On the runway in front of them, she could see the string of helicopters landing and taking off. The choppers remained on the ground only long enough to dump their human cargo of evacuees before lifting into the sky again. Just like Katrina, she thought, as she watched so many people pour from one chopper that she knew they must have been piled on top of one another inside the cabin. Most of them were empty-handed, although a few clutched overstuffed plastic garbage bags. Mothers grabbed the hands of their children. One man carried an elderly woman in his arms. Rebecca turned back to the task of unloading the supplies. She would see plenty of these people in the days to come. There was no time to worry about them now.
“You two!”
Rebecca recognized Dorothea’s booming voice over the din from the helicopters. She turned to see the older woman standing near the bottom of the steps leading up to the concourse, her gray uniform a few shades darker than her braid and her hands forming a megaphone around her mouth. “Get your gear and come inside!” she called.
They finished unloading the chopper, then rummaged through the cargo until they found their duffel bags and ran together into the terminal.
Inside the glass walls of the concourse, the din changed from the roar of the helicopters to the buzz of human beings confined in too small a space to hold them. The gates looked as they might during a freak snowstorm on Christmas Eve, when all the flights had been grounded. People were everywhere. They slumped in the chairs. They sat on the floor, leaning against one another to stay upright as they tried to sleep. Long lines snaked to the restrooms, as well as to the few bottled water stations Rebecca could see.
She and Adam followed Dorothea through the corridor to the lobby, and Rebecca felt Adam’s hand light against the small of her back. He was so physical, and she liked that about him. He was always touching Maya—an arm around her shoulders, holding her hand, smoothing her hair. Brent touched Rebecca when he wanted sex; he was so damn predictable. They’d be walking home from a restaurant, and if he took her hand, she knew what he was after. The only good thing was that she nearly always wanted it, too.
In the lobby, Dot ushered them into a small office and closed the door. Two desks took up nearly all the space in the room, and there were no chairs. “Okay,” Dorothea said. “Have a seat.”
Rebecca boosted herself onto the edge of one of the desks, but Adam dropped his bag at his side and remained standing, hands in his pockets. He rocked on his heels as though raring to get to work.
“Is there any organization to what’s going on out there?” he asked. Clearly he thought there was none, and Rebecca guessed he was close to being correct, but it wasn’t the sort of question you asked Dorothea Ludlow. He didn’t know Dorothea well, so he couldn’t really have known. She tried to keep a smile off her face.
“Damn straight, there’s organization!” Dorothea said, gray eyes flashing. “We’ve accomplished more here in two days than you could in a month.”
Adam held up his hands in surrender. “I believe you,” he said with an uncertain laugh.
Rebecca grinned. “Don’t beat up on my brother-in-law,” she said to Dorothea.
“I can already see I’m going to have to separate the two of you.” Dorothea shook her head in mock disgust.
“We’ll behave,” Rebecca said.
Dorothea folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the second desk. “Well, listen up, and I’ll tell you the setup,” she said. “The concourse is where the majority of evacuees will hang out for now. Here in the lobby, on either end, is where the medical teams are setting up the tent walls. I’ll let one of the DMAT workers give you the full rundown. Look for Steve. He’s in the baggage-claim area.” She looked at Rebecca. “We’ve got the four zones going, like we did with Katrina,” she said, and Rebecca nodded. She would explain what that meant to Adam later. “No one expected this many people, and the teams are overwhelmed—” Dot looked at Adam “—which is not the same as disorganized. We’re trying to get some more teams in here. Like I told you, the cell towers are down, but I have a sat phone. Here’s your two-way radios and some extra batteries.” She pointed to the radios on the cluttered desk behind her. “No power, needless to say. The medical areas’ll have some AC from generators, but the rest of the terminal’s a damn steam bath.” She turned her attention to Adam again. “We need the princess here,” she said.
Rebecca laughed. Dorothea said that nearly every time they landed in a disaster area. She knew Rebecca would shrug off the idea, but Dot probably saw Adam as fresh meat. Adam, though, had no idea what she was talking about.
“Who’s the princess?” he asked. His face was open and boyish, and Rebecca was getting a kick out of seeing him so out of his element.
“She’s talking about Maya,” she said. “Dot thinks anyone who doesn’t work for DIDA is soft.”
“Maya’s not soft,” Adam said. Rebecca liked hearing him come to Maya’s defense, even though they both knew that Maya was as soft as mashed potatoes.
“We need her here.” Dorothea patted the pockets of her uniform jacket, as if checking her supplies. “We’ve got a mountain of kids with mountains of problems, and we have no pediatrician. Not one. And as you can see—” she motioned in the general direction of the tarmac, although they couldn’t possibly see it from the office “—the people keep pouring in.”
“Maya can’t do it,” Adam said.
“She knows that,” Rebecca said. “She’s just being a pain in the butt.”
“There’s a difference between can’t and won’t.” Dorothea suddenly clapped her hands together. “Okay!” she said. “Let’s get to work.” She opened the office door and marched out, and Rebecca watched Adam stare after her, openmouthed.
“Wow,” he said. “I had no idea what a bitch she is.”
“Really?” Rebecca stood up from the desk. “I thought that was common knowledge.” They left the office and made their way through the sea of tired, anxious people, following the signs leading toward the baggage-claim area. She felt uncomfortable that she’d put Dorothea down.
“Dot’s not really a bitch, Adam,” she said as they crossed the central lobby, where broad green beams formed a crisscross pattern beneath the high open ceiling. “It’s hard for her to believe that not everyone feels as passionately about disaster work as she does. She can make people do what they don’t want to do. That’s why DIDA is a success. Why it works.”
“Right,” he said. “I get it.”
They passed beneath a replica of the Wright brothers’ plane. Beyond that, Rebecca saw the canvas tent walls. An extremely young guy in a gold DMAT uniform rushed toward them as they neared the tent.
“Adam and Rebecca?” he asked.
They nodded and Rebecca thought he was going to hug them, he looked so pleased.
“Fantastic!” he said. “I’m Steve.”
“Hey, Steve.” Adam reached out to shake his hand. “How’re you holdin’ up?”
“Haven’t slit my wrists yet,” Steve said, “though I’ve considered it. Let me get you oriented real quick because there’s no time to waste.” He started walking toward the tent walls, and they fell into step on either side of him. “We’re basically out of control, but we’re improving,” he said. “We’ve got nurses and PAs doing triage out on the tarmac as soon as people get off the choppers. And here’s the scoop on the tents. Tent One there.” He pointed to the tent farthest from them. “That’s for the walking wounded. Sprains, cuts, minor respiratory problems.” He nodded toward the tent in front of them. “Tent Two is urgent care. We’ve had a couple of women in early labor. Compound fractures.” He shook his head. “Saw three of them already this morning. People don’t belong on roofs.”
“I thought this was the baggage-claim area.” Adam turned in a circle, searching for the carousels.
“Inside the tents,” Rebecca said.
“Right,” Steve said. “They don’t design airports to house evacuees.” He led them to the other end of the lobby, point
ing to the door leading to a stairwell. “Do not go down to the basement,” he warned. “The addicts took it over with the first wave of evacuees and things aren’t pretty down there.”
And will only get worse as they run out of drugs, Rebecca thought.
“Where are the pharmaceuticals being kept?” Adam asked, clearly thinking the same thing.
“What little we have is in one of the rental car offices,” Steve said. They’d reached the area by the ticket counters, where two more tents had been set up. “Here’s the third tent,” he said. “The E.R. of the operation. Cardiac arrest. Seizures. Active labor. That sort of thing. We have no supplies, by the way. You’ll figure that out soon enough, though.”
“And the fourth tent?” Adam asked.
Rebecca knew what the fourth tent was for, but she let Steve tell him.
“The expectants,” he said. “The ones who would die no matter what. Palliative care in that one. Letting the families be with them, if there are any family members around.”
Adam nodded. “Mostly elderly,” he said.
“Right,” Steve said. “A lot of them are from one of the small hospitals that had to be evacuated. Then we’ve been getting a lot…way too many…from nursing homes. Sadder than hell.” He looked from Adam to Rebecca and back again. “You brother and sister?” he asked.
“What?” Adam laughed.
“You look alike,” Steve said.
Rebecca and Adam exchanged a glance. Rebecca took in Adam’s dark eyes. Brown hair. She supposed they did look alike, especially in their DIDA uniforms. She tossed an arm around Adam’s shoulders, breathing in the scent of soap and aftershave, knowing it would be her last whiff of a well-groomed man for quite a while. “He’s my darlin’ brother-in-law,” she said to Steve, “but thanks for the compliment.”
“Hey!” Adam grinned. “That’s my line.”
“Well, whatever,” Steve said, and she could tell he had no time to joke around. He pointed toward the ticket counters. “You can put your gear over there. I’ve got to get back to the concourse.”
Steve took off down the hallway, and Rebecca and Adam dumped their duffel bags behind the ticket counters. Rebecca watched Adam fill his lungs as if he knew he wouldn’t have another chance to catch his breath for the next two weeks.
“Welcome to DIDA, bro,” she said, and they headed for the tents.
Rebecca spent most of the day with the patients needing urgent care, while Adam worked in the emergency tent. Dorothea had been right about the children. They were everywhere. Asthma attacks were rampant. Broken bones. Fevers. Wounds that were already oozing and infected. Rebecca didn’t know how Maya worked with kids all day. It was the one area where Maya was tougher than she was. “I’m just used to it,” Maya would say, as if it was no big deal.
As Rebecca’s fifth patient was brought to her, she already felt her frustration rising. The screaming five-year-old boy had broken at least a dozen bones in a fall from a tree onto the roof of a car. He should have been airlifted directly to a hospital, not stuffed into a helicopter with dozens of other people. Yet she knew there’d been no time to triage the evacuees as they were scooped up by the choppers. It was up to them to separate the sickest, the most gravely injured, from the others who could be treated here in the terminal. Those in the worst shape, like this little boy, would be airlifted inland. Yet as he screamed during Rebecca’s examination, she couldn’t help but wonder if Maya would be handling him differently. In her head, she heard one of her sister’s favorite refrains: Children are not simply miniature adults when it comes to medicine.
She saw Adam from time to time during the day when he’d transport one of his emergency patients to her tent. They weren’t able to exchange more than a few rushed words with each other, always about a patient’s condition and treatment, yet she felt connected to him. She was so glad he was there. She hoped the work hooked him and that he’d want to do his two weeks next year as well.
Around dusk, she finally took a break. She jogged down the long hallway to the concourse, dodging evacuees, relieved to be out of the tent and moving her muscles. In the concourse, she headed for the water station and spotted Adam standing near the windows. Grabbing a bottle of water from one of the pallets, she went to stand next to him. He glanced at her without speaking, and in his face, she saw the toll the day was taking on him. She’d never before noticed the fine lines around his eyes or seen the tight, unsmiling set of his lips.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said with a sigh. His gaze was fixed on the never-ending line of helicopters as they landed, dumped their passengers and took off again. “It’s different than I expected, though,” he said. “Rougher and—I don’t care what Dorothea says—disorganized as hell.”
“You get used to it.” She didn’t want him to lose heart.
He took a swallow from his water bottle. “I decided after the first few crazy hours to stop fighting it,” he said. “To see it as a challenge.” He glanced at her again. “I was thinking of you,” he said. “I figured, if Bec can do this year-round, I can handle it for two measly weeks.”
“No doubt about it,” she said.
“I admire you, kiddo.” He put his arm around her shoulders.
“Don’t make me blush,” she jested, but his words meant something to her.
“Look at that.” He pointed to one of the choppers, and they watched as the doors opened and a river of people—mostly children—literally poured from the cabin onto the tarmac. Adam quickly lowered his arm from her shoulders, pressing his hand to the glass as though he could stop them from falling. They watched as the kids landed on top of one another. Rebecca had seen worse. Much worse. She rested her hand on Adam’s back, and he shook his head. “This is a horror show,” he said.
They watched volunteers on the tarmac help the kids get to their feet, trying to create order out of chaos. One of the volunteers, a woman, waved to a group of men standing at the side of the tarmac. She held up four fingers, and the men rushed toward the helicopter, carrying four litters between them.
Rebecca heard Adam groan, probably picturing four more patients swelling the ranks inside the tents.
“That’s it,” he said. “I’m calling Maya.”
“What?” Rebecca asked, stunned. “You’re not serious.”
“I am.”
“She won’t come,” Rebecca said. “She shouldn’t come. I don’t think she’s recovered from the miscarriage yet, Adam. Emotionally, I mean. I talked with her the other night, and she’s still a mess. And that incident in the restaurant was really—”
“She needs a project,” he said. “She needs to get outside of herself.”
Rebecca felt a small spark of panic she couldn’t quite get a handle on. An ages-old need to protect her sister, maybe? Maya didn’t belong in the airport. She needed things neat and orderly. She’d be a wreck.
But she knew there was something else behind her panic besides wanting to protect Maya: she’d liked sharing this day with Adam. Sharing the experience. They were two high-octane doctors who could throw themselves into the fray. Maya, on the other hand, would hold everyone back. She’d be high maintenance, sapping some of Adam’s energy from his work and getting in the way.
Was that it? Was that really the source of her trepidation?
It was true that Maya would be high maintenance. She’d need some hand-holding. Yet there was still something more, and if Rebecca was being honest with herself, she knew what it was: DIDA was her world. It was where she shined. She didn’t want to have to share that world with her sister. Ever.
“It’s a bad idea, Adam,” she said. “Can you imagine how she would have reacted if she’d been on our helicopter when that guy said we were being shot at?”
Adam gnawed his lip, and she knew she’d hit him with a dose of reality.
He finished his bottle of water, leaning his head back to get every last drop. “You’re probably right,” he said, his attention again on the in
jured kids who were now being carried across the tarmac. He rubbed his neck, then gave her a smile, the crow’s feet like tender wounds at the corners of his eyes.
“Back to the tents,” he said.
13
Maya
“YOU MUST BE A VERY POPULAR GIRL, HALEY,” I SAID AS I walked into the examining room, where my fourth patient of the afternoon sat with her mother.
Haley, whose pixyish haircut and delicate Asian features made her look younger than her ten years, seemed mystified.
“How did you know?” She sat on the examining table, her arm in a cast.
“Well, not every patient I see has about—” I pretended to count the names scribbled on the cast “—a hundred signatures on her cast.”
Haley laughed.
“It’s made it bearable,” her mother said. She wore her own cast on her lower leg, and her crutches rested against the counter. They’d been in a car accident in the spring and were both lucky to be in my office at all.
“Mom didn’t want anybody to write on her cast,” Haley said. “Not even me.”
I had a memory of my own broken arm. It was actually Rebecca’s memory, not mine, because I’d only been two at the time and couldn’t recall exactly what happened. I’d fallen off a swing and broken my humerus. My arm was in a cast, and Daddy took to carrying me everywhere. Finally Rebecca, who was six at the time, yelled at him over dinner one night, “She broke her arm, not her leg!” It was a memory I couldn’t recall, and yet I treasured it. I loved picturing my father carrying me around. Loving me that much.
I made small talk with Haley and her mom as I checked the girl’s hand for swelling and numbness. “Are you still having much pain?” I asked.
“Hardly any,” she said. She was a stoic kid. She hadn’t even complained the first time I saw her in the hospital, despite the fact that her radial head had snapped from the bone. She was also adorable. Her mom was a big-boned woman, blond and fiftyish, obviously unrelated by blood to her daughter. Every time I saw them, I felt hope. Adam and I could adopt a child like Haley, I thought, or like any of the other adopted kids I saw in my practice. Adam didn’t get it. He didn’t witness the parent-child bonds I saw every single day, bonds that had nothing to do with blood and biology.
The Lies We Told Page 8