by Chrys Fey
The sky lightened degree by degree from smoke-gray to a translucent blue with streaks of yellow and orange. The sun was a bright orb peeking above the buildings when they reached the hospital. Seeing the hundreds of people crammed in the parking lot stunned Donovan. He stood next to Tray and looked out at the expanse of people in utter bewilderment. So many. Their bodies were caked in mud. Their clothes dirty. Several tents and makeshift shelters with tarps for ceilings were set up in the parking lot for treatment. People with minor injuries were being treated. Those who needed surgery were rushed into the building on gurneys.
Two HI-EMA trucks—there should’ve been a lot more—were parked in the middle of the throng. A few workers passed out water and Meals-Ready-to-Eat as fast as they could to the needy hands reaching out to them. Random volunteers handed out blankets, clothing, and shoes to people who could use it. There were far too many people, though, and not everyone would be able to get what they needed. In no time, the food and water would run out, leaving these survivors hungry and thirsty. With the sun beating down on them, unforgiving, many would drop from dehydration. The hospital could give some of them intravenous fluids, but they probably didn’t have the equipment to hook everyone up to IVs.
Donovan moved along the rows of people alongside Tray. A woman with bloody arms wrapped gauze around a man’s head. A young boy, who must’ve been no more than ten, held a bottle of water to a younger child’s lips. Were they alone in this chaos? Everywhere he looked, he saw suffering being battled by the beauty of strangers helping strangers. They were comforting and nursing one another.
For hours, Donovan searched. When hunger deteriorated his strength, making his muscles burn and twitch, he suggested getting something to eat. They got in line and waited as person after person retrieved a meal. Donovan’s tongue was dry in his mouth. His head spun with fatigue. He was handed a brown plastic container by a female HI-EMA worker. As he stepped aside, he peered behind the workers to see one box of MREs. The worker caught his eye and gave a shake of her head. Her silence told him everything. When they hand out the last MRE, they’d be left to starve. Even her. Donovan knew he’d have to ration out his food and single bottle of water until more help arrived.
He ripped open a package consisting of two thin pieces of multigrain snack bread and ate them with the cheese spread he squirted from another package. It actually wasn’t bad. He put the remainders of his meal—a plastic bag that would heat up his main meal with a bit of water, a package of grilled chicken breast, a lemon poppy seed cake, and cinnamon candy—in the pockets of his shorts. Throughout the day, he popped Red Hots into his mouth to trick his stomach into believing it was full; it didn’t work.
An hour later, he stood in front of boards posted near the hospital’s front doors. These boards were covered in spreadsheets full of names of the people at the hospital. More were filling up as survivors added their own names in case loved ones came looking. Donovan’s finger trailed down every list from top to bottom, from the front of the three boards to the back. Beth’s name wasn’t there. He found a couple of Katie’s but not Tray’s little girl.
Donovan picked up a pen and added his name to the bottom of a list. Before he handed the pen to Tray, he drew an infinity symbol beside his name, hoping it would catch Beth’s eye. Would she see his name listed there? He imagined her falling to the ground with joy if she did. As he would’ve done if he had seen her name.
What if she were dead?
The thought sickened him, but he had to know regardless. With heavy feet, he walked through the crowded doors of the hospital and found a nurse.
“Excuse me?”
“Sir, I can’t help you right now.”
“I just have a question to ask.” He put a hand on her shoulder to keep her from turning away. Stress and exhaustion mirrored on her face. She had dealt with many distraught individuals and wasn’t looking forward to dealing with another. “I’m trying to find someone—”
She cut him off. “Then check the lists outside. We have no other way to document such a large quantity of people coming in and out of these doors.” She tried to leave again, but Donovan stopped her.
“I have,” he said. “I want to know where the dead are being taken.”
The woman froze. Sympathy washed away her lines of impatience. “The dead in this area are being taken to Cartwright Field.” She pointed in the general direction. “Past Shriner’s Children’s Hospital. Keep cutting through the parking lots and you’ll find it.”
Donovan told Tray this bit of information. They agreed to go and then return to the Medical Center where they felt they’d have a better chance of finding their loved ones. After checking the lists tacked to the boards at Shriner’s Children’s Hospital and adding their names with Kapiolani Medical Center in parenthesis, they continued on to Cartwright Field, a large baseball field. The green grass was full of black body bags. Bodies were also wrapped in tarps and other plastic covers. White writing was scrawled on many of the body bags with names. Most documented genders. Some just said “child.” Tray checked those. Donovan couldn’t imagine Tray’s fear over seeing his little girl’s face every time he unzipped one of the bags. He was petrified of seeing Beth’s face, but Tray was looking for his wife and his daughter.
A few of the body bags had plastic baggies of jewelry on top of them for identification purposes. Donovan kept his eye out for Beth’s charm bracelet and rings, as well as her name and “female.” He peeked into the bags and partially lifted tarps to see the faces of the women. Row after row, he went. After a while, the women’s faces began to blur. Every time he blinked, he saw their glossy eyes staring up at him.
They finished their morbid task and headed back to the Medical Center. Donovan went to the boards and found his own name. From there, he looked over the additions. None of them were the right ones.
He sat on the outskirts of the parking lot and nibbled on the lemon poppy seed cake. Tray sat next to him. Neither of them said anything. The day had been a long, hard one, and it wasn’t over yet.
Every hour or so, Donovan returned to the boards. Sheets of paper were starting to overlap each other and still Beth’s name wasn’t there. On his way back to Tray, a woman stopped him.
“Here.” She held out a T-shirt to him.
“No, thanks,” he said. “Give it to someone else.”
“I’m giving it to you,” she said and extended her hand. “You’ll have a terrible burn if you don’t take this shirt. I can already see you’ve been in the sun for too long without protection.”
Her words rang true. His skin was burning in the sunlight. A look at his chest revealed red skin. Already, the skin on his shoulders was peeling. He gratefully accepted the old T-shirt. Slipping it on, it rubbed against his burned skin.
At dusk, when his stomach growled for food, he poured a bit of water into the bag from the MRE package, slipped the grilled chicken breast inside, and propped it up on a small rock. Steam seeped from the bag as it heated his meal. He stared up at the sky, at the pink and orange clouds. With the chemical smell tingling his nostrils from the MRE and the cool breeze touching his skin, he wished Beth were with him. For all he knew, Beth was a corpse. She could have died when the first wave hit them or been swept out to sea. Her soul could be long gone. He may never see her again, may never hold her.
“Meg! Katie!” Tray shot to his feet.
Donovan looked up to see Tray lifting a little girl into the air. He crushed the girl to his body and opened his arms to a weeping woman in a tattered dress. The small family embraced, crying and kissing.
Reunited with his family, Tray walked away with his daughter on his hip and his arm around his wife’s waist. Donovan was forgotten. He ate his meal alone as tears clogged his eyes.
Chapter Sixteen
Beth used the soles of her sneakers to push herself to the wall. Seething, she inched into a sitting position. She touched her shoulder. Her index finger dipped into a hole. She bit her bottom lip. The bullet had
passed straight through the meat of her shoulder, which was a good thing, because the bullet didn’t have to be dug out, but not so good considering she had two holes for blood to escape through. Her arm was streaked with blood, and her shirt was soaked with it. She pressed her palm to the hole in the front of her shoulder. If she lost any more blood, she’d lose consciousness, and death would soon follow.
“Hey!”
Her voice cracked.
“Hello, somebody? Come on! Hello.” She lay the back of her head against the wall. “Somebody, please. Hello.”
Her energy was depleting when the door opened. Mr. Gun crossed his arms in the doorway. “What?”
She took a shuddering breath. “I’m going to bleed to death. If I die, you won’t be able to use me for bait.”
“And what do you want me to do about that? I’m not a fucking medic.”
She didn’t like the option that came to her mind, but she didn’t have any other choice. “I can cauterize it,” she said. “I need something thin and long and metal.” She considered office supplies and kitchen utensils usually found in the workplace. A ruler wouldn’t work. Neither would a spoon. “A metal ballpoint pen might work. And a lighter. You might be able to find one in a desk.”
Smokers always had spares, right? Surely someone who worked there sucked down a cigarette during their lunchbreak.
“I’ll see what I can find.”
She almost thanked him, but realized he was the bastard who shot her. Why would he care if he wanted to kill her in the end? He could be sitting with his buddies, laughing about his lie to help her. But if she died before their plan came to fruition, he wouldn’t be able to use her as leverage. How would he make sure Donovan was on his way if she was a corpse?
Grasping her shoulder, she asked God to help her through this ordeal. Please don’t let me die. If Donovan is alive, I can’t leave him. I can’t put him through more misery and heartache. And you shouldn’t want to put him through that either. So please, help me to survive this. Help me, help me, help me…
Her bottom lip trembled. Her mind repeated “help me” like a broken record. She was slowly sinking into unconsciousness when the door finally opened.
Her eyelids fluttered.
“Here.”
Her gaze lowered to the hand stretched out to her.
“This is what I found.”
In the middle of his palm sat an expensive silver pen and a yellow lighter.
She peeled her hand away from her wound and took the items with blood-stained fingers. “Thank you,” she whispered and meant it.
She set the pen in her left hand. Her fingers barely had enough life in them to hold it. With her other hand, she flicked the lighter to summon a tiny flame. Slowly, she rotated the pen, letting the flame lick every inch of the metal cap. She did this until the metal was hot enough to burn. Then she felt for the hole at the back of her shoulder. Taking the pen in her hand, she reached around and penetrated her wound. The instant the red-hot cap touched her flesh, her shoulder ignited with flames. She threw back her head as a scream ripped from her.
Fire coursed through her arm. Her brain shouted, STOP!
But she couldn’t.
She held the pen in place until the searing sensation ended. Pulling the pen back out sent pain rippling through her. She dropped her head as tears flowed down her cheeks. Even as she cried, she wiped the blood off the pen with her T-shirt. Body shaking, she spun the wheel on the lighter and reheated the cap. Her hand quivered when she brought the pen to the hole at the front of her shoulder.
She hesitated.
The pain radiating from her wound would quadruple the moment she stabbed herself with the pen. But she had to do it. She took three fast breaths before jabbing the fiery pen into the hole. A wail soared out of her throat. She bent forward as she sobbed. The smell of burning flesh touched her nostrils. Nausea flirted with her stomach. She would’ve thrown up, but the pain was too great.
Blackness pinched the corners of her vision. Her head wobbled. She wedged the pen back out. No more did she feel pain. No more did she feel sick.
A weakness drew her away from herself. She collapsed into the wall. Her eyelids sealed, and her body slid to the ground. A second before she fell into unconsciousness, the pen and lighter were snatched out of her feeble grasp.
****
Beth seesawed in and out of consciousness. Every time she cracked open her eyelids, colors burst like fireworks—blinding white, blood-red, and scorching yellow. Seconds later, she’d dizzily sink under the influence of anguish only to have it vomit her back up into the waking world. The ground felt unsteady beneath her body, as if a whirlpool had opened up and was swallowing her in its great, watery mouth.
When the dark released her for the umpteenth time, she was able to withstand the temptation of its pull. She moved her fingers over the ground and felt the grit of sand and the silky powder of dust.
Sweat beaded on her face. Her shirt clung to her back. Whimpering and panting, she maneuvered herself into a sitting position. Her head spun like a toy top. She tapped her fingers over her wound. Crusted blood flaked off her skin. There was no fresh blood, which meant she had successfully cauterized it. The skin around the bullet hole was burned. Every inch of her shoulder throbbed. She moved her fingers to the pulse point in her neck. Her heart beat was slower than normal.
Leaning her head back, she focused on her breathing. Her logic was that if she brought her organs oxygen, she could hold out until help arrived. To keep her mind off the prospect of death, and to ward off the drunken feeling of blood loss, she sang songs in her head from “Baby One More Time” to “God Bless the USA.” She was on her encore of “Bittersweet Symphony” when the door opened. Mr. Gun stepped in. He dropped a paper plate with two slices of white bread next to her. She eyed the bottle of water he put next to it. Hunger gnawed at her stomach with shark’s teeth. Saliva pooled in her mouth. Plain white bread was tasteless and far from what she’d want if she could have anything, but it was something to fill the cavity in her stomach. Except, it wouldn’t give her the nutrients her body needed. Protein, vitamins, calcium. That was what her body needed to produce more blood.
“Can you look for a packet of sugar and salt?” she asked. Her voice was faint.
“What for?”
“A bomb.” She sighed. “My body needs the nutrients. I’ll add it to the water. It won’t be as effective as an IV, but it may help.”
Mr. Gun stared at her. His inner dialogue played out across his face. Should he help her? His job was to kill her, but not before he killed Donovan.
“Fine,” he hissed.
The door released a groan when he flung it open and stalked out. Beth counted to one hundred and thirty-three before he returned. He tossed a tiny white packet of salt and a pink packet of sugar at her. They hit her in the chest, tumbled down her stomach, and fell onto her lap.
She muttered her thanks and reached for the bottle of water. In order to unscrew the cap, she had to hold the bottle with her left hand and wrench off the cap with her right. Her muscles strained. Taking off the cap was almost too much work for her. With a trembling hand, she lifted the bottle to her lips and took a sip. Then she set it between her legs and used her teeth to tear open the packets. She poured the salt and sugar into the water, twisted the cap back on, and gave the bottle a couple of half-hearted shakes. Her arm fell. She set the bottle on the ground as if it weighed five pounds.
Her gaze lifted to Mr. Gun. She plucked the empty packets from her lap and held it out to him. “Do you want these back? I could give someone a paper cut with them.”
He sneered at her. “Fucking eat them for all I care,” he spat and slammed the door shut.
She picked up the paper plate and tore off a piece of bread. Chewing was even too much for her, but she worked her jaw until she consumed all the bits from the first piece of bread. Throat dry, tongue plastered to the roof of her mouth, she took a swallow of water. The salt and sugar gave it an unplea
sant taste, but she forced herself to take another drink. Saving the second piece of bread and the rest of the water for later, she hugged her arm and settled into the corner of the wall.
She drifted off to sleep. In her dreams, she relived the tsunami, the churning water, and the lack of oxygen. She tried to paddle to the surface, but something had her ankles. She looked and screamed. Bubbles rose from her mouth. Jackson Storm held onto her ankles and was pulling her into the pitch-blackness.
A bang jerked her awake. Her heart thudded. Her mind twirled. She stared at the group of men in the closet.
So they’re going to kill me now.
Broken Nose, the man she had kicked, and the man with the big shoulders stepped forward. She winced when their hands came toward her. The blows she expected to come didn’t. Their hands seized her arms. She cried out when her shoulder was jostled. They half carried, half dragged her to the chair in the middle of the floor. She dropped onto it with a thud and protectively grabbed her shoulder. Tears crowded her eyes.
“Call Donovan again.” Mr. Gun thrust the phone in her face. She flinched back. “If you die, we lose our advantage. Donovan is the main objective. We need him, so you better make your plea convincing.”
She took the phone.
The numbers danced.
She blinked, jabbed one button, and had to wait for her eyesight to stop blurring to dial the rest. The phone was heavy. She thought it would break her wrist.
The ringing ended, and Thorn’s voice came on, “Beth, is it you?”
She met Mr. Gun’s watchful glare. “It’s his voicemail again.”
“Then leave another fucking message.”
“He may never get my messages. I’m going to die because you’re too stupid to realize he doesn’t have access to his cell phone.”
Mr. Gun jabbed the silencer between her eyes. “Hearing his wife get her brains blown out in a voicemail will make him come after us. I don’t need to keep you alive.”
He was right. If she really were leaving Donovan messages, hearing a gunshot would sicken him with rage. He’d seek them out to kill them.
