I was here. I was this.
I study every person I pass. Because what if my mom is here? What if Leo is here? Or my friends? Is this where I should start my search?
A doctor bumps my shoulder as he navigates a teen girl on a stretcher through the crowd. She grits her teeth in pain. Her eyes dart. I sense her fear. I remember my own when I waited here, not knowing anyone. Not knowing if I was okay. Convinced hospitals are where people go to die so it must be my turn. But I made it because of Nurse Cathy and the man with the big hands and the calm voice and Doctor Patel. And me. Because of that, I’m okay and my room belongs to someone else now. Maybe this girl will go to a room like the one I had and be Doctor Patel’s next patient.
She needs to know this is a good thing.
“It’s okay,” I say to her. She looks for my voice. I’m sure she wishes it were coming from someone she knows. I can’t give her that. But I can try to give her peace. Hope. “Everyone is here to help. Let them help.”
And then she is around the corner. Gone. So I push forward.
Still checking every stretcher and doorway for someone I know. Someone I love.
An old man reaches for me. Wants to knot my fingers with his the same way I wanted to knot mine with Charlie’s. I fold his hand into mine as I pass, thinking I’ll give him a brief moment of comfort, then move on. But when I look at his face, he looks back at me with watery eyes. His skin hangs ashen and dull.
He’s almost gone.
“Nurse!” I yell, waving my free hand. “Over here! Hurry!”
The nurse rushes over. Puts her fingertips to his wrist. Checks his pulse. I hold his other hand, waiting. Hoping. The nurse shakes her head. Mouths, “I’m sorry.”
What? “No.” My eyes tear. They can’t just pick and choose. “Do something!”
But she moves on. Eager to help someone who still has a chance.
This man doesn’t.
The old man’s fingers loosen their grip on mine. He gasps for breath. I hang on tighter. He’s slipping but I can’t let go. Nobody deserves to die all alone in a hallway. I remember Charlie. The way he stayed with Jason at the fraternity party, waiting for the ambulance, holding on to hope. I told him it mattered that he’d stayed with him until the end. It mattered that Charlie didn’t let his friend die alone.
“I’m here,” I say. I want to give this man something. Access to a memory. A vision better than here. But I don’t know him. I don’t know his life.
So I tell him about the things I love. That most people love. Like sunshine and ocean water and salty air and sandy feet. His breathing strains. It’s the sound of Charlie all over again. I close my eyes. Try to give him what I couldn’t give Charlie. I tighten my grip on his hand. Let him know the feel of skin on skin from another human in his final moments. I keep talking.
Of blue skies and tall mountains. Of love and laughter. Of the first day of summer. And the last day of winter. Of clouds and air. Of trees and flowers.
“Margaret . . .” The word is a whisper. “Loves flowers.”
“Yes, Margaret does love flowers. She’s picking flowers now. She’s in a great big field of them. There are so many colors. It’s so beautiful. She’s happy. She loves you. So much.”
The tiniest flicker of a smile edges the corner of his mouth as his watery eyes focus then fade.
One last breath.
His hand goes still in mine.
And he’s gone.
I want to fall to the floor like the woman in the yellow shirt. Not just for this man but for Charlie, too. And his friend at the fraternity party. And the person in the bed in the room across from mine in the ICU. For the rows of people lined up along the outside of the hospital and inside the stairwells. For the ones covered up in the triage tents and the ones who won’t be found.
But I have to keep moving. I have to keep pushing myself forward, one foot in front of the other. So I rest this man’s hand over the still space of his heart and let go.
I don’t want to risk waiting for an elevator and being greeted by security guards when I make it to the first floor, so I take a breath, pull Charlie’s journal against my chest, adjust my sweatshirt collar over my mouth and nose, and push the heavy door open into the stairwell.
Don’t look, I tell myself. Don’t breathe.
The bodies are still piled there. More now than before. The rotting smell even worse. My eyes sting and my lungs scream as I run downstairs, passing all of them as I round each flight.
It seems to go on forever.
Until. Finally. An exit door.
I push it open and stumble into the cold morning air, gasping for breath. My head spins, dizzy, from running down multiple flights of stairs without breathing. I steady myself against the side of the building. Inhale fresh air. Try to focus. What if I’m not healed enough to do this? My knees wobble and my vision blurs. I squint my eyes against the daylight. It’s overcast but still so bright compared to the rubble and the blue-gray dim of hospital rooms. But I’m out here in it. I made it. I raise my face to the sky. Let the wind take hold of my hair. To remind me I’m alive. That I survived. And when I finally feel the fizz in my fingertips fade, I push off the wall and move on.
Tents clutter the parking lot. So many people still need help. Then I see a table stacked with granola bars and bottled waters. I edge closer. Not granola bars. Protein bars. Like the ones packed in my emergency earthquake kit in elementary school. I take exactly five. I can make them last for two to three days. Taking more would feel like stealing from the volunteers. Or the ones still hurting. The ones still healing. I stuff the bars and four water bottles into the pockets of my sweatshirt. Then go.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
9:20 A.M.
I rip open a protein bar and take a bite. It’s chewy like caramel, but not nearly as delicious. Chocolate, I think. Chocolate mixed with cardboard. It sticks to my teeth. Feels filmy on my tongue. But I keep eating because I know it will give me the strength I need.
I walk through the gray morning mist of the marine layer and anxiously await the bright streaks of sunshine to burn through. They’re arriving slowly but surely, sputtering to a start. The sky goes orange with beginning.
I look up at the dangling sign of a freeway overpass. Take note of the next exit written on the sign. It’s one I know from traveling on school buses to water polo games. I’m inland. I’m closer to the foothills than I am to my mom’s office. I need to head west.
I change course. Walk on.
By the time I come upon a makeshift shelter in the middle of the grass field of a park a few blocks later, my stomach is begging for another protein bar. I sip water instead. Watch the people. They’re living in tents or out of their cars, their belongings stuffed into laundry baskets and trash bags. The energy is restless. Furtive. Most people gather in circles of trust around their stuff. I stick to the fringe to let them know I’m a stranger. A few feet from me, a disheveled woman hunches over a hibachi grill. No food. Just heat. Three small kids huddle behind her. One of them is an infant, not even walking yet. He isn’t wearing pants or a diaper, only a dirty T-shirt. Another is a little girl, probably five years old, with uneven ponytails and stained pants. Her brother, next to her, is younger and wearing stripes. The kids look hungry. Cold. I wish I’d looked for more things around that table in the hospital parking lot. Maybe there were diapers. Blankets. Toothbrushes. Food. Soap. Things I could give to people who need them.
“Hello,” I say to the woman. Testing the waters. The fact that she’s a mom makes her seem safer to approach than the other strangers. But then she looks at me. Narrows her eyes. Gathers her children behind the protective fold of her back.
“What?” she says, firm with warning.
I hesitate. “I wanted to tell you, there’s a table back at the hospital. There’s food. Water. There’s help.”
I take a step toward her and she angles her body closer to the grill. Too close. I’m afraid her hair will catch fire. She grits her teeth. L
ooks at me hard.
“I have a gun,” she says, but doesn’t make a move for it.
I falter. Put my hands up. “I don’t want anything.”
“Everyone wants something.”
“I don’t. Really. I just want to help.” But that’s not entirely true. Because I do want something. I want information. I want to know what she knows about getting to the parts of town beyond here. Back to Pacific Shore. Back to home. “I’m trying to find my mom.”
Her face softens. I think it again. She’s a mom. She knows. But in an instant she stiffens her shoulders again. Precisely because she is a mom. Her own kids come first.
I get it. I do.
My mom would do the same for me.
The baby peeks out from behind her back. Shivers. She pulls him in front of her. Gathers him in her lap. Tries to warm him by rubbing her hands up and down his bare legs. I remember the cold of the rubble. The way my teeth chattered and my fingertips froze. Her baby is cold like I was. And right now I’m almost too warm in all these layers.
“Do you want my sweatshirt?” I ask.
She studies my filthy team sweatshirt, crusty with dried blood. “You keep it.”
I shake my head. “No, no. Not this one.” When I walked into the laundromat, I was thinking about quitting water polo. I gave my championship ring to Charlie, but I hung on to my sweatshirt. It stopped the bleeding in my arm and told Nurse Cathy where I’m from. I wouldn’t give up this sweatshirt. I empty the pockets and line the protein bars and bottled waters at my feet, along with Charlie’s journal. I unzip my dirty team sweatshirt and point to the soft gray sweatshirt from the hospital underneath. “But you can have this one.”
Her baby shivers in her lap. The little girl behind her sneezes. I pull the clean sweatshirt off, still warm from my body heat, and hold it out to this mom while I stand in the 5K T-shirt. She hesitates. Until her baby whimpers. And then she quickly grabs the sweatshirt from me and wraps him in it.
She nods. “Thank you. That’s. . . incredibly generous.”
I zip up my dirty sweatshirt. Tuck Charlie’s journal underneath. Bend to collect my food.
“Mommy, I’m thirsty,” the older boy says, eyeing my water.
His words send me straight to the rubble. When I got water and Charlie didn’t. I tried to direct it his way, knowing he was as thirsty as I was, but it never got to him. I hold tight to one of my water bottles. I couldn’t help Charlie. But I can help this little boy now. I hold the bottle out to him. He looks at his mom, asking permission to take it. She looks at me.
“Are you sure? Don’t you need it?”
“You need it more. I just need to find my mom.”
“Go ahead,” she says to her son. Then to me, as her eyes glisten, “Thank you. Again. Thank you.” She untwists the cap. Rations their gulps so there’s something for everyone.
“I need to go. I need to figure out how to get back home.”
She points right. “If you walk about five blocks that way, you’ll be on the main drag. You’ll have better luck finding help to get you where you’re going.”
“Five blocks?”
She nods.
“Thanks.”
I turn to go.
“Hey,” she calls out to me after I’ve taken a few steps. I stop. Turn back around to face her. “There’s been looting over there. Arrests. If you were my daughter, I’d want someone to tell you to be careful. So for your mom, I’m saying it. Be careful.”
“I will.”
I walk five blocks. Round the corner. See the police cars. Hear a police officer shouting from a megaphone.
“This street is closed,” he says. “Use alternate routes or risk arrest.”
It doesn’t feel safe here. There’s almost a palpable crackle to the air, telling me to turn around. I know there’s been looting because entire televisions are in the middle of the sidewalk. Dropped. Broken. And then the more necessary things like boxes of diapers, baby formula, and empty jugs of water. On top of that is the trash and discarded remnants of the things that became too much to carry. Chairs. Laptops. Plastic crates full of treasured belongings. Things from home.
Where was everyone going? Where are they now?
I recognize the hollowed-out storefronts of this main street. My mom and I have taken weekend day trips here to shop and have lunch and see a movie. The places I know are hard to recognize now among the broken windows and debris.
A siren sounds, and about ten people come running toward me. My heartbeat amps up as I get caught in the tangle of them. I turn and run with them to avoid whatever they’re fleeing. Tear gas? Guns? I run three blocks, trying to escape the chaos, then stop at the corner, bent over and dragging in air. Like Charlie in the rubble. Like the old man in the hallway. I should sit down and rest. Figure out a plan.
My mom’s office is at least a thirty-minute car ride from here. There’s no way I’ll have the strength to make it on foot. What parts of me will I have to abandon along the way?
I duck into a doorway when I see a police officer with her back to me on the sidewalk ahead. I hold my breath. Wait until she goes away.
It feels good to stop moving, so I sink to the dirty ground. I unscrew the top off a bottled water and down it in one take. I tell myself five minutes. A little time to rest and regain my strength.
STRONG
I drove beach roads in California. Bumper-to-bumper on hot summer days or in the evening rush. Past bright orange sunsets, surfers, and sandy-footed tourists eating ice-cream cones.
But the beach in winter was different.
In the winter, the fog rolled in and the pale blue lifeguard towers were shuttered, standing still like tiny houses on the sand. Bracing for the cold. Looking lonely. Looking sad. There weren’t any tourists in their wrinkled-from-the-suitcase clothes with their sunburns and their floppy hats.
On the Fourth of July, when I first talked to Leo and got jittery at the feel of his shoulder touching mine, the beach was warm and crowded and full of life. Buzzing with energy and promise.
But a couple weekends ago, when we walked down the pier and stared out at the big waves, it was empty. Cloudy and dull. We passed only one person—a woman pushing a dog wearing sunglasses in a stroller.
“Sometimes I can’t believe we live in this town,” I said, watching her pass.
“We’ll miss it when we’re gone.”
“Do you think so?”
“I know so.”
“I think I’ll miss this. Us. The fact that you can be right here whenever.”
He laughed.
“What? It’s true,” I said. “Like when you’re somewhere and I’m somewhere else, we won’t be able to just walk down to the beach and laugh at dogs in sunglasses.”
“I think we’ll live.”
I chuckled. “You know what I mean.”
“We’ll be good. We’ll be better than good.”
“You think?”
“I know.”
“Okay.”
We walked down the stairs of the pier. Sat side by side in the cold sand. The waves roared in, pummeling the shore in their wintry, angry strength.
Leo reached for me. Grazed my fingers with his. I gave his hand a squeeze then stood up and walked to the water. I dipped my naked toes in the wetness. Felt the cold foam fizzle until Leo came up behind me, laughing.
“You have a day off from practice, but you can’t stay out of the water,” he said.
He leaned in to nuzzle my neck. Turned me around. Kissed me sweetly. Even though my feet were numb from the ocean, I felt that kiss all the way to my toes.
I dug my feet in deeper. Let them sink into the heavy wet sand. I wanted the waves to cover all of me. To keep us forever.
I looked at the water in front of me. Thought of all the faraway places it could take us. All the places my mom and dad had seen.
I remembered her telling me how she’d sat on the same beach before I was born. She stepped into the same ocean with me in her stomach and my
dad at her side. The first time she ever felt me kick was when the cold water hit her bare belly. Like I knew we were beach people and I was aware I was home.
It’s where she took me on the day my dad was buried when I was four months old. A few hours before, she’d stood by his grave, listened to the hollow thump of dirt shoveled over his coffin, feeling helpless. And scared. And so suddenly alone. All she wanted to do was feel the ocean. So she left a full house of the people who loved her most. Her friends and coworkers. Roommates from college. The neighbors from two doors down. My mom’s mom and my dad’s sister and brother. His parents, aunts, and uncles. All those people who knew my dad best. They had spent the afternoon making pity faces at my mom while putting their hands on her wet cheeks and promising they’d be there if she needed them. If she needed anything, they would be her people. No matter what or when or where.
She said thank you because that’s what you say when people make promises like that. But after she’d said thank you one time too many, she darted past a table full of casserole dishes and untouched desserts.
She went to her room, put on her bikini, and snuck out the back door with me.
She walked us to the beach.
Ran barefoot through the hot sand.
Dropped her towel down.
Made her way into the water with me in her arms.
The water licked at her toes. Rolled over her feet. Crept up her ankles. Pushing. Pulling. She kept moving forward because moving forward was what she had to do.
A million thoughts swirling. A million what if s and hows and whys running through her head.
I’ve heard that story so many times. I know it like my own because it’s the moment that made us.
It’s the story about how she wasn’t sure she could raise me all by herself.
But then she dipped my toes into the water and I squealed. I kicked my feet, splashing her with the salty ocean water as I laughed. And then she said she understood.
Aftershocks Page 15
