they were there. “That’s not fine!” she yelped in a watery voice when Isaac copped to thinking that he’d broken his back. She shivered in the cold and then realized that Isaac still didn’t have anything covering him. She could do that without touching him or moving him. Joy took the shirt and flattened it out over him, covering as much of his chest and stomach as she could. He was giving her orders and she was catching most of them, but without being able to see through her tears to read his lips, she was only catching some of it. When he called it out, telling her to look at him, Joy took a shaky breath and wiped at her eyes to clear them, leaving muddy looking smears on her cheeks from the tears cutting through the soot. He said he couldn’t go to a hospital and that didn’t make any sense, he shouldn’t be doing anything other than going to a hospital, but then she thought maybe it had something to do with his eyes, the scary eyes, and she panted in a few shaking breaths before sniffing and nodding. “Okay. Okay, okay, I’ll just...okay, just I’ll be right back, okay? Don’t move, don’t try to move, I don’t think you’re supposed to, okay? Okay?” she asked, choking back the lump in the back of her throat at the idea that Isaac might actually die right there on the asphalt for saving her life and then what were all of the kids supposed to do? He was more important than she was to this community. “Okay,” she said again, as if willing herself to get up, and Joy sniffed and pushed herself up to her feet. “Okay, I’ll be right back, I promise,” she insisted, and then she took off to follow his instructions. Isaac could barely nod to encourage her when she said that she would be right back after giving her a tender look when she placed his shirt over his chest and stomach. She was worried about him, but he’d explain it to her when she got back. She was older than the other kids. She knew that monsters didn’t always have glowing eyes and fangs, and if she didn’t, she was old enough to understand that if he explained it to her. He watched her run off before his eyes returned back to the burning orphanage above him, and Isaac wished he had the ability to just roll over and shove his face in the asphalt so he didn’t have to see it. Everything he did, all of the work he had put into a home for the kids, it was gone now. Their blankets, their toys, their picture that they drew for him, their memories, gone, and that hurt infinitely more than his shattered spine. His eyes started to burn with tears as he watched the roof collapse in on itself above him, and Isaac couldn’t take it anymore. He just closed his eyes. They opened again when he heard running footsteps and he glanced over to see Joy, giving her a warm smile. “Hey. It’s alright, it’s okay. Everything is going to be okay, come here.” He was able to reach his hand out for her, gesturing her to come closer. “Sit. Sit down, let me talk to you. You don’t have to be so afraid. I’m going to be okay, Joy. Everybody got out, this could have been so much worse.” It had taken Joy a minute to be able to get out the words she’d been trying to get out, between gasping for breath in coughing fits and just trying to formulate coherent sentences when she was scared and upset, but she’d done it. She’d found one of the volunteers and explained that Isaac was hurt and wanted his brother but his phone was inside so someone else needed to call. The girl she’d found didn’t seem to know what she was talking about, but had found another volunteer who had nodded knowingly before taking out his cell phone and starting to dial out. Joy stood there, antsy, until she heard from the male volunteer that Isaac’s brother was coming and then she took back off. Joy rushed to his side and was a little relieved to see that he hadn’t tried to move. “He’s coming, your brother’s coming, they said,” she breathed as she lowered herself to sit beside him on the cold pavement. “You could be paralyzed, she pointed out, looking more upset than before he’d spoken. “I should’ve just kept them in. The hearing aids, I should’ve just slept in them, I’m sorry…” she said, her voice watery with the threat of more tears. “Shh, no, Joy, it’s okay,” he promised her calmly, reaching out for her hand once more and squeezing it tightly. “Look. Hey, Joy. Look at me, see?” He turned his arm where he had to shove his elbow through the window, the cuts already looking old and worn, healing away quickly. “See? I’m going to be alright, my body is going to fix itself. This is not your fault. None of this is your fault, the most important part is that you’re safe and I’m going to be okay, right? That’s the most important. And we’re going to get you new hearing aids, I’m going to have Camden take you to a fitting tomorrow. It’s all going to be okay.” He fell silent for a second, giving her a moment to compose herself, before continuing hesitantly. “...I’m not normal, I’m not like you. A long time ago I had to get out of a bad situation and a friend of mine helped me. He did something for me that made me heal faster than other people. That’s why I jumped out. Because I knew I would heal. I promise, I’m going to be okay. You did good, Camden is going to get here and he’s going to know what to do.” Isaac wet his lips and took in a deep, rattling breath, trying to ease away his own pain as he tried to figure out what the next step was. “Once he comes I’m going to call Pepper Potts. You’re all going to have to stay in the Tower for a night before I can get you all to my place, but I don’t want the little kids to see me like this. You’re older, I need you to help as much as you can, alright? When they take the kids to the tower, I want you there with them to make sure that everybody gets what they need. You know better than Potts or Stark does, Harry needs a blanket to get to sleep, Julia and Vernon need to be read stories, Eric is allergic to peanuts. You know all of this, you’ve been around long enough, but I need you to make sure that everybody is taken care of.” Joy sucked in a quick breath when she saw that the cuts all over his arm were healing up like it happened forever ago. He went on to explain a little more and Joy stiffened. Don’t ask about the eyes. You don’t want to know, so don’t ask, she reminded herself and she nodded. “If I forget, Luli knows, too? Right?” she asked uneasily, because she was used to taking care of Charlie, but this was like taking care of twenty Charlies and that was a lot for her to wrap her head around. “Luli knows too,” he assured her with a little nod, wincing as he shifted a little to try and make himself more comfortable on the ground. He only winced again, remembering to never try and do that again. “I’m going to have Camden pick you up a phone so you can keep in touch with me, depending on how I am tonight I might come in and make sure that everything is going alright. You’re not going to be doing this alone, I’m going to be in constant contact, I’m not going to abandon you guys, alright? I’ve always told you guys that I would be here and I meant it, I’ll take up a hospital bed in the tower if I have to, but it’s going to be okay.” He should call Allison. But right now, there was so much going on and he had to take care of so much that it would have to wait. “I want you to see a doctor too, they probably have medical staff there. I don’t think you breathed anything in too much and I’m pretty sure you’re alright, nothing is broken, but I want you to get a check up just in case, alright? Will you do that for me?” She didn’t like the sound of being put in charge, just because it meant that Isaac wasn’t, even for the night, but Joy nodded and sniffed and wiped at her face again. “Okay.” She felt bad that she didn’t have any money for new hearing aids or a phone or anything like that and he was going to have to pay for it, but she needed the hearing aids and if he wanted her to have a phone for now, then that was something that she should have. “I will,” she said with another nod. “You’re really okay…?” she asked reproachfully. “It was a long way down…” “Okay.” He nodded, smiling a little with gratefulness that she was stepping up to the challenges he knew he was setting for her. “And yes, I’m really okay. Listen to me, don’t I sound okay? Camden is going to get here and I’m going to be fine.” He just needed to get there before the fire department, because they would try to move him and then they would definitely want to bring him to a hospital. “You’re not going to be doing this alone, a lot of people are going to be helping you. You’re going to be fine, Joy, you’re smart. I know you’ll be okay.” He let his head rest back again, looking back up at his building, and he gave a tired sigh before frowning. “...I’m sorry.” Isaac shook his head a little. “I should have smelled it. If I had gotten there sooner none of this would have happened, everything is gone.” He sounded okay, but it had been a two story drop and he’d already been hurt from the ceiling beam. Joy wasn’t as convinced as she wished that she was, but she nodded anyway, looking up when she heard a loud motor approaching and saw a dirty looking jeep pull up. The sirens were coming closer and Joy guessed they’d probably be there any minute. “I don’t—” she started and then stopped herself from finishing that she didn’t understand why he was blaming himself for the fire. Accidents happened. A big guy, young-looking but stocky and tall was hurrying toward them and Joy stiffened. “Is that him?” she asked, because it was hard to see the other man’s face in the dark. He looked over when he heard the sound of the Jeep, relief flooding him when he saw Camden get out and rush over. “That’s him.” He looked back at Joy. “Go back to the others. Camden is going to go out and get you a phone after he brings me home and I’ll have him give you my number to call me, alright? He’s going to have to get me one too, it’s okay. I’ll call Pepper on the way home, she’ll be here with the Avengers to get everybody back to the tower. Keep your phone on you. I promise I’ll call. I swear.” He squeezed her hand one last time. “Go to the others. Make sure they’re all okay. Go, I want you there when the firemen arrive. You know what’s going on.” As the other man finally approached, crouching beside Isaac on his other side, Joy focused her attention on Isaac’s parting instructions and she nodded again. “Talk loud, okay? When I call, you’ll have to talk really loud,” she said, looking a little apologetic and a little ashamed, but determined all the same. Isaac gave her hand a squeeze and sent her off and Joy gave him one more worried look before pushing herself back up to her feet and wandering away, back toward the group huddled in the playground to wait for help. |