Page 88 of Boss

Kassidy dressed after a half-hour of waiting because she just couldn’t stand his absence any longer. She wore his sweats and one of his shirts when she arrived in the kitchen. And it was not nearly enough to protect her from the winter storm or the howling winds blowing in through the halls of the lower level. Tarek had put on his coat, workman’s boots, and gloves. He had with him some large black construction bags he filled with the debris.

“The tree fell?” she yelled over the sound of the wind.

“Yeah! And with the temperature is dropping, we won’t be able to keep this place warm!” he shouted back. The kitchen had three open entrances and none of them had doors to keep the snowstorm out. Tarek pulled loose the broken branches that were caught between the house and outside.

“What are you doing?” she called out.

“I’m thinking of covering up in here, using some of the quilts to make a barrier. Go to the laundry room! Get the heaviest ones you can find in the bottom cabinets,” he yelled.

“Okay!” Kassidy ran back down the hall. She pulled her clothes out of the dryer, and stacked them on the ironing counter. She then went to the cabinets and dragged out the heaviest blankets she could find. She carried the haul back to the kitchen in both arms. When she returned he had a ladder.

“We should have gone for the tractor,” she sighed.

“Too late for that now.”

“Are you sure about this?” She shook out the first blanket. “Will it work?”

“Yeah!” he had to shout over the blaring wind. “Maybe you should go back upstairs in the room. Close the door to keep in the heat!” he said. From the top of the ladder, he pulled on a taller branch. To Kassidy it didn’t look safe.

“Maybe you shouldn’t do that! I mean it looks dangerous!” she yelled up to him.

The wind was as loud as a freight train now. And the snow blew a hard frigid cold that seemed to freeze the air she took into her lungs. It made her feel as if she were caught up in a wind tunnel. The storm had picked up, and was worse than the day before. Its might slammed in on them with unrelenting force.

“Don’t worry!” he yelled back down to her. “We cover this and—”

Before he could speak or explain further the roof above him caved in and another tree fell on top of Tarek. He was knocked from the ladder and buried under the collapsing structure. Kassidy screamed in horror. She dropped the blankets.

“Tarek!” she yelled as she tried to get to him. Shards of glass sliced at the bottom of her bare feet.

“Ow!” she howled in pain. She went to her knees and pulled out the glass from both of her feet. All around the room was what looked like melting snow and glass. She ignored the small cuts and scrapes to her hands and knees as she crawled to him with her foot bleeding and leaving a trial of her blood behind her.

“Tarek? Tarek!” she pleaded.

She pulled plaster and all kinds of other debris from over him. She pushed at the branch that rested on his back. It was heavy, but not too heavy to move. He lay face down and she couldn’t tell if he was fatally wounded or not. But she feared the worst.

“Please, God, please let him be okay,” she said through tears. The pain in her feet made it impossible to stand. They weren’t safe. She knew it. She could feel it. What if the tree continued to crash into the kitchen? If they stayed where they were another collapse of the roof could kill them both.

“Okay. Okay, Kassidy, you can do this. Get up. Get up! Fuck! Do it!” she shouted at herself and suffered pure agony as her feet felt like she stood on nails. Tears sprung to her eyes and her breathing became labored. She grabbed Tarek by the back of his jacket and started to drag him. As she stepped backward, tinier shards of glass cut into the bottoms of her feet. Kassidy squeezed her eyes shut and ignored the pain. All she focused on was dragging and pulling, an action she repeated over and over.

“You can do it. You can do it,” she said as she wept with a mixture of fear and courage. There was a loud sound, a groaning sound as if something above was being moved by a crane. But it wasn’t a crane. It was the ceiling. She looked up. She couldn’t see it but she could hear it. The tree wasn’t done falling in on them.

“God, please help me!” she cried. She kept dragging and pulling. She kept going until she had him out into the hall. That’s when it happened. The tree and what was left of the wall and roof collapsed in on the kitchen and obliterated everything below. If she hadn’t moved him he would be dead. She dropped to the floor in exhaustion. Her feet bled. When she looked down at the blood on both of them she felt lightheaded. The pain was so bad she wanted to black out. She sucked in a deep breath and tried again to gain her bearings. She started plucking the glass, and splinters from her feet once more.

Tarek groaned.

He was awake.

Her heart lifted.

“Tarek? Can you hear me sweetheart? Tarek?” She crawled to him. She rolled him over to his back. The side of his face was bloody, and there was a wound that wept openly at the top of his head. She touched it and couldn’t tell if it was deep or not.

“What the fuck happened?” He tried to rise.

“No. Stay still. Don’t move yet,” she said. She looked around. “Where is the medical kit, like a first aid kit?”

“Ah, shit, what hit me?” Tarek wavered. He tried to sit up again. She pulled him over to her and put his head in her lap.

“Stay still. I don’t know how bad you were hurt. The tree came in. It collapsed the roof. See?” she pointed. He lifted his head and looked back into the kitchen. Exhaustion or pain overtook him and his head dropped back down on her lap.

---