The Tempest by A.J. Scudiere (story read aloud .txt) 📗

Paul, who'd been standing on the porch, shepherding each of them in, now had his entire flock safely down the steps. Joule could just see him standing in the upper doorway as he took one last look at the oncoming funnel. His hair whipped in the wind and his clothing plastered against him as he watched the funnel. She imagined she could hear his flannel shirt snapping like a flag around him. Joule understood. The storm itself was mesmerizing.

Boomer was yelling up to the man, but Paul had already caught on. He slammed the door behind him, ducking down even as he slid three deadbolts into place. He raced down the steps, passing Joule in a huff before finally hitting the concrete floor and joining the rest of them.

“Levi and Laura?” he asked the two big men, but they shook their heads.

“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