The Lies We Told (8 page)

“What?” Adam laughed.

“You look alike,” Steve said.

Rebecca and Adam exchanged a glance. Rebecca took in Adam’s dark eyes. Brown hair. She supposed they
did
look alike, especially in their DIDA uniforms. She tossed an arm around Adam’s shoulders, breathing in the scent of soap and aftershave, knowing it would be her last whiff of a well-groomed man for quite a while. “He’s my darlin’ brother-in-
law,
” she said to Steve, “but thanks for the compliment.”

“Hey!” Adam grinned. “That’s
my
line.”

“Well, whatever,” Steve said, and she could tell he had no time to joke around. He pointed toward the ticket counters.
“You can put your gear over there. I’ve got to get back to the concourse.”

Steve took off down the hallway, and Rebecca and Adam dumped their duffel bags behind the ticket counters. Rebecca watched Adam fill his lungs as if he knew he wouldn’t have another chance to catch his breath for the next two weeks.

“Welcome to DIDA, bro,” she said, and they headed for the tents.

Rebecca spent most of the day with the patients needing urgent care, while Adam worked in the emergency tent. Dorothea had been right about the children. They were everywhere. Asthma attacks were rampant. Broken bones. Fevers. Wounds that were already oozing and infected. Rebecca didn’t know how Maya worked with kids all day. It was the one area where Maya was tougher than she was. “I’m just used to it,” Maya would say, as if it was no big deal.

As Rebecca’s fifth patient was brought to her, she already felt her frustration rising. The screaming five-year-old boy had broken at least a dozen bones in a fall from a tree onto the roof of a car. He should have been airlifted directly to a hospital, not stuffed into a helicopter with dozens of other people. Yet she knew there’d been no time to triage the evacuees as they were scooped up by the choppers. It was up to them to separate the sickest, the most gravely injured, from the others who could be treated here in the terminal. Those in the worst shape, like this little boy, would be airlifted inland. Yet as he screamed during Rebecca’s examination, she couldn’t help but wonder if Maya would be handling him differently. In her head, she heard one of her sister’s favorite refrains:
Children are not simply miniature adults when it comes to medicine.

She saw Adam from time to time during the day when he’d
transport one of his emergency patients to her tent. They weren’t able to exchange more than a few rushed words with each other, always about a patient’s condition and treatment, yet she felt connected to him. She was so glad he was there. She hoped the work hooked him and that he’d want to do his two weeks next year as well.

Around dusk, she finally took a break. She jogged down the long hallway to the concourse, dodging evacuees, relieved to be out of the tent and moving her muscles. In the concourse, she headed for the water station and spotted Adam standing near the windows. Grabbing a bottle of water from one of the pallets, she went to stand next to him. He glanced at her without speaking, and in his face, she saw the toll the day was taking on him. She’d never before noticed the fine lines around his eyes or seen the tight, unsmiling set of his lips.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said with a sigh. His gaze was fixed on the never-ending line of helicopters as they landed, dumped their passengers and took off again. “It’s different than I expected, though,” he said. “Rougher and—I don’t care
what
Dorothea says—disorganized as hell.”

“You get used to it.” She didn’t want him to lose heart.

He took a swallow from his water bottle. “I decided after the first few crazy hours to stop fighting it,” he said. “To see it as a challenge.” He glanced at her again. “I was thinking of you,” he said. “I figured, if Bec can do this year-round, I can handle it for two measly weeks.”

“No doubt about it,” she said.

“I admire you, kiddo.” He put his arm around her shoulders.

“Don’t make me blush,” she jested, but his words meant something to her.

“Look at that.” He pointed to one of the choppers, and they
watched as the doors opened and a river of people—mostly children—literally poured from the cabin onto the tarmac. Adam quickly lowered his arm from her shoulders, pressing his hand to the glass as though he could stop them from falling. They watched as the kids landed on top of one another. Rebecca had seen worse. Much worse. She rested her hand on Adam’s back, and he shook his head. “This is a horror show,” he said.

They watched volunteers on the tarmac help the kids get to their feet, trying to create order out of chaos. One of the volunteers, a woman, waved to a group of men standing at the side of the tarmac. She held up four fingers, and the men rushed toward the helicopter, carrying four litters between them.

Rebecca heard Adam groan, probably picturing four more patients swelling the ranks inside the tents.

“That’s it,” he said. “I’m calling Maya.”

“What?”
Rebecca asked, stunned. “You’re not serious.”

“I am.”

“She won’t come,” Rebecca said. “She
shouldn’t
come. I don’t think she’s recovered from the miscarriage yet, Adam. Emotionally, I mean. I talked with her the other night, and she’s still a mess. And that incident in the restaurant was really—”

“She needs a project,” he said. “She needs to get outside of herself.”

Rebecca felt a small spark of panic she couldn’t quite get a handle on. An ages-old need to protect her sister, maybe? Maya didn’t belong in the airport. She needed things neat and orderly. She’d be a wreck.

But she knew there was something else behind her panic besides wanting to protect Maya: she’d liked sharing this day with Adam. Sharing the experience. They were two high-octane doctors who could throw themselves into the fray. Maya, on the other hand, would hold everyone back. She’d be high
maintenance, sapping some of Adam’s energy from his work and getting in the way.

Was that it? Was that really the source of her trepidation?

It was true that Maya would be high maintenance. She’d need some hand-holding. Yet there was still something more, and if Rebecca was being honest with herself, she knew what it was: DIDA was her world. It was where she shined. She didn’t want to have to share that world with her sister. Ever.

“It’s a bad idea, Adam,” she said. “Can you imagine how she would have reacted if she’d been on our helicopter when that guy said we were being shot at?”

Adam gnawed his lip, and she knew she’d hit him with a dose of reality.

He finished his bottle of water, leaning his head back to get every last drop. “You’re probably right,” he said, his attention again on the injured kids who were now being carried across the tarmac. He rubbed his neck, then gave her a smile, the crow’s feet like tender wounds at the corners of his eyes.

“Back to the tents,” he said.

“Y
OU MUST BE A VERY POPULAR GIRL
, H
ALEY
,” I
SAID AS
I walked into the examining room, where my fourth patient of the afternoon sat with her mother.

Haley, whose pixyish haircut and delicate Asian features made her look younger than her ten years, seemed mystified.

“How did you know?” She sat on the examining table, her arm in a cast.

“Well, not every patient I see has about—” I pretended to count the names scribbled on the cast “—a hundred signatures on her cast.”

Haley laughed.

“It’s made it bearable,” her mother said. She wore her own cast on her lower leg, and her crutches rested against the counter. They’d been in a car accident in the spring and were both lucky to be in my office at all.

“Mom didn’t want anybody to write on
her
cast,” Haley said. “Not even me.”

I had a memory of my own broken arm. It was actually
Rebecca
’s memory, not mine, because I’d only been two at the time and couldn’t recall exactly what happened. I’d fallen off a swing and broken my humerus. My arm was in a cast, and Daddy took to carrying me everywhere. Finally Rebecca, who was six at the time, yelled at him over dinner one night, “She broke her
arm,
not her leg!” It was a memory I couldn’t recall, and yet I treasured it. I loved picturing my father carrying me around. Loving me that much.

I made small talk with Haley and her mom as I checked the girl’s hand for swelling and numbness. “Are you still having much pain?” I asked.

“Hardly any,” she said. She was a stoic kid. She hadn’t even complained the first time I saw her in the hospital, despite the fact that her radial head had snapped from the bone. She was also adorable. Her mom was a big-boned woman, blond and fiftyish, obviously unrelated by blood to her daughter. Every time I saw them, I felt hope. Adam and I could adopt a child like Haley, I thought, or like any of the other adopted kids I saw in my practice. Adam didn’t get it. He didn’t witness the parent-child bonds I saw every single day, bonds that had nothing to do with blood and biology.

There was a knock on the door and my receptionist, Rose, poked her head into the examining room. “Dr. Pollard for you on one,” she said.

Adam!
“Thanks, Rose.” I turned to Haley’s mother. “Excuse me,” I said, “but I need to take this call.”

I rushed to my office. He’d been gone two and a half days, and I hadn’t expected to be able to hear from him yet. I was used to long periods without contact during Rebecca’s absences, but it felt different to be so out of touch with Adam. When I wasn’t at work, I was glued to CNN, horrified by the news of missing and stranded people and the images of boats
moving from house to house in a desperate search for survivors.
Disaster team personnel are treating hundreds of patients in the airport,
CNN reported, and I assumed that’s where Adam was calling from.

I sat down at my desk and picked up the phone. “Adam!” I said.

“Hey, My.” He sounded exhausted, but I thought there was a smile in his voice.

“I didn’t think you’d be able to call!”

“The cell towers are still down, but I’m using Dorothea’s satellite phone. How are things there?”

“Oh, things are fine here,” I said. “I’m more concerned with how things are where
you
are. It looks horrendous on TV.”

“Understatement,” he said. “Are you in the middle of something?”

“I have a patient, but I can take a minute. Are you anywhere near Rebecca?”

“Uh-huh. They have a bunch of medical tents set up in the airport lobby, and the whole terminal, every part of it, is wall-to-wall people. It’s really sad, My. Most of them have lost everything.”

“I can’t even imagine it,” I said. “Is there food?”

“MREs.”

“Ugh. Where do you sleep?”

He laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound. “I think I’ve gotten two hours since I arrived, but it’s not too bad. There’s a big carpeted conference room on the second floor and the volunteers sleep on the floor.”

Ouch. He wasn’t the best sleeper even in our king-size bed.

“You know…” His voice trailed off. “There aren’t enough of us here,” he said. “We’re trying to do the impossible, really, and…there are no pediatricians…” He stopped talking altogether.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

I heard him sigh. “I thought I could guilt-trip you into this,” he said. “Into coming.”

I hesitated. “Coming?
There?
I’d be more of a liability than a help, Adam.”

He didn’t respond, and I continued. “I heard one of the helicopters carrying doctors was shot at. I was worried it might be yours and Rebecca’s.”

He made a sound of annoyance. “That was just a rumor. The only thing to worry about here are all the sick and injured people who need help.”

He couldn’t really be asking me to come. “Adam, I can’t.”

He let out a long breath. “I know,” he said. “It’s all right.”

“What would I do with Chauncey?” I asked, although I knew the answer. Our neighborhood teemed with teenage pet-sitters.

“I said it’s all right,” he repeated.

I ran my fingers over the keyboard on my desk. “What are you seeing?” I asked.

“You name it. Heart attacks. Women in labor. Broken bones. Infections. Lots of chronically ill folks who just need maintenance meds. Loads of respiratory problems. And…there are so many kids here.”

Kids. And no pediatrician. That was why he thought I could help.

I rubbed my temple. “God, I am such a baby,” I said.

“It’s okay.”

“But you called to try to talk me into it.”

“I just got…it was an emotional reaction to what’s happening here. All around me. I knew you could help, so I felt like I should try to persuade you. That wasn’t fair.”

“You’re still trying, but I’d be useless there.”

“Look, someone else needs to use this phone,” Adam said.
“I don’t know when I’ll be able to call again.” He was disappointed in me. I heard it in his voice.

“Okay,” I said, unhappy with the abrupt end to our conversation. “I love you. And tell Rebecca I love her, too.”

“Will do.”

I hung up the phone and looked down at my orderly, uncluttered desk. Patient files were neatly stacked on the left. My prescription pad and two pens were lined up next to my mouse on the right. “You coward,” I said out loud as I stood up. I left my office and walked down the sterile hallway to the sterile examining room where my well-cared-for patient waited for me. I thought of Adam and Rebecca, the people I loved most in the world, doing what they believed in less than two hundred miles from my office, and wondered why I was in Raleigh and not with them.

B
Y THE THIRD DAY
, R
EBECCA WAS DIZZY WITH EXHAUSTION
. Her vision blurred as she administered some of their dwindling supply of oxygen to a man with emphysema, and her voice echoed in her head as she tried to calm a woman going into premature labor. She’d managed to brush her teeth in one of the stifling, fetid restrooms, but that was her only concession to hygiene, and she knew the unshowered smell of her own body was mixing with that of the people around her. It was only going to get worse, but she’d been in DIDA long enough to know that a force inside her would soon take over. The force that no longer craved sleep, and that could see clearly through the blurred vision and hear every word a patient spoke despite the echoes. That force had never failed her, but it took time to get there.

She hadn’t seen Adam all day and wondered how he was doing. Some people never did learn how to handle the unrelenting human tragedies and the chaos of a disaster site. Adam was used to the controlled environment of the O.R. He’d looked as though he’d been sideswiped by a train, hollow eyed
and soaked with sweat, when she last saw him. Yet his focus had been tight on the shoulder wound he was treating at the time, and she’d felt encouraged. She had faith in him and wished she’d had a moment to tell him it would get better. That force—the ferocious energy he didn’t know he had inside him—would kick in, and he would be fine.

Around two in the afternoon, when the dizziness became so intense she thought she might keel over in the middle of examining a patient, she left the tent and went upstairs to the conference room for an MRE and a bottle of water. She lowered herself to the floor near the glass wall overlooking the tarmac. Slipping the MRE pouch into the heater sleeve, she rested it against the window and drank water while she waited for the beef stew to warm up. From where she sat, she had a perfect view of the string of helicopters landing, unloading evacuees, then taking off again. She had to figure out where they would put all these people. They might need to set up tents in the parking lot. The airport simply wasn’t big enough for the number of evacuees. In a few days’ time, it had become a small impoverished city with too little food, too few restrooms, too few medical personnel to treat the burgeoning population of patients, and thick, hot, putrid air that was difficult to breathe. The two shops in the lobby had been thoroughly looted, and there were rumors of worse crimes, especially in the basement. Yet she witnessed, as she always did, bonds forming between evacuees who’d met on one of the choppers or in the waiting areas at the gates, the seedlings of friendships that would last a lifetime. She saw strangers helping strangers, women taking turns watching one another’s kids, men helping to carry the wounded into the terminal. It was always this way. Ninety-nine parts human kindness for every one part depravity.

She was eating the stew when she noticed a man on the tarmac. He was dressed in a pale blue polo shirt, gray pants and
leather work gloves as he helped unload a woman and her wheelchair from a helicopter. His back was to her, and she could see the cut of his triceps as he reached up for the chair. She felt that familiar pull low in her belly that had dogged her since she was a teenager. Lord. How could she even think of marrying Brent—marrying
anyone
—when her body was so quick to respond to the nearest hunk of male flesh? Was she
normal?
She was thirty-eight. At some point, wasn’t her libido supposed to settle down?

The man leaned over to say something in the woman’s ear, and even from where she sat, Rebecca could see the elderly woman’s hand shake as she reached up to touch his cheek. Tears sprang to Rebecca’s eyes. She’d worked for three days in a sea of suffering people without her eyes so much as burning, but witnessing two seconds of humanity between the aid worker and the old woman was doing her in.

A younger female volunteer pushed the wheelchair toward the terminal, and the man straightened up, stepping back from the chopper. He opened a bottle of water and rather than drinking it, poured it over his head. Rebecca smiled, thinking of how wonderful that small shower must feel.

The man turned to start walking toward the terminal, and she let out a gasp.
Adam
. She cringed. She’d been sitting there seriously lusting over her sister’s husband.

She’d gotten to her feet and was grabbing another bottle of water from the broad conference table when Adam walked into the conference room.

“Hey,” he said when he spotted her. He was drenched, his arms covered with grime as he pulled off the leather gloves and reached for a bottle of water. His chin and cheeks were shadowed with stubble.

“How are you holding up?” It was hard to look at him, as though her attraction to him from moments earlier might be visible on her face.

“Doin’ okay.” He took a long pull on the bottle, then surprised her with a grin. “I thought DIDA doctors would be practicing medicine, not offloading helicopters.” She could tell he didn’t mind, though. Not one bit. He was all right. No, not just all right. He was loving it.

He looked past her shoulder toward the door. “Here comes the boss,” he said, and Rebecca turned to see Dorothea approaching them.

“Just got word that a camp flooded twenty or so miles from here,” Dorothea said. “Two hundred kids. They’re flying them in now.”

“Just what this place needs,” Rebecca said. “Two hundred more bodies.” But she was already thinking of where they could put them and how they could change their triage system to cope.

“You.” Dorothea poked Adam’s damp chest.

“What about me?” he asked.

“I’ve been watching you,” she said. “You take to this stuff like a pig to mud.”

“Good to feel needed,” he said with a shrug, as though Dorothea’s backhanded compliment meant nothing to him.

“And here’s a mindblower for the two of you,” she said. “Got a call about an hour ago, and guess what? The other Dr. Ward is coming.”

“The…
Maya?
” Rebecca asked.

“She’s at RDU, getting ready to board a helicopter.”

They stared at her, stunned into silence.
Oh, no,
Rebecca thought.

“You’re shittin’ me,” Adam said.

“Spoke to her myself,” Dorothea said.

Rebecca tried to picture Maya boarding the helicopter, and she could almost
feel
her sister’s apprehension. This was a phenomenally bad idea in too many ways to count.

“Well, what d’ya know.” Adam grinned. “That’s my girl.”

“I can’t believe it,” Rebecca said, as though sharing his admiration. Inside, her heart sank like a stone.

“Believe it.” Dorothea picked up a water bottle and gave the cap a twist. “I’ve got to get back downstairs but just wanted to give you the heads-up.” She headed for the door, calling back to them over her shoulder, “I need to find a new nickname for that one,” she said.

Rebecca watched her walk away for a moment, then she and Adam looked at each other. Adam smiled, holding up his water bottle in a toast.

“To Maya,” he said.

Rebecca tapped her bottle to his. “To my awesome sister,” she said, and turned away quickly to hide her dismay.