Ice Storm Read online

  Nothing.

  He didn’t know what to do. Should he slap her? He’d never slapped anyone in his whole life and didn’t know if he could. If he shook her harder, he felt like he might break her. She seemed so old and frail to him now. He went and got a glass of cold water—very cold water—from the tap and flicked some at her face.

  “Eve. Damn it, I need you to be awake.” He felt tears pressing at the back of his eyes. Don’t cry, stupid. Do something.

  Oh my God, he suddenly thought, is she dead? He reached down and pulled her hand out of her blankets and tried to find her pulse. She was warm at least. Wouldn’t a dead person go cold? His hand was unsteady, but he made himself calm down and focus. There. A flutter on her wrist. Another. It was slow, but she had a pulse, a heartbeat. He leaned in so his ear was next to her mouth and held his breath to listen better. Yes, she was definitely breathing. He could hear it.

  Then why wasn’t she waking up?

  He went back into the kitchen and yanked opened cabinets until he found her other pots and pans. He brought out a big pan with a lid and took it back in and slammed the lid into the pan, right by her ear. He screamed nonsense at her while he did it a second time. No one could sleep through that racket.

  But Eve did.

  He knew then that something was really wrong with her. She wasn’t just sleeping. She was unconscious. Or in a coma. Or—well, he didn’t know what, but something. Something bad. Maybe she’d had a heart attack or stroke or whatever other attack old people got. Maybe the stress of listening to cracking branches and remembering the bad times in foreign countries had made her brain shut down. Could that happen? It was mean to think, but that’d be the best possible explanation. It seemed most easily remedied. Better than a stroke or something that she might never get better from.

  Whatever was wrong, she needed help. And he wasn’t the help she needed.

  But he could find her that help.

  How, idiot?

  Somehow.

  But you don’t have a phone, or a car, or a way to call an ambulance, or anything at all. And if you knock on doors, no one else is going to have that stuff either. They might have a car in the garage, but no way could anyone make it through the street to the emergency room with Eve in the back seat, not with the trees and power lines all over. They might have a working cellphone somehow—like a satellite phone—but he had no idea of knowing who would have one. And even if he did get through to the ambulance, the ambulance couldn’t make it in here any more than someone could make it out in their car.

  No doctor would live on this street. It wasn’t a nice enough neighborhood. Doctors had money.

  Were main streets clear yet? If they were, he might be able to ask a bunch of people to help carry Eve to meet an ambulance. But he didn’t have a way to call the ambulance, and anyway, he didn’t want to move her with a bunch of regular people tripping over snow and sliding on ice. He wanted a professional to move her, a paramedic or—

  The voice came to him, a fuzzy memory. It hadn’t been but a few days ago. “I live three blocks up from you.” That firefighter. The woman had said she lived three blocks up and on Verdun. He didn’t have her address, but someone who lived by her would know which house was hers. He’d knock on doors and ask until he’d found her. Firefighters had to know rescue stuff, like CPR and all that, so she had to be able to help. The roads were full of limbs and trees, and the snowdrifts were high, but she could make it back here on foot. She probably had taken an oath to help people, so she’d make an extra effort a regular person might not.

  And he would make it to her. Then he could hand over the responsibility to her, to an adult who knew what to do. He might be useless when it came to medically helping Eve, but he wasn’t 100% useless.

  He threw his jacket on. He just needed to put his gloves on and he could go. But he hated to leave Eve alone, and he hesitated. Still, the sooner he ran up the street and found help, the sooner she’d be better.

  He still didn’t know how the firefighter would get Eve to a hospital if she needed one, but he knew she would have more ideas than he did, some kid who had few skills beyond gaming and writing essays for school. At least the firefighter would have an idea of what was wrong with Eve, why she wouldn’t wake up. Maybe she could fix her.

  What a little kid kind of thing to think, he thought. Fixing, whatever that entailed, was probably much more than the work of an hour, or even a day. It probably would take a hospital.

  Grow up. Be a man. Go get your friend some help.

  He exited through the back door, leaving it unlocked, putting on his gloves as he went. There was a light breeze, but with the frigid air, it was enough to cut right through him. He hurried down the middle of the street, skirting downed trees, climbing over them where there wasn’t a way around them. While he’d imagined himself running for help, there was no running about it. It would take a few minutes just to get to the end of his street. It was only three blocks, he told himself. Okay, three long blocks, and he didn’t know his exact destination, but he would make it.

  The tree branches seemed to grab at him and trip him on purpose. He knew that wasn’t so, but it felt like it, like some malevolent power of the storm still wanted to get him, that it hadn’t given up just yet.

  Or maybe it wanted to get Eve. She was the one really in trouble.

  He wouldn’t let it have its way. He jogged through two yards where the street was blocked, and when he couldn’t run, he climbed or stumbled or walked. He fell down more than once when he hit hidden patches of ice, but he got up again. Branches sticking out from fallen trees scratched at his face, and he ignored them and kept going.

  On the second block, there were even more tangled power lines down. They weren’t sparking or anything, and no lights or noise emerged from any house, so he thought they were dead. Still, he gave them a wide berth, having to climb up on someone’s front stoop to get around the tree that had brought them down and the tangle of wires around it.

  “Hey!” an angry voice shouted, as a door opened. “Get off my porch!”

  He turned to the voice, not scared at all. Ray was focused on Eve and on getting her help. “Do you have a working cellphone?” he demanded of the angry man, whose head was sticking out of his front door.

  The man didn’t answer.

  For some reason, that made Ray downright angry. He was sick and tired of people stalking him and ignoring him and getting angrier than the situation warranted. He pointed a finger at the man, and he lowered the tone of his voice while raising the volume. “Are you a doctor then? I need a doctor! Or a cellphone. Is yours working?”

  The man shook his head, his gaze sliding away, and Ray turned away and staggered on, forgetting the man in a few seconds. By the end of the second block, he was tired. It wasn’t just a two-block stroll on a typical day. It was an obstacle course, and it was cold, and he found those two blocks harder than any walk to school, harder even than trying to run on a sandy beach. But he didn’t care if it was hard. He had to get help. He stopped about a third of the way up the next block and knocked on a door. No one answered. He knocked on the next door. And another. Finally, the fourth door he tried, someone answered, wrapped in blanket.

  “Do you know where the fireman lives? The lady firefighter, I mean. She lives around here somewhere.”

  “No,” the person said, a woman, younger than his mom. Her voice was rough, as with a head cold. “I thought you were the electric company. Do you know when they’re coming?”

  “I don’t. The firefighter moved in a year ago. Does that ring a bell? She’s white and has dark hair. Tall.” He raised his hand over his own head to show how much taller.

  The woman shook her head and shut the door.

  Ray kept lurching up the street, knocking randomly on doors that he could easily reach, that weren’t blocked by downed limbs or trees. Half the people were not answering. Maybe they’d gone to hotels or to shelters, or maybe they were too cold to move from their beds. He found
one more person at home who didn’t know anything about a firefighter.

  He’d reached the end of the third block and found nothing. Maybe the firefighter was in the next block. Or maybe he’d gone the wrong direction. She’d said “up the street,” though. “Three blocks up from you” meant this direction. The other direction, and people would say “down the street.”

  It could be that the firefighter didn’t know that yet. She could be new to town, not just new to the street. He nearly turned around to go the other way, but no. He was already here. He’d made it through the obstacles on those blocks, so he should try the next block too. If he didn’t find her there, he’d walk back to Eve’s and try three blocks down from his house.

  The wind picked up and a gust seemed to cut right through his jacket. He couldn’t stay out here forever. He had to find that firefighter.

  He started knocking on doors again, every single door this time.

  Finally, he found someone who knew the answer he so desperately needed. “They live in that blue house there.” The man pointed across the street, down two houses, and then he closed the door.

  It took over five minutes to make it from that house to the blue house. There were a lot of limbs down here in the street. As he got to the house, the front door opened, and a man emerged, bundled up. He was holding a bright green handsaw. He watched Ray stumble over branches and come his way.

  “Hey, kid. Be careful.”

  Ray kept climbing over branches toward the man. “Is this where the firefighter lady lives?”

  He nodded. “Do you have a fire?”

  “No. Someone is sick. An old lady that lives by me. I can’t get her to wake up.” The worried tears that he’d being holding back started flowing and he dashed them impatiently away. “I know they are paramedics too or know first aid or whatever. Is she home? Can she come and help me?”

  “I’m sorry, she’s not home.”

  “Oh.” Ray felt entirely defeated. He sank down where he was, exhausted, afraid, and out of ideas. “You’re not a paramedic or anything like that?” he asked. One last hope.

  “No, sorry. Get up. Come inside. You look frozen. Get off that cold ground, okay?”

  “I need to get back to her. If I can’t get her help, I should at least stay with her.” He made himself stand back up. “But I should get her help. Somehow, I mean.” He looked around as if ideas would be piled up among the crisscrossed branches. “But how?”

  “Come on in. I have a radio. I can get in touch with my wife.”

  “You can?” Ray went from despair back to hope in a dizzying instant.

  “I can. Come on. Get warm. We’ll call her.”

  Ray stepped into a house that was as warm as anything he’d felt in days. Seemed like years. He opened his jacket and ripped off his gloves. It was too hot, in fact, and he broke out in a sweat within seconds.

  “Kick your shoes off if you don’t mind. Then follow me.”

  Ray obeyed and, in his socks, padded after the man through the house. In a big family room, there were three little kids watching a DVD. Or two were watching. One was hardly more than a baby. The other two were maybe six and eight years old. They didn’t even look up, they were so engrossed. Lucky them, having electricity to watch movies. Not to mention heat.

  The man led him back to a tiny room off that family room, not much bigger than a walk-in closet. There was a strange-looking radio sitting there, plugged in, and when he turned it on, lights went on.

  “How do you have electricity?” Ray asked. He heard the wonder in his own voice, like some veteran of the Napoleonic wars in 1880 seeing the miracle of electricity for the first time.

  “Whole house generator.”

  “Most people in the neighborhood are cold. Really cold.”

  “I know. I asked the neighbors we know to come over, but they refused. Some went to shelters, others to relatives’ houses. One to a hotel that had generators.”

  Ray was irrationally angry at the man for being warm when so many people were cold. He knew how stupid that was, knew that this family had planned better for a power outage, was all, and that they didn’t deserve his anger. He put that silly feeling aside. Eve was all that was important right now. And he needed the man’s good will to get help for Eve.

  The man made a call on the radio and a voice said, “I’ll get her.” He turned around and said, “I’m Reed, by the way. Reed Guinto.”

  “Raysan Mitchell,” Ray said.

  “How do you know my wife?”

  “I talked to her a couple days ago, at a fire. The first day of the storm. We only said a few words, but she mentioned she lived on this street, and so I—” He faltered. “I didn’t have a better idea.”

  “This was a good idea,” Reed said. “I have the radio. We’ll get something done.”

  The voice of the woman firefighter came on, asking what was wrong. Her husband told her what was happening. The woman said, “Tell me about this person who’s sick. What are her symptoms?”

  Reed motioned Ray forward. “Talk normally. She’ll hear you.”

  Ray said, “Eve. She’s seventy-eight years old. She was tired last night. I think she fell asleep on the toilet in the afternoon, though she’d napped too. And this morning, I couldn’t get her up at all. I tried everything.” He listed what he’d done.

  “Did you pinch her or make her feel pain?”

  “No.” Ray felt a stab of guilt for not thinking of that. “Should I have?”

  “That would have been my next step. But probably, from what you said, that wouldn’t have woken her up either.”

  “I don’t know what else to do,” Ray said. “Tell me, and I’ll do it. Or better still, come here and take care of her. Please.” He felt no older than the children in the family room, pleading with an adult to take over.

  “The roads are still blocked in most places. We had a hard time getting to fires last night. We have a plow we’re using to clear roadways of trees to get to people, but only one. Let me check with the watch commander,” she said. “Dead air for a few minutes, Reed.”

  The man leaned back and turned to Ray. “We’ll get your friend help. Don’t worry.”

  “I can’t help but worry.”

  “So the woman is your neighbor? Not a relative?”

  “Just a neighbor. And my friend,” Ray said. “She’s a good person, and I don’t know that she has anyone else. She never mentioned children or sisters or brothers or whatever.” He realized how much he did not know about Eve. All the questions he hadn’t bothered to ask her.

  “It’s good she has you, then.”

  “I don’t know about that. She helped me more than I helped her. She kept me warm the last two days with her woodstove.”

  “You’re helping her now.”

  It didn’t feel like it. “I should get back to her.”

  “We haven’t heard the plan yet. Sit and rest a minute.” He rose from his chair and offered it to Ray.

  Ray shook his head. “I’ll stand, thank you.” He didn’t want to get comfortable. He had a thought. “You don’t happen to have any firewood, do you? She has the woodstove, but I’ve burned the last of the wood. And she said not to burn green wood, that it might start a fire if too much of it was used.”

  “That’s smart of her. No, I’m sorry. We don’t have a fireplace. Or wood.” He sat once more.

  “It’s okay,” Ray said. He’d get more wood off that dead tree. Somehow.

  The woman came back on the radio. “Okay, Reed?”

  “Here,” the man said.

  “We have one fire just called in and two probable heart attacks already. Triage, you know. We’ll slot her in after that. What’s the address again?”

  The man looked at Ray.

  “I don’t know. It’s mine and two doors down—two doors in this direction.” He told the woman his address.

  “She’s on the same side of the street as your house?” the woman’s voice asked. “Two doors exactly?”

  �
�Yes. My house, one more, and then hers. She has plants in her front yard, not grass, and there are three wooden steps up to a small covered porch. There’s a kid’s wagon on the front porch.”

  She read back his address to him and he nodded while Reed confirmed it was right.

  “Okay, we’ll be there. I gotta go. Engine is pulling out for the fire,” she said. She signed off.

  The man turned off his radio.

  “I should have asked how long it would be,” Ray said.

  “I’d count on at least a half-hour. Could be as long as two hours. Do you want something to drink? Something warm to eat while you wait?”

  “I can’t wait here. I need to get back to Eve. I mean, thank you for your help, but I really need to go.” He turned around and retraced his steps through the house.

  The man followed. “You’re welcome to stay here, really. It’s warm here.”

  “No, I can’t,” Ray said, zipping up his jacket. He was about to put on his gloves when he remembered. He turned and offered his hand to shake. “Thank you again, sir.”

  “I hope everything is okay,” Reed said. “You stay warm, hear?”

  Chapter 16

  Ray put on his gloves and picked his way down the three and a half blocks. He passed a man with a chainsaw, working to clear his driveway of a fallen tree. Ray thought about stopping to ask him to cut the dead tree up for him, but the man was so focused on his work, the chainsaw was so loud. it’d take a minute to get his attention. And he might say no anyway, or make Ray wait until he was finished. No, Ray needed to get back to Eve. After she was taken care of, he’d worry about getting more wood for himself. She might be awake by now anyway, and wouldn’t he feel stupid for calling the fire department over it?

  But when he stumbled into her house, shivering from the cold, she was right where he had left her. He stood there, helplessly, wishing there was something he could do. He tucked the blankets more securely around her and realized how much colder Eve’s house was than the firefighter’s had been. He had no urge to strip off his jacket here.

  He checked the woodstove. It was burning low. He should get more wood. Or should he? No. He didn’t want to leave Eve alone, and it take him an hour to gather more wood and more time to dry the wood by the stove. It was more important that he stay by her side.