He held out his hand to Miriam, but she drew away.
Matt leaned into the meager shelter of the car, where he could see Miriam—blurrily—in the faint illumination of the map light. “What’s wrong?”
She hissed back: “My journals!”
Christ in a red wagon, Matt thought.
“Dr. Wheeler! You can leave what’s in the trunk! But I want my journals!”
The journals were bundled at her feet, still wrapped in her yellow raincoat. Matt leaned over her, conscious of the wet woolen odor of her skirt—it smelled like a wet dog. He tied the arms of the raincoat together to make a sort of bag for the journals, a tedious process that left him plenty of time to reflect on the absurdity of his position, standing ass to the wind in the midst of the most powerful typhoon to approach the Oregon coast since the ice age. The rain was sluicing into the car now, soaking Miriam, but Matt had ceased to care: Let her get wet, she deserved to get wet. He couldn’t shake the memory of those funnel clouds snakedancing toward shore; couldn’t shake a suspicion that one of them might reach down and fold him into the dark wing of the sky.
When the journals were bundled together, he stood and offered Miriam his right hand. This time she took it, moaning as she stepped out of the car. As soon as she was standing he put his right arm around her waist and tugged her, half-lifted her, in the direction of the Emergency door. Only these few steps, Matt told himself. One two three.
But the hospital door resisted when he tried to pull it open. The wind? No—not just the wind.
He banged a fist against it. The door was quarter-inch-thick wire-mesh glass. Inside there was a dim light, perhaps motion… but he couldn’t see much through the blur of rain.
Feeling panic like a third presence, something large perhaps just over his shoulder, Matt pulled the wide handle of the door a third time… and this time it opened outward.
He hurried Miriam inside. She stumbled a few steps, then righted herself and took the package of journals from Matt. “Thank you,” she said breathlessly, not looking at him, brushing water from the raincoat bundle. “That was… harrowing.”
Tom Kindle pulled the door closed behind them.
Kindle held a hammer in his hand. A sheet of plywood and two pine planks were leaning against one wall.
Matt sat down on the tiled floor, panting. Water ran off him in all directions. He looked at Kindle. “You were about to board up that door.”
“Yup.”
“You couldn’t have waited?”
“It didn’t seem wise.”
“Kind of a vote of confidence, isn’t it?”
Kindle smiled. “Welcome back anyway.”
Abby Cushman met him where the stairs opened into the hospital basement. She briefed him on Paul Jacopetti’s medical crisis and added, “He’s resting easier now, though the pain hasn’t entirely gone away.”
“I’ll look at him. But I need to change into dry clothes first. Do me a favor—make sure Miriam gets dried off, too. Maybe you can find some fresh clothes to fit her.”
“All right.” But Abby hesitated. “Matt—I should tell you, I nearly fell apart when Paul got sick. It was a little embarrassing. Well—more than a little.”
“Abby, you’ve done fine. Without you, we wouldn’t all be here. You can’t handle every crisis that comes along—nobody could.”
“But I could have done better. Matt, I don’t know anything at all about first aid! The most I ever did at home was spray Bactine on scraped knees. Maybe sometime you could give us a short course?”
“I will. Should have done it months ago.”
“We’ve all been busy. But speaking of first aid, Beth was a wonder! She didn’t do anything in particular—mainly convinced Mr. Jacopetti to take his dentures out. But she calmed him right down, and it looked like she knew what she was doing. You have a student there!”
“I taught her CPR. Gave her a first-aid manual to read at home.”
“Well, she’s a quick study, anyhow. Bright young woman.”
“When she wants to be,” Matt said.
In clean, dry denim—and despite the shriek of the ventilator ducts, which Abby had warned him about—Matt felt 100 percent better.
It was his experience that bad weather tended to shrink a room. The basement cafeteria, a cavernously large space, had contracted to circles of light around the battery lanterns. It wasn’t just a room anymore. It was a huddling place, a dry cave.
He spoke to Paul Jacopetti and read his blood pressure, which was slightly but not dangerously elevated.
“Doc,” Jacopetti said.
Matt unwound the sphygmomanometer cuff from Jacopetti’s pale arm. It was always the difficult ones who called you “Doc.”
“Yes, Mr. Jacopetti?”
“Can I put my thucking teece back?”
“Certainly. Beth was worried you might pass out. But that doesn’t seem likely at this point.”
And Matt looked away politely while Jacopetti slipped his dentures into his mouth.
“Everybody says angina,” Jacopetti said. “It’s not a heart attack, it’s angina. Okay, good, but how is that better? It feels like a fucking heart attack.”
“They’re not necessarily different. Angina pectoris is the pain you feel when your heart’s not getting enough blood through the coronary arteries. The heart works harder to compensate, and it simply gets tired—the way any muscle hurts if you overwork it. It’s a symptom of coronary disease, but in your case the heart itself seems to be basically sound. We can treat the angina with drugs called beta blockers, which help the muscle ease up a little bit”
Jacopetti was frowning, trying to digest this information. “How long do I take these drugs?”
Probably the rest of your life, Matt thought. If we can find a supply. And keep them from going bad. It was one of those facts of life he still hadn’t grown accustomed to: no new pharmaceuticals. No more free pencils or coffee mugs from drug companies promoting Tofranil or Prozac. No more Tofranil. No more Prozac. No more insulin, come to that, or penicillin, or measles vaccine… not unless he could locate every ounce of every significant drug and store it somehow, refrigerate it, prolong its active life.
Must get this advice to the Boston and Toronto people, Matt thought. Should have done it sooner.
Christ, everything had gotten away from him these last few months. He had been blinkered by his fear for Rachel, transfixed by her slow evolution. But Rachel was gone. It was past time to pick up the fragments of his life, including his work.
“You’ll probably be on medication for some time,” Matt said, “but I can’t tell you for sure until we do a more thorough workup. Not until the storm passes, obviously.”
“If it ever does,” Jacopetti said. “In the meantime… it still hurts.”
“I’ll go up to the pharmacy and find you something. Lie still while you’re waiting, all right? Don’t exert yourself.”
“I’m not going fucking dancing,” Jacopetti said.
Matt checked in with Abby before venturing upstairs.
She might have fumbled the Jacopetti crisis, but she was doing a fine job as den mother. She had helped Miriam Flett into a dry outfit and settled her onto a mattress with coffee and Oreos. Now Abby was contemplating the possibility of a hot communal meal—“Maybe a little later, if Tom gets his generator working and we can run the microwave. I think that would cheer people up, don’t you? It’s hard enough just keeping track of everybody. Some of us want to move into the hallway—it’s quieter there and closer to the bathroom. Would that be all right?”