Something Beautiful (Beautiful #3) (13 page)

I gripped the edge of the stretcher, squeezing the plastic-covered cushion in my fist, while Brandi carefully slid a scrub top over my head. She helped me slip my arms through, patiently waiting, while I struggled with lifting my left shoulder.

“I can get you a hospital gown instead,” she said.

“No. No gowns,” I said. Grunting, I maneuvered my arm through the sleeve.

“You can’t even get dressed, but you’re going to go look for her?”

“I can’t just sit here, safe and warm, while America’s out there somewhere,” I said. “She probably has no clue she’s about to get hit again with more weather.”

“Shepley, listen to me. We’re still under a tornado warning.”

“It’s impossible to get hit twice in the same night.”

“Actually, it’s not,” she said. “It’s rare, but it happens.”

I climbed off the stretcher, my breath catching when the torn muscle in my arm moved.

“Fine. If you’re gonna insist on being ridiculous, you have to sign an AMA.”

“Sign a what?”

“AMA—Against Medical Advice.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Chief said, holding up his hands. “Where do you think you’re going?”

I breathed out through my nose, frustrated. “Another storm is coming in. She’s not back yet.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for you to head out into the rain.”

“What if it were your wife, Chief? What if your daughters were out there? Would you go?”

Tornado sirens filled the air. They were much louder this time, the eerie drone sounding like it was just outside the doors. Everyone looked around, and then the panic began.

I started for the door.

But Chief stood in front of me. “You can’t go out there, Shepley! It’s not safe!”

Holding my left arm to my middle, I shouldered past him and then pushed my way through the crowded waiting room to the doors. The sky had opened up again, pouring down rain on the parking lot. With horror and disbelief on their faces, people were running across the cement to the emergency room.

I looked up for signs of a funnel cloud. I had no car and no idea where she was. I’d been afraid plenty of times in my life, but none of them had ever come close to this. Keeping the ones you love safe wasn’t a question, but I couldn’t save her.

I turned around, grabbing Chief’s shirt with my fist, his badge digging into my palm. “Help me,” I said, shaking with fear and frustration.

Screams erupted, and power flashes sparked in the distance.

“Everyone, get in the hallways!” Chief said, yanking me back to my stretcher.

I fought him, but even though he was twice my age, with the use of both of his arms, he easily overpowered me.

“Get! Your Ass! Down!” he growled, struggling to push me toward the floor.

Brandi put a young boy in my lap and held on to three more children, hunkering down next to me.

The young boy didn’t cry, but he shook uncontrollably. I blinked and looked around, seeing the terror-filled faces of everyone around us. Most of them had already suffered through one devastating tornado.

“I want my dad,” the young boy in my lap whimpered.

I hugged him to my side, trying to shield as much of his body as I could. “It’s going to be okay. What’s your name?”

“I want my dad,” he said again, on the edge of panic.

“My name is Shep. I’m alone, too. You think you could hang out here with me until this is over?”

He looked up at me with big russet eyes. “Jack.”

“Your name is Jack?” I asked.

He nodded.

“That’s my dad’s name,” I said with a small smile.

Jack mirrored my expression, and then his grin slowly vanished. “It’s my dad’s name, too.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“We were in the bathtub. My mom … my baby sister. It got real loud. My dad held on to me tight. Real tight. When it was over, he wasn’t holding me anymore. Our couch was upside down, and I was under it. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know where any of them are.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll know to look for you here.”

Something slammed into a pane window and shattered the glass. Frightened cries barely registered over the sirens and blustering wind.

Jack buried his head into my chest, and I gently squeezed him with my good arm, holding my left against my middle.

“Where’s your family?” Jack asked, his eyes clenched.

“Not here,” I said, peeking over my shoulder at the broken window.

America

“How much farther?” I asked.

“Two miles less than the last time you asked,” Reyes grumbled.

Reyes was driving fast but not fast enough. Just knowing that Shepley was at the hospital, hurt, made me feel like I could jump out of the car and run faster than what we were going. We had exited off the turnpike to a road with a narrow stretch of houses that had somehow been missed by the tornado.

I’d rolled down the window, and I was resting my chin on my hand, letting the air blow against my face. I closed my eyes, imagining the look on Shepley’s face when I walked through the door.

“Landers said he was pretty beat up. You should prepare yourself for that,” Reyes said.

“He’s okay. That’s all I care about.”

“Just don’t want you to be upset.”

“Why?” I turned to him. “I thought you were the badass trooper with no emotions.”

“I am,” he said, squirming in his seat. “Doesn’t mean I want to see you cry again.”

“Doesn’t your wife cry?”

“No,” he said without hesitation.

“Ever?”

“I don’t give her a reason to.”

I sat back in my seat. “I bet she cries. She probably just doesn’t show it. Everybody cries.”

“I’ve never seen her cry. She laughed a lot when Maya was born.”

I smiled. “Maya. That’s cute.”

Huge drops of rain began to spatter on the windshield, prompting Reyes to switch on the wipers. The back and forth and drag across the glass began a cadence that echoed every beat of my heart.

One corner of his mouth turned up. “She is cute. Head full of black hair. She came out, looking like she was wearing a toupee. She was bright yellow the first week. I thought she just had a naturally great tan … like me.” He smirked. “But it turned out to be jaundice. We took her to the doctor and then the lab. They stabbed her heel with a needle and squeezed her foot for a blood sample. Alexandra didn’t shed a tear. I cried as much as Maya did. You think I’m tough? You haven’t met my wife.”

“Your wedding day?”

“Nope.”

“When she found out she was pregnant?”

“Nope.”

I thought about it for a while. “Not even happy tears?”

He shook his head.

“What about the women you pull over? Do you let them go if they tear up?”

“It makes me uncomfortable,” he said simply. “I don’t like it.”

“Good thing you married a woman who doesn’t cry.”

“Lucky. Very,
very
lucky. She’s not overly emotional.”

“Doesn’t sound like she’s emotional at all,” I teased.

“You’re not far off.” He laughed once. “I wasn’t sure she even liked me at first. It took me two years and a lot of hours at the gym to even get up the nerve to ask her out. I didn’t think I could love anyone more than I loved Alexandra until a few weeks ago.”

“When Maya was born?”

He nodded.

I smiled. “I was wrong. You’re not a jerk.”

A shrill tone came over the radio, and the dispatcher began rattling off a weather report.

“Another tornado?” I asked.

Then the sirens began to wail.

“The National Weather Service is reporting a tornado on the ground within Emporia city limits,” the dispatcher said in a monotone voice. “All units be advised, a tornado is on the ground.”

“How is she so calm?” I asked, looking up at the sky.

Dark clouds were swirling above us.

Reyes slowed, looking up. “That’s Delores. It’s her job to be calm, but also, nothing rattles that woman. She’s been doing this since before I was born.”

Delores’s voice came over the radio again. “All units be advised, a tornado is on the ground, traveling north, northeast. Current location is Prairie Street and South Avenue.”

Delores continued to repeat the report while Reyes’s eyebrows pulled together, and he began frantically searching the sky.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“We’re a block north of that location.”

Shepley

The wind blew in clusters of rain, soaking the tile and toppling chairs. Several men with hospital badges rushed over with a large piece of plywood, hammers, and nails, and then they got to work covering the broken glass. A few more swept up the glistening pieces of glass that had scattered onto the floor.

Chief stood and started to walk over to where the maintenance men worked. Just as he began to chat with one of the men, he glanced out the window. Then he turned on his heels and yelled, “Everybody, move!”

He grabbed a woman and leaped just as a compact car punched through the plywood and the remaining windows, coming to a halt on its side in the middle of the waiting room.

After a few seconds of stunned silence, wailing and yelling filled the room. Brandi turned the children she’d been holding over to me, and she ran over to the car, checking the workers and some patients who had been mowed down.

She held her palm on the forehead of a man, blood gushing down his face. “I need a stretcher!”

Chief stirred and then looked up at me with confused eyes.

“You all right?” I asked, hugging the children around me.

He nodded and then helped up the woman he’d pushed out of the way.

“Thank you,” she said, looking around in a daze.

Chief peeked out the hole in the wall that the car had created. “It’s passed.”

He took a step toward the broken bodies around the car but paused when his radio came on.

A deep voice broke through as a man spoke, “Two-nineteen to Base G.”

“Base G. Go ahead,” the dispatcher spoke back.

Chief turned up his radio. He could hear the disguised panic in the officer’s voice.

“Officer down at Highway Fifty and Sherman. My cruiser has been overturned. Multiple fatalities and injuries in this area, including me. Requesting ten-forty-nine to this location. Over,” he said, grunting the last word.

“How badly are you injured, Reyes?” the dispatcher said.

Chief glanced up at me. “I have to go.”

“Not sure,” the officer said. “I was bringing a young woman to the hospital. She’s unconscious. I think her leg is trapped. We’re going to need some hardware. Over.”

“Copy that, two-nineteen.”

“Delores?” Reyes said. “Her boyfriend was reported to be at Newman Regional with the fire chief. Can you radio the hospital to notify?”

“Ten-four, Reyes. You hang in there. We have units on the way.”

I gripped Chief’s arm. “That’s her. America is with that cop.”

“Base G is the Turnpike Highway Patrol. She’s with a state trooper.”

“It doesn’t matter who she’s with. He’s hurt, and she’s stuck in there. He can’t help her.”

Chief turned away from me, but I tightened my grip on his arm.

“Please,” I said. “Take me there.”

Chief made a face, already against the idea. “By the sounds of it, they’re going to have to cut her out of the cruiser. That could take hours. She’s unconscious. She won’t even know you’re there, and you’ll probably just get in the way.”

I swallowed and looked around as I thought. Chief pulled his keys out of his pocket.

“Just …” I sighed. “You don’t have to take me. Just tell me where it is, and I’ll walk.”

“You’ll walk?” Chief said in disbelief. “It’s dark. No electricity means no streetlights. No moon because of the clouds.”

“I have to do something!” I yelled.

“I’m the fire chief. There’s an officer down. I’m going to oversee the extraction and—”

“I’m begging you,” I said, too tired to fight. “I can’t stay here. She’s unconscious, she might be hurt, and she’ll be scared when she wakes up. I have to be there.”

Chief thought about it for a few seconds and then sighed. “All right. But stay out of the goddamn way.”

I nodded once, following when he turned for the parking lot. It was still raining, making me worry about her even more. What if the car was overturned in a drainage ditch, like the Charger? What if she was under water?