“We weren’t,” I whispered.
“I climbed up and could see a lady… Was the pilot a girl?”
I’d forgotten that. I nodded. The motion sent my head spinning again.
“Well, she was still in her seat, but she was…” Tully shook his head. “She passed,” he said quietly. “Everything from the plane was on the ground, half in the water, like.”
“She don’t need to know everythin’,” Simmee said quietly.
“I want to know,” I said. “There were three patients and a nurse besides the pilot and me. You didn’t see any of them?”
“No, ma’am. The water was right swift. You wouldn’t believe it. Usually just a trickle through there. Only thing that saved you was you got caught in the branches and whatnot on the bank. You and these here bags. It’s a miracle you landed where you did or you wouldn’t be here. And a miracle I got to you when I did, ’cause that water was still rising.”
Why me? I thought, starting to tremble again. Why did I live and not the others?
Simmee leaned close to me, resting her arm around my shoulders. “You was meant to live,” she said softly, as if privy to my thoughts. She smelled of powder or laundry soap or something clean and beautiful. How she could stand being so close to me and my stench, I didn’t know.
“Thank you for rescuing me,” I said to Tully, my voice thick. I clutched my rancid backpack to my chest. “I’m with DIDA,” I said. “That’s a doctors’ relief organization and we’re working out of the airport in Wilmington. I need to get back there.”
He shook his head. “The water…it’s been crazy. It was already way higher than normal, but it come up even higher overnight and washed my johnboat away. Snapped the rope where it was tied to the dock. Ain’t never happened before. We was already cut off from the mainland. We can’t go nowhere till the water goes down or we get our hands on another boat.”
Trapped. I remembered the word Simmee had used to describe our predicament.
“Is this an island?” I asked.
“Not usually,” Simmee said. “But it is right now.”
“This here is Last Run Shelter,” Tully said. “It’s connected to the mainland by a skinny ol’ strip of land. When it floods, we’re usually stranded for a few days. Maybe a week at most. But I ain’t never seen it flood like this.”
“Me, neither,” Simmee said, “and I lived here all my life.”
“How far is it to the Wilmington airport?” I asked.
“As the crow flies, about fifty miles,” Tully said, “but there ain’t no crows that can carry you.”
“Well…” I looked around the kitchen. “Can I use your phone?”
Simmee laughed. “We ain’t got a phone.”
“I had a BlackBerry—a cell phone—with me.” I started digging through my backpack again. “The cell towers were down, but maybe they’re back up by now.” I pulled medical supplies, a flashlight, batteries and two MREs out of my bag, setting them on the table. “My phone’s not here,” I said.
“Maybe it fell out?” Tully suggested.
I remembered Dorothea running toward me with the pack as I was loading the little boy on the chopper. Maybe it had fallen out then.
I looked at Tully in frustration. “Is it possible…I know you’ve already done a lot for me, but could you go back to where the helicopter went down and wait there for help to come? Or at least leave a note saying where I am?”
“Not without a boat,” Simmee said.
“People will be looking for me,” I said. “My sister’s a doctor with DIDA. My husband, too. They’ll be looking for me.” My voice broke. “How will they find me?”
“You’re alive, ma’am,” Simmee reminded me, and I knew she was telling me I should feel grateful for that fact. “Everything else’ll sort itself out in good time.”
“I know,” I conceded, but only momentarily. “Maybe one of your neighbors has a boat? Or at least a phone?”
“Us and Lady Alice are the only ones stubborn enough to live out here,” Simmee said. “And Lady Alice ain’t got no boat. No phone, neither.”
“Who’s Lady Alice?” I asked. The one who screwed up my shin, I remembered.
“Just our neighbor.” Tully stood up and stretched.
“She lives through the woods that way.” Simmee pointed out the window. “I fetched her when Tully brung you here ’cause she knows some things about doctorin’.”
“She’s not a real doctor like you,” Tully said. “But she stitched you up good, right?”
I nodded. My shin was on fire and I hoped the antibiotics would kick in quickly. I drained the rest of my water, then rooted through the Baggies looking for the water purification tablets. “If you’ll give me a pitcher,” I said, “I’ll use these tablets to make some water that’ll be safe for me to drink.”
“Sure.” Simmee reached into one of the cupboards and pulled out a plastic pitcher. I started to get to my feet. “No,” she said, her hand briefly on my shoulder. “You set.” She filled the pitcher with water and handed it to me. I wasn’t sure how many tablets to add to it. I’d never used them before and never thought I’d actually need to. I dropped one into the pitcher and hoped for the best.
“Thanks,” I said.
Simmee moved to her husband’s side, and Tully put his arm around her.
“She’s gonna be a good mama, ain’t she?” he asked, but he wasn’t really talking to me and I knew it. He was talking to the air. To the heavens. To whatever force had put him together with the beautiful, kind and ethereal creature at his side.
I thought of how she’d cared for me. Cleaned me up. Dressed me. “She will be,” I agreed.
I watched as Tully leaned over as though he might kiss Simmee’s cheek. Instead, he breathed in the spun gold of her halo, and for a moment, I forgot about being afraid. Instead I felt touched. Touched and, finally, truly, grateful.
23
Rebecca
THEY SAT ON LOST LUGGAGE IN A SMALL ROOM NEAR THE tents in the baggage-claim area. Adam leaned forward from his perch on a huge chestlike suitcase, elbows on his knees, and looked at her without speaking. His eyes were red. At some point, he’d found the time and privacy to cry. Rebecca hadn’t seen him give into it, but then she’d been asleep for four hours, thanks to the Valium Dorothea had forced on her. She’d taken the pill without a fuss, knowing it offered her the only chance at sleep, and without a few hours downtime, she’d be of no value to anyone. And she wanted to be of value. It was the only cure for the unaccustomed helplessness she felt and the only way she could keep her mind off Maya’s fate.
Had it happened quickly, so quickly Maya’d felt no fear? She vacillated between hoping her sister was still alive in the woods, and hoping she’d been killed on impact, the way the searchers had assumed the pilot had died.
Now, she sat across the small room from Adam on a network of soft-sided suitcases she’d arranged so that they formed a sort of recliner. This was a fitting room for the two of them, she thought. Lost luggage. Lost people.
The upper portion of one wall of the room was made of glass, and Adam abruptly sat up straight, peering through it. “Here comes Dot,” he said, getting to his feet.
Rebecca rose awkwardly to find that her legs were asleep. She sat down again with a thud as Adam opened the door.
“No news,” Dorothea said before either of them could ask.
“Give me the phone again,” Rebecca whispered, reaching toward Dorothea. She’d lost her voice since her screaming episode early that morning. Dorothea pulled the satellite phone from its holster and handed it to her.
Rebecca yanked the antenna to its full length and dialed Maya’s number, while Adam and Dorothea waited patiently for her to act out the charade.
You’ve reached Dr. Maya Ward.
Rebecca pressed her lips together at the sound of Maya’s voice. She wanted to dial the number over and over again, as if hearing Maya sound so alive could somehow make her be alive. She felt Dot and Adam’s eyes
on her, though, and handed the phone back to Dorothea. “When’s the last time you heard from the S and R team?” she asked.
“Half an hour ago.” Dorothea lowered herself to the one chair in the room. “They’ve been good about staying in touch, but they have zilch to report. They airlifted the pilot and the other body out of—”
“They’re searching the woods, too, right?” Rebecca interrupted. It hurt to talk and she rubbed her throat. “I mean, not just the water.”
Dorothea nodded. “They have searchers and dogs in the woods,” she said. “I’m confident they’re doing a good job, babe.” She slapped her hands on her knees, straightening her back. “Now,” she said, shifting to her don’t-give-me-any-crap voice, “I want the two of you to go home.”
“No,” they answered together. They’d talked about it when Rebecca woke up from her Valium-laced sleep. They were not going anywhere. It was the one good thing—the only good thing about this whole mess: she and Adam were on the same page.
“We’re not leaving,” Adam said, and he sat down on the chest again as if planting himself in the room. “I feel closer to her here. I can’t go back to our house right now. I’d go crazy.” He shook his head. “I want to be where I’m needed.”
“Same here,” whispered Rebecca.
“Why am I not surprised?” Dorothea said. “Will you at least take the rest of today off? Just…chill. Talk. Do whatever you need to—”
“We’re working,” Rebecca said, and she knew she was speaking for both of them.
“Either we’re working here or we’re going back to the crash site,” Adam said to Dorothea. “Pick your poison.”
Dorothea sighed. “Okay,” she said. “You win. But pay attention to yourselves and each other. If either of you feels like you’re going down, come to me. Tell me. You don’t have to be superheroes.” She got to her feet. “We’re going to make some major changes here in the next couple of days,” she said.
“How so?” Adam asked.
“They’ve got one of the roads cleared. Had to lift a couple of huge boats off it, if you can believe that. So they’re opening one of the Wilmington high schools as the new evacuation center, and we’ll be setting up a clinic there. FEMA and the Red Cross’ll bring in cots and supplies. The roads leading to Wilmington are still iffy, but they’re bringing in buses from somewhere and tomorrow they’ll start moving the evacuees over. We’ll gradually shut down operations here and move over there.”
“Do they have power?” Rebecca asked.
Dorothea shook her head. “No. They’re bringing in extra generators and they’ll take these over. There’s a cafeteria there, of course, but it’ll still be MREs unless the power comes back on.”
Rebecca pictured a high school. There’d be a gym. An auditorium. Classrooms. She could see the possibilities. “How will it be set up?” she asked. “Will we use—”
“Babe, forget the administrative stuff, okay?” Dorothea said. “We have other folks who can take care of that. Focus on the medical.”
“So we’ll actually get cots?” Adam smiled, and Rebecca wondered how he managed to raise the corners of his lips. “I’m going to miss the conference-room floor.”
“Well, here’s even better news,” Dorothea said. “They’re moving trailers into the high school parking lot for the volunteers. We’re cramming four people to a trailer, but if you don’t mind sharing, you can have one to yourselves.”
Rebecca looked at Adam and gave him a nod.
“Fine,” Adam said.
“No problem,” Rebecca agreed. She wanted Adam close by. The only thing that made this nightmare bearable was knowing she was not in it alone.
24
Maya
WHEN I WOKE UP THE FOLLOWING MORNING, I WAS FILLED WITH panic even before I opened my eyes. I was trapped on an island with strangers, surrounded by water that, for all I knew, might still be rising, and I felt horribly, dizzily nauseous and disoriented. I’d slept most of the day before, turning down the canned peaches Simmee had offered me sometime during the evening, but I’d had plenty of the chemical-tasting water. I wasn’t sure if that was the cause of my roiling stomach or if fear was the culprit. It was far better to wake up here, with two caring people, than alone on the creek bank, I told myself. The thought that I might have regained consciousness in the wilderness with floodwaters cresting over my face did nothing to decrease my sense of panic. I hoped the others had been dead before the water reached them.
Sheets were once again beneath me on the bed, and I couldn’t remember how they got there. Dappled sunlight shimmered across the gold-and-cream wallpaper, and dust motes danced in the air near the windows. Carefully, I sat up, my body like a dry old board that cracked and splintered as it bent. I put my feet on the floor and waited for the dizziness to pass before standing up. On the old dresser, my DIDA uniform pants and T-shirt were neatly folded, along with a pair of panties that did not belong to me. I guessed that mine had been beyond saving. Next to the clothing was a pair of old tennis shoes. I needed to wash. No way would I put on these clean clothes while I still stank of swamp and sweat. I left the room and crossed the hall to the bathroom.
There was a small curtained shower stall in the corner of the bathroom, but I didn’t dare risk using it. Between my light-headedness and the long wound on my shin, a shower could only do me harm. I did my best to wash in the sink, then dressed in my clean clothes. Simmee’s shoes were an excellent fit, although if I had to do any walking, I’d miss my orthotics. They were pretty low on my list of things to worry about.
In the corner of the shower, I found a big bottle of shampoo and I carried it and a threadbare towel into the kitchen where I leaned over the rust-scarred sink, turned on the water and squirted shampoo onto my hair. I gingerly rubbed the blood-caked area above my ear, not wanting it to start bleeding again. Bending over was excruciating. My broken rib felt as though it was slicing into my lung, and lifting my arms over my head only made it worse. I thought of giving up, but I already had the shampoo in my hair. As I let the water flow over my scalp, I thought of how Adam and Rebecca must have felt when they realized I was missing. Did they think I was dead? Oh, God. I couldn’t bear the thought of what they were going through. If only I could get word to them that I was all right!
“Let me.”
I started at the sound of Simmee’s voice, the back of my head knocking into the faucet.
“Easy,” she said, as she ran her fingers through my hair. “Go on now. Put your arms down.”
I lowered my soapy hands to the edge of the sink and closed my eyes.
Simmee turned off the water as she worked the lather into my hair. “We need to watch how much water we use,” she said. “We got a big ol’ holdin’ tank under the house, but who knows how long the electric’ll be out, and we can’t get water out of the well without it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, realizing I’d used up some of their limited water supply.
“Oh, no matter,” she said. “This has got to be killin’ your back, leanin’ over like this. And you got this big ol’ goose egg on the side of your head, don’t you? Didn’t even know you had that. Does it hurt?”
“A little,” I said.
“I’ll make short work of this,” Simmee said, and I felt the firm orb of her belly pressing against my side as she rinsed the shampoo from my hair. She turned off the water and wrapped the towel around my head. “There you go,” she said. “Watch your head on this here faucet when you stand up.”
“Thank you.” I straightened up slowly, leaning against the sink for support. I tried smiling at her as I blotted my hair with the towel. “I couldn’t stand the way I…how filthy I felt.”
“I bet.” Simmee dried her hands on a kitchen towel, then studied me hard. “You’re shakin’ all over,” she said. “You need to eat somethin’. We had t’ eat all the icebox food days ago so it didn’t rot, but I got them canned peaches I told you about. I got all kinds of canned food, actually. And eggs.” She po
inted to the table, and I saw a small basket of eggs in the center.
“Where did you get them?” I asked.
“Our chickens,” she said, then grinned. “Get ’em every morning, whether we want ’em or not. Let me cook you up some.”
I glanced at the old electric stove. “How?” I asked.
“We got a grill in the yard,” she said. “Got a smoker out there, too.” She pulled one of the chairs from beneath the table. “You sit,” she said. “You’re rattlin’ the walls with that shakin’.”
I was so weak from the little I’d done that morning that I nearly fell into the chair. I wasn’t hungry, but knew I needed to eat. “All right,” I said. “Eggs’ll be great.”
She brought breakfast to me in the living room, so I could sit on the three-legged overstuffed chair and elevate my leg on the ottoman. She’d made three perfect eggs, sunny-side up, and I managed to get two of them down before my stomach balked. I even drank half a cup of the coffee that Tully’d brewed on the grill.
“I don’t like coffee, myself,” Simmee said. She sat on the plaid sofa, and I had the feeling she enjoyed watching me eat, the way a mother might take pleasure in nursing her child back to health. “Tully, now,” Simmee continued, “that boy can drink a bucket of coffee three times a day.”
“Where is Tully,” I asked. I hadn’t seen him since the night before.
“Huntin’,” she said. “He’ll git us somethin’ for supper.”
I glanced toward the door where I remembered seeing the guns. Only one was propped against the wall now.
“What does he hunt?” I asked. I didn’t have a single friend who hunted, and it had always struck me as barbaric. Right now, though, I could see how useful his hunting skills could be.
“Oh, everythin’,” she said with a shrug. “Rabbit. Turkey. Sometimes deer. He fishes a lot, too, but he don’t like it as much without the boat.” She laughed. “Tully loves it when the power goes out, though,” she said. “He plays like he’s on that survivor show.”
The Lies We Told Page 14