Rushing Waters (9 page)

Once Peter opened the door, the wind was so strong that it pulled the door right out of his hand and slammed it against the wall behind them. The glass broke and fell into the water they were standing in, in the hall. The two boys looked at each other and exchanged a smile. They both were nervous but sure now that they were doing the right thing and should have done it hours before. But the tide was lower now than it would have been the night before, and it was better trying to escape in daylight, where they could see what was around them in the water.

“Good luck,” Peter said to Ben, then walked out onto the front stoop and stepped into the floodwater, and an instant later he was gone, swept away with the force of the current, moving at high speed as he tried to stay on the surface and not get pulled down. He didn't have time to turn around and watch Ben jump in behind him, holding tightly to Mike's leash. Peter was already out of breath from the struggle when he saw a lamppost coming toward him, and thought it might help slow him down. He tried to maneuver himself toward it, and with a superhuman effort, he grabbed it and hung there for a minute, fighting the powerful forces that tried to tear him from it. Then he saw something dark race past him, and instinctively he reached out with one hand and grabbed Mike's collar. It was the Lab hurtling through the water. Peter turned and tried to see what was behind them, but there was no sign of Ben, just the dog.

“It's okay, boy!” Peter shouted at him, holding tightly to his collar, keeping his head above the water with one hand and his other arm wrapped around the lamppost with all his strength. He didn't even feel a piece of metal slice through his arm as he saw a boat heading toward them. They had seen Peter hanging on, and they sped toward him. The dog was frantic as Peter refused to let go of his collar to keep him from being swept away. The boat was next to him seconds later, and two Emergency Services officers grabbed Peter and the dog and dragged them into the boat. Peter was breathless and nearly unconscious as they wrapped him in a blanket and laid him on the floor, and the dog whined as he lay beside him. Peter waved a hand at them before they could move on.

“No…my friend…he's in the water…we were together, he was with the dog…” They looked around the swirling waters, but saw nothing. They headed backward for a short distance, but there was no sign of anyone in the water, and without saying anything to Peter, they moved on, as he slipped into unconsciousness. He had swallowed a lot of water and threw up when he came to again. They brought him to a makeshift dock they had erected for emergency boats, and had ferried the people they rescued to it all night. They signaled for an ambulance for Peter, and as they put him on a gurney and slid him in, he waved wildly at them for the dog. The two men who had rescued him glanced at each other, and one of them nodded and helped the big, exhausted Lab climb into the ambulance, and he lay down on the floor. His leash was still attached to his collar, but there was no sign of Ben anywhere. Peter laid his head down on the gurney and was crying when they got to the hospital. He tried to explain to the paramedics what had happened, and that Ben was still in the water back there somewhere where they had found him.

“Maybe he got ahead of you, son, and you didn't notice. The water was moving pretty fast. We'll tell the boys in the boats to go back and take another look. Just take it easy now.”

“It's his dog,” Peter said, crying like a child, feeling as though he had stolen Mike instead of rescued him. The Lab barely managed to crawl out of the ambulance and followed the gurney into the hospital. But no one stopped him as he dragged his leash behind him and followed Peter. The nurses in the ER had seen stranger things that night, as the paramedics rolled Peter down the hall, and left him there crying, when they went to fill out the admission forms. Mike lay down next to the gurney with a mournful look, and a little while later, the nurses came to check on Peter. He had his face turned to the wall and he was still crying, as he thought about Ben, and worried about him. All he could hope was that someone had picked him up by then.

“Is this your dog?” the nurse asked gently. They both looked as though they had nearly drowned, which was the truth.

“He belongs to my friend,” Peter said, turning to look at her. “They went back to find him.”

They had heard a hundred stories like it as the rescue teams brought people in. And not all the stories had happy endings. Many of them didn't. The death toll so far had been higher than they feared. “What's the dog's name?” she asked to distract him as she took his vital signs, and saw the cut on his arm, as Peter continued to cry. She asked Peter his name, how old he was, his address, and if there was someone he wanted them to call. He gave them Anna's number because he didn't want to frighten his parents if the hospital called them directly, and the nurse jotted down the number. “The doctor will take a look at you in a minute,” she reassured him, and Mike watched her go, as Peter leaned down and patted him. All Peter could think about was Ben and what might have happened to him after he jumped into the water. The current had been a lot stronger than he had expected, and he hadn't even noticed he had a gash on one arm from when he'd been hanging onto the lamppost. The nurse had made note of it on his chart and was telling Juliette about him as she handed it to her.

“The paramedics said he nearly drowned. I think he may need stitches in the arm. He came in with a dog. He said he was in the water with a friend, but they brought him in alone.” Juliette nodded somberly. It was easy to spot him down the hall, with the black Lab lying next to the gurney, and she could see that Peter had been crying when she stopped next to him and smiled. They had put heated blankets on him to keep him warm. The OES had gotten a series of generators working for them a short while before. Peter was shaking violently from the cold water and the shock.

“How are you feeling, Peter?” she asked him gently. He was badly shaken, very pale, his lips were blue, and they had treated him for shock in the ambulance and when he came in. Like everyone else she'd seen since the hurricane hit the city, he had been through a lot, and from his appearance, so had the dog. She examined Peter's arm and decided it didn't need stitches, and his vital signs were better than she'd expected. He had youth on his side. Anyone older than he wouldn't have been able to survive and resist the powerful force of the water. He told her about Ben while she examined him, and she told him Ben might have been taken to another hospital, depending on where he'd been found, and by whom, and she asked about the dog. Peter was in fairly decent condition, all things considered, but she wanted to keep him for a few hours to observe him, possibly overnight, to make sure he didn't have any more serious secondary reactions from nearly drowning. And he told her he was a junior at NYU.

“Would you like us to call your parents?” she offered, and he shook his head.

“They're in Chicago, and it'll just scare them. I'd rather call them myself and tell them I'm okay. My mom was worried about the hurricane.” He felt for his cell phone, but it was no longer in his pocket, and his wallet was gone too. It made him realize that Ben might have lost his too, and if he was injured or unconscious, they wouldn't know who he was. He said something about it to Juliette, and she promised to let him know if a young unidentified male came in, in the next few hours, and he thanked her. He told her what Ben looked like, and then she asked him if he'd mind if she put Mike somewhere out of harm's way, in case one of the patients objected to him, or was scared of him, although he was very well behaved.

“There's a supply closet with a couple of cots in it that the ER docs have been using to get some sleep. I'll put him there and give him something to eat,” she promised, and Peter sat up and watched as she led him away. Mike didn't seem to object, and she came back a few minutes later and told Peter she had given Mike half a turkey sandwich and a bowl of water, and he seemed peaceful and was lying down. Peter smiled and lay down on the gurney and thought of Ben again, and drifted off to sleep.

When he woke up, Juliette asked one of the nurses to bring him a phone so he could call his parents. He was already crying before they answered. He told his mother where he was and what had happened, and she burst into tears. He was sobbing as he listened to her. Getting through the water was the hardest thing he'd ever done, and just thinking of it now made him shake harder. He knew he had come close to dying in the water.

“I don't know where Ben is, Mom. He was right behind me, and I grabbed on to Mike. But I didn't see Ben anywhere, and they didn't find him when they picked me up. They said he might have gotten ahead of me, but he was behind me when we left the house.” He couldn't stop crying, nor could his mother, and his father had burst into tears the minute his wife had signaled that it was him. It had been an agonizing wait for word of him.

“He's probably okay, and they took him to another hospital,” his mother tried to comfort him. It was what Juliette had said to him too.

“I hope so. It sounded like the house was going to collapse, so we got out.” He tried to explain to her, and she didn't blame him for not evacuating when he should have—she was just grateful that he was alive and had called her. They had been trying to reach him since the night before, but cell service had been poor or nonexistent, and they were worried sick when they couldn't get through. There was almost no cell phone service downtown by then, and Ben's mother had called them several times too. Jane Holbrook wasn't sure now what to say to her when they called her, but if Peter had turned up in a hospital, Ben might have been picked up too, by another rescue boat, and taken somewhere else. If one of them had survived it, the other probably had too. But it would be hard telling her that Peter had been rescued and Ben was missing.

They talked for a few minutes, and Peter spoke to his father too. They wanted him to come home to Chicago as soon as he could fly and the airports opened. It had already been announced that parts of NYU had been severely flooded and would be closed for months. Their buildings extended over a broad area, and those in the worst flood zone had been badly damaged. And the airports were still closed or the Holbrooks would have flown in. They wanted him to come home to recover from his ordeal as soon as he could. Peter didn't comment, but he wanted to go home too, once he knew Ben was okay.

He called Anna after that, and she cried as soon as she heard him, and they both sobbed when he told her that Ben was missing. “I grabbed Mike when he went past me, but I didn't see Ben anywhere. Has he called you?” Peter asked her, and Anna said he hadn't. She promised to come to the hospital if he stayed there, and she said she could take Mike home with her until Ben got in contact with them. After they hung up, Anna's mother called Ben's parents, to see if they'd heard from him. They had just spoken to the Holbrooks in Chicago, and Ben's father was calling all the hospitals to see if they had anyone matching Ben's description who had been rescued from the flood. It was agony waiting to hear from him, and getting through to the hospitals and obtaining information was hard. Everything was chaotic, and information was sparse.

Anna's mother went to see Peter that afternoon, and brought him some clothes and a pair of her husband's sneakers, which fit him, and he clung to her like a child and cried. There was still no news of Ben, and no sign of him at the hospitals his parents had called. All they could do was wait until he reached out to them, or they located him at a hospital.

Juliette decided to keep Peter for the night when he ran a fever, and she checked on him several times. She told him that Mike was doing fine, that one of the nurses had taken him for a walk on her break, and everyone loved him and was feeding him. Peter had asked Anna's mother to leave the dog with him. He liked knowing he was there, like a piece of Ben he had with him, and the hospital didn't mind. When Peter went to check on him in the supply closet, Mike was ecstatic to see him. Peter sat on the floor next to him with his arms wrapped around him until a nurse made him go back to bed.

“What about his friend?” the admitting nurse asked Juliette while she made a note in his chart about the fever.

“We don't have him here, and I gather no one has heard from him,” Juliette answered quietly, and the nurse nodded. There was nothing else she could say. It was a familiar story by then, of people who had lost track of each other in the flood. And Juliette knew that sooner or later, they would find Ben's body, or he'd call home. Until then all anyone could do was hope.

The noise level where Ellen and her mother were was deafening, the lights were on constantly, children cried or played and ran around. Conditions were crowded, people were upset, and it was like trying to sleep in an airport or a train station, and between the stress of what they were all going through and the chaos around them, no one could get any rest. Grace looked exhausted and every bit her age on Monday morning, after the hurricane hit the city the night before. It had arrived with lightning speed in the end, much faster than predicted, and with greater force. Ellen felt no better than her mother, and Gina and Charles were wiped out too. There was almost no cell service, with very rare exceptions downtown, so Ellen could no longer reach George. And just as had happened with Sandy, the news channels reported that the city was virtually untouched uptown. All the serious damage and flooding had occurred south of Forty-second Street, only a few blocks higher than the last time. Charles told Ellen that he would have liked to find hotel rooms uptown for all of them, if possible. His hotel had been evacuated too. But Gina had already told him she wouldn't go. She still hadn't heard from Nigel, and he had agreed to meet her at the shelter whenever he could. Most of the bridges into the city were closed, and she suspected that he hadn't been able to leave Brooklyn yet, and Red Hook had been one of the places hardest hit. She thought he might still be trying to salvage the equipment in his studio. She didn't want to just disappear to a hotel uptown and leave him worried sick when he came to look for her. It didn't seem right, however tempting Charles's offer of comfortable accommodations was.

“If you can even get a hotel room uptown,” Ellen commented when he told her. “Lots of people are trapped in the city. The hotels uptown must be full.” They were talking as they got trays of food for the others in the makeshift cafeteria. He said his kids were living on potato chips and popcorn and he was letting them. The Red Cross and restaurants and hotels uptown were donating food to the shelters. And Ellen said she had drunk enough coffee to keep her awake for a year. They exchanged a smile. Ellen would have liked to get her mother to a hotel soon, but the word on TV and around the shelter was that there wasn't a hotel room to be had anywhere in the city. Those who could organize it quickly enough had gone uptown the day before, some even before the evacuation was announced, fearing what would come. And now it was unlikely they could find a hotel room anywhere. All the hotels were full with people who couldn't leave the city, tourists who couldn't go home when the airports closed, and anyone who had fled the trendy neighborhoods downtown. For many of them, money was not an issue, and they had filled the hotels the day before.

“So I guess we're stuck, at least until Nigel shows up in our case,” Charles said, as they juggled the food trays back to their cots where the others were waiting for them. Ellen was impressed by how calm he was. The basket case he had been on the plane, clutching her arm, bore no relation to the man he was now. He had his wits about him, was wonderful to his children, and kept them entertained, playing games with them and telling them stories for hours. For lack of anything better to do when they were bored, he walked them around the shelter so they could count how many dogs they saw, or how many cats, or black or white dogs, anything to keep them distracted and amused. And he was patient and respectful of his ex-wife, despite her obvious concern over the man she had left him for. Ellen admired Charles for how protective he was of her and said as much to him.

“I loved her for a long time, and I guess my heart has taken a while to catch up,” he said ruefully. “And she's the mother of my children after all.” The way he said it made Ellen wonder, as she often had in the past four years, if she would have that noble role one day. Being a mother seemed like the highest honor of all. It made her sad thinking about it, as it always did, but for now they had other things to worry about. And her mother was already asking when she could go home, at least to take a look. There were police lines threaded throughout all of downtown, which no one was allowed to cross, with electric lines down, in some sad cases drowning victims in the streets, trees still liable to fall with weakened roots, and buildings at risk of collapsing. By Monday morning, the floodwaters had begun receding, but not enough, and some buildings were reported to be flooded with ten or fifteen feet of water, filling the basements and part of the ground floor in many cases. And there was no telling when Grace would be allowed to check out her home. Ellen was nervous about the shock Grace would experience when she did. She had been through it once before, after Sandy, but this seemed like a lot for her to go through a second time. She was, after all, seventy-four years old.

“How's your mother holding up?” Charles asked her as they wended their way through the crowd and passed the boy with the iguana. It had remained on his head most of the time since he'd arrived, and Ellen made a face as they passed him, and the lizard stuck out its tongue as Charles laughed. They felt like old friends now. “She seems remarkably plucky, after all she's just been through.” And Grace had been very sweet with his children and let them play with her dog. Blanche was shaken up and nervous too, but still sweet with the children.

“She was convinced it wouldn't be as bad this time, and the apartment was already underwater when we left. The lower floor at least.” Wading out of the building in water to their waists and chests had been an unforgettable experience for Ellen and her mother. “I think it's going to be pretty bad when we go back. Possibly a total loss, and she loves her home.” It was a bit like living through a war. Natural disasters took everything with them, with no regard for what one loved, or what one did or didn't have, or how well one had prepared. Ellen had a strong sense that all her mother's neighbor's help with the preparations had been in vain, despite his good intentions and theirs.

When they got back to the others, Gina was worried, and talking about Nigel again. They had just shown scenes of Brooklyn on the screen that was powered by a generator, and all of Red Hook looked as though it had been destroyed. Fourteen people had drowned there, and Gina was terrified that Nigel might be one of them. Charles put an arm around her and comforted her, like a brother or a friend, without taking advantage of the situation, or whatever lingering feelings he had for her. Ellen admired him more than ever. She talked to her mother quietly when she insisted that she wanted to at least try to get back to her building and see if the police would let her in for a look.

“I think it's too soon, Mom,” Ellen said gently, feeling bad that she hadn't been able to call George. He must have been worried sick about them, and would be in his office by then. But there was no way she could call him, until they got to an area where her cell phone would work again. Their cell phones had worked sporadically in the beginning but less well now, with lines vastly overloaded by people calling in and out.

“It just said on CNN that the floodwaters are receding,” Grace insisted. “Last time they let me in to look ten hours after the storm. It's been sixteen now. We can always come back here if they won't let us in.” She was determined to try and was stressed all day, waiting to go home, while Ellen worried about contacting George, and Gina cried every time she thought of Nigel. It was an unnerving day for them all.

And almost like the vision of a romantic hero, a handsome, fiercely disheveled man with long hair and an unkempt beard, but a taut athletic body, in rough boots and jeans, cut through the crowd and strode toward them. The moment she saw him, Gina screamed and threw herself into his arms, as Charles turned away discreetly and looked at Ellen. She raised a questioning eyebrow, and he nodded. It was Nigel. He held Gina in his arms for an instant, then peeled her away from him, and paid no attention to the two little girls or anyone else around them.

“Thank God…I was so afraid something happened to you…,” Gina said breathlessly, and together the two of them were a striking image of youth and beauty, however bedraggled they both were. “It said on the news that fourteen people drowned in Red Hook.” She had been terrified for him.

“I lost all my equipment. The studio is ten feet underwater,” he said, looking devastated, without asking how she and the girls had fared, or expressing relief that they had survived too. It struck both Ellen and Charles simultaneously, though neither of them commented. “Do you realize what that means to me?” Nigel went on. “And of course I have no flood insurance. I spent the entire night helping all the artists out there load their canvases into vans. We managed to save a lot of their work, but none of mine. My negatives are gone too. It's a tragedy.” He was nearly in tears as he said it, and Gina expressed her heartfelt sympathy with her arms around his waist.

“I'm just grateful you're alive,” she said in a deeply moved voice.

“It will take me years to replace that equipment, and the negatives are irreplaceable. Thank God I left my old negatives in England,” he said as he looked around, noticing their surroundings for the first time. “My God, what a dreadful place this is. So many children and old people.” He made a face as Grace and Ellen watched him with interest, almost like a character in a movie, which was what he seemed like. There was an unreal quality about him, and his blatant narcissism came right through his pores. “Why didn't you go to a hotel?” he asked Gina in surprise.

“We didn't have time. The police evacuated us, I had to leave everything at the apartment, except some clothes for the girls. All the hotels downtown are flooded. And I didn't want to leave here until you came—I didn't want you to worry if we just disappeared and went uptown.” She didn't tell him that Charles had been begging to find them a hotel room uptown, whatever it took to get one.

“You should have. I've got a ride back to Brooklyn in a few minutes. I came over to drop some artwork off at a friend's.” He hadn't even come especially to see her, which wasn't lost on Charles. “I've got friends in Red Hook I still want to help.” And a woman and two children at a shelter in Manhattan, whom he supposedly loved. There was no evidence of it in his eyes or his words. “You really ought to try and get out of here as soon as you can. The noise alone would drive me insane.” They weren't enjoying it either, but Gina had insisted on staying for him, so he could find them. And then it was as though he remembered her children as an afterthought and looked down at both of them. “Having fun, girls? It's an adventure, isn't it?” He didn't wait for their answer but turned back to Gina with a distracted look. “I've got to go. They're waiting for me. I'll see you back at the apartment whenever I can get back in. It won't be for a few days.”

“Take care of yourself out there—it's still dangerous. Where will you be staying?”

“God knows, most of Red Hook was destroyed last night. I'll find a bed somewhere. I'll call you when I have cell service again.” And with that, he gave her a peck on the lips, forgot to say goodbye to the girls, ignored the others, and pushed his way through the crowd to the exit, with a look of irritation and disdain as people blocked his path by virtue of sheer numbers, and without a glance back at Gina, he was gone. It was all about him, and he hadn't even bothered to tell her to take care, when he went back to his friends waiting for him outside. And he hadn't offered to take her with him, which Charles would have objected to anyway, for the safety of their children. But Nigel apparently had no interest in them at all, and no concern for Gina.

Seeing him there had been a somewhat shocking experience that illustrated who he was, and Gina wasn't oblivious to it either. There were tears in her eyes when he left, and she turned away from Charles so he wouldn't see her cry. He made no comment and chatted with the girls, but he had gotten a full on view of who and what Gina had left him for, and so had she. She went to get a cup of tea then, or so she said, and when she came back, she said to Charles quietly that maybe they should try to go to a hotel, if they could find one anywhere. She didn't say it, but there was obviously no point waiting for Nigel here. And Charles no longer had business to conduct in the city, since all the Wall Street firms were closed, and Wall Street itself and the stock exchange were underwater. All he had to do in New York now was help Gina and their girls. It was his only mission there.

“I'll see what I can do,” he said quietly, and went to stand on line for one of the landlines they had just set up for people at the shelters. Ellen had tried that to call George, only to discover, after she'd stood on line for two hours, that the phone lines were set up only for local calls, not international, so she couldn't call him. In one fell swoop, they had lost all the conveniences of modern technology and civilization. It was like camping out in the dark ages, as someone said while she'd waited on line. But for the most part, they were relieved to have a place to go, however noisy, uncomfortable, and limited it might be. It was better than being in danger in their homes, and all the children seemed to enjoy it, far more than the adults, who were uncomfortable, stressed, and exhausted.

Gina was quiet and looked distressed, thinking of Nigel's visit, after Charles left them to use the phones, and Ellen said nothing to her. She sat quietly talking to her mother, as she held Blanche and fretted about seeing the damage to her home.

Charles was back an hour later, and announced that he had found a hotel room in the East Fifties. “It sounds pretty awful,” he said honestly. “It appears to be a second-rate hotel, but someone told me to try it. All the decent ones uptown are booked. I tried those too, and this one as a last resort. It's called the Lincoln East, and they only had one room. They'll give us rollaways for the girls, and I can sleep on the floor, if it's all right with you. I don't mind. Or you can just take the room, and I'll stay here, although I'd rather be close to you and the girls. I don't want you wandering around the city alone right now, even uptown. What do you think? I reserved it and paid with a credit card, so we've got it if we want it.” Gina looked immensely thankful and relieved. The shelter was wearing on all of them after nearly forty-eight hours. Two days of noise, discomfort, and chaos among a thousand people was rough on anyone at any age.