Nobody spoke.
Then Grandma whispered something I barely heard.
“He was coughing.”
The manager froze.
Grandma’s eyes filled.
“He couldn’t stop coughing.”
I turned toward her.
“Grandma?”
She was looking somewhere far beyond the checkout counter.
“I thought he was going to die.”
She was 19 when it happened.
She had come downtown to buy a Christmas present for her mother.
The department store was crowded.
Music played from speakers overhead.
Children waited near a decorated tree.
Grandma remembered standing beside a rack of winter coats.
Then somebody shouted.
“Fire!”
At first, people thought it was a mistake.
Then smoke rolled across the ceiling.
The lights flickered.
Someone screamed.
Grandma ran toward the nearest exit.
But halfway there, she heard a child crying.
A little boy lay under a fallen display.
His mother was also on the floor.
Something heavy had struck her leg.
She was trying to stand.
