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

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 family of Faraday Mazur.”

Joule