“I’m pressing hard, but it’s not stopping.”
The woman had no pulse, nor was she breathing.
“I know CPR,” Rory said. He was suddenly kneeling on the other side of the woman.
“You take care of the boy.”
Daria called to Andy.
“Do the compressions, Andy,” she said. Andy had never been put to the test, but she knew he could do it; she’d taught his CPR class.
“Rory can do the breathing.”
She ran over to the boy, who was unconscious, but breathing. Shelly’s hands were covered with his blood, and Daria said a quick prayer that the boy had no blood-borne diseases.
“We need to get them to the trauma center,” she said. She was wondering exactly how they were going to do that when she heard the sweet call of a siren somewhere on the other side of the wind.
“Thank God,” she said out loud.
“I hear a siren!” Andy’s neighbor said. He was sitting near the boy, looking dazed and helpless.
Within a minute, the ambulance pulled into the driveway. It was staffed by only one paramedic—Mike—and an EMT, who was driving. But it didn’t take long before they had the woman intubated and the boy bandaged, and both of them, placed in the ambulance.
“Rory and I will go with them in the rig,” Daria said to Andy.
“You take Shelly back to the Sea Shanty, please.”
“No,” Shelly said.
“I’m staying with Andy.”
Daria turned to Andy.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“There’s no time to talk about it now,” Andy said. He was pushing her toward the ambulance, but Daria held her ground.
“Tell me,” she said. “Shelly and I have been together for a couple of years,” Andy said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. She was afraid you’d try to break us up if you knew. Okay? Now get in the ambulance.”
Daria backed away from Andy, stunned.
“Daria?” Mike called from inside the rig.
“Let’s go!”
With one more glance at her sister, she turned and ran toward the ambulance.
JUaria walked out of the treatment room in the nearly empty trauma center. Rory, who had been waiting on one of the chairs in the hallway, stood when he saw her.
“They’re going to be all right,” Daria said, walking toward him.
“Both of them?” Rory asked.
Daria nodded. The woman had not looked good in the ambulance, but after two hours in the treatment room she was breathing on her own and alert enough to ask about her son.
“Thank God,” Rory said, and he drew her into a hug. Daria closed her eyes, resting her cheek against his shoulder for a moment before pulling away.
“You’re soaking wet.” She brushed her hand over the damp front of his shirt.
“How can you tell?” he asked.
“So are you.”
Her wet clothes clung to her body, but she had not given them a thought until this moment. Suddenly, she felt cold.
“There’s nothing more we can do here,” she said.
“Woody—the EMT—said he can give us a ride home.”
She sat in the passenger seat of Woody’s car, barely noticing how the wind pushed them around on the deserted roads. Shingles and twigs flew against the car’s windows, and she didn’t even blink when they hit the glass in front of her face. Woody and Rory were talking, about the storm or the trauma center; Daria didn’t know or care. She felt shaky and strange. She still hadn’t absorbed all that Chloe had told them earlier that evening—that conversation seemed like a bad dream from weeks ago. And then there was the revelation about Shelly and Andy. She did not truly know either of her sisters.
Woody let them out in front of the Sea Shanty. At least two of the porch screens were torn, flapping wildly in the wind like a trapped bird.
Rory leaned close to her ear.
“I should check on Poll-Rory while I’m out here,” he said.
Daria stared at the front door of the dark Sea Shanty, not wanting to go inside, not ready to explain the past few hours to Chloe, if she happened to be up.
