On the Island (17 page)

Chapter 38

—

T.J.

I couldn’t identify the noise at first. It hit me suddenly, when my brain figured out that the thwack-thwack-thwack sound was helicopter blades echoing in the distance.

The sound grew fainter until I couldn’t hear it anymore.

Come back. Please turn around.

It didn’t. My hope turned to despair, and I knew I was going to die. My strength was fading, and I had a hard time holding on to the beam. My body temperature had dropped, and I ached everywhere.

I pictured Anna’s face.

How many people can say they’ve been loved the way she loved me?

My fingers slipped off the beam, and I struggled to grab it again. I held on, drifting in and out. A dream about sharks jerked me awake. A faint sound in the distance became louder.

I know that sound.

My hopes soared, but I had used up the very last of my strength and I lost my grip on the beam, my fingers sliding down the wet surface. My head went under and I drifted downward. I instinctively held my breath as long as I could until, eventually, I couldn’t.

I floated in a sea of nothing, weightless, until another sensation overpowered me. Death wouldn’t be peaceful after all. It hurt, the crushing weight of it pounding on my chest.

Suddenly, the pressure vanished. Seawater spewed from my mouth, and I opened my eyes. A man in a wet suit knelt beside me, his hands hovering above my chest. My back rested on something solid, and I realized I was inside a helicopter. I breathed in deeply and as soon as I had enough air in my lungs, I said, “Go back. We have to find her.”

“Who?” he asked.

“Anna! We have to find Anna!”

Chapter 39

—

Anna

I nestled deeper into my numb place. The man gently shook my shoulder, and I didn’t want to talk, but he wouldn’t stop asking if I could hear him. I turned toward his voice and blinked, trying to focus my swollen, tear-filled eyes.

“What’s your name?” he asked. “One of the other helicopters just pulled a man out of the water.”

I struggled to sit up, wanting to hear clearly what he was about to say.

“They said he’s looking for someone named Anna.”

It took a moment for his words to register, but when I comprehended their meaning, I experienced elation, pure and true, for the first time in my entire life.

“I’m Anna.” I wrapped myself in my arms and rocked back and forth, sobbing.

We landed at the hospital and they loaded me onto a stretcher and brought me inside. Two men transferred me from the stretcher to a hospital bed, neither of them speaking English. They wheeled me past a pay phone hanging on the wall.

A phone. There’s a phone.

I turned my head toward it as we went by and panicked when I couldn’t immediately recall my parents’ phone number.

The hospital was overflowing with patients. People sat on the floor in the lobby, waiting to see a doctor. A nurse approached me and spoke soothingly in a language I didn’t understand. Smiling and patting my arm, she pierced the skin on the back of my hand with a needle and hung an IV bag on a pole next to my bed.

“I need to find T.J.,” I said, but she shook her head and, noticing my shivering, pulled the sheet up to my neck.

The chaos of so many voices, only some of them speaking in English, thundered in my ears, louder than anything I’d heard in the last three and a half years. I inhaled the smell of disinfectant and blinked at the fluorescent lights that hurt my eyes. Someone pushed my bed into a hallway around the corner. I lay on my back fighting to stay awake.

Where is T.J.?

I wanted to call my parents, but I didn’t have the strength to move my body. I fell asleep for a minute, jerking awake when footsteps approached. A voice said, “The Coast Guard just brought her in. I think she’s the one he’s looking for.”

A few seconds later a hand pulled back the sheet covering me, and T.J. climbed from his hospital bed into mine, trying not to tangle the lines of our IVs. He wrapped his arms around me and collapsed, burying his face in my neck. Tears ran down my face at the sheer relief of holding the solid weight of him in my arms.

“You made it,” he said, trembling all over. “I love you, Anna,” he whispered.

“I love you, too.” I tried to tell him about the pay phone, but exhaustion overtook me and my garbled words didn’t make sense.

I slept.

“Can you hear me?” Someone gently shook my shoulder. I opened my eyes and for a moment, I had no idea where I was.

“English,” I whispered, comprehending that the man looking down at me was a blond-haired, blue-eyed American in his mid-thirties. I glanced over at T.J., but his eyes were still closed.

Phone. Where is that phone?

“My name is Dr. Reynolds. You’re in the hospital in Malé. I’m sorry no one has checked on you for a while. We’re not equipped to handle extra casualties. A nurse took your vital signs a few hours ago and they were good, so I decided to let you sleep. You’ve been out for almost twelve hours. Are you in any pain?”

“Just a little sore. And thirsty and hungry.” The doctor motioned to a passing nurse and made a pouring gesture. She nodded and returned with a small pitcher of water and two plastic cups. He filled one and helped me sit up. I drank it all and looked around in confusion. “Why are there so many people here?”

“The Maldives is currently in a state of emergency.”

“Why?”

He looked at me strangely. “Because of the tsunami.”

T.J. stirred beside me and opened his eyes. I helped him sit up and hugged him while the doctor poured a cup of water and handed it to him. He drank it down without stopping.

“T.J., it was a
tsunami
.”

He seemed confused for a minute, but then he rubbed his eyes and said, “Really?”

“Yes.”

“Did the Coast Guard bring you in?” Dr. Reynolds asked, pouring each of us another glass of water.

We nodded.

“Where did you come from?”

T.J. and I looked at each other.

“We don’t know,” I said. “We’ve been missing for three and a half years.”

“What do you mean, missing?”

“We’ve been living on one of the islands ever since our pilot had a heart attack and crashed into the ocean,” T.J. said.

The doctor scrutinized us, looking back and forth at our faces. Maybe it was T.J.’s hair that finally convinced him.

“Oh my God, you’re them, aren’t you? The ones who went down in the seaplane.” His eyes were wide. He took a deep breath and blew it out. “Everyone thought you were dead.”

“Yeah, that’s what we figured,” T.J. said. “Do you think you could find us a phone?”

Dr. Reynolds handed T.J. his cell. “You can use mine.” A nurse removed our IVs and T.J. and I climbed carefully off the hospital bed. My legs wobbled, and T.J. steadied me, putting an arm around my waist.

“There’s a small supply room down the hall,” Dr. Reynolds said. “It’s quiet and you can have some privacy.” He stared at us and shook his head. “I can’t believe you’re alive. You were all over the news for weeks.”

We followed him, but before we reached the supply room, we came to the women’s bathroom.

“Can you wait, please?” I asked. They stopped, and I pushed open the door, closing it behind me and plunging into darkness. My hand fumbled for the switch and when the lights came on, my eyes darted from the toilet to the sink and finally to the mirror.

I had completely forgotten what I looked like.

I went up to the mirror and studied myself. My skin was the color of coffee beans and T.J. was right, my eyes did look bluer because of it. There were a few lines on my face that hadn’t been there before. My hair was a mess of tangles and two shades lighter than I remembered. I looked like an island girl, savage, unkempt, and wild.

I tore my gaze away from the mirror, pulled my shorts down, and sat on the toilet. I reached for the toilet paper. Unspooling some, I rubbed it against my cheek, feeling the softness. When I finished, I flushed and washed my hands, marveling at the water that flowed from the tap. T.J. and Dr. Reynolds were standing in the hall waiting for me when I opened the door. “I’m sorry I took so long.”

“That’s okay,” T.J. said. “I went to the bathroom, too.” He smiled at me. “That was weird.” He took my hand and we followed Dr. Reynolds into the supply room.

“I’ll be back in a bit. I have to check on some patients and then I’ll call the local police. They’ll want to talk to you. I’ll also see if I can find you something to eat.”

My stomach growled at the mention of food.

“Thanks,” T.J. said. When he left we sat down on the floor. Shelves of medical supplies surrounded us. It was cramped but quiet.

“You call yours first, Anna.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He handed me the phone. It took me a minute, but I finally remembered my parents’ phone number. My hand shook, and I held my breath as it rang. There was a click on the line. I started to say hello but then a recorded voice said, “The number you are trying to reach has been disconnected or is no longer in service.”

I looked at T.J. “Their number has been disconnected. They must have moved.”

“Call Sarah.”

“Do you want to try your parents first?”

“No, go ahead.” T.J. buzzed with anticipation. “I just want someone to answer.”

I called Sarah’s number, my heart hammering in my chest. It rang four times before someone answered.

“Hello?”

Chloe!

“Chloe, can you put your mommy on the phone right away please?”

“May I ask who’s calling?”

“Chloe, honey, just get your mom, okay?”

“I have to ask who it is and if they don’t tell me, I’m supposed to hang up.”

“No! Don’t hang up, Chloe.”
Would she even remember me?
“It’s Aunt Anna. Tell your mommy it’s Aunt Anna.”

“Hi, Aunt Anna. Mommy showed me pictures of you. She told me you live in heaven. Do you have angel wings? Mommy’s grabbing the phone so I gotta go now.”

“Listen,” Sarah said. “I don’t know who you are, but that’s a sick thing to do to a child.”

“Sarah! It’s Anna, don’t hang up, it’s me, it’s really me.” I started crying.

“Who is this? What do you get out of these kinds of calls? Do you think they don’t hurt?”

“Sarah, T.J. and I didn’t die in the plane crash. We’ve been living on an island and if it weren’t for the tsunami, we’d still be there. We’re at a hospital in Malé.” Now that I’d gotten the words out, my crying intensified. “Please don’t hang up!”

“What? Oh my God. Oh my God!” She screamed for David but she was crying and talking so fast I couldn’t understand anything that was coming out of her mouth.

“Anna? You’re alive? You’re really alive?”

“Yes.” I was bawling and T.J. was jumping up and down, he was so excited. “Sarah, I called Mom and Dad first but their number was disconnected. Did they sell the house?”

“The house was sold.”

“What’s their number?” I looked around to see if there was a pen or something to write on but came up empty-handed. “Call them, Sarah, call them the minute we hang up. Tell them I tried to call them first. I’ll call you back and get their number as soon as I can find something to write it down with. Tell them to wait by the phone.”

“How are you getting home?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Listen, T.J. hasn’t even called his parents yet. I don’t know anything at this point, but I’m going to give his mom and dad your number so they can coordinate with you. Wait for their call, okay?”

“I will. Oh, Anna, I don’t even know what to say. We had your
funeral
.”

“Well, I’m alive. And I can’t wait to get home.”

Chapter 40

—

T.J.

Anna handed me the cell phone. I dialed my number and waited for someone to answer.
Pick up, pick up, pick up.

“Hello?” It was my mom. A wave of emotion washed over me when I heard her voice. I hadn’t realized until that very moment how much I’d missed her. Tears filled my eyes and I blinked them back. Anna put her arm around me. “Mom, it’s T.J. Don’t hang up.” There was silence on the other end, so I kept talking. “Anna and I didn’t die in the plane crash. We’ve been living on an island. The Coast Guard rescued us after the tsunami and we’re at the hospital in Malé.”

“T.J.?” She sounded weird, like she was in a trance. She started crying.

“Mom, put Dad on!”

“Who is this?” my dad yelled into the phone.

I felt a second wave of emotion when I heard my dad’s voice and I wanted to hold on to it, but my desire to make someone understand what had happened and where we were won out. My voice was steady when I said, “Dad, it’s T.J. Don’t hang up. Just listen. Anna and I made it to an island after we crashed. The Coast Guard pulled us out of the water after the tsunami. We’re at the hospital in Malé, and we’re both fine.” There was silence on the other end. “Dad?”

“Oh my God,” he said. “It’s you? It’s really you?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“You’ve been alive this whole time? How?”

“It wasn’t easy.”

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“We’re okay. Tired and sore. Hungry.”

“Is Anna okay?”

“Yeah, she’s sitting here next to me.”

“I don’t know what to say, T.J. I’m overwhelmed. I need to think for a minute. I need to figure out how to get you out of there,” he said.

For the first time in a long time, nothing weighed heavy on my shoulders. My dad would take over and bring us home. “Dad, Anna wants you to call her sister and make sure she knows what’s going on.”

Anna told me the phone number, and I repeated it for my dad.

“The last thing I want to do is hang up, T.J., but it’s eight p.m. here, and I need to start making calls before it gets much later. Getting you on a plane might be difficult because of 9/11. If I can’t get you and Anna on a commercial flight, I’ll charter one. It will probably be tomorrow before I can get you out of there. Are you both able to leave the hospital?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Can someone take you to a hotel?”

“I can check. Maybe someone can give us a ride.”

“Once you get to a hotel, call me and I’ll give them my credit card number.”

“Okay, Dad. Is Mom all right?”

“Yeah, she’s right here. She wants to talk to you.”

I could hardly understand my mom. As soon as she heard my voice, she started crying again.

“It’s okay, Mom, I’ll be home soon. Don’t cry. Put Dad back on the phone, okay?”

When my dad came back on the line I told him we were going to talk to the local police and then we’d try to get to a hotel, and I’d call him from there.

“Okay, T.J. I’ll be waiting.”

“He’s going to start making calls,” I said after I snapped the phone shut. “He said getting us on a commercial flight might be hard because of 9/11.”

“What’s 9/11?”

“I don’t know. He said he might have to charter a plane. If we can find a ride to a hotel, we can call him and he’ll give them his credit card number. We probably can’t get out until tomorrow though, Anna.”

She smiled. “We’ve waited this long. I can wait one more day.”

I pulled her close and hugged her. “We’re going home.”

We walked out of the supply closet and looked around for Dr. Reynolds. He was standing in the hallway waiting for us with two police officers. There was another man waiting with them. He wore a khaki shirt with the name of the seaplane charter stitched on the pocket.

Dr. Reynolds held a brown paper bag with a big grease stain down the side. Smiling, he handed it to me and I looked inside. Tacos. I pulled one out and handed it to Anna, then took one for myself.

The deep-fried tortilla was wrapped around shredded beef and onions. A spicy sauce dripped down my hand. I wasn’t used to so many different flavors at one time. Starving, I ate the whole thing in under a minute.

The officers wanted to talk to us, so we followed them to an empty corner of the lobby. I reached into the bag and got both of us another taco.

The officers spoke English, but their thick accents made them hard to understand. We answered their questions, telling them about Mick and his heart attack, and then crashing and making it to the island.

“The search and rescue team found parts of the plane but no bodies,” one of the officers said. “We assumed you had drowned.”

“Mick knew we might not land safely, so he told us to put on life jackets. Otherwise we would have,” Anna said.

“They searched for bodies,” the other officer said. “But they didn’t expect to find any. There are sharks.”

Anna and I glanced at each other.

“Some of the wreckage from the plane washed ashore. My backpack, Anna’s suitcase, and the life raft. Mick’s body washed up, too,” I said. “We buried him on the island.”

The man from the seaplane charter had some questions.

“If the life raft washed up, why didn’t you trigger the emergency beacon?”

“Because there wasn’t one,” I said.

“All life rafts have a beacon. They’re mandated by the Coast Guard when a plane flies over water.”

“Well, ours didn’t,” I said. “And believe me, we looked.”

He wrote down our contact information and then handed me a business card.

“Please have your attorney call me when you get back to the States.”

I put the card in the pocket of my shorts. “There’s one more thing,” I said, turning back to the two police officers. “Someone was living there before us.” Anna and I told them about the shack and the skeleton. “If you were looking for a missing person, we may have found him.”

When we finished talking to them, we asked Dr. Reynolds if someone could drive us to a hotel.

“I can,” he said.

Dr. Reynolds drove a beat-up Honda Civic. He didn’t have air-conditioning, so we rolled our windows down. He pulled out of the parking lot, and the roads, cars, and buildings—things I hadn’t seen in so long—amazed me. I inhaled car exhaust fumes, so different from the smell of the island. When I saw the sign for the hotel, I smiled, because it finally hit me that Anna and I would have a room, a shower, and a bed.

“Thanks for all your help,” we told Dr. Reynolds when he dropped us off in front of the hotel.

“Good luck to both of you,” he said, shaking my hand and giving Anna a hug.

The hotel hadn’t suffered much damage. Someone was sweeping debris away from the sidewalk in front when Anna and I walked through the revolving door. Hotel guests had gathered in the lobby, some of them standing next to piles of luggage.

Everyone stared at us. If there was a no shoes, no shirt, no service rule, I was currently violating it. I caught our reflection in a large mirror hanging on the wall. We didn’t look so great.

I followed Anna to the reception desk where a woman stood typing on a computer.

“Are you checking in?” she asked.

“Yes. One room, please,” I said.

“We’re pretty full,” she said. “But we do have a suite available. Will that be okay?”

I smiled and said, “That will be just fine. Could I borrow your phone?”

She turned the phone toward me, and I called my dad collect. “We’re at the hotel,” I said.

“Get a couple rooms and charge everything to them,” my dad said.

“We only need one room, Dad.”

He paused for a second. “Oh. Okay.”

I handed the phone to the woman and waited while my dad gave her his credit card information. She handed it back to me and finished typing.

“Is there a gift shop at the hotel?” my dad asked.

“Yeah, I can see it from here.” The gift shop was just around the corner from the front desk. From what I could tell, it looked pretty high-end.

“Buy whatever you need. I’m working on getting you and Anna out of there. The Malé airport sustained some damage, but they told me they haven’t had to cancel too many flights. A commercial flight isn’t going to work, so I’m working on chartering a plane. Your mom wanted to fly over and get you, but I convinced her that you’d get home sooner if you didn’t have to wait for her to come to you first. I’ll call your room as soon as I have the details, but be ready to leave by morning.”

“Okay, Dad. We will.”

“I don’t even know what to say, T.J. Your mom and I are still in shock. Your sisters haven’t stopped crying, and the phone is ringing off the hook. We just want to get you and Anna home. I’ve already talked to Sarah, and I’ll make sure she gets all the information as soon as I have it.”

We said good-bye, and I handed the phone back to the woman behind the desk.

Anna and I walked into the gift shop and looked around, unsure where to start. It was divided in two. One side had racks of clothes—everything from souvenir T-shirts to formal wear—and the other side had nothing but food. Candy, chips, crackers, and cookies lined the shelves.

“Oh my God,” Anna said, and took off.

I grabbed two shopping baskets from a pile near the front door and followed her.

I handed her one and laughed as she tossed SweeTarts and Hot Tamales into it. I picked up a bag of Doritos and threw them in, followed by three Slim Jims.

“Really?” she asked, raising one eyebrow.

“Oh, yeah,” I said, smiling at her.

After we filled one basket with junk food, we headed to a rack of toiletries.

“There’s probably soap and shampoo in the room, but I’m not taking any chances,” Anna said, grabbing more and adding toothbrushes and toothpaste, deodorant, lotion, razors, shaving cream, and a brush and comb.

Next, we picked out a T-shirt and pair of shorts for me. Anna waved a package of boxer briefs in my direction, and I shook my head but she nodded, laughed, and threw them in the basket. I reached into a barrel full of men’s flip-flops and picked out a black pair.

A nearby rack held sundresses, and I selected a blue one for Anna. She found a pair of sandals to go with it.

Anna scooped up some underwear, a pair of shorts, and a T-shirt, and we carried the baskets to the counter, charging everything to our room.

We rode the elevator to the third floor. I slid the key card in, and when we entered the room, the first thing I noticed was a huge king-size bed piled high with pillows. A large flat-screen TV hung on the wall across from the bed and four dining chairs and a table sat next to a rolltop desk and mini-refrigerator. The living room area had a coffee table, couch, and two chairs arranged in front of another TV. The air conditioner blasted frigid air into the room. A tray of four plastic-covered glasses sat on a low table by the door. I unwrapped two, walked into the bathroom, and filled them at the sink. Anna followed me, and I handed one to her. She stared at it for a few seconds before she raised it to her lips and drank.

We checked out the rest of the bathroom. A giant glass-walled shower occupied one corner of the room, and a marble counter with two sinks and a basket of soap and shampoo stood between the shower and a deep Jacuzzi tub. Two white robes hung on a hook by the door.

“I’m going to call Sarah, so I can get my mom and dad’s number. I told her to have them wait by the phone. How many hours ahead of Chicago are we?”

“I think eleven. When I talked to my dad he said it was already eight p.m. there.”

Anna sat down on the bed and grabbed the pad of paper and a pen from the nightstand. She picked up the phone and dialed. “It’s busy. I’ll try her cell.” Dialing again, she waited and then hung up the phone. “It just kept ringing.” Anna frowned. “Why isn’t she answering?”

“Because she’s probably calling everyone you know and they’re calling her back. Her phone will probably be ringing for the next several days. Let’s get in the shower. You can try again as soon as we get out.”

We stayed in the shower for almost an hour, scrubbing and laughing. Anna couldn’t stop washing, even after I told her she was definitely clean.

“I’m never going to take another bath for as long as I live. I’m officially only taking showers,” Anna said.

“Me, too.”

When we finished, we dried off and put on the bathrobes. Anna squeezed toothpaste onto two toothbrushes and handed one to me. We stood in front of the double sinks brushing, rinsing, and spitting. She put her toothbrush down and said, “Kiss me right now, T.J.”

I picked her up and set her on the counter, then took her face in my hands. We kissed for a long time.

“You taste incredible,” I said. “You smell pretty good, too. Not that I ever minded when you didn’t.”

“This is better, though,” she said, resting her forehead on mine.

“Yes.”

We left the bathroom, and I stretched out on the bed with a room service menu in one hand and the TV remote in the other. “Anna, take a look at this.” She was tearing into a package of SweeTarts, but she plopped down next to me and checked out the menu. She handed me the bag of Doritos and I opened them and crammed a handful into my mouth. Nacho cheese had never tasted so good.

It was hard deciding what to order because we wanted everything. We finally narrowed it down to steak and French fries, spaghetti and meatballs, garlic bread, and chocolate cake.

“Oh, and two giant Cokes,” Anna said.

I called room service and placed our order. Anna grabbed the key card and something off the low table by the door and said she’d be right back.

“You’re naked under that robe,” I reminded her.

“It won’t take long.”

I channel-surfed. Every station was broadcasting tsunami coverage. Anna came back into the room carrying a small bucket. I sat up. “Is that ice?” I asked.

She put a piece in her mouth and said, “Yep.” She lay down on the bed next to me and I watched her suck on it. She sat up and untied my robe. Opening it, she ran her hand gently along my side. Despite the pain, my body responded to her touch immediately.

“You have some spectacular bruises developing here,” she said. “What happened?”

“There was a huge tree trunk in the water.”