Excerpt from Playing Botticelli by Liza Nelson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Inside the cramped ambulance when it finally came, reality shifted somehow. David grew smaller strapped down on the stretcher, already attached to an IV-drip. Not small like a baby. More than anything else, he resembled at that moment a little old man, fear and pain stripping all the childhood out of his face. When the driver asked Philip if he wanted to sit up front, Philip shook his head and reached for my free hand. David already had my other. In a matter of an hour we had developed the visceral, physical intimacy of family.

Almost. As involved in the boys as I was, I also found myself thanking God, even if I didn't believe in him, that Dylan was safe. When she'd told me she was invited to dinner with the Reverend and Mrs. Brasleton after choir practice, I was not thrilled. This phase Dylan was going through, this flirtation with the Baptists, was annoying. But at least at this moment I knew where she was.

"What about my bike?"

I turned to Philip, but it was David speaking, worried even now about his bike.

"It's safe. I put the lock on," Philip answered before I could. Kids can be so amazing.

"David, you hang in there." I gave both boys' hands a quick squeeze. "You're being very brave, the two of you. Aren't they?" I turned to the medic sitting on the other side of David, a young guy with acne who had tried to describe the equipment to Philip earlier although the boy was too frightened to pay attention.

"Oh, yes, ma'am." He rubbed his palms along his knees as if to follow a musical beat the rest of us couldn't hear. "You have a very brave little boy here." Gradually, David's grip lightened, exhaustion or painkiller. Philip stared straight ahead, holding on tight as ever.

What if I had not happened by? How long would the boys have waited before someone else stopped, and who, what kind of person? How would life be different, for them or that other passerby, now reaching another destination untouched? And what if I had not glanced over when I did, had kept driving, what other road would my thoughts be traveling now? Those planes colliding, finding these boys. What is life but the friction of one coincidence against another?

Thousands of miles away, victims and survivors were going through their private, enormous anguish. I tried to see them, but my imagination closed down. All I knew were these children's hands in mine, small and dry, dirt etched deep in the lines of the knuckles. I knew David, his dilated eyes, the matted damp hair above the bandages on his forehead, the blood drying to a muddy rust at the edges. And I knew Philip, his almond eyes the color of tree bark, the two pinpricks of nervous energy high on his otherwise drained cheeks, his narrow lips set in stubborn stoicism. For now at least, the ambulance had become the donut of my life. These boys had me completely claimed.

From Play Botticelli, Liza Nelson. (c) December 1999, Liza Nelson used by permission.