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TWO
He was strong, and he spoke English. That was all Juneau knew about her new partner. Under the circumstances, that was already more than she could’ve hoped for. He was doing most of the heavy lifting. She’d tried to help, but he gave her a dark look and invited her to “take a seat,” though she suspected he’d enforce his will if she balked. And honestly, the flaring pain persuaded her more than his authority.
So she watched him work. The medical center had held up better than most of the buildings in town. Only one wall and part of the ceiling had collapsed. Now Silas labored to clear the place out while she used a sheet to paint a banner that read, Refugio aquí. When she finished, she limped toward the broken wall to hang it street side, and as soon as he saw her move, Silas dropped the heavy chunk of plaster in his hands. He hurried toward her as if she were permanently crippled.
I might be, if it wasn’t for him. Hell, I’d probably be dead. She’d never known a bona fide hero before. So far she’d managed to be normal around him, but it was hard not to let gratitude color her responses. And the fact that he hadn’t left her to fend for herself in the wake of the disaster—it reiterated what she’d known when he pulled her from the wreckage. He was something special.
“I’ll do that,” he said.
“So, what, you’re going to have me sitting around, waiting for guests?”
Her leg wasn’t broken. She’d taken a look earlier, and it appeared to her that she’d sustained deep bruising around her knee. Nothing would cure that but time. Until then, she’d swallow some painkillers, once they cleared this place a bit, and do the best she could.
He thought about that a moment. “Help me, then.”
When he approached to take the sheet from her, she realized all over again just how enormous he was. He had to be close to seven feet tall, because at five foot nine, she wasn’t petite, and he made her feel tiny and feminine. That was new. As she watched him, Silas gathered makeshift tools, a couple of metal shards, and a wedge of cement. From the gentle crow’s feet and brackets at his mouth, he looked to be in his late thirties or early forties. He had an interesting face. In fact, most women would probably consider him ugly with his crooked nose and overly strong jaw.
She followed him outside, curious about his methods, and while she held one end, he used brute strength to spike the sign into place. It wasn’t straight, but the message was clear. They could expect survivors to start filing in, which meant they needed to finish clearing the medical center, lay hands on any usable supplies, and locate food and water.
“One of us needs to stay here,” he said as he finished the task. “Since you’re fluent in Spanish, it should be you.”
“You just don’t want me walking around on this leg.”
To her surprise, he ac
knowledged that. “True. But my point stands. I can also bring back more supplies in a single run, and I’m better suited to deal with trouble.”
Juneau nodded. “Go on, then. I’ll finish up here.”
Each step hurt as she completed what he’d started. But her determined hope faltered when she finished clearing all the way to the stairs. She found the doctor, still and lifeless. How the hell was she supposed to deal with this? Intellectually, she knew the dead had to be moved. Otherwise they risked disease and infection among the survivors. But the phone lines were down, and there was no one to call.
With a murmured apology, she rolled him onto a sheet and towed him out through the broken wall. Stray dogs might get at him out here. But she couldn’t leave him inside with the living. A quick look around revealed a storage shed so flimsy that it must’ve swayed with the quake instead of collapsing. It was a little further than she wanted to go, dragging such a burden, but she couldn’t leave him in the street. Juneau opened the latch and shoved the body inside.
Her return to the medical center went a lot slower. She was afraid of what else she’d find. But fortunately, the doctor seemed to have been alone at the time of the quake. Thankfully, he’d run a small practice.
By the time Silas got back, she’d managed to set up a couple of tables and had covered one of them with bandages, tape, and other medical odds and ends. The painkillers, apart from OTC ones, she left locked up. Since she wasn’t a doctor, that stuff shouldn’t be in circulation anyway. Silas came in pushing a wheelbarrow full of bottled water and canned goods, his face red and sweaty from working in the afternoon heat.
“Did you dig out a whole store?”
His smile came and went, fleeting as a bird gliding over the ocean. “Pretty much.”
Silas went back almost immediately, leaving her to do the setup. Good thing she stayed, too. People began to arrive with dusty faces and bloody hands. Some, she could tell by their injures, had dug themselves out of the wreckage. She gave out water and aspirin while trying not to panic.
How the hell did I think I could manage an aid effort like this? I’ve never even owned a cat.
“Are you a nurse?” a woman asked in Spanish.
“No. I teach English.” Or I did. Before this. “But I’ve had basic first aid training. I can tend wounds.”
That galvanized three or four people to queue up around her. “Me duele.”
“Ayude a mi hijo, por favor.”
And she tried. At least, everyone seemed grateful for the water, more shell-shocked than anything else. The survivors asked relatively few questions. Doubtless they knew she had no answers.
A couple of families huddled together. Juneau prowled through the supplies, looking for ready-to-eat food. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Silas had managed to save a few boxes of granola bars. They would be crushed inside the envelopes, but the packages could be slit open and the contents eaten anyway. Those she doled out, feeling helpless.
When Silas returned the second time, she was still bandaging wounds. As she helped people, more arrived. He had another load of food and water. Two men attempted to intercept him to take what they wanted, but he stilled them with a single look. Yeah, she was incredibly glad to see him. The mood could easily turn in situations like this, and as people became more desperate, they’d do things they would never otherwise consider.
