The Lies We Told

by Diane Chamberlain

  Someone was moving my body, turning me first one way, then another. The smell was nearly overwhelming and I tasted bile rising in my throat. I felt a warm rag on the back of my thighs. My bottom. Between my legs. I opened my eyes. The light in the room was entirely different now, lemony and thick. The girl was there, cleaning me as if I were a baby.

  “Sorry,” I whispered.

  “What, ma’am?” the girl asked.

  “Sorry,” I said again.

  I thought I heard her laugh. “It’s all right, Miss Mary,” she said. “I got you cleaned up good as new, now.”

  I blinked and absorbed what I could of the room without turning my head, afraid the dizziness would overwhelm me if I did. It was a small cube. A narrow door—a closet?—was on the wall opposite me. One window, the glass cracked on an angle in the lower pane, let in the sun. The walls were covered with faded, ancient-looking wallpaper. Gold diamonds on a cream-colored background. Aside from my cot, the only other furniture was an old dresser, the walnut veneer peeling off the front of the drawers, and what looked like a bassinet made of dingy white wicker, cracked and broken in places. The bassinet was pushed into a corner, as though it had been used many years ago and no longer served a purpose.

  I looked back at the girl who was drying my legs with a towel and realized I was nude from the waist down. I didn’t care. Nudity was the least of my worries.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “I’m Simmee,” the girl said. “And you’re Mary.”

  “No,” I said, realizing only then that she’d been calling me by that name. “Not Mary. Maya.”

  “Oh, I thought you said Mary.” She smiled. “Well, now, we each got ourselves a funny name, ain’t we?” She leaned out of my line of sight for a moment, then stood next to me again. “Lady Alice says I should get you walking,” she said. “Ain’t good to being layin’ down so long, she says. And I need to show you where the bathroom is in case this happens again. I’m puttin’ some of my pants on you now, okay, ma’am?”

  I felt her lift my left leg, then my right and she slipped soft fabric up to my hips. “You ain’t got no shoes, but I think you’ll fit in some of mine.”

  “No shoes?” I said. Where were my shoes?

  “I got to wash your pants and things with the sheet,” she said. “We ain’t got another sheet, so I had to put towels on the bed for you for time bein’.”

  “Thank you for doing this,” I whispered.

  “Happy to do it, Miss Maya.”

  “Simmee,” I said, “I need to go back to the airport.”

  “Can’t go nowhere, ma’am.” Simmee stood next to the bed, the bundle of foul laundry in her arms. “Floodwaters got us wrapped up tight,” she said. “Last Run Shelter’s turned into Last Run Island for a spell. I’m afraid you’re good and trapped here, just like the rest of us.”

  21

  Rebecca

  THEY FLEW BACK TO THE AIRPORT LATE THAT EVENING. Rebecca stared blankly out the window at the darkening sky, the numbness now in every cell of her body. Even when Adam turned to her to ask, “Should we have stayed with the searchers?” she didn’t bother to answer him. More searchers were flying in. There was only room in the clearing for two helicopters, and the search and rescue team members who were already there nearly pushed them aboard the blue-and-yellow chopper. The searchers found euphemistic ways of saying that she and Adam would only be in the way; it was time for the professionals to take over. They needed equipment to reach the pilot, they said. They needed another boat. They needed…Rebecca couldn’t remember what else they’d said. They pushed her, and she’d allowed it, walking toward the helicopter, unable to feel her feet. Her legs.

  “Rebecca?” Adam nudged her, asking again, “Should we have stayed?”

  She didn’t respond. Just stared out the window, holding tight to the numbness.

  The searchers had somehow determined that the pilot was dead. “Most likely killed instantly,” one of them had said. So, in fourteen hours of searching, they’d found the pilot, the poor guy who’d been defiled by an alligator and many, many scraps of metal. That meant that four people were still missing. And there was this: thousands of other people were still missing. Who knew how many were trapped in their homes? Who knew how many lay underwater on their streets and in their yards? Rebecca didn’t want to hear anyone say, “Why spend all these resources on four missing people when thousands are still unaccounted for?” She didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want to think about that delicate leafy branch as it dipped and danced in the rushing water of the stream on its way to the river, where it had been instantly, irrevocably, lost. And so she didn’t think. She didn’t think about anything at all.

  When they reached the airport, she went directly to the urgent-care tent, leaving Adam to update Dorothea on their day. She dug into her work, glad to be with patients who didn’t know or care who she was and what had happened. They cared only about themselves and, in many cases, about one another, because there was a contagious kindness among these people now. The more trapped they felt, the more their injuries festered, and the more frightened they became, the more they seemed to sense they were in this together. She witnessed the kindness as a woman offered the last half of her bottle of water to an elderly man. As a young man held a stranger’s feverish child on his lap. She wanted to be with these hurting people. She was one of them now. Maybe she could help them even if she couldn’t help herself.

  Sometime in the middle of the night, Rebecca spotted Dorothea walking through the tent toward her, and a moment of sheer terror broke through the numbness at the sight of her.

  “No news,” Dorothea said quickly. Then she drew Rebecca away from her patient, despite her protests. “I’ve sent Adam to bed,” she said. “And I want you to go up now, too.”

  “I’m fine here.” Rebecca couldn’t meet Dorothea’s gaze. Instead she looked at the line of exhausted, sweating, sick and injured patients.

  “No, you’re not,” Dorothea said. “I insist you get some sleep. I’ll get one of the fresh DMAT docs to take over here.”

  Rebecca looked at her then. “Don’t make me go,” she said. Her voice sounded wounded to her own ears, but she steadied herself, clinging hard to the numbness.

  Dorothea looked defeated. “I’m worried about you,” she said.

  “Don’t be.”

  “Two more hours.” Dorothea looked at her watch. “That’s it. Then you’re going to sleep.”

  Rebecca nodded noncommittally, then headed back to her canvas-walled cubicle.

  Hours later, she was examining the tender belly of a teenage girl when everything changed. Early-morning light turned the canvas tent walls a pale yellow, and all at once, the numbness left her with such suddenness that she gasped. Everything around her snapped into focus: The moaning African-American girl on the cot. The worn green flip-flops on the girl’s feet. Her own pale fingers where she pressed them against the girl’s dark skin. The tray of instruments at her side. Snap, snap! She lifted her hands from the girl as if she’d been burned. Rushing from the cubicle, she grabbed a nurse by the arm.

  “Gotta get out!” she said. “Girl with lower right quadrant—” She couldn’t finish the sentence. She ran through the tent, then through the sea of evacuees waiting for their turn inside. She ran through the lobby and the long corridor and the concourse crowded with people who had nowhere to go. Pushing open one of the gate doors, she raced down the stairs and out onto the tarmac, where the roar of the choppers coming and going filled her head. At the wall of the building, she bent forward and screamed and screamed and screamed, letting the choppers steal the sound of her voice, until she had no voice left to steal.

  22

  Maya

  I KNEW I HAD A FEVER EVEN BEFORE I OPENED MY EYES. MY mind was logy, thick with the heat, and I was soaked with perspiration. The room was filled with rosy light, and I guessed it must be close to dusk. I must have slept for hours. I remembered waking up long enough to check
the wound on my leg. There it was—a gash nearly the length of my shin that someone named Duchess Alice or Queen Alice had stitched closed with thick thread. The skin around it was hot and red, and I knew I was in trouble. Deep trouble, in too many ways to count. At least one of my ribs was broken. It ached when I took in a breath and made me yelp when I changed position on the bed. My head had a throbbing lump near my right temple and the hair above my ear felt stiff to the touch. Blood.

  I’d awakened one other time to use the small bathroom with its cracked blue wall tile and rust-stained tub. My intestines still grumbled, but the worst was over. The water, I thought, remembering the glass of water the girl—Simmee?—had given me. I can’t drink any more of that water.

  I got out of the bed, straightening the ragged old towels I’d been lying on. Opening the door of the room, I walked into the dark, narrow hallway. So far, I’d seen only that hallway and the bathroom across from the room where I was staying. Where was I? What had Simmee called it? A shelter? I only remembered bits and pieces of my brief conversation with her.

  The dizziness teased me, and I had to brace myself against the walls as I walked down the short hallway. I was barefoot. Where were my shoes? The hallway opened into a small kitchen. I had the feeling everything about the house was small. I leaned against the doorjamb in the kitchen, keeping my breathing as shallow as I possibly could to avoid the pain in my rib cage.

  The kitchen was a pale pink, the sort of soft pink someone might use in the room of a baby girl. The appliances—a short, round-shouldered refrigerator and an electric stove—looked ancient. A small rectangular table surrounded by four chairs sat in the corner near the screen door.

  A second open doorway stood to my left, and I headed for it. I found myself in a living room full of mismatched furniture far too big for the space. The sofa was a broad brown-and-cream plaid, its cushions sagging. A green floral chair, overstuffed and missing one ball leg, tilted in the corner behind an ottoman. A dark brown prefab wall unit held a small TV that I doubted still worked now that TVs had gone digital. The wood-plank floor was covered by an oval rag rug. Despite the shoddy furnishings, the room was neat and uncluttered. I walked across the room—it took me only four steps—to peer through the two curtainless, shadeless windows. Outside, I could see only the deep green of shrubs that blocked all but a few rays of pink sunlight from entering the room.

  I turned around to head back to the kitchen, and that’s when I saw the guns. I caught my breath, grabbing the edge of the tilted chair to steady myself. The two guns were propped against the wall near the living room door. Were they rifles? Shotguns? I didn’t know the difference. The only type of gun that would be forever branded in my brain was the Colt automatic that had killed my parents.

  I wanted to get out of that house. I needed to get back to the airport and Rebecca and Adam.

  “Simmee?” I called as I walked into the kitchen again, but my voice sounded as though I hadn’t used it in months. I pulled open the screen door, nearly falling down the two concrete steps that led into…not a yard, exactly. More of a jungle. The world outside the house was so green that it made me woozy, and I had to hang on to the rusted iron railing that jutted from the steps. The brush and woods were wildly overgrown, and the trees seemed to cradle the house with their branches. I was in a suffocating green cage. Ahead of me and to the right, though, I could see a path through the undergrowth. It was narrow and uneven, carpeted with sandy white soil and crisscrossed with tree roots. It entered the tangle of green at a vertigo-inducing angle, inclined a little, then veered to the left out of my line of sight. My stomach heaved just looking at it. I lowered myself to the top step and closed my eyes.

  “Well, hey, Miss Maya.”

  It was a man’s voice. I forced my eyes open, and saw Simmee and a young guy walking toward me from the path.

  I gripped the railing and tried to stand, but the muscles in my legs wouldn’t cooperate. It was like trying to stand on limp spaghetti.

  The guy rushed forward. “Easy, now,” he said, offering me his hand. I leaned hard against him as I rose to my bare feet. “Let’s get you back inside,” he said. “Sim, you get the door. That’s a girl.”

  Simmee opened the screen door for us, and the man helped me into the kitchen. He pulled out one of the chairs from the table, and I sank into it, letting out my breath. I tried to smile at them. “I’m a mess,” I said.

  “Oh, no, Miss Maya,” Simmee said. She opened one of the cabinets and pulled down a plastic glass. “You’re just beat up somethin’ fierce.”

  The man grinned at me, his arms folded across his chest as he leaned against the side of the old refrigerator. “Well, all I can say is it’s good to see you among the living.” He studied me with a curious smile. “You don’t remember meeting me this mornin’,” he said. “Do I got that right?”

  I shut my eyes, trying to sort memory from dream. He didn’t look familiar, but I did vaguely remember seeing a man in the doorway of the room where I’d slept. “Begins with a T,” I said, looking at him again. He was staggeringly handsome. Mid-twenties, maybe, and very fair. Blue eyes. Blond hair. He had a strong, square chin and a broad chest beneath a black T-shirt. Gold hair shimmered like sunlight on his forearms.

  The guns, I thought. The guns are his.

  Simmee filled a glass with water from the faucet. “This here’s my husband, Tully,” she said. “He’s the one that saved you.”

  I had so many questions for him. Where did he find me? Where were the other people from the helicopter? But all I could seem to manage was, “I need to get to the airport.”

  “Here you go, now, Miss Maya,” Simmee said, handing me the glass. “You need to drink. You’re all dried out inside.”

  My hand shook so violently as I tried to take the glass that Simmee had to hold it to my lips. I suddenly remembered my bout of diarrhea and pushed her hand away. “The water,” I said. “Where is it from?”

  Simmee looked surprised. “The tap, of course.” She pointed to the sink.

  I shook my head. “I think maybe that’s what made me sick during the night.”

  “You sayin’ our water’s no good?” Tully smiled, and I was relieved that his voice was teasing.

  “I…maybe because of the storm?” I guessed. “Or maybe you all are just used to it and my system’s not. Do you have any bottled water?” I looked around the kitchen as though I might spot a bottle of Dasani or Aquafina, and knew the quest was ludicrous.

  Simmee and Tully both laughed. “Water’s perfectly fine here, ma’am,” Tully said. “But hey, Sim. Check them bags I found with her. I saw some bottles of water in one of ’em.” He pointed beneath the table. I leaned over, wincing at the pain in my rib, and saw my backpack along with a couple of duffel bags on the floor. I felt as though I’d bumped into a friend in a foreign country. In an instant, though, the real-life nightmare came back to me.

  Brace for a crash!

  I remembered dropping like a stone, my hands pressed against the window of the helicopter, the treetops coming closer, closer, the litters pressing hard against my legs.

  “Oh,” I said weakly, as I sat up straight again, rubbing my temple in confusion. “Where is everyone?” I searched Tully’s face as Simmee bent over for the baggage. “The people who own these other bags? Where are they?”

  “Let me get them, honey,” Tully said to Simmee, gently moving her aside. “Down too low for you.” He scooted the other chair out of the way, drew the bags from beneath the table and slid them in front of the stove. They stank of fetid water.

  I hated the way he avoided my question, but right then, I was hungry for what I had in my backpack. I pointed toward it. “I have pills in there to sterilize water,” I said, glancing from Tully to Simmee. “And antibiotics. I have a fever. I think…” I stopped myself from saying the wound on my leg was infected, which it most certainly was. I didn’t want to insult them again.

  Simmee handed me the backpack, and for the first time, I real
ized she was pregnant. Quite pregnant. She wore a loose, sleeveless dress, but still. How had I missed that round belly?

  The pack was wet and smelly beneath my fingers as I struggled to open the clasp. My hands trembled from hours—days?—without food or water, except for that one glassful that had gone straight through me. I finally managed to flip open the top of the bag and reach inside.

  “You’re a doctor, right?” Tully asked from the doorway as I pulled a bottle of water from the backpack, uncapped it and drank. My stomach balked, and I forced myself to pause in my drinking.

  “Yes,” I said, remembering that Simmee had asked the same question. “How did you know?”

  “All the stuff that was with you on the chopper. I looked through some of them bags for identification. Saw all the first-aid stuff.”

  “Where are the others?” I asked as I unzipped the plastic bag that held the antibiotics. I shook two capsules from one of the bottles and swallowed them with the rest of my water. “Where are the people who were with me on the helicopter?”

  Tully scooted the second chair closer to me, turned it around and straddled it. “Ma’am,” he said, “I’m sorry to tell you this, but I believe you was the only one that made it out of that bird alive.”

  “Oh, no.” I remembered my patient, the little boy, as clearly as if I’d seen him only moments earlier. I remembered Janette, the nurse. “Are you sure?” I asked. “Did you find me…where did you find me?”

  “Ma’am—Miss Maya—we had some serious floodin’ from these sister storms. I was out in my johnboat on Billings Creek checking out the damage and I saw the chopper. It was stuck in some trees. Not real high up. Looked like it broke a bunch of branches and come to rest maybe fifteen, twenty feet from the ground. The side was tore off and y’all fell out. Like you wasn’t strapped in.”