Part 11 (2/2)
She gasped.
The trailer was filled with people.
They sat huddled in groups, some wearing scrubs. Others, like him, wore whatever they'd been caught in and enough grime to mask any detail of color.
The woman's fingers slipped under his elbow and he started. ”In,” she ordered. ”Is your lady hurt?”
”Ribs,” he said automatically. ”I think they're bruised.”
She smiled from underneath a fringe of ash-tipped red hair. ”It's okay. We're going to get everyone out. Take her that way.” She pointed to a small knot of exhausted looking women. ”Erin?”
One, a blonde sporting a thick scab across her cheek and dirty nursing scrubs, looked up. Upon seeing Katya in Nigel's arms, she straightened. ”Bring her.”
He stepped over hands and legs and made his excuses. Faces blurred. So many. At least thirty crammed into the trailer. Many wearing hospital clothes. He saw two IVs, their bags affixed to the trailer rafters.
As he set Katya down on the floor, the back of his neck p.r.i.c.kled. He turned, met the woman's warm brown eyes. She tucked a shoulder-length braid behind her as she bent to place a wad of clothing under Katya's head. ”She'll be okay,” she said, though he hadn't asked.
The window between trailer and cap cracked open. ”Mattie?”
She didn't turn. ”We're set, Laurence. Go.”
The window snicked shut.
Erin worked quickly, raising Katya's s.h.i.+rt and feeling around the livid bruise climbing from hip to breast.
”How bad is it out there?” he asked, his eyes on Katya.
The woman called Mattie crouched as the truck lurched into motion. Everyone swayed, holding the walls, the window frames build into the sides, and each other.
The shadows outside pa.s.sed in a blur.
”It's bad,” she said. ”But we're going to get everyone to a safe place.”
Nigel looked down at his hands, clasped tightly.
Mattie reached over, touched his shoulder. ”Your lady will be fine. She's strong.”
His throat worked. No sound came. Then, slowly, raggedly, he asked, ”Bellingham. Is it-?” His voice betrayed him. It broke as he read the truth in her steady regard.
In her sympathy.
”I'm sorry,” she told him, shaking her head. ”Mount Baker erupted.”
Erin looked up from the bandages she wrapped around Katya's ribs. ”Not so much erupted as blew out,” she told him. ”Near as we can tell, there was a sudden flurry of volcanic activity in the Ring of Fire. It touched off even the dormant ones. The shockwave obliterated Bell-”
He rose to his feet so fast, he had to slam a hand against the window for balance. Refugees startled awake around him.
”Erin really.” Mattie frowned at her, disapproval clear in her voice.
She winced. ”Sorry, Dr. Lauderdale.”
Nigel barely heard. Shaking his head, over and over, he picked his way through a sea of faceless refugees. Not that he could go anywhere.
There was nowhere to go.
His world had become a trailer filled with strangers.
”May Day,” he whispered as he gripped the edge of a window. He stared out into it, saw only ash and the glowing ember of h.e.l.l inside it.
Love you, too, Dad.
The strangers said nothing as tears slid from his gritty eyes.
Chapter Nine.
The trailer was quiet. Now and then, a child's voice rose on a sob or a question, to be hushed by whatever exhausted adult was nearby.
Exhaustion filled her to the bone. Wrapped so tightly she could barely breathe, Katya remained silent while she watched Nigel in the dim interior. He stared out of the dingy window and didn't bother wiping away his tears.
Tears for his city?
For someone else?
She'd been so selfish. While she had been so focused on herself, she'd never bothered to ask him what-who-he'd lost in the cataclysm.
The truck shook, jarring everyone inside as another earthquake tore through the bedrock. Mattie linked hands with some of the more frightened children. ”It's all right,” she soothed.
They clung to her as if they knew her. Children from the hospital? Was she a doctor?
A doctor who'd saved those she could.
Katya got carefully to her feet. Mindful of the crowded conditions, she worked her way through the tangled knot of people until she could slip her fingers into the window frame beside Nigel's for balance.
”Nig-”
He didn't let her get a word out. Silently, he turned, caught her in one arm and crushed her to him in a hug that stole the last of the breath from her body.
What could she do? As he buried his face in her hair, she held onto him. As tightly as if he'd fade, cease to exist if she didn't. As if she could tell him without speaking how much he meant to her.
He whispered something ragged against her hair.
The terrible, shattering crack of thunder came again. The glow beyond the ash flared wildly, suddenly lighting the sooty sky to a muddy orange.
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