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After getting Gloria and her patient settled, it was time to get back to work. And Rigo knew beyond a doubt that today would be unlike any other he’d ever had while at this job—as though the surprise call from Gloria hadn’t been enough of a shock.
Provident Island Beach Patrol’s headquarters took up the top floor of a three-story concrete behemoth of a building which sat directly on the sand, about fifty feet back from the shoreline. The ground floor was open, ringed with chain-link fence and marked off by the giant concrete pillars that kept the building high and dry. Beach Patrol used the area to store their equipment, as did some of the other vendors who worked out on the sand. The second floor housed bathrooms, showers, and a grill and gift shop for tourists who came to Surfside Beach, the most-visited beach on the island. Long known for its amenities, Surfside Beach was a popular destination for beachgoers from all over the country from Spring Break to Labor Day.
Today, though, the beach was empty. As Rigo walked from his truck to the area under the building, rain fell on his head with a stinging slap. The air around him had begun to turn angry. Most everything had been transferred to higher ground except one last ATV they used to patrol up and down the beach during the season. Hidden back in the corner, Rigo guessed it had been overlooked by the lifeguards who had helped move the rest of the equipment to the Park Board’s storage lot in the middle of the island.
Chances were that if Hurricane Hope truly came in as a Category Four hurricane, all of the beach patrol ATVs, lifeguard stands and other equipment would be ruined, no matter where on the island they were housed for safekeeping. Category Four storms brought feet upon feet of storm surge, and very little on the island would not be touched by it in some way, Rigo feared.
He took the elevator up to his office on the third floor and grabbed the ATV keys. Rigo looked around. One of the lifeguards had packed everything up and moved it away from the windows, which a city crew had boarded up yesterday. The room was dark, which echoed the foreboding in his thoughts. This building had withstood numerous storms. It only made sense that it would stand up to Hurricane Hope, too. But this time, for some reason he couldn’t explain, he wasn’t so sure. Everyone in Port Provident would know sooner rather than later, though.
He picked up the small, framed picture of his mom that was still sitting on the corner of his desk. He’d always loved this picture of the two of them at a baseball tournament in his youth. Cancer took her when he was just eighteen, but it hadn’t robbed him of the memory of her steady, sweet smile. He shoved the picture in his pocket, turned off the light and locked the door.
He didn’t know if he’d ever unlock it again.
Taking the ride back down the elevator, Rigo realized it would probably be one of the last rides he’d get to take for a while. He held out absolutely no hope for the squeaky old elevator, which had to basically be overhauled at the end of every season because the saltwater in the air rusted out just about every part and sand wedged in every nook and cranny. No way it would survive a hurricane.
“Goodbye, old girl,” Rigo said as he got out of the elevator and gave the buttons a small tap. He quickly tossed the picture of his mother on the front seat of his beach patrol truck and headed back to the storage area underneath the Surfside Beach Pavilion to move the ATV.
The wet sand made the ATV’s tires a bit sluggish, but Rigo was able to get some traction and speed as he headed toward the main road leading to Gulfview Boulevard. He needed to cross Gulfview, stay on Palm Avenue, and go about fifteen blocks until he reached downtown Port Provident. Normally, the trip wouldn’t take more than 15 minutes. But today, with pelting rain and the occasional wind gust, he figured it would take more.
At the stoplight, Rigo tightened the hood of his rain jacket around the baseball cap he was wearing to keep the water out of his eyes as much as possible. This particular ATV had a sun cover on it, and while there wasn’t a drop of sunshine in the sky anymore, it did keep some of the rain out. Just not much.
Rigo noticed that the water was quickly rising in the streets. It looked to be about six inches deep and climbing. He knew he needed to get the ATV to the lot soon and then figure out how to get back to the beach to pick up his truck before the tide got too high. He jammed the ATV in gear as hard as he could, pushing the little green four-wheeler to move. Water sprayed from around the tires, splashing Rigo constantly. The streetlights still worked, but there was virtually no traffic. At each intersection, Rigo looked both ways but never slowed down as he plowed through red and green lights alike.
As he pulled into downtown near his destination, Rigo noticed a small waterspout twisting out of the water in the harbor and hopping easily onto the waterlogged street, then spinning dizzily along. Hurricane Hope wasn’t playing games. A gust of wind knocked into the waterspout, shearing the little twister and stopping its momentum.
Thump. Thump.
What on earth?
He couldn’t tell what it was, but he didn’t dare stop to find out. He knew he was just one step ahead of being swept away or blown away. Or both. Rigo pulled through the entrance to the Park Board’s lot on Twelfth Street and when he’d parked the ATV, he stood up and checked the cover above him.
Two sand trout lay on top of the soaked brown canvas. They’d been sucked up by the waterspout and dropped on top of the ATV when the spout died out.
Wow. It was raining fish.
A fishnado. He didn’t even know what to think about that.
Rigo pulled his radio out of the plastic bag he usually carried it in to protect it from water while out on patrol. He hoped that the cloud cover hadn’t totally shut down the radio frequencies yet. Service had been spotty all afternoon and was getting worse.
“This is Vasquez. Dispatch, are you there?”
Static crackled, then faintly, Rigo heard a voice. “10-4, Chief. Can you give me a 10-8?”
“I’m at the Park Board lot. I just had to bring over the last beach patrol ATV. Is there someone in the area who can take me back to get my truck?”
“There are some officers in the area assisting citizens to the shelter at Provident High. I can divert one of them to come get you, Chief.”
Rigo could barely pick out enough syllables to understand what she was saying. He hoped the dispatcher could hear him better. Otherwise, he’d probably be standing here for a long time.
“Thanks. I’ll be at the back of the building under the cover. Tell them to pull up in the lot if they can.”
“10-4 Chief. Someone will be there shortly.”
Rigo stood under the cover, back flat against the wall. He didn’t know why he was trying so hard. He was already soaked. A few more sheets of rain couldn’t possibly make him any wetter.
As he waited for the Provident County Sheriff’s Department car, Rigo tuned to the maintenance department’s frequency and punched the talk button.
“Williams? Are you still there? This is Vasquez.” He hoped the answer would be affirmative. He didn’t have the right keys to lock up this lot. Not that a lock would matter much in the face of the biggest storm the island had seen in his lifetime.
“I’m over at the warehouse, Chief. Almost through.”
“Great. I’m just leaving the Park Board lot. Everything’s here. Can you come lock up?”
The voice crackled in the speaker. “No, sir. Dalton says I need to get out of here—they’re closing the causeway.”
Rigo stopped in his tracks. Rain pelted him. “They’re what?”
“Closing the causeway in just a few minutes. The winds are too strong for cars to be at the top of the bridge now. Did you know the storm’s only twenty miles an hour away from sustaining Category Four winds?”
He got back on the ATV and turned back toward the beach pavilion to get his truck, consigning the four-wheeler to wash away with the eventual tide. He hoped the little utility vehicle could get him back. He bowed his head, not just against the force of the blowing rain, but in a silent prayer that he still had enough time to rescue Gloria and get her off the island.
Gloria knew she should pack, and quickly. But she couldn’t stop herself from looking out the window and watching the storm clouds roll in. Tanna had the TV on in the living room, and as Gloria walked past, she recognized Rick O’Connell from National Weather News reporting live from the barrier wall on Gulfview Boulevard. Rick O’Connell’s presence was like the sign that the storm was going to be big. He never went anywhere that wasn’t going to be a really big deal.
A heavy mist was falling on Rick and his bright yellow raincoat. He wasn’t wearing the hood, though, and his trendy longer haircut was blowing back and forth with the gusts.
It was weird to think this was all happening right outside her window—literally—and yet, she was watching the ever-heavier lines of rain and buffeting winds on TV, as though it could have been anywhere in the world.
She’d been through a number of hurricanes since her family moved to Port Provident from Mexico when she was a child. They’d lived on the Yucatan Peninsula, so she’d seen a few there, too. Gloria considered herself a hurricane pro at this point. Go to the local big box store. Buy plenty of batteries, bottled water, a new flashlight or two, and load up on the nonperishable food. She had a great mini propane stove that she’d boiled many a pot of water on to make post-hurricane ramen noodles. She knew when to fill up the bathtub and had studied the required elevation survey of her lot when she’d moved into the house. She had moving things to higher ground down to a science.
But this time, it wasn’t just about her. She had a pregnant teenager in her care—and that girl could go into the next stage of labor and become a mama at any minute.
“Gloria. You’re still here.”
She jumped at the sound of a deep voice as her front door opened.
“Rigo.” Ice caught in her throat at the reappearance of the man who’d kept popping into every thought she’d had for the past half hour.
“They closed the causeway early. I headed over here as soon as I heard they were going to, but the official word came down just as I was turning into your neighborhood.” He shut the door behind him with a soft click, then walked to the window and stood near Gloria. Tanna got off the couch to take a look, as well. They watched in comfortable silence for a few moments as the sheets of rain beat against the small window and loose palm fronds swirled in the streets below, blowing and tumbling in the wind. “You need to get out of here.”
Suddenly, Gloria became aware that something was very wrong.
“Rigo! You’re dripping on the floor!” A puddle had begun to collect over the sturdy work boots he was wearing.
He shrugged, a sheepish grin catching the corners of his narrow lips. “I’m soaked to the bone, but that puddle isn’t me.”
“Gloria?” Tanna’s usually soft voice jumped an octave. “I think that’s me. I think my water broke.”
Gloria’s heart sank. A crack of adrenaline to match the lightning bolts outside shot through her body. “We’ve got to get her to the hospital. The clinic is closed, obviously.”
Rigo shook his head. “Can’t. I heard it on the radio on my way over here. Their power is already down and their main generator failed. They have only the absolute bare minimum amount of backup power. It’s a good thing they evacuated all the critical patients this morning and discharged everyone who could be sent home. They’re not accepting any patients right now. I’m afraid it’s going to get more dire before this night is over.”
Gloria settled Tanna on the sofa, then carefully watched the mother-to-be, checking her rate of breathing and the time between the pulse of her contractions. Everything was kicking into gear.
So was Hurricane Hope. A gust of wind shook the front windows to the house.
Gloria looked around her little home. She’d never stayed in it through a storm as big as what the National Weather News reporters were saying Hope would evolve to. She thought back to that elevation certificate they’d had to obtain as part of the home’s purchase. The home was behind the barrier wall that ran behind the beach and protected the majority of the residential areas of the city, but a generous storm surge would put several feet of water into her home.
She’d made a career from out-of-hospital deliveries at the birth center. She was confident in her skills, but she always operated from the vantage point of caution.
And right now, caution had been thrown to the wind and blown miles away. The little home on Travis Place was no place for Tanna to labor and give birth.
Gloria paced, three steps forward, followed by three steps back. “But if the causeway is closed, we’re trapped on the island and we can’t stay in a one-story house. I don’t want to take her to the shelter of last resort at the high school, either, if I don’t have to. Too many people. She doesn’t need an audience. Stress can slow down labor and complicate it, putting us in an emergency situation. This is stressful enough. I don’t want to add to it.”
Rigo looked out the window. “I’ve got the beach patrol truck. It’s a four-by-four, so we should be able to get back to Tía Inez’s house just fine. But not if we wait too much longer.”
Gloria’s head snapped around. “Your aunt’s house? What do you mean?”
“You said it yourself. You can’t stay here and the shelter isn’t ideal. But I don’t know what kind of night I’m going to have. I figure I’m going to be rescuing some pretty stubborn people who should have already left from their homes. But there’s no one more stubborn than my aunt.” Rigo smiled. “Inez has lived in Port Provident for every one of her seventy-three years. And as she told me just yesterday, she hasn’t left for a hurricane yet, and she doesn’t intend to start now. Her house survived the Great Storm of 1910 and every other storm since, and she doesn’t believe it will fail her now. You can stay with her and take care of each other. I don’t expect the water to get up to the second story. It never has before—the house is at a pretty high point.”
Gloria stood still, although her mind raced like never before. She always had a plan. She didn’t know if the fact that she didn’t have one now scared her or infuriated her.
But maybe it wasn’t a failing on her part.
Maybe it was that there were no plans that made sense for delivering a baby in a hurricane.
The only thing that made any sense was Rigo—and she didn’t know if that scared her or infuriated her, either.
Rigo raked a hand through his wet hair, sending a small stream of water down his shirt and to the floor to join the widening puddle. “You’re not going to have lights or running water anywhere you go, not even at the shelter. I think Inez’s house is your best option right now. Relatively private, and as safe as you’re probably going to find without being at the shelter or leaving the island—which you obviously can’t do now.”
Rigo had on a Beach Patrol T-shirt and black pants. But the shirt was white, and the water had rendered it practically see-through and as close as a second skin.
Just for a second, Gloria stopped running birthing scenarios in her head and caught herself staring. He clearly still works out as much as he did at eighteen on the baseball team.
Gloria shook her head to clear her derailed train of thought.
“What, you won’t go? You don’t really have a choice, Glo.” Rigo looked at her, then Tanna, then the door. “The water is rising. Your house is in one of the most flood-prone areas of town. Your street floods when someone leaves their sprinkler on too long. It’s not safe.”
“Gloria, please? Can we go there? Please.” There was no escaping the mix of pleading and rising panic in Tanna’s voice. She’d never been through a birth or a hurricane before. She had to be terrified.
Gloria knew her first responsibility was to the safety of her patient and the unborn child. Now was a time to be decisive.
“I need ten minutes to gather my things,” Gloria said to Rigo. Tanna’s shoulders relaxed slightly.
“Five. I don’t think the truck will be able to handle us staying here for ten. The water’s already risen two inches up the tires while we’ve been standing here talking. I’m close to being worried about the truck starting again.” He narrowed his eyes and stared at her straight-on. “Felipe would want you to take care of yourself first and get out of here as fast as you can. Stuff can be replaced. People can’t. You know that.”
Ferocity rose in Gloria, like an angry cat who’d been out on the streets too long. “Felipe? You lost all right to speak to me of Felipe when you led him into an ambush, then didn’t even have the decency to show up at his funeral. Believe me, Rigo, I know you can’t replace people.”
Her breath came out in short bursts through flared nostrils. Her jaw muscles clenched together. She knew she was right on this, and she would not back down. Felipe and his memory belonged to her. Not to the so-called best friend who bailed. She would not back down. Not even when she saw what looked like hurt in his eyes.
Rigo turned away and looked back out the window. “It wasn’t an ambush. Gloria, it was a traffic stop gone very, very wrong. You know that. The official investigation told you that.”
She knew every word of that report by heart. “Semantics don’t matter. He should have been there at the hospital. With me. With Mateo. You knew he was on his way to us in the hospital. You should have called someone else for backup.”
“There was no one else I trusted like Felipe. Something didn’t seem right about that stop. He was the best cop I knew. I trusted his instinct. I knew they had drugs in the car. I knew something was going on. What I didn’t know was that they had a guy with a gun who was going to pop out of the trunk and start shooting.” He paused, then looked at her, but his brown eyes were blank. “Felipe was my partner. My best friend.”
Gloria felt her heart drain, as if she’d been shot point-blank in the chest. “No. He was my partner. My best friend. My husband. And now he’s gone.”
She couldn’t control herself. She buried her head in her hands. She would not cry in front of Rigo. “The memories in this house are all I have.”
She heard his shoes move, heard the lap of the water puddle as the work boot raised out of it and took one step closer to her. She heard the damp shirt pull as Rigo’s arm reached out for her. Then he stopped.
“Five minutes. I’m going out to start the truck while you pack and gather what you’ll need for the birth. Then we’ve got to go. I’m not about to leave you here so you can drown and go join him.”
Rigo walked back out in the rain, and Gloria took in one more panoramic view of the main area of the 1930s-era house she and Felipe had loved so much and bought not long before that terrible night when all her dreams shattered like a dropped mirror. They’d spent countless hours painting and fixing it up, participating in the shared dreams of new homeowners and expectant parents who were finally going to meet a baby after so many roadblocks along their path to parenthood.
Even years after that terrible night when everything changed, Gloria had never had enough heart to change Mateo’s room. The walls had stayed light blue. Just the way Felipe painted them, in those last three weeks before he and Mateo never came home again.
And in the remainder of the time she’d lived there, surrounded by painted walls and painful memories, there hadn’t been a hurricane anywhere near Port Provident. So, everything had remained neat as a pin, and more or less just how it had been the last time Felipe walked out the door to go on patrol and Gloria had gone out to get a quick check from her OB because her kick counts were off.
She turned her head and saw that her street was now best described as a river. Rigo wasn’t exaggerating about the situation getting more dire by the minute. The water covered the front yard and would most likely continue to rise, then be creeping under the front door sooner rather than later. And when that happened, her orderly little house and orderly little life—the one she managed so tightly and fiercely because the alternative was too much to bear—would change tonight. And just thinking about it made an indescribable heaviness fill her chest like thick cement reaching slowly to all corners of a mold.
“Gloria? Is everything okay?” Tanna gestured from the striped sofa in the corner. “I knew I’d be nervous when labor finally got here. I just never imagined I’d be this nervous.”
“Well, Tanna, there’s a lot going on. It’s understandable that you’re scared. But I’m here and I’m not leaving your side and we’ll get through this together.” With a shaky exhalation, Gloria followed behind Tanna, feeling as though she was leaving all the hopes and dreams of her past in the boggy front yard. But she couldn’t show that burden to Tanna, who had enough worries of her own today.
“Lie down while I gather my things. I’ll check your dilation and other vitals as soon as we get to Inez’s house. We don’t have the time to do it right now. You’re going to do great, mama. Babies have been born in all kinds of conditions, and the vast majority of them throughout history haven’t had electricity, either. Your body knows exactly what to do, and it’s telling us that it’s almost there.”
Gloria opened the door to the storage closet in the hall where she kept the suitcases and pulled one out along with the plastic storage bin of birth supplies she kept packed at all times. Everything she needed—even shots of Pitocin in case of bleeding and a small tank of oxygen for mom or baby—was inside.
She laid the suitcase open on the queen-size bed in her bedroom.
She made herself keep going, pulling a few shirts and shorts and pairs of sturdy shoes out of the closet. She grabbed a pair of pajamas and carefully folded them on top of the stack. Then she went into the bathroom and filled her toiletries bag with a few overnight essentials.
Gloria decided to walk through the house to see if there was anything else she needed to take. As she passed by her desk, she reached in the drawer and grabbed the folder that Felipe had always kept their important papers in. She knew some of what was in there, but truthfully, not all of it. Her sister, Gracie, had been her rock in those days when the world spun off its axis. She’d handled the finances and the insurance and the details. But Gloria figured since Felipe had said it was important, she didn’t need to take the chance that the contents of the folder would be waterlogged.
From the bookshelf, she grabbed her own Bible and the family Bible, given to her by her abuela in Mexico. She picked up a few other things here and there and tucked them into the suitcase, but she didn’t have a plan. Mostly, an item made it in the suitcase if she happened to lay eyes on it and it registered through her daze as important or memorable.
Gloria walked robot-like through each room of the house, not seeing much, until she stepped into the small blue room and stopped. She hardly ever came in this room. Most weeks, she just ran the vacuum across the carpet as quickly as possible.
Some weeks, she still had to stop the vacuum in the hall.
Although Gracie had come and taken down the crib and some of the other baby furniture during those nightmare weeks after Mateo died, the rocking chair had never moved from the corner. Without realizing what she was doing, Gloria crossed the room, sat in the chair and started rocking.
She picked up the oversize light brown teddy bear from the floor and cradled it in her arms, the same way she’d been able to hold Mateo—just the one time, with his eyes closed and no butterfly whispers of baby breaths in his lungs.
Fire pushed into her throat and collected like lava. Hot, slick, overpowering. The memories burned her mind and her soul.
This room was the last connection she had to her son who died before he’d ever had a chance to live. Her darling baby. The only baby she would ever have.
Aside from that occasional vacuum, she mostly avoided Mateo’s little room. But it was always there, virtually untouched. She’d never had the heart to completely dismantle the last remaining link she had to her son.
What if she woke up tomorrow and it was gone?
What if she woke up tomorrow and the last place she could feel Mateo’s presence and see Felipe’s labor of love in every stroke of paint on these walls...what if it was all gone?
Gloria hugged the teddy bear fiercely, then leaned over and bit the stuffed ear tightly to muffle the sobs that she couldn’t muster the fight to keep inside.
Tanna waddled into the doorway. “Whose room is this?”
A cottony feeling choked Gloria’s throat and she tried to wipe off the tears with the bear’s ear. She hadn’t talked about her son to anyone in so long. She didn’t know if she could utter his name now. “It belonged to my son, Mateo.”
Gloria’s low, gravely tones muffled in the stuffing of the bear.
“Did he evacuate already?”
Gloria lifted her eyes heavenward. “I guess you could say that. He’s in Heaven. He left a while ago.”
She struggled to hold her emotions inside. Tanna had her own journey to motherhood today. She didn’t need to know the details of how Gloria’s son was stillborn.
Gloria turned and climbed on a nearby box, stretching her arms as far as she could to tuck the bear on the top shelf of the narrow closet.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to interrupt.” Tanna frowned and looked around the perfectly arranged room, so clearly at odds with a baby being gone for years. “I just came to tell you that Rigo’s at the door. We have to go.”
