And he looked again, reluctantly, toward the west.
Offshore, the racing overcast had begun to dimple.
Black clouds grew lazy tails, which spiraled toward the sea.
Where they touched, white foam erupted.
Waterspouts, Matt thought. He counted five of them. It was fascinating, almost hypnotic, how they moved. There was something awful about their twisting, like the lash of a cat’s tail, plucking the water here and there, then lifting and falling again. Moving in the dim light. Moving toward shore.
A sudden curtain of rain obscured the view.
“Maybe you had better drive a little more quickly,” Miriam said.
* * *
Everything would have been all right, Abby Cushman thought, except for the ventilator ducts.
The storm was way too big, and coming way too fast, and Matt Wheeler was still out there somewhere, hadn’t even arrived at Miriam Flett’s house when the phones went dead… and then the lights in the basement cafeteria began to dim, and Tom Kindle ambled away to some other corner of the building to start up a generator, leaving Abby alone with six more or less terrified people in the flickering dark… and all this would have been endurable, except for what she had begun to think of as the God Damn Noise.
She had no idea how the hospital was ventilated. She knew only that several pressed-tin ducts ran along the ceiling above the fluorescent fixtures, and that the wind had somehow penetrated these conduits. Worse, the wind had begun to play them like a pipe organ. Not any ordinary pipe organ, Abby thought, but a pipe organ for mastodons and great whales; a pipe organ that produced sounds too fundamental for the human ear, perceptible only, like fear, in the hollow of the stomach.
The God Damn Noise had begun a little after six o’clock. It was innocuous at first, almost a whisper; then above that, as the velocity of the wind increased, came an intermittent keening note—eerie, but bearable.
Then the whisper rose to shouting volume, the sound of a bathroom shower running full tilt. And other noises began to creep in along the columns of hammered tin, in particular a low wail that made Abby think, uncomfortably, of a crying child; and periodic creaks and pops, as of sheet metal stressed beyond its tolerance.
She endured that… though it made her feel absurd, serving Oreos and lukewarm coffee to six individuals huddled knees-to-chest on hospital mattresses on a cold linoleum floor. Pollyanna in a pantsuit. She felt like a jennyass, frankly.
But then Bob Ganish began to complain of claustrophobia: It was too close in here, he insisted, especially with the fluorescents out and the damn battery lanterns casting such a dreadful low light—seemed like the air had gone bad. So Abby had to sit with him and share her cookies and change the subject. Hey, what was the best sale he ever made down there at Highway Five Ford? The drop-dead pinnacle of his sales career? And Bob smiled nervously and launched into a description of the near-criminal flogging of a used 1990 Pinto. The monologue lasted twenty minutes, by Abby’s watch, including details on the financing. All the while the ducts screaming and Abby beginning to feel that Ganish’s hysteria, by some reverse osmosis, was draining into her.
Okay, all that, and Dr. Wheeler still out in the storm…
But then the wind made a sound that was, in Abby’s imagination, precisely the sound the last T. Rex might have made, dying in a pool of hot Cretaceous mud…
(—her grandson Cory had been a dinosaur buff—)
…and to top it all off, that was the moment Paul Jacopetti picked to have his goddamn heart attack.
* * *
Abby was startled by the sudden commotion of voices. She turned away from Bob Ganish, spilling her coffee onto his pant leg. (“Ouch, Abby, hey!”)
Jacopetti lay face-up on his mattress, his hands clutched over his chest. His face was pale, and he was breathing rapidly, wheezing.
Worse, everyone seemed to expect Abby to do something about it.
She hurried to Jacopetti’s mattress and crouched over him. “Paul? What is it?”
“I’m having a fucking heart attack,” he gasped, “what does it look like!”
Her first impulse—she was instantly ashamed of it—was to slap him. Tell him: Not now! This isn’t the time or the place, you idiot. Have your heart attack later.
Instead she asked, not too intelligently, “Does your chest hurt?”
“Yes, it hurts. Hurts like a son of a bitch.” He closed his eyes and grimaced.
Abby looked up. Everyone had gathered in a circle around the mattress, their attention on Jacopetti, or worse, on her. The ventilator ducts screamed. Abby heard the sound of a window breaking, perhaps up on the second floor, a nerve-wrenching sound conducted directly into her eardrums.
She said, half to herself, “I don’t know what to do.” Then, as the last buckles of restraint broke loose, louder: “I don’t know what to do! Stop staring at me!”
She felt a hand on her shoulder, gently pulling her aside—Beth Porter’s hand.
Abby bit her lip but retreated from the mattress. Dazed, she watched Beth kneeling over Paul Jacopetti. “Mr. Jacopetti?” Beth said. “Mr. Jacopetti, can you hear me?” He opened his eyes. “You… what do you want?”
“Mr. Jacopetti, you have to tell me what’s wrong.” Perhaps the pain had gotten worse—Jacopetti seemed suddenly more malleable. “Chest hurts.”
“Show me where,” Beth said.
Jacopetti raised his right hand and drew a circle on his shirt above the breastbone.
“There in the center?” Nod.
“How about your arm? Does your arm hurt at all?”
“No.”
“How about your breathing?”
“Tight.”
Gendy, Beth levered back the man’s head so his chin jutted up. “Mr. Jacopetti, I know this is a personal question, but are those false teeth?”
“Dentures,” he managed. “Why?”
“Can you take them out? In case you fall asleep or anything. It’s safer. Or I can take them out for you.”
Jacopetti pried out his teeth. Abby had always been a little frightened of this man—his barrel-shaped body, his booming voice, his invincible cynicism. But Jacopetti without his teeth looked altogether less threatening. His cheeks seemed to collapse inward, giving him an old man’s gummy frown.
Jacopetti looked up at his audience. “Thuck you,” he said/Thuck all oth you.”
“We could use some more light,” Beth said hurriedly. “Maybe if everybody would just sit back down?”
They did, though Abby stayed close, mad at herself for failing this test. If it hadn’t been for the noise…
“Mr. Jacopetti,” Beth said, “are you nauseated?”
Nod.
“Feel like you might throw up?”
“Maybe.”
“Could somebody fetch a towel just in case?” Chuck Makepeace dashed for the bathroom.
“Mr. Jacopetti, listen to me… Did you ever have this pain before?”
“Not as bad.”
“But you’ve had it before?” Nod.
“Seen a doctor about it?”
“No.”
“It always went away?” Nod.
“Okay,” Beth said. “That’s good. I think what you have isn’t a bad heart attack. I think it’s angina. It’ll probably pass if you lie still.”
Joey Commoner, leaning against the wall with a strained expression, said: “How would you know?”
“Hush,” Abby told him, and got a sullen glare in exchange.
Bob Ganish, his claustrophobia forgotten—misplaced along with his common sense, Abby thought—offered: “This man should be in a hospital.”
Jacopetti: “I am in a hothpital, you athholel”
Ganish reddened. “I mean, he needs proper medical attention.”
Abby took the salesman aside a second time. “I know he does, Bob, but our proper medical attention seems to be lost in the storm. Let’s sit down, shall we?” She looked at her watch. Seven-forty-five. How much worse could this weat
her get? Much worse, she supposed. The eye, the Helper had told her, would probably pass directly over Buchanan, possibly around midnight. And that was only half the storm.
“I wish,” she muttered, “somebody would turn off this goddamned noise.”
* * *
Matt felt as if he had fallen into some peculiar time warp: The smaller the distance between himself and his destination, the more slowly he was forced to proceed.
The enemy wasn’t so much wind—though that was bad enough—nor even Miriam Flett’s relentless backseat driving. The enemy was visibility. More precisely, invisibility.
All traces of daylight had passed. The rain was continuous and dense as fog. It carried with it tiny particles of salt and something else, a crystalline dust, some sort of sea life, Matt presumed. The effect of this was to obscure his vision so completely that he turned onto Campbell Road, the direct route to the hospital, without any certainty that he had chosen the right intersection. There were no landmarks, nothing perceptible beyond five or six feet from the car even in the high beams. He drove hugging the right side of the road, scanning for the sign that marked the entrance to the hospital, then worrying that he’d passed it—maybe it was set too far back from the tarmac.
A particularly strong wind rocked the car up on its right-hand wheels; Miriam sucked in her breath. “I should have stayed home!”
“Home might be underwater by now,” Matt said. “Try not to worry, Miriam. We don’t have far to go, and we’ll be safe at the hospital.”
“Can you guarantee that?”
“Stake my life on it.”
“Not funny, Dr. Wheeler.”
“Not meant to be.” Desperate, he took the next available right. It looked like the entrance to the hospital—the shrub on the corner seemed familiar.
But it wasn’t the hospital. He identified, on close approach, an unfamiliar yellow speed bump, a parking lot that curved the wrong way; finally, the broken window of the local 7-Eleven.
Miriam’s hands were clenched together in her lap, arthritic knuckles knotted together. She said, “Are we stopping for snacks?”
It wasn’t the hospital, but it was at least a landmark. Matt tried to recall the relationship of the 7-Eleven to Buchanan General. He’d driven this route at least twice a week for years, but when he tried to map it in his head… was the 7-Eleven before the hospital? Certainly. Close to it? He thought so. But how many yards exactly? Was there another store en route, possibly a camera store? He seldom stopped at any of these shops; they were vague in his mind.
He navigated turtle-fashion back to Campbell Road and crawled onward.
Miriam gasped as a yard-long tree limb came whirling out of the darkness and struck the rear left window. The glass starred but didn’t shatter. Miriam whispered something inaudible. Matt clenched his teeth and drove.
He slowed where the curb yielded to a driveway on the right. He exchanged a glance with Miriam, then turned the wheel. This might be the hospital. It probably was. Better be.
The access lane seemed to crawl on forever in front of the car. Matt began to entertain the possibility that he had driven from the 7-Eleven into a horizonless limbo of rain and wind, all landmarks erased. He fought the temptation to check his watch every thirty seconds, try to calculate his progress. He was suddenly aware of the pungent smell of the sealed automobile, his own sweat mingled with the lighter, sourer odor of Miriam and the reek of wet upholstery and wet clothing.
He was grateful when a brick wall loomed up in the twin circles of his headlights—even more grateful when he recognized it as the east wall of Buchanan General.
He pulled abreast of the Emergency entrance. “Thank God,” Miriam said.
Matt switched off the engine but left the lights on. “I’ll come around to your side. Wait for me. We’ll go in together.” He didn’t say it, but he was afraid Miriam was light enough that the wind might simply sweep her away.
She nodded.
The door was wrenched out of his hand as soon as he opened it. The wind, Matt thought, had made everything dangerous, even an ordinary act like opening a car door. The door banged against its stops and bounced back, whacking his hip. Matt stepped aside and pushed it closed, sparing Miriam more than a momentary blast of salty rain.
He fumbled around the hood of the car with his hands braced against the cold metal. The wind was nearly strong enough to lift him up—certainly strong enough to knock his feet out from under him if he took a miscalculated step. The combination of wind and rain was blinding. With his eyes pressed tight in the darkness, every surface of his body awash, it was as if the world had been reduced to some few essential elements: the wind, the automobile, the wet concrete under his feet. Variables in a complex equation.
He groped along Miriam’s side of the car until he found the door handle. Then he steadied himself, took as deep a breath as the wind allowed, and opened the door. Instantly, the door kited into its stops; but this time Matt was ready for it; he wedged his body against the door frame and held it fully open.
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 fir
st. 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.”