She showed them fading scars on her hand. “He was right, you know. There was already enough glass in the room that I cut myself. I didn’t even see it there.” She paused again, thinking. “Anyhow, Mark tossed a lamp through the window and was pushing the remaining glass outside when we heard a scream through the opening.”
She looked around at the other teens. They were all listening intently. “A woman was screaming. She was in a room down the hall from us and she had a baby. She was scared to death and didn’t think she could leave the room. ” She pointed to Mark. “Mark was so brave. He didn’t hesitate a second. He took my hand and said ‘We need to help her.’ So we did.”
“The woman had yelled to us what room she was in. We left our room and ran down the hall. This was the first time I could really see those lights and the waves and everything.” She trembled as the vivid memory came back to her. “As we reached the room we heard things falling and breaking. Mark was sure that pieces of the concrete were breaking off the motel. Anyway, we reached the woman’s room. She was so scared and her baby was crying. We led her to the stairs and helped make sure she didn’t fall as we all came down.”
“The stairs on the first floor were all messed up. We decided to run around the building and maybe take the stairs on the other side. The poor baby was crying the whole time. It was such a nightmare.” Jamie started to cry again.
“You can take a break now if you want,” said Kylee. “There will be more time later.”
“It’s okay,” Jamie said. “I want to get this all out.” She took another deep breath and continued. “We were right. The stairs on the other side were fine. So we went down and made it to the ground. The woman thanked us and took off running away from the ocean.”
“Did you follow her?” asked Theo.
“No, Mark wanted to sweep around once more and see if anybody else needed help. We called as loud as we could, but didn’t hear anything from anyone. It was so hard to hear anything with all the booming in the sky and the buildings all creaking and groaning. We gave up and walked out into the street. A big…shockwave, I guess, knocked us over and then we saw this insane tidal wave coming toward us. We ran back under the motel into the garage. The wave hit the motel. At first it was just water rushing by on all sides. Then this horrible noise and the walls started to crack and then things were falling.”
Jamie showed them her damaged arm. “That’s when this happened. It’s also how Mark broke his leg…really bad. We got a bunch of other bumps and bruises, and Mark got hit in the head pretty hard. It knocked him out for a few minutes but then he was back.”
At this she stopped speaking. They all remained in silence for a minute while the machines beeped. As much as Theo wanted to know what had led to Mark lying in bed clinging to life, he wanted to give Jamie time to get out what was clearly a painful recollection.
Jamie looked around the room and spoke again. “For a long time we were in the dark. I don’t know how long. I was scared. Mark was too, I think, but he was so brave for me. He kept telling me that everything would be okay. That night was the longest of my life. Mark didn’t move and neither did I; we could barely see anything. Then the daylight came.”
“Mark was… he was stuck under a beam or something. He had been there all night, with his leg crushed under, and he hadn’t even told me. We were in this pocket of what was left of the garage, and there was so much dust and sand and water. It was hard to see but there was definitely light outside.”
“As brave as Mark had been… well as time passed he got sicker and sicker and before I knew it I was the one talking to him, on and on, telling him it would be okay and we would get out of there and go home.” She looked up. “I didn’t think we would.”
“By the time it got dark again Mark was sleeping a lot of the time. I was so hungry and weak and hurting and I just stayed with him. I guess I must have drifted off to sleep, cause this voice called out to me and when I looked around it was light. A bunch of police officers were making their way in. After that everything was a big blur. They got Mark out from under the beam and they took us out of the garage and brought us to the hospital.”
“They separated us then and I didn’t see Mark for a few days. No patients could leave their rooms at first, I think cause everything was still so out of control. Finally I was told I could go see him. The doctors said his leg had gotten infected. They treated it so he wouldn’t have to get it amputated but he had slipped into a coma and he doesn’t seem to be waking up. I’ve stayed with him as much as I can.”
Jamie looked around the room again and smiled uneasily. “I know that I barely got to know him at all, but he was there for me. I didn’t know that any of you were still alive and I was all he had…” She broke down crying again and Kylee held her.
“We’re all here now,” Kylee said. “You aren’t alone.”
They all took turns telling Jamie their story of the past few weeks. She had a fairly good idea of what had been going on around the island from the gossip that had passed among the nurses in the ICU. She seemed relieved overall just to be around so many people. Theo wanted to be happy for her, and for Kylee and Michelle as well, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Mark. Was he going to die? Theo didn’t know much about medicine but he had enough common sense to know that when someone had been in a coma for a couple weeks the odds were not great.
They stayed and talked for hours. When it came time to leave for the night, Jamie didn’t want to leave. “You can stay with us in our apartment,” said Kylee, ” It’s ours for a little while longer.”
“Thanks,” said Jamie, “but I made a promise that I wouldn’t abandon Mark and, well, I’m just not ready to leave yet.”
“I’d like to stay too, if that’s okay with you,” said Bill. “Just for one night.”
Theo wasn’t sure this was the best idea. Bill had looked gloomy as ever the entire time they had sat in Mark’s room. He decided to keep his mouth shut this once and hope for the best.
Reluctantly, the other teens said goodbye to their friends and returned to their apartment. Theo stayed awake a long time that night, staring into the darkness and picturing care-free, wild, ladies’ man Mark, now struggling to survive.
Chapter 7
The next few weeks went by quickly. Routine visits to Mark’s hospital room had replaced much of the teens’ aimless wandering. Mark’s health remained the same, which Theo reckoned was better than getting worse. He was determined to cling to that notion, and he held it especially close when sitting in Mark’s room listening to the regular noises of the life-support equipment.
Bill’s moods had improved since discovering that Mark and Jamie were alive. Theo noticed that this was a combination of a confidence that Mark would get better, which Theo worried was bordering on delusion, and a profound connection that was developing between Bill and Jamie as their shared care and concern for Mark drew them to each other. Theo doubted Bill even realized it was happening, but that blossoming of feelings in the gloom of the ICU was very apparent, and very positive to Theo and Kylee.
There was no shortage of love in the air as July turned to August. Ryan and Michelle went off on quiet walks every day and sat on the beach every night, wrapped around each other in the moonlight. Theo and Kylee had begun spending evenings on the roof of the condominium. They had taken chairs and a small table from one of the lower balconies (Kylee called it “liberating” the furniture) and set them on the roof where they ate dinner every night that it wasn’t raining.