The Year of Chasing Dreams (29 page)

Lloyd looked grim. “Road this way is a mess, but I’ll radio for a team. Maybe they can get in from the other direction.”

“Lot of trees down on the property,” she said.

“They’ll get there,” Lloyd assured her.

She nodded, and with effort remounted her horse. “I need to go.”

“Keep your phone on. It’s also a GPS—they can find you through the signal.”

Thinking of their small town, she asked, “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“We lost much of Main Street, and so far nine dead, five unaccounted for. Whole string of tornadoes came through, then headed north.”

She closed her eyes against a stab of sickening pain and helplessness, remembering that her mother might have been in the grocery store when the twister hit. All she could do was blink away tears, turn her horse, and start the arduous journey back to Jon’s side.

Ciana lay on the hard ground next to Jon. Twilight was falling, and the wool blankets were damp from the wetness leaching through from underneath their two bodies. She stroked his cheek, checked his pulse—still weak—moistened his lips with water, whispered her love for him. And waited. If no one came soon, she’d have to ride back to the barn and scrounge for dry blankets, a flashlight, maybe some dry wood she could use to build a fire to keep them warm into the night. She remembered the quilt in the loft, the old diaries. The paper would make a good fire starter—if she had the strength to climb the ladder.

Every muscle in her body throbbed, and she longed to sleep. She kept drifting off and jerking herself awake. Fear was all that stood between her and longed-for oblivion. Jon’s injuries … her mother … and what of Arie’s parents … Abbie, Eric, and the new baby? Her neighbors? What had happened to them? Had they been spared? Her one consolation was knowing that Eden and Garret were in Florida and far from the disaster area.

Ciana glanced at her horse, caked with dried mud. Firecracker’s head drooped, and Ciana knew the animal was done in. Yet the animal stood quietly, her reins looped to the rail of the fence corral, seeming to understand that her keepers were hurt and unable to change the circumstances. Soldier had sensed the same, for the large dog stood watch faithfully without a whimper. Jon had always told her that animals had senses absent in humans. She saw with her own eyes now how right he was. Ciana had found a bowl in the bed of Jon’s battered truck and shared some of the bottled water with the dog. He’d drunk greedily, but she had no food for any of them and knew they were in dire straits.

All at once, Soldier’s ears pricked forward, the ridge of fur along his back stood up, and a low growl came from his throat. “What, boy?” Ciana asked. “What do you hear?” Seconds later, she heard the whine of engines coming from a distance. She stood on quivering legs, faced toward the approaching noise. Then she saw ATVs heading from the direction of her house, or rather, the rubble of her house.

Soldier went stiff and menacing, his growl deepening. Her heart tripped. She remembered ATVs tearing up her fields at night only months before. Was this help or trouble heading toward them?

As the vehicles closed the distance, she saw that the men riding them wore bright blue jackets, and when one turned to avoid a nasty rut, she read the word
PARAMEDIC
on the jacket’s back in bright yellow. She sagged with relief.

“Stand down,” Ciana said, touching the dog’s head. Soldier instantly obeyed.

Three men and four vehicles, one a stretcher on off-road tires and being towed, ground to a stop in front of her. “You all right, lady?” a man asked, eyeing the dog.

“My fiancé’s hurt bad. The dog won’t hurt you.”

In minutes, the men had set up a portable triage and set to work on Jon while Ciana and Soldier stood back. She watched as the team poked in IVs and hooked up small machines to gauge his vitals. She heard one whistle low when he lifted the blanket and saw Jon’s leg. “Good thing he’s out,” the man said.

Two of the men gently straightened the leg, then put it in an air cast. Because Jon didn’t even groan through the procedure, Ciana became even more concerned for him. How far under was he?

In no time, Jon was prepped, laid on a backboard, and placed on the stretcher. One of the men radioed to say, “Bringing in two.”

Ciana rubbed her eyes, confused. “I—I’m all right—”

“No, miss,” one of the rescuers said kindly. “You’re not. You need to come with us.” He motioned for her to climb behind him on his ATV.

She felt torn. She desperately wanted to go with Jon, but the animals … Her brain went woozy. The medic took her hand and seemed to understand her concerns. “They’ll find their way back.”

“The—the reins … trip …”

“I get it,” one of the other men said. “You don’t want the horse to step on her reins.” He came forward, removed Firecracker’s bridle, draped it over the fencing. “Go on,” he told the horse, slapping her rump.

Numbly, Ciana watched her horse start in the direction of the barn. “Go,” she told Soldier. The dog tagged behind the horse, but Ciana knew that even back at the barn, there was
no one to care for the animals. No food, no access into their familiar stalls and shelter. No Jon.

“Ready?” the man driving her vehicle asked once she climbed on behind him. He revved the engine and followed the stretcher out of the field, past the broken house and the fallen trees to the frontage road, where an ambulance waited, lights flashing in the rapidly darkening night.

The ambulance ended up taking them to Nashville, to the same hospital where Arie had spent so much time having cancer treatments. During the ride to the hospital, listening to the calls coming over the paramedics’ walkie-talkies and battery radios, Ciana began to grasp the scope and size of the disaster. An estimated two hundred twisters had touched down over a ten-hour period through three states. Emergency forces were reeling from the toll of death and destruction. The numbers were too large, the reports too overwhelming for her mind to wrap around, so she tuned out what she could and held Jon’s hand, watched fluids flow into his arm, and answered questions for the ambulance tech, who held a sheaf of forms. At some point, the tech stretched masking tape across Jon’s forehead and wrote
head trauma
in black marker. “Lot of walking wounded,” the man explained while tucking the paperwork under Jon’s blanket. “Guys like this can’t speak up, and this will expedite his examination process. The two of you will be separated at the hospital.”

“Please, no—”

“No choice. The worst cases must go first. You can walk and talk.”

The hospital scene was chaotic. Jon was swiftly moved up to intensive care, while Ciana found herself in a large room
that had been converted into a triage center for those victims with less serious injuries. She was placed on a cot, and in spite of the glare of overhead lights and the noise of doctors, nurses, and tearful victims, she fell into an exhausted sleep. At some point her soiled clothes were removed and bagged and she was put in a hospital gown and taken to Radiology. Afterward she was moved into a real bed in a quieter, darker space. The experience was dreamlike, as she tottered between wakefulness and oblivion.

No one knew where she and Jon were, but they were alive, which was more than could be said for so many others. For the moment, it was all she had to hold onto.

Eden and Garret landed a motel room barely the size of a closet, old and smelling musty. Garret secured it for a week. When Eden protested, saying they should be back at Bellmeade in another day, he said, “May be a while, love. Authorities have clamped down on the town and say no one comes in until they’ve searched the place completely for the wounded.”

“But how will we know about Ciana and Alice Faye?”

“We wait for them to get hold of us.”

“No one can get through!” she cried.

He put his arms around her. “That might take a few days too.”

“What should I do? I can’t just hang around doing nothing.”

He kissed the top of her head. “I’d search to see if she’s been hurt. If she has, she’ll be treated and might be easier to find.”

His idea made sense. Yet it was frightening too. “What if—”

Garret refused to let her finish her sentence. “Just do a search.”

Names of patients were being posted online by medical officials on different hospitals’ Web pages. A patient’s condition
was not listed, only name and location. And yet the growing lists of both “John and/or Jane Doe,” meaning the patient hadn’t been identified, was alarming. Social media pages were filling with requests of people looking for family and friends too. Eden was diligent, surfing from site to site, and also calling medical facilities. Twenty-nine hours later, she got a hit on Ciana’s name in the Nashville hospital she knew well.

“Found her!” Eden cried to Garret, coming in the door from making a food run. “And she’s not far from here.”

“Let’s go.”

Eden needed no prompting.

The rattle of food trays woke Ciana. She felt groggy, but slowly reality returned and she remembered everything. Her first thought was for Jon. How was he? Where was he? The room was full of beds and patients like herself, so she turned to the bed next to hers to see a man shoveling food into his mouth. “You have the time?”