The Tempest

by A. J. Scudiere

  “Tried to kill y’all,” Bob added softly, and that seemed all that needed to be said. The rest of them didn’t need more of the grim story, and Laura and Levi faded into the background as they all dealt with the problems the two had caused.

  Joule looked around the space from her perch, and though she was close to hyperventilating, she saw that Paul had built a real shelter down here. That told Joule, more than anything, that people did expect to get tornadoes here. They expected at least enough bad storms to make it worth building all of this. Constructing a shelter wasn’t cheap or easy, she’d learned.

  “Have you had a tornado before?” she asked Paul. It seemed her a rather innocuous question. Some part of her knew she was avoiding looking at the scene before her—her brother shot in the leg, Izzy even worse.

  But they were being tended to, and she would only be in the way. So she pestered Paul to keep her brain occupied. She was quite confident that he would say Yes, all the time.

  What he said instead was, “One big one, fifteen years ago. We don't get many.”

  She must have had a strange look on her face. He told her what she should have understood for herself by now. “Haven't you figured it out? Once is enough to learn.”

  He wasn’t distracting her. He wasn’t making it better. She wished she’d only had once!

  Turning, she climbed down the last step, wondering why she'd wasted the time. Her brain turned on full speed now. Her brother was bleeding, shot, and so was Izzy.

  Joule headed toward Cage. Brenda had already pulled a large medical bag from the shelf and was directing Cage while she pulled out supplies and handed others off to Dev.

  Paul had stocked this place, filling the metal shelves that were bolted into drywall. The walls were spackled and taped but not painted.

  Brenda was using scissors to cut Cage’s jeans up to the spot where the blood was coming from. As Joule watched, more bubbled out of the wound. It wasn’t spurting, but it wasn’t stopping, either. To her untrained eye, it looked like too much. His thigh was dripping with his own blood, and Joule fought the abject terror that accompanied knowing her brother had been shot and maybe mortally wounded.

  She glanced across the room and made a quick decision. Though she knew Izzy needed her more, Joule needed Cage more. She wasn't proud of making that call, but it was what it was. She knelt down next to her brother and asked Brenda, “Is there an exit wound?”

  “You're looking at it,” Brenda told her without missing a beat. “It went in the back, and this is where it came out.”

  “Oh, thank God.” Joule didn't know much about gunshot wounds, but she knew the bullet not being lodged inside him was the better option. Her brother was now in a disturbingly good mood for someone watching his own blood ooze steadily from his own leg.

  “He's good,” Brenda told her sharply. “I've got this. Go help the girl.”

  Joule looked up at Cage, thinking she would go if he dismissed her. Instead, as Brenda tended to his wounds, applying pressure and trying to get them to stop bleeding, he pointed to another spot. Joule couldn’t see it because it was covered in blood, but she knew what he was pointing at.

  Cage grinned and told Brenda, “This leg can take it. Somebody already stabbed me here and glued me back together once.”

  “Shut up!” Joule yelled at him, glad for his good spirits. Then she added her usual, “I said I was sorry.”

  “Go help Izzy,” Cage said softly, his expression now serious. His easy instruction and clear gaze convinced her he would be okay.

  Joule crawled across the short distance to Dr. Murasawa, who had given up on trying to get Izzy to wake up and had slipped out from under her. Izzy was now laid out across the floor, with Dev hovering over her. Dr. Murasawa began ripping her shirt open.

  Joule jerked back at the sight. Cage’s wound had too much blood, but Izzy? This was everywhere, and Joule could see tissue at the edges of the wound. Blood practically poured out each time Dev moved in the slightest bit. He wasn’t “hovering” over her, as Joule had thought, but was actively stanching the bleeding.

  “Here,” Dr. Murasawa said, reaching into the medical supply bag Brenda had set between them. She handed Joule a fistful of gauze already bloody from her own fingers. “Right here. Apply more pressure.”

  She said it as though there was more pressure to apply. But Joule wasn’t sure she could do more than Murasawa and Dev were already doing. Still, she leaned forward, pushing the gauze against the wound, almost as though she were doing CPR. There was no rhythm but the short prayers running through her head.

  “What about her back? Do we need to roll her over?”

  “In a moment. This side is worse. We have to stop it first.”

  Was it a blessing that she’d already seen the worst of it? Joule didn’t know. As bad as this was, the other side could be much better and still be horrific. Her thoughts numbed as she tried to focus on doing the job.

  “Okay, I’m going to tip her. Joule, you hold where you are. Deveron, get gauze ready to stop what’s on her back.” Dr. Murasawa was taking firm charge. Joule was relieved; she was an engineer, but that didn’t include human machines.

  As Joule pressed to the spot, now moving as Dr. Murasawa tipped Izzy, her friend jerked. She made a noise that sounded like she was struggling to breathe.

  “I think she may have a collapsed lung,” Dr. Murasawa pronounced. Though she wasn’t a medical doctor, she seemed to know a lot.

  Joule ignored the thought that knowledge alone might not be enough to save her friend.

  “How do we fix it?” Joule asked. She wanted to believe that, if they just had a plan, they could make it work. But even as she asked, above her, a roar and a boom made them all look up.

  The funnel had finally reached them.

  71

  Cage was carried up the steps by Joule on one side and Dr. Chithra Murasawa on the other.

  They moved sideways. The east Indian woman was shorter than his sister, and she went first in an effort to keep him level. Joule brought up the rear.

  It didn't matter that they tried so hard to protect his leg. The pain was excruciating, no matter what they did. They'd managed to make the bleeding stop and he was bandaged using a massive amount of gauze. His thigh was now effectively twice as big around from all the necessary gauze tied on tightly with shirts, strips of fabric, and pressure. He wiggled his toes periodically to be sure he still could.

  When they hit the top step and he could see out the open closet door, Cage was impressed to find the house still standing.

  It had sounded so much worse. But then again, he was no expert.

  Boomer had walked out into the yard, the stillness circling around him. Clean air brought the sharp bite of ions after a storm, but the normal sounds that he’d taken for granted—creatures scurrying, bugs buzzing, birds chirping in the trees—were all eerily absent.

  The only noise was Boomer, talking into the huge brick of a telephone in his hand.

  Bob stood at the edge of the porch, watching everything and bouncing a little. He turned to face them, motioning them forward. “It's safe.”

  Paul had kept them safe with the shelter. He’d had medical supplies enough for both Cage and Izzy, and even for Dev’s scratch to the head that they’d only discovered later. There was food and, after they'd stabilized Cage and bandaged Dev, they'd all managed to eat a little.

  Joule had been overjoyed to find cans of tuna, and little Toto had been thrilled to eat one. He’d drunk all the water from the can and then lapped up more and more. Joule had refilled the tiny bottle cap over and over until he'd finally had enough.

  Cage was quite certain that his sister now had a kitten. And he wondered if Mary Allen and Glenda, who owned Desperado’s Hideaway, would let her keep it. He was almost certain that, if they wouldn't, then the two of them—or the three of them—would be moving somewhere that would. Then again, he wasn’t certain if any of them would be staying at the Hideaway anymore. There was a huge ho
le in the side of the house that might take a while to repair.

  As the two women, now very mismatched in height without the stairs correcting for it, moved him across the living room, he inadvertently put weight on the leg.

  “Ow!” he yelped, unable to stop the sound and gripping their arms too tightly, just as he grabbed everyone's attention before he shook his head. “Sorry, dumb move.”

  He breathed out through the pain and tried to distract himself. “Boomer’s got a phone?”

  “Old Sat-phone,” Bob replied, still standing at the edge of the porch. “Always carry it.”

  “Do you to just run search and rescue?” Joule asked him, still holding Cage up. She would literally support him forever if she had to. He knew that.

  Bob answered, “Anytime we got something going on, we do. We started with our dad when we were kids.”

  Cage had a moment to wonder what kind of man produced sons like Boomer and Bob. But they were doing good work.

  “We're doing a lot more of it each year. Lost Dad about five years ago.” He sighed and shifted the topic a little. “The truck is jacked up high because we get floods. It’s heavy because we get high winds and down trees a lot. So we got a winch on the front of it. We get tornadoes every once in a while. Recently we've gotten a lot.”

  “Like this?” Cage asked, but Bob shook his head.

  “This is new.” He paused as though there was nothing more to say about that. Then he added, “Boomer and I checked the weather already. The fronts are done. Everything has moved through the area and dissipated. This should have been the end of it.”

  The sky was once again a bright and bold blue, absent of any clouds.

  Out in the yard, Boomer pulled the phone from his ear and turned around, hollering up to the group. “We need to get out to the road ASAP. We’ve got an ambulance already on the way for this one.” He motioned to Cage.

  Cage nodded but wondered how he could make it to the road when he couldn't stand and his bike was surely gone.

  “Let me see about the truck,” Bob said, hopping the steps down to the ground, much more agile than he appeared he would be. The truck was not quite where they'd left it, but it was upright, and in a few moments, Bob had backed it up to the porch.

  It wasn't like Cage to let others carry him, but he had to let them do it this time. He was more trouble than help, and it hurt no matter what. At least getting carried was faster. Boomer and Bob, were an evenly matched set, moving like a well-oiled machine. They laid him across the backseat of the truck and let Joule ride in the front.

  The ride was rough, the gravel on the driveway a mess, and he gritted his teeth against each bump and jolt. When they reached the highway, the pavement itself was smoother, but it was littered with debris, and the truck rolled over all of it.

  “What about Izzy?” he asked the question that no one had asked yet.

  “There's another crew that will come back for her tonight or tomorrow,” Boomer told them. “They’ll get Levi and Laura, too. If they can find them.”

  Boomer said Brenda had covered Izzy with a sheet, the most respectful way to leave her in the unfinished shelter as they all headed up the stairs.

  The group had been stuck in the shelter for more than five hours, but Izzy hadn’t made it past the first twenty minutes, despite their heroic efforts. She’d needed a hospital. She’d needed surgery. She’d needed not to have been fucking shot by a drug runner.

  Levi and Laura had disappeared, most likely their bodies had been swept up by the storm. Cage hoped they rotted somewhere.

  Anger bubbled through every bone. Izzy had been ripped from the pipe with Joule, but she’d survived that! She’d found Dr. Murasawa. And they'd come to help save whatever was on fire.

  But Levi and Laura, with their greed and shitty decisions, had shot him and Izzy and probably even left the bullet graze on Dev’s head.

  Dev would be okay. And Brenda had assured Cage that he would, too. “I've seen worse. Daddy took a bullet to the thigh, and he’s walking around just fine.”

  Cage figured that while Paul wasn’t his role model in general, he could certainly serve as a model for this. He flexed his toes again, glad that they still worked and angry that Izzy was still in the shelter.

  When they arrived at the crossroad where Boomer had arranged the meeting, the ambulance was waiting. For the first time, as the EMTs loaded him onto a gurney and shoved him into the back of the ambulance, Cage realized his injury was bad enough that they thought he might not survive.

  The speed with which they moved, racing him to the hospital, reinforced their concern. Brenda might not be the best judge about gunshot wounds.

  The EMTs had given Joule directions to find him in the hospital but refused to let her ride in the ambulance with him. A short while later, he was wheeled into the ER.

  The doctor asked him questions as the crew rushed him down the hallway. “How long ago were you shot? Can you wiggle your toes? … Show me.”

  He was rapidly whisked into surgery, which made him even more nervous. Brenda was definitely wrong. He knew they wouldn’t move him that fast unless his injury was serious.

  As they laid him out on the table, hooking him to IVs and machines, Cage turned to the nearest doctor and grabbed her arm. “What's your name?”

  “Dr. Patel,” she answered kindly, not giving in to his own wild fear. “What do you need?”

  “If I don’t make it…” Cage whispered as he felt the anesthetic starting to take hold, “Tell my sister about… the… tickets.”

  72

  Joule sat on the soft but still uncomfortable couch in the hospital waiting room.

  She had believed that she and Sarah and Dev were smart people until they'd been tasked with finding this particular surgical waiting room in the maze of the hospital hallways. It had taken five different people and three different sets of directions to get them here. Of course, once they'd checked at the desk to be sure they were at the right place, and had signed in, they’d been summarily dismissed to wait for the surgeon to come out. So they slumped in the cold, blue-and-white room with the old print magazines.

  Though they clustered together, they stayed mostly quiet. Sarah graciously shared her phone, and together, they played stupid little video games, trying to replace their fear with leveling up.

  The fact that they'd rushed her brother in so quickly made Joule think that Dr. Murasawa’s estimates of his chances for survival had been cheerfully overblown. That may have been a good thing at the time, but now Joule’s worries ran rampant.

  What if they'd not taken the job? She wondered why Izzy had made it so far, only to be shot. Would Izzy have survived if they hadn't been stuck in the tornado shelter for hours?

  Joule wasn't sure if she would ever know the answers. And she hated that.

  Her thoughts also took the obvious but morbid turn. Would Cage survive?

  In an attempt to shake that thought and the crushing sensation that accompanied it, she stood up abruptly. After that, it seemed the only thing to do to quell her nervous energy was to head to the vending machine as though that was what she meant to do. She returned with snacks and disturbingly poor coffee for everyone. No one even bothered to crinkle the wrappers and open the food, though periodically they each seemed to forget how bad the coffee was and take a sip.

  She settled back in, played more games and, at one point, did an ill-advised internet search for how long surgery should take for gunshot wounds. But the results were so varied that it didn't let her know if Cage should have been out hours ago or if she should prepare to sit here for five hours more.

  Three other families or groups sat waiting in the room with them, leaving her and Dev and Sarah clustered together on one couch. Each time a physician stepped out of the surgical suite, the entire room either stood up or leaned forward. Three times, someone had come out—and three times, it had not been for her.

  At last a doctor arrived, her soft voice saying, “I'm looking for the famil
y of Faraday Mazur.”

  Joule jerked forward immediately, though it seemed to take Sarah and Dev a little longer to put the name together with the roommate they constantly called “Cage.”

  “Yes!” She rubbed her hands down the front of her jacket and missed the soft feel of Toto curled in the pocket. She'd left him with Boomer, confident he was in good hands. But now, holding Toto would have made the news more bearable.

  The doctor nodded, a short, curt movement, as she was clearly very practiced at not giving away any information from her expression. But her next words were, “The surgery was a success. Your brother should have a full recovery, though he’ll be in the hospital for at least several days for observation and physical therapy.”

  At Joule’s expectant expression, she continued. “The bullet went all the way through, but it didn’t nick an artery or a bone. Our time was spent making sure that nothing else was damaged and then that everything was properly put back together.”

  Joule was stunned, trying to absorb what her brain told her was only good news. She couldn’t feel it yet, though.

  The doctor stared at her, as if something might be wrong. But surely she'd seen this before? People must need a moment all the time. She gently asked, “Is there anything else I can answer for you?”

  “That's it? Just the one surgery? Then he’s good as new?”

  “Well, he will have a scar. A gunshot wound scar. He might think that's cool.”

  Not right now, Joule thought, though Cage would. He’d enjoy matching the scar where she'd stabbed him. She latched onto that and blurted out, “The fact that he was stabbed in that same leg before didn't interfere?”

  “It wasn't quite the same place. The old scar isn't deep. Whoever took care of it handled it perfectly adequately.”

  Perfectly adequately. Joule thought of her time in the attic, frantically trying to glue her brother's leg back together where she'd stabbed him. But she would take it.

  She opened her mouth to say thank you, but instead, she blurted one more question. “When can I see him?”