Page 156 of Just One Look
She could barely make it. How had he done that trip between the cars four times? In the mud? In the rushing water? She thought it, and then she forgot it, because she was dragging herself hand over hand, and then she was inside, and they were safe.
The younger woman was still crying behind her, but the older one wasn’t, and neither was the baby. She turned around to check, not even aware of her body anymore. Checking on her patients, one by one. The mother was feeding the baby, and she had skin on skin. That was good. She told the older woman, “Take your clothes off. They’re making you colder. Get your daughter’s pants off, too.” The woman looked at her wildly, and Elizabeth said, “I’m a doctor. You’re in danger like this. Get your clothes off now.”
She started to do it, her cold hands fumbling, and Elizabeth turned back to Luka. His hands were shaking, trying to untie the rope around his waist. She said, “It doesn’t matter. We can drive with it.” A chime was pinging, in fact, and that was the rope caught in the door, keeping it from closing all the way.
Never mind. It could ping.
He looked at her. Mouth open, hauling in breath. Hair streaming. Face ashen. She thought,Get out of here. Reverse.She didn’t dare try to turn, not with the water rising. She pressed the accelerator slowly, the way she’d done to pull Luka out, and the big car ground its way through the water. Twenty-five yards. Fifty, and the flooding was less.
Turn around,she thought, and did it. A three-point turn, her hands barely shaking, because it was still an emergency, and she couldn’t lose her focus now. The water was still flowing over the road, but only a few inches of it.
They were safe. She could do this. She had this.
Luka said, “Flares.” He didn’t have his own clothes off, and he should, but his arms were lying limp at his sides, his inexhaustible strength exhausted.
“What?” she said.
“Flares,” he said. “Stop the car.”
She almost pulled over, then realized,There’s nobody behind us. Nobody can get through.Her mind tried to replay the sight of the car going over the guardrail, of Luka flung against it, losing his footing, but she dragged it back again, focused on the road, and stopped the car.
Luka, getting that rope unfastened from around his waist at last, because no man had more hand strength, then reaching under the seat and grabbing the red flares. Out into the night again, and the sudden burst of light that was a flare igniting. Setting it in the middle of the road, then jogging on.
How are you running?she thought.How?And followed him. A second flare lit, and she was beside him with the car as he unlatched the hook from under the SUV, then pulled himself inside again, taking the sodden pile of strapping and rope with him.
“Where?” he asked. His teeth chattering, his entire body locked in shivers. “Can’t think. Hospital, maybe, but where’s a hospital? Whangarei, that’s about it, but we can’t go there tonight. If this road’s this bad, the others will be, too.”
“No,” she said. “Back to your house. Right now, they most need to get warm and dry, and so do you.”
“They need a doctor,” he said. “Especially the baby. The baby’s too little.”
“Luka.” Somehow, she laughed. “Iama doctor. And you’re … you’re a miracle.”
