An adult stories – The Storm by CleverGenericName,CleverGenericName The Storm
Apologies for the long delay between stories. My ADHD strikes again. I have been working on at least five projects in parallel without finishing any of them, but finally got this one to where I am happy with it. This story actually started out as something a bit more serious, but somewhere along the way, it morphed into one of those late-night disaster movies I used to watch as a kid.
Fair warning: there is basically no sex in this story. If graphic sex is your jam, there are many other excellent choices for you on this site. Otherwise, if you’re still with me, I hope you have fun reading.
Kevin – Early Afternoon
A roadside gas station and convenience store somewhere on U.S. 41 south of Tampa.
There is something to be said for being out on the open road with no real plan or destination in mind. Most of the time, my mind is out of control with a million thoughts slamming into each other like a mosh pit at a death metal concert. When I am out on the road, though, my thoughts slow down to a tolerable hum, and I can start to relax.
Riding in early June in Florida can be a bit of a crapshoot. Some days are beautiful, warm enough that you can feel the sun on your skin but still cool enough to ride in comfort. Other days are melt-your-face hot, where it is only tolerable to ride any distance in the early morning or evening. Today was one of those first days, and my brother, Daniel, and I had been on the road for a couple of hours already.
I used to get my adrenaline fix doing maritime Search and Rescue (SAR) with the Coast Guard. I was one of the best, and I lived for that job. The training was intense, and the hours were erratic, but there was no feeling like putting yourself on the line to save a life, just you and your team against the worst that Mother Nature can throw at you. It seems like that was a lifetime ago, back when I was still married.
Now, I am divorced and out of the service. About the only adrenaline fix I get these days is from riding my motorcycle. My ex-wife, Rachel, is a good one. One of the best, in fact. But three years after the divorce, my daughter is still plenty angry with me and wants to see me as little as possible. So that gives me a lot of time to ride and think about how I messed it all up.
——
We started the day at Daniel’s house in Tampa, and our plan, such as it was, was to end up down in Cape Haze at our parents’ place. It had been a while since either of us had visited, and I was sure that my father would have a laundry list of chores he wanted us to take care of around the property when we got there.
Normally, this would have been my weekend with my daughter, Penny. But she was in Atlanta this weekend with Rachel, to meet her boyfriend’s family for the first time. Rachel had been with her boyfriend, Frank, for the past year or so. She was finally moving on, I guess, but I couldn’t hold it against her. I was the one who broke our marital vows long before she met Frank.
In case you haven’t picked up on it yet, I am an idiot. And now, I am a lonely idiot.
It was easy to become morose when I thought too much about Rachel and Penny, so I shook off my dark thoughts and looked over to my left, where Daniel was sitting comfortably on his black 2022 Harley-Davidson Road King Special. He was always one for comfort over style. He bought his Road King brand new, and he got most of the advanced safety and all of the advanced comfort options. It suited him well.
The Road King weighed almost twice as much as my Ducati, and it had plenty of room for his powerful 6’3″ firefighter frame to fit comfortably on it, even with his wife, Cindy, riding behind him. Today, though, he was by himself as Cindy and his daughter, Rebecca, had decided to stay home. They claimed to be worried about the Tropical Storm Watch that had been issued overnight, with the first real storm of the season forming out in the gulf. In reality, I think they just wanted to have a spa day together and to do some shopping without Daniel hovering over them. For Cindy and Rebecca, a day on the bikes for Daniel and me, meant a guilt-free day of mimosas and malls for them.
As for myself, I lean the other way on the question of comfort versus style. I was riding high on my cherry-red Ducati Monster 821. It was twitchy and responsive, like my wiry 5’11” frame. I looked good and traveled fast—but my ass and groin muscles were already screaming, and we weren’t even halfway through the ride. I refused to mention my discomfort to Daniel, though, as I knew he would show no sympathy.
——
Since it was just the two of us, we took our time meandering down the coast on U.S. 41, also known as the Tamiami Trail. It used to be the primary route between Tampa and Miami before they built the I-75. Now it was packed with locals and tourists. For the most part, we just hung back in traffic, although occasionally my ADHD would get the better of me and I would rocket ahead of Daniel when we hit an open stretch of road, waiting for him to catch up at the next service station.
We stopped for lunch in Venice, down by Caspersen Beach and were back on the road before 1 PM. We were maybe an hour away from Cape Haze when Daniel signaled to me, and we pulled into a gas station. I was listening to my ‘Get There Sometime’ playlist—more than 1,000 songs that help me get in the zone as I ride. They blend together as I cruise, letting my ADHD brain gear down enough to focus on the road. Think of Baby from Baby Driver but replace the Motown classics with hair metal from the eighties and hard rock from the nineties. Boston’s “Peace of Mind” was just starting as we stopped. I waited while Daniel used the facilities, and my mind couldn’t help but wander.
Back when I was still married, on a day like today we would have gone to the beach to hang out and ride the storm surge. Penny was a creature of the water. At eight, she had already been a better surfer than I ever was, and now, at eleven, she was gearing up for her first major competitions, and sponsors were already sniffing around.
If I closed my eyes, I could picture Rachel in her red two-piece, and Penny in her Quiksilver wetsuit, laughing as they rode the waves on our beach out on the key. Those were my favorite memories: spending the day on the beach with my family without a thought for tomorrow.
They were probably better off without me, though. I was a fun dad but a bad father and husband. It was a regret that I was sure I would take with me to my grave.
——
Lost in my own thoughts, it took me a minute to notice that the owner of the gas station had come outside and was starting to screw plywood sheets over the convenience store’s windows. That seemed a bit excessive for a tropical storm that was forming far out in the gulf. Even if it intensified into a full-on hurricane, it would still make landfall hundreds of miles to the north. He was having a tough time holding up the plywood sheets while also screwing them into the siding, however, so I wandered over to help while I waited for Daniel to finish up.
“Need a hand?” I asked the owner.
“That would be much appreciated,” he replied in a thick Georgian accent. “They’re saying on the radio that we only have a couple of hours until the storm hits, and I want to be ready.”
“I thought this storm was going to pass us by?” I said, as we worked. “I was sure I read this morning that it was going to make landfall closer to the panhandle than to here.”
“That was this morning,” he grunted as he drove in the last screw. “As of noon, it had grown into a full-blown hurricane and just after lunch, it took a hard right directly towards us. It’s now on track to make a direct hit, and it is still growing. There is no telling how strong it will be by the time it gets here.
“If I were you, I would turn around and head back up the coast to get out of its way. It’s no time to be out on your bikes.”
Rachel – Early Afternoon
Stump Pass Beach State Park
It was nice to just lay back on the lounger, feet in the warm sand, oversized sunglasses and hat keeping the glare out of my eyes, watching Penny play in the surf. She was tall for an eleven-year-old and fearless. Her sun-bleached hair which had grown past her shoulders was blowing in the strong onshore breeze. She had stopped cutting it after the divorce, and I hadn’t forced the issue. She was wearing her favorite wetsuit, although the swells were too rough for me to allow her to go too far out from shore, so she was riding the smaller waves closer to shore and playing in the surf.
You have to be cautious going out in hurricane season. But growing up in Florida, you learn that if you cancel your plans every time there is a Tropical Storm Watch in effect, you will never make it to the beach. It’s true that the first big storm of the season was brewing out in the gulf, but it was well out to sea and was going to make landfall hundreds of miles to the north. With any luck, it would hit just close enough to generate some nice swells for Penny to play in, but far enough away to not cause too much concern.
The beach we were on was way out on the key, past the first beach where all the tourists stop, past the McMansions and yacht club, and past the second beach favored by locals. It took a while to get there, but it was worth it. There were fewer people, although the parking lot was almost full, and there was very little noise other than the muted sound of the waves hitting the beach. Penny loved this beach, even though it inevitably brought back memories of her father. The sand was pristine, though, there were shark teeth for the finding, and it had the best break within an hour’s drive of our house. So, screw Kevin.
We were supposed to be in Atlanta this weekend to meet my fiancé Frank’s family. He had proposed to me last weekend and booked the trip to meet his family to celebrate. A last-minute business trip, however, had put the kibosh on that plan, so we ended up staying home and coming to the beach instead.
——
I often wonder what life would be like if I hadn’t powered up Kevin’s old iPad that night, three years ago. Kevin had been away for two months, training new SAR team members, and I was catching up on some of the endless paperwork for the hospital. In typical Penny fashion, she had been watching a video while holding her iPad, pouring milk, and attempting to pet the cat. The iPad was the unintended victim of her multitasking, and its screen had shattered. I just wanted Penny to be able to watch her shows, and I knew Kevin kept all his old electronics in his office like some kind of cyber-hoarder.
The password was the same as it was on all of Kevin’s devices. He wasn’t a master of cybersecurity, and his ADHD made it difficult for him to remember one password, let alone a number of long and random alphanumeric codes. It took a while to start, but once it came back to life the notifications started rolling in.
I wasn’t really paying attention, but one message caught my eye just before the notifications ended, “We still on for later?” One short message, and my world crumbled.
It was a pretty typical affair, as far as these things go. I was working fifty-hour weeks at the hospital and spending every spare moment fending off the advances of Dr. Douchebag, the head of my department. He knew I was married, but he thought he was God’s gift to women, and he looked down on men like Kevin. Honestly, I had no time to sleep let alone think about other men, especially not a pompous self-important ass, but for whatever reason Dr. Douchebag brought out all of Kevin’s insecurities.
Rather than communicating his concerns with me, Kevin stayed at home and stewed. He had always had a hard time between postings, the boredom and inactivity weighing heavily on his mind. That combined with my longer hours and Penny’s growing independence mixed together into a potent cocktail of anger and discontent. In his mind, he constructed a fantasy that I was being unfaithful, and his fears gnawed away at him from within.
I never imagined Kevin would worry about someone like Dr. Douchebag. We had been together since high school, and we made it through medical school and postings, through the birth of Penny and through my post-partum depression. I thought we had been tested and we had survived, stronger than ever. But I was wrong.
Kevin had always been the kind of guy that drew a crowd wherever he went. He was rarely the tallest or best-looking man in a room, but he was ruggedly handsome in his own way and so charismatic women would offer to buy him drinks, even when I was right beside him. He was funny, kind and, I thought, loyal to a fault. He was my ride or die.
I wish I had noticed Kevin beginning to pull away from our marriage. If I hadn’t been so exhausted all the time, maybe I could have done something before it happened. But I just didn’t see it coming.
Things came to a head when Kevin was promoted to be the lead trainer for the Coast Guard SAR teams. He was working out of Sector St. Petersburg, where we lived at the time, but would be posted for 4-6 weeks to other sectors, to oversee their ongoing training. I missed him when he was away, but we texted every day and we spoke every evening when I was putting Penny to bed.
There was a woman who was part of one of Kevin’s training cohorts. I looked her up on social media when I found out and immediately wished I hadn’t. She was tall and fit, with raven black hair. She had been a competitive swimmer and amateur kickboxer, and she was all lean muscles and confidence. She was all the things that I wasn’t. She made a practice of acquiring the men she wanted, and she set her sights on Kevin. He was flattered by the attention and was sure, by that point, that I was already stepping out from our marriage.
Things ended badly for Kevin and me, with harsh words exchanged both ways. We did the best we could to be civil around Penny, but when Penny found out why we were divorcing, she blamed her dad. She had always been a daddy’s girl, and her rejection of her father after the divorce was like that of an evangelical Christian who loses their faith in God; it was sudden, intense, and final. I did my best to encourage her to forgive her father, in time, but there had been very little improvement on that front over the past three years, and I worried there might never be.
——
I came back from my daydream and noticed that there was a young girl, maybe 7 or 8, playing in the water with Penny, who was showing her how to ride waves on her boogie board. Just like her dad, Penny had one of those magnetic personalities that seemed to draw other children to her, and this girl was no exception.
A younger couple, who must have been her parents, were watching them play. After a few minutes, they came over and introduced themselves to me.
“Your daughter is a real force of nature,” the husband said with a laugh.
“You don’t know the half of it,” I replied with a smile. “You haven’t known fear until you have been hit by hurricane Penny.”
“Well, Kira is sure having a blast playing with her. It’s really nice of Penny to make the time to play with a younger girl like that. Most girls your daughter’s age wouldn’t be bothered.”
“You’re too kind, but I agree, Penny is pretty great. I am kinda biased though,” I replied with a laugh.
“I hate to ask this, but we weren’t really planning on spending too long at the beach today, and we didn’t bring any snacks. Would you mind watching Kira for a few minutes while we scoot back to town? I noticed a food truck selling hotdogs and fries… we would be happy to bring you and Penny some fries to say thank you.”
“I don’t mind at all,” I replied. “We should be here for another hour or so before we head back. And no need to bring back any fries for us. We always pick some up on the way home. They are worth the wait.”
After a quick thank you and a word with Kira, they gave me their cell number and left. As they did so, a warm, moist wind started gusting along the beach. It wasn’t the cooler breeze you would expect to be coming in off the ocean, but it was nothing to be too concerned about either.
Kevin – Early Afternoon
Heading south on State Road 776
Nothing like a little hurricane to put a damper on a nice day of riding. Hurricanes are no joke, though, and this hurricane, in particular, sounded like it could get pretty intense. Having switched from my playlists to the radio, the announcers were already calling it the ‘storm of the century,’ and it hadn’t even made landfall yet. As if to echo that sentiment, the day was starting to become unnaturally dark.
Daniel and I could have gone back up to Tampa, I guess, but we were worried about our mom and dad, whose house was distressingly close to the coast and now, directly in the path of the oncoming storm. At least Dad was an engineer before he retired, and their house was designed and built to withstand a small nuclear strike. Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that, but we were close enough that we decided to ride down to their place and wait out the storm with them just in case. Cindy and Rebecca would be safe back in Tampa and Daniel and I could provide mom and dad with some backup, in case anything went wrong.
There was no danger that Mom and Dad would evacuate before we got there. It was already pretty late for them to be leaving at this point, and my dad was as stubborn as I am. The only way he was going to be leaving that house was with the help of a tranquilizer gun and gurney.
Penny and Rachel lived close to my parents as well. After the divorce, Rachel took a position as the head of surgery at the local hospital in Englewood, which was a quarter-hour north of Cape Haze. My parents adored Penny and loved Rachel at least as much as they loved me, so they were thrilled when they moved closer. I tried my best to be a good dad and co-parent, but as my grandpa used to say, ‘that’s kind of like closing the barn doors after the horses are already out.’ You might feel like you’re making things better, but really, you’re just hiding the evidence of your mistake.
Thank God they were in Atlanta, or I would have been beside myself with worry for them. Look, I know it’s not my job to be worried about Rachel anymore. I get it. But there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for those two, same as when we were married. The only difference is that now Rachel doesn’t want or need me to do much of anything.
Listening to the radio was making me even more jittery than usual. After half an hour of the same warnings and very little new information, I switched back to my playlists but upgraded from ‘Get There Sometime’ to ‘Get There Fast.’ Moments later, the Rolling Stones kicked things off with “Gimme Shelter.” I had to chuckle as we rode on.
Rachel – Twenty minutes later
Stump Pass Beach State Park
Things started going sideways less than 15 minutes after Kira’s parents left. That warm, moist breeze from earlier had picked up and was now a steady, swirling presence while the surf started to get much heavier. Where an hour before the waves had been high but even and regular, they were now white-capped and starting to smash into each other, creating a churning froth.
With an uneasy feeling in my gut, I got Kira and Penny out of the water, and I quickly put on my sandals and cover-up. Kira’s parents still hadn’t returned, and I noticed that very few, if any, cars had come into the parking lot in the last fifteen minutes. Other beachgoers around us were also looking worried and, as if by an unspoken agreement, began moving towards their parked cars.
Not five minutes later, the sky out over the gulf started turning a dark gray before descending towards the water in a grey curtain that was slowly being drawn across the day. The warm wind had grown much stronger and was now cut by gusts of almost frosty cold air.
Just then, the public announcement system for the further beach crackled to life and an automated voice stated that the Tropical Storm Watch that had been in effect earlier in the day had been upgraded to a Hurricane Warning with an Evacuation Order. As you can imagine, this announcement spurred the few remaining beachgoers to flee to their cars and head for the entrance.
We lost valuable time in making our escape as I tried to call Kira’s parents. The cell network was congested, however, with incoming and outgoing calls, and we couldn’t get through. I took the girls to the highest point in the surrounding dunes but still couldn’t see Kira’s parents’ SUV making its way back to the parking lot. The only car that was coming this way, in fact, was a deputy from the county sheriff, and he was moving fast.
Finally, I got a text from Kira’s parents saying they were not allowed to come back up the key, but they would meet us in the first parking lot on the mainland. With only one way on or off the key, there was no way that we could miss them.
We ran down to our car as the deputy pulled into the lot and told us that we had to evacuate immediately. The timing was going to be tight to get off the key before the storm hit as it was rapidly picking up speed and power.
Kira started crying as the officer spoke, but Penny took her hand and reassured her that everything would be okay. I couldn’t miss the underlying worry, however, hidden just under the surface of Penny’s face. Kira calmed down some but didn’t let go of Penny’s hand as we got into the car.
We were one of the last cars to leave the parking lot. The deputy made one more pass to make sure that everyone was out before he peeled off down the incoming traffic lane, his lights flashing. We got less than a quarter mile, however, before we hit the end of the line of traffic waiting to get off the key. It was moving at a crawl.
By this point, I was getting worried, but I put on my game face for the girls. I cranked on some Taylor Swift to keep their spirits up but looking west, I could see the towering wall of black rolling inexorably towards us.
Kevin – Mid-Afternoon
Two miles North of Cape Haze
The traffic was bad. Not for Daniel and me—you would be an idiot to drive directly into a storm of this magnitude like we were—so we had our lane to ourselves. The road out of town, however, was crawling with residents desperate to escape the storm or at least to get out of its path. My ‘Get There Fast’ playlist was doing its job and Springsteen’s “Born to Run” was playing through the Bluetooth connection in my helmet.
More than once, Daniel and I were forced to dodge oncoming cars in our lane as desperate motorists risked heading into oncoming traffic to get ahead of the storm. It had started raining at a steady clip, which is never good news on a motorbike, and it was far darker than it should have been at mid-afternoon.
Daniel and I had ridden together for long enough that we didn’t need to talk with each other to know what each of us was going to do. We kept the comms channel open for emergencies but rode in silence, other than the underlying pulse of my music. We were getting close to Mom and Dad’s, though, so we knew we could get out of the weather before things got too bad.
The towering wall of clouds to our right now completely blocked the sun. Bolts of lightning lit up the outer bands of the storm, but the inner core was solid, inky black. The rain was steady and getting stronger.
As we drove into Cape Haze, my phone, which was patched into the comms on my helmet, indicated that I had an incoming call. I was amazed that it made it through, as I was sure that the cell networks would still be congested with people reassuring relatives of their safety and making plans to escape the storm. A pleasant automated female voice informed me that the call was from Rachel Dawkins.
Rachel Dawkins—that name was still jarring. When we got divorced, Rachel had gone back to her maiden name, dropping the second-last vestige of our time together (with Penny being our final remaining link). More recently, Penny had started talking about changing her name as well, but she needed my permission. If not for her love for my father, her beloved Grampy, I imagine that the request would already have been made.
If she asked, I was leaning towards saying “Yes,” but just the thought of it made me feel like a hooked knife was being pulled through my guts. What else could I say? I couldn’t force Penny to love me or value my name. I had shattered her trust, and all indications were that it was never coming back.
I wasn’t too shocked to get a call from Rachel, though. It was very much in character for her to check in with me to make sure that my parents and I were safe from the storm.
“Hey, Bab…” I caught myself, old habits dying hard and all of that. “Sorry, Rachel, how is Atlanta? I am sure glad you’re not at home; there is a bit of a storm heading our way.”
“Kevin, thank God I got through. Where are you?”
“Daniel and I are about a mile north of my parents’ place; what’s up?”
The phone crackled, and I lost a bit of her reply.
“… we didn’t go, change of plans, we are out on the key… car won’t start, and we are still out past the lighthouse… accident in front of us… stopped to help… no way off.”
The line cut out before she could finish.
Well, this was bad.
The rain picked up in intensity, with some pebbles of hail now added to the mix. I radioed over to Daniel, “Rachel and Penny are stuck out on the key with no way to get off. I am going to go get them.”
Without hesitation, he replied, “We sure are, little brother.”
“Daniel, you need to go to Mom and Dad’s place. Think about Cindy and Rebecca, and…” He couldn’t hear the rest as he gunned his Harley’s Milwaukee-Eight 114 engine, and his bike leapt forward. I sped up to catch him, and we whipped along side by side.
“You shouldn’t do this; it’s too dangerous,” I told him as we rode.
“Sorry, can’t talk, I’m doing hero shit,” was his reply before he turned off his comms.
That was my brother for you. We’re flying head-long into the storm of the century, with nothing but our bikes and a misguided belief in our own invincibility, and he thought it was time to misquote a stupid meme. I could just picture his smirk under his visor. His daughter would be so proud of him, I thought. If we make it out of this.
My ‘Get There Fast’ playlist wasn’t going to cut it anymore. It was time to take it up a final notch to ‘Get There Now’, and I cued it up as we rode. The first notes of “Run to the Hills” by Iron Maiden started to rumble as I leaned down over my bike.
Rachel – Same time
North of Boca Grande on the key
There is no crisis on God’s green earth that can’t be made worse by impatient idiots. We were finally making decent progress towards the causeway and bridge that were the only way on or off the key. The sheriff’s deputies were guiding traffic, and both lanes were now streaming cars off the key as fast as they could move through the heavy rain and gusting winds.
Steady progress just wasn’t good enough for some, however, and an oversized pickup sped by us, one set of wheels on the margin and the other on the grass, only inches from the drainage ditch. This would have been borderline idiotic under ideal circumstances, but in the outside fringes of a hurricane, it was closer to suicidal.
When the pickup was passing by, its wheels started to slip into the ditch, and the driver overcorrected, causing the truck to bounce up and glance off our front quarter panel. Undeterred, the truck sped on, but less than a dozen cars later, its front left tire started to slip into the ditch again. The driver overcorrected, but this time the truck veered sharply to the right, its lifted bumper smashing through the driver’s window of a dark blue sedan. In a moment, the truck righted itself and kept on driving, while the crumpled sedan sat unmoving, its wheels at a 45-degree angle to the lane.
No one stopped to help the occupants of the damaged car, and panicked drivers flowed around the wreck like water around a stone in a fast-moving stream. I hesitated, but only for a second, before stopping, grabbing my medical kit and rushing over to help, while telling Kira and Penny to stay in the car. The girls were putting on a brave face, but even Taylor cranked to full volume could only do so much to steady their nerves.
As I reached the sedan, I could see an older couple in the front seats with a younger child in the back. The man had been driving and was badly hurt, with visible injuries to his head, chest, and abdomen. The left side airbags had deployed, likely saving his life, but his wife was hysterical and seemed to be slipping into shock. Their grandson was crying in the back.
I knew they needed help, and I tried to assess their injuries as quickly as I could. I was not dressed for this kind of weather, and I could feel the toll the cold rain and rapidly dropping temperature were taking on my body. I got lost in the work, though, and when I looked up after my rapid triage, we were the only cars left on this stretch of road.
I was starting to feel the edge of panic set in. There was no way that I was going to be able to move the man into our vehicle by myself, but he needed more help than I could provide, and he needed it now. Why hadn’t anyone else stopped? We needed to get this man to the hospital.
As I was beginning to give up hope that we could get the couple and their grandson to safety, I saw a pair of headlights cut through the rain. A deputy was making a last pass of the key to make sure that everyone was off, and he came to a stop beside us.
The deputy saw that I was shivering almost uncontrollably, and he gave me his jacket to keep warm, before helping the younger child into the front seat of the squad car and the women into the back. Working together, we managed to get the older man out through the passenger-side door and laid him on the back seat with his head in his wife’s lap.
“He needs urgent medical care,” I told the officer as I gave him back his jacket. “Englewood has the closest emergency services. They should have some doctors on-site even in a storm like this. Tell them he has a possible TBI and, likely, internal bleeding.”
“Are you going to be okay getting off the key yourself, ma’am?”
“I will be right behind you,” I told him. “Now go.” Maybe I shouldn’t have been telling the deputy his business, but the doctor in me was now fully in control.
Fighting the gusts of wind, I half ran, half staggered over to the car. “Alright, girls, let’s get the hell out of here,” I said as I pressed the starter. Nothing happened. I tried again. The check engine light flickered on.
Thinking quickly and praying that I got service, I called the one person who might be close enough and crazy enough to come get us.
Kevin – A Few Minutes Later
On the causeway to the Key
It took us less than five minutes to reach the causeway and bridge to the key. The storm surge was crashing against the tops of the rocks on either side of the causeway, and rivulets of foam and water were being whipped up and slammed down on the road, leaving it slick with sea water and rain.
A deputy’s car was parked across the road, and he stood hunched over in his rain slicker, looking miserable and cold. As we approached, he waved at us to stop.
“No one is allowed out on the key; you are going to have to turn back.”
I was tempted to simply blow by him and take my chances, but having been in the service, I had too much respect to do that. I slowed down and got as close to him as I could before yelling, “I am with the SAR team, we got a call about an emergency on the key. We don’t want to go out there as much as you don’t want us to go, but we don’t have a choice. You can escort us if you’d like.”
It wasn’t a total fabrication as I did work with SAR teams, and I had gotten a call from the key for help, just not in any kind of formal capacity.
“Sorry, I can’t leave the causeway. Too many idiots trying to ignore the storm and cross over.” After a pause, he added, “No offense. My partner is doing a last sweep of the key so maybe he has already seen to your emergency. Keep an eye out for him on the road, and maybe he can save you some time.”
With that, the deputy moved out of the way, and we drove out onto the causeway. As bad as the conditions were driving down the coast, the causeway was almost impassable. Daniel and I were both expert riders who had seen and ridden in some pretty bad conditions, but we had never ridden in anything like this. We had to lean hard into the wind just to stay upright, and the wind buffeted and bounced us as we rode. Daniel was better off than I was since his bike weighed almost as much as a small car, but I was bouncing around on the Ducati like it was my old ten-speed racing bike on a gravel road.
Once we were off the causeway and over the bridge, we picked up speed and soon reached Rachel’s car. I heard the faint strains of “Love Story” by Taylor Swift as Rachel opened her door and ran to me. My breath caught as I saw her, despite the desperate situation.
“Thanks for coming, Kev.”
“Always, Rachel. You can count on it.”
I winced as I said it, at my obvious hypocrisy. Rachel, always kinder and more gracious than me, pressed on.
“You have to get the girls to safety. There is no way that they will last through the storm. Kira’s parents should be just on the other side of the causeway in a red SUV, and you need to get Penny to your mom and dad’s. I am sure your dad is going to be thrilled that that bomb shelter of a house he built is finally going to be put to the test.”
“You have to come with us,” I shouted. “The storm is about to hit, and you need to get off the key now.”
“You know I can’t come with you, Kev. There is no way either of you is going to be able to carry three people in this weather, not even Daniel on that monster of his. Leave me, take the kids. They are the only thing that matters right now. I will do my best to ride out the storm.”
I glanced around, but there wasn’t a house in sight. Rachel’s car had died on the only uninhabited stretch of the entire key.
“Rachel, we passed a small shelter a couple of hundred yards up the road. Make your way there while we get the girls to the mainland. I will come back for you, I promise.”
“Kevin, don’t come back for me. I’m serious. We have to make sure that one of us makes it through this. Please. Take Penny to safety and let me take my chances. I will do my best, but I need to know that you two are safe.”
Penny bent down to Kira and told her, “Daddy and Uncle Daniel are the best. You can trust them. They will get us out of here, I promise. You hold tight to Uncle Daniel and keep your face buried in his back. We will be safe before you know it.”
Looking at Kira, I knew that she wasn’t going to be able to hang on to Daniel without some help. Problem-solving on the fly, I popped open one of Daniel’s panniers and pulled out two rolls of strapping. I put Kira up behind Daniel and started to wrap them both.
“What the fuck are you doing, Kev?” Daniel asked, and I am sure he thought I was losing my mind.
“She’s not going to stay on behind you on her own. It’s the only thing I can think of that might give her a chance,” I replied as I secured the straps.
There was no time to argue, and as soon as I finished, Daniel started back the way we came. I looked at Penny and put my visor down as close to her face as I could.
“I love you, Surfer Girl. We’ll do this just like we did when you were younger. Arms around my back, and don’t let go for anything until we stop.” Penny had ridden behind me on my bike plenty when she was younger because, as I said before, I am a fun dad but a questionable father.
As Penny mounted behind me on the Ducati, Rachel bent over and gave her a kiss on the forehead. She didn’t say a word, or if she did, it was lost in the wind.
“I love you, Mommy,” Penny called out.
“I’ll be back for you, Rachel; watch for me,” I managed to say, unsure if she heard me as we were off.
——
You need to stay laser-focused when riding in any kind of weather, particularly with an unbalanced weight behind you. The Ducati is a killer bike, but it’s not really built to carry an extra passenger for any distance, particularly not in weather like this. Every gust of wind or burst of hail threatened to send us skidding out of control.
All the lessons I had learned about riding in weather flooded through my mind. Don’t go too fast, or you risk hydroplaning out of control. Be smooth and in control with the throttle, brakes, and steering… smooth and easy. Avoid hazards on the road; well, that one wasn’t going to happen, although I did try to avoid hazards now flying through the air.
Keep a low profile and a firm but flexible grip to help with your stability while leaning into the wind. At least with the hurricane, I could be confident that the wind wasn’t going to suddenly change directions. And most importantly, stay relaxed.
Yeah, right.
I needed to get out of my head, so fired up my ‘Get There Now’ playlist to see what the music gods had to offer for a relaxing Sunday afternoon ride. After a few second, the opening riff of “Nothin’ But a Good Time” by Poison started cranking, and I felt myself shift into a state of flow—a Zen-like state where I could react without conscious thought to what the storm threw at me. All of the skill I have built over the years and all of my love for Penny doing battle with the awesome strength of the storm.
In my years in search and rescue, there were maybe a half dozen times when I was pushed to the absolute edge of my physical ability and reflexes. That ride topped them all. I felt Penny’s arms around my waist, though, and there wasn’t anything in this universe that was going to stop me from getting her to safety.
After what felt like two hours of riding, but was probably more like two minutes, we burst out from between the last houses on the key onto the bridge and then the causeway. The storm surge was still rising, and a half lane of the road was now underwater. We shot over the bridge, and narrowly avoided disaster as I lost traction on one of the metal seams and started a rear-wheel skid towards the guardrail.
I felt Penny’s arms tighten around my waist as she took a deep breath, but she didn’t flinch and stayed rock steady. That’s my girl. Nothing for it but to steer into the skid and ease off the back brake… lean over… close, so close to pulling out of the skid… even closer to the flooded-out lane.
Any halfway decent motorcycle instructor will tell you that it is a terrible idea, under just about any circumstance, to plant your foot to help recover from a skid. There is only one good thing that can happen—you pull out of the skid—and a cornucopia of badness ranging from worsening the skid, to snapping your ankle in half, through to a full and catastrophic wipeout. But desperate times call for desperate measures and all that bullshit, so 40 feet out from the washed-out lane of watery death, I kicked down hard and tried to pop us up out of the skid.
Somewhat miraculously, we managed to recover from the skid and just clipped the edge of the washed-out lane before pulling in behind Daniel. At the same time, I felt a flare of white-hot agony in my ankle. Luckily, the adrenaline coursing through my system quickly numbed the pain to a dull ache.
Within a block of the end of the causeway, we saw a small parking lot with a red SUV, its headlights casting slivers of light through the darkness and rain. Daniel and I pulled in, and Kira’s parents flew out to pull Kira off Daniel’s bike. They seemed torn between relief that Kira was safe, gratitude for our saving her, and fury that we would tie her to the back of a bike to do so.
Believe me, it wouldn’t have been my first choice, either.
“It’s too late for you to make it out ahead of this storm,” I explained to Kira’s father as her mother hugged her close. “Follow my brother to my parent’s place. Their house is built like a bomb shelter, and you can ride out the storm there.”
“Can my daughter ride with you?” I asked. “I think she has had all the excitement that she needs for one day.” They signaled their agreement with a quick nod of their heads.
Penny got off and threw her arms around my neck. “What’s going to happen to mommy?” she asked with a half sob before running to the SUV, while Kira’s dad started the engine.
“We have to get going,” Daniel shouted at me over the wind.
It had taken us less than 10 minutes from the time we left Rachel to get to the mainland and find Kira’s parents. When I looked back at the key, however, the wall of black clouds looked much closer than it had when we left. Like you could almost reach out and touch it.
“I am going back for her.”
“You’re a fucking idiot…”
“Truth.”
“If you don’t take my bike. Your toy will never make it in this shit; it’s too light.”
He was right. We traded bikes, and I looked over at him.
“Daniel,” I started, then glanced over at the SUV and Penny.
“I got her, brother; you go and get your girl, and I will see you at home.”
She’s not my girl anymore, I thought as I peeled out of the parking lot, but the devil himself couldn’t stop me from going back to get her. Looking ahead at the full fury of the oncoming storm, however, it sure seemed like he was willing to give it the old college try.
I fired up my playlist one last time. I hit the causeway just as Axel Rose started singing, “Take me down to the paradise city where the grass is green and the girls are pretty, oh won’t you please take me home.” Somehow, Guns & Roses seemed appropriate when I was riding hell for leather into Armageddon.
Rachel – A Short While Later
A small roadside shelter back on the key
I like to think that I am a pretty positive person. Even when my marriage was falling apart, I did my best to stay upbeat for Penny while crying myself to sleep at night. Looking around, though, I had to admit that things were looking pretty bleak.
After Kevin and Daniel left with the girls, I struggled to the shelter that Kevin had seen before collapsing from exhaustion and from the cold. I hoped that he listened to me for once in his life and got himself and Penny to safety. If I was going to die in this storm, I needed to know that he would be there to look after her when I was gone.
It’s strange how things come into focus at the end. I had been dating Frank for almost a year now. He was a good man, steady and reliable—all the things that Kevin was not. But it was Kevin who filled my thoughts as I shivered on the floor of the small shelter. I had missed him over the past three years—but I never regretted leaving. The way I saw it, there were three legs to a good marriage—love, respect, and trust. I still loved Kevin, and probably always would. I respected and valued him as a person and a father, but the trust was gone.
I closed my eyes and prayed that Kevin and Penny had made it to safety.
Kevin – Same Time
On the causeway
We were only in the very outer fringes of the hurricane, but it was already almost impossible to see the road ahead from the rain and darkness. I thanked Daniel for his foresight in trading bikes, as gusts of wind nearly knocked me over, but the big bike made it through. I had been gone for less than ten minutes, but the causeway was almost completely covered as I crossed it, with less than half a lane of asphalt that was still clear of the churning water. In another few minutes, it would be underwater.
I passed over the bridge and was back on the key, rain streaming off the windshield and trickling down my visor. Even with the adrenaline coursing through my system, my ankle was beginning to throb.
Two minutes later, I drove right by the small shelter I had told Rachel to take cover in, and I nearly lost it as I braked and tried to come around. As I regained control, Rachel stumbled out to the bike. I whipped off my jacket, and she was too exhausted to fight as I pulled it around her.
“I told you not to come back for me,” she said as she got behind me on the bike and leaned close. For the first time in three years, I felt her arms around me, but her grip was weak. I flipped up my visor and turned to look at her.
“Think of Penny. Just focus on holding on for Penny. I will get us home.”
I felt her arms tighten around my waist and we were off.
——
We were almost to the causeway, and I was beginning to think that we might actually pull this off when I felt Rachel’s arms tighten around my waist. She let go with one arm and pointed off to the right, where I could just make out the taillights of a police cruiser. It looked like it had lost control and smashed into a tree. The driver’s door had taken the brunt of the impact, but the rest of the cruiser looked almost intact.
Despite the risk, I knew that we had to stop and help if we could. I pulled up tight to the rear bumper and jumped off, which I instantly regretted as my ankle exploded in a sharp shooting pain. I could see right away that the deputy hadn’t survived the impact with the tree which had collapsed his door and shattered the left side of his body. The family that Rachel and the deputy had helped, however, were still alive but trapped in the car. The woman was awake but in shock, while the young boy seemed unharmed but was crying uncontrollably. The man was unconscious in the back seat.
I leaned over and yelled to Rachel, “You stay with them. I am going to see if I can break into one of these houses so we can find shelter.” We might still have been able to make it off the key at that point, but there was no way that we could leave the injured family behind.
The deputy had crashed beside the last row of houses before the causeway, on the leeward side of the key. Each of the houses looked about the same; that is to say large, pretentious and expensive. I noticed that one, however, had what looked to be a stone fireplace, which was quite unusual in Florida. I figured a fireplace like that must weigh a few tonnes at least, which would need a pretty solid foundation to support it. Maybe that foundation would make a difference in surviving the hurricane … or maybe we would be crushed under collapsing stonework. Either way, I chose that house as our shelter.
I fought my way through the wind to the front door, which featured a decorative pane of stained glass with delicate scrollwork. There was no time for subtlety, so I pried a paver up from a nearby retaining wall and threw it through the scrollwork. Reaching through the paver-sized hole I had made; I was relieved to find a standard deadbolt lock with a quick release. I assumed that there was a security system, but I didn’t think that help would be on the way any time soon if we set it off.
Once I had the door open, I fought my way back to the deputy’s car. Rachel thought that the woman and child could be safely moved, so I picked the boy up from the front seat and told him to keep his face pressed against my shoulder. Rachel put her arm around the older woman’s waist, and I led the two of them to the house.
With each step I felt a sharp lance of pain through my ankle, but I ignored it and pressed on. I knew from my first aid training that I could be doing permanent damage to joint and tendons, but I didn’t see any other option at this point.
“Are we allowed to just break into someone’s house like this?” the older woman asked in consternation when she realized where we were going.
“Well, I am trying to keep us alive long enough for the homeowners to get upset with us. Until then, this is home until the storm passes by. Why don’t you wait here with your grandson while we get your husband. Don’t go any further into the house until I have a chance to look around; we have no idea if this house is built to withstand this kind of wind.”
“How are we going to move her husband inside? With the severity of his injuries, I would normally only transport him when he was immobilized on a stretcher, but I don’t think that’s an option.”
“Let’s just get him inside and then deal with the consequences once he is safe. We can’t leave him out there in the storm.”
Rachel ran upstairs and came back a minute later with a sturdy-looking throw blanket. It looked expensive. Well, it probably wouldn’t look so good in a few minutes, but there was nothing to be done about that.
Bracing ourselves, we pushed back into the storm, and made our way to the deputy’s car. The gusts of wind were now so strong that we could barely get the car door open, and when we did, there was a constant danger of it slamming shut, seriously injuring anyone in its path. Between the two of us, we managed to slip the injured man out of the car and onto the blanket before pulling him across the open space to the entranceway.
I considered going back one more time to retrieve the body of the fallen deputy, but I didn’t think that I would be able to move him, given the way the trunk of the tree was wedged against his body. It pained me to leave him out in the storm—his family deserved to have a body to mourn over and to bring to its final resting place—but there was nothing that could be done until the storm passed.
——
Once we were all inside, Rachel immediately went into doctor mode and started assessing everyone for new injuries. The power was out across the key, and it was pitched black in the house, so she asked the woman from the car, who we later learned was named Martha, to hold up her phone for light while she worked on her husband. While Rachel worked, I took a quick look inside the house, figuring that we couldn’t spend the time waiting for the hurricane to pass huddled in the entranceway.
The entryway opened into what would have been, on most days, an exceptionally beautiful living area with floor to ceiling windows that looked out on the bay. Today, however, the windows were covered with storm shutters that must have been lowered into place before the homeowners evacuated the key.
As I had seen from outside, there was a massive stone fireplace that dominated the north wall. “Must be north easterners”, I thought to myself, as I shook my head. How much money do you need to have before you think it’s a good idea to build a stone fireplace in your house in Florida?
While Rachel continued to work on the unconscious man, I went upstairs and tried to get a better handle on the supplies that might have been left in the house. Luckily, with so little time to evacuate, there seemed to be a fully stocked kitchen along with a reasonable supply of spring water.
In an upstairs hall closet, I found a stack of beach towels and winter comforters which I brought downstairs, along with a small first aid kit. By the time I returned, Rachel had finished reassessing the injured man, and he seemed stable, at least for the time being.
Rachel and Martha dried him off, as best they could, and placed a rolled towel under his neck for support. He was still on the blanket we had used to move him from the car, so we tucked the warmest-looking comforter around him where he lay.
While they were working, I took a longer look at the man whose life we were trying to save. My first thought was that he was definitely a dad. He looked to be in his early sixties, was clean shaven, but with saggy jowls. He was wearing pleated khaki shorts, with black dress socks pulled most of the way up to his knees and sandals. He was also wearing a light blue button-down shirt, which Rachel had opened to get better access to his chest, revealing a thick, long-healed scar that ran the full length of his sternum.
While we were working, I glanced at Rachel’s hand and noticed for the first time that she was wearing an engagement ring again—but not the one I had given her when I proposed. I knew I had no right to be hurt, but I felt a sudden and profound sense of loss.
“Congratulations,” I whispered to Rachel.
“What?” she asked, confused. I looked down at her hand where the ring sat prominently, one larger diamond swimming in a veritable sea of smaller diamonds. I didn’t think it really fit her aesthetic—Rachel had always been one for understated elegance—but maybe she had changed, and I just hadn’t noticed.
Following my gaze, she said in a quiet voice, “Thank you. Frank proposed last week. The trip this weekend was so that we could share the news with his parents. That was why we were flying to Atlanta.”
“Well, I wish you both the best. He is a really lucky man. I would know,” I said sadly, with just a touch of self-loathing. “I hope you two are incredibly happy together, and that he can bring you the stability and peace that you deserve. That I should have given you.”
“Yeah, Frank’s great,” Rachel replied, but she sounded more subdued than I would have expected.
“I miss you and Penny so much it hurts, Rachel. And I will always be sorry for what I did to you both. I would say that it was a mistake, but it wasn’t. I know that now. It was a series of terrible choices that I made, which destroyed your trust in me and destroyed our marriage. It is now, and will always remain, the greatest regret of my life.
“But that doesn’t change how happy I am for you and Frank. There is nothing I want in this world more than for you and Penny to be happy.”
Our talk was interrupted by a loud thump and crash as something large, carried by the wind, careened through the air and smashed into the storm shutters in the living room. If I had to, I would have guessed that it was a patio table from one of the nearby houses. With the mood broken, Rachel turned to Martha and asked, “What is the scar on your husband’s chest from? It looks like it’s pretty old. Anything we need to be worried about?”
“Charles had open heart surgery when we were both much younger. He caught a virus that attacked his heart and left it weak and enlarged. When he wasn’t recovering as they expected, they went in and wrapped his heart in a mesh sleeve.”
“I have performed that surgery several times,” Rachel replied, “He must have been very ill.”
“It was terrible. We were travelling across the country in a VW Van before leaving for Africa on a mission. We were in the far north of Canada, when Charles started to have symptoms like a bad flu. Several days later, he still wasn’t better, and he started to have extreme fatigue and chest pains, before he passed out. They had to medivac him to the nearest surgical center.”
After a longer pause, Rachel asked, “Did you ever make it to Africa?” It was clear that talking about Charles was helping to keep Martha calm and her grandson was listening intently.
“I never did, but Charles joined the foreign service and ended up traveling to Africa a half dozen times over his career. Look at him,” she said with affection in her voice. “Can you imagine my Charles traveling to Africa? He was so terrified of getting sick again after that terrible virus damaged his heart. But he had heard God’s call and so he went, despite his fear.”
“He sounds like a brave man,” I said, and I meant it. I was reminded of James Neil Hollingworth’s thoughts on courage: that it is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. I guess Charles had found the thing that was more important to him.
“What did he think of Africa, once he finally got there?” Rachel asked, encouraging Martha to continue with her story.
“Well, he found it terrifying. Everything about the experience scared him: different languages, different cultures, different climate … even the flight. The last time he had flown was that desperate medivac flight more than 20 years before; it was all terrifying, but it didn’t stop him.
“On the second last night of his first trip, he got into a taxi and asked the cab driver to take him to one of the poorest slums in the area. He didn’t want to spend his one trip to Africa staying in international hotels. He wanted to meet real people and to help them.
“The cab driver brought him to a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. Charles described it to me later, and there was poverty like he had never seen before. Over 5,000 people lived in the slum, in ramshackle huts made of cardboard, cinderblocks, and corrugated steel. There was no safe drinking water and no sewers, just open trenches full of human waste.
“In the middle of the slum was an old convent with a small school. Charles spoke to the nuns and asked to join them in prayer. We are both devout Catholics you know. Afterwards, Charles asked how he could help. The nuns said they needed a deep well dug so that they could provide fresh water to the people.
“He asked what it would cost, and it was $5,000, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it was unimaginable wealth for the nuns, and a sizeable sum for Charles and me. I thought he might look for a grant or a government program to help, but when he came home, he asked me if we could pay for the well ourselves.
“Now, you have to understand that we have eight wonderful children, so money was always tight. But we knelt in church, prayed, and in the end, we paid for the well. Charles went back a couple of years later and the community was transformed. The well tapped into a large aquifer, and the convent and the community used the fresh water to grow crops. And rather than walking for hours each day to fetch water, young girls were able to stay in school.
“But the community had a new problem. They were growing so much food that they couldn’t eat it all, but because they had nowhere to store I, it was spoiling or being eaten by pests and rodents before it could be sold at market. The nun said that if the community had silos to store their crops and keep them from spoiling, then they could sell them at market. So, Charles came home, and we talked, and we prayed, and we took out a loan on our house to build their silos.
“Over the years, Charles went back five more times. That community now has two schools, a health clinic and families are replacing their hovels with good, cinderblock houses. The doctor at the health clinic, two of the nurses, and all of the teachers at school are women who went to school at the convent. And that is all because of Charles. And he was terrified every step of the way.
“Before each trip, he couldn’t sleep for weeks out of worry. He was sure he would get sick, his heart would fail, and that he would never come home to us. But his fear never stopped him.”
“He sounds like a hero,” I said to Martha with deep admiration in my voice. “But you are as well. You looked after your home and eight children while Charles was away. You made sacrifices to pay for families and children that you would never see, never even get to meet.”
“I don’t know,” Martha said while looking down shyly. “It didn’t seem like a sacrifice at the time. Our children grew up in a house full of love and family. We love each of them for who they are, and we hope that if our family was ever in need, someone would step up for us as well.”
It was now fully dark out, and when Martha finished her story, the room went quiet except for the sounds of the storm—gusts of wind, pounding rain and hail, distant crashes as the storm methodically dismantled the key and the insignificant dwellings that people had arrogantly built in its path.
Martha’s grandson had curled up and fallen asleep, and she got some blankets and curled around Charles, careful of his injuries. I decided to make one more trip upstairs for food and water before trying to get some sleep. When I stood and put pressure on my ankle, the pain was almost unbearable, and I collapsed back to the floor.
“What’s wrong?” Rachel asked, having heard my groan of pain but barely able to see me in the dim light.
“It’s nothing, I’m fine,” I replied.
“Kevin don’t be a jackass. You are clearly not fine. What did you hurt?”
Resigning myself to my fate, I told Rachel about using my foot to recover from the skid on the motorcycle, and the pain that had been building ever since. Despite my protests, she came over and took my foot into her lap, riding boot and all. Within five minutes, she had assessed my ankle and was worried that I had a third-degree sprain and, likely, a hairline fracture.
“Your boot is about all that is keeping you mobile at this point,” she told me in her matter-of-fact doctor’s voice. “If I try to take it off, your ankle is going to balloon out like a grapefruit, and you won’t be able to put any weight on it at all.”
“So, the boot stays on. Got it,” I replied with a chuckle, “Well, no one wants to be smelling my feet at this point, anyway.”
With that, we settled in for a very long night. I am not sure that I slept more than a couple of hours in total. Every time a new gust of wind slammed into the house; I would wake with a start. Several times, I was convinced that one of the storm shutters was going to be ripped away, but they all stayed attached, much to my amazement.
Over the course of the night, I managed to connect sporadically to the cell network to get updates on the storm’s progress, and to let Daniel and Penny know that we were alive but still on the key. Daniel, Penny, and Kira’s family had made it to our parents’ place and were safely riding out the storm.
The hurricane was passing directly over the key, and it looked like we would be in the eye just after 10 AM the next morning. It was moving slowly enough that we would have about an hour of calm before we were hit again. That was when the storm would be at its most dangerous.
——-
I woke up the next morning disoriented and in the dark. I could still hear the wind and the rain pounding on the roof and the shutters. Rachel was asleep beside me, her head resting on my shoulders, and her arm tucked across my chest. Martha had fallen asleep, wrapped around her husband, and their grandson was still asleep on the couch.
I lay back against the wall and closed my eyes. The pain in my ankle was now excruciating, and I knew that it would be difficult to walk.
“That should have been us,” I heard Rachel’s soft voice and opened my eyes. She was looking over at where Martha was wrapped protectively around Charles. “I always thought that we would grow old together. I loved you so much.”
“I know, Rachel, believe me, I know. I was stupid. I was arrogant. I was angry. I sometimes wish I could have just died before I hurt you and Penny that badly. I’m sorry.
Rachel looked at me for a minute as if she wanted to say something, but thinking better of it she sat up and stretched her back. She gently woke Martha and shifted her aside so she could check on Charles. After a few minutes, she came back over, sat down beside me, and said in a soft voice, “He’s dying. He is not going to last through the storm. His pulse is weak, and his color is off. I suspect that he has some internal bleeding, and if so, he will be dead by dinner if I can’t get in to fix it.”
I closed my eyes and thought. We had to get Charles off the key and to a hospital. Our only chance would come as the eye of the hurricane passed overhead. We would have less than an hour to make our play.
I thought of a dozen plans for getting off the key and discarded all of them. We had to assume that the bridge and causeway were going to be impassable, so our only choice would be to evacuate by boat. We would need someone to meet us on the mainland to get Charles to the hospital. An ambulance would be ideal, but there was no way that anyone would risk sending one out in the storm.
Looking at our meager medical supplies, I threw back two extra-strength Advil and then stood up. The pain from my ankle washed over me, and I gritted my teeth, but I didn’t faint, and I didn’t collapse. Rachel had said that the more I put weight on my ankle, the more likely I was to do permanent damage. But that was a tomorrow problem. Today’s problem was making sure that Martha and her grandson didn’t have to watch Charles die.
I made my way to the back of the house and looked out of a window in the kitchen, which was small enough that it wasn’t shuttered. At the back of the house, I could see a large boathouse that had survived the onslaught of the storm, at least so far. The storm surge had risen at least ten feet, so any boats inside would have spent hours smashed against the rafters and roof, but I hoped that they would still be functional.
If there was a boat in the boathouse that still worked, and if I could reach Daniel, and if we could get to the hospital on time without further injury to Charles, then we might have a chance. That was way more ‘ifs’ than I was comfortable with, but I didn’t see any better options. I went back to the others and explained the plan.
“In about an hour, the eye of the hurricane is going to pass almost directly overhead. That will give us an hour or so with calm winds and a lower storm surge to get off the key. Even if we had a working vehicle, we would have to assume that the bridge and the causeway will be impassable, but I am hoping that there is a boat in the boathouse out back that can get us across the Bay.
“The most intense winds in a hurricane are in the eyewall, so the storm is going to get much worse over the next hour. Once we make it through that, though, they will die down to almost nothing and we will make our move. I will get the boathouse open and the boat running, and then we are going to make a break for the mainland. My brother Daniel is going to meet us and take us to the hospital. The timing is going to be tight—really tight—but I think we can do it. So, let’s get Charles ready to move.”
I explained how we would carry Charles to the boat. We would double up the sheet he was lying on, roll up the edges tight to his body, and then each of the women would take a corner near his head while I took the two corners by his feet. It was going to be a real test for my ankle, but I didn’t see any other way.
I knew that a family that could afford a house like this one would likely have a boat with some kind of security system or kill switch, so I spent the next hour searching for a key or remote starter. Finally, just as the winds were dying, I found a cabinet with a Yamaha key. I hoped the boat would be big enough that we could lay Charles flat along the bottom, but at this point pretty much any boat would do.
After a few tense minutes, I managed to get enough cell coverage to message Daniel and tell him to meet us at the marina in Placida Park, just on the other side of the Causeway, half an hour after the eye began its pass. Daniel and I had grown up in this area, and I knew that he would know where to go. The timing would be tight—the hospital was a 15-minute straight shot north of the park—but that couldn’t be helped. We would be moving perpendicular to the eye; however, the faster we traveled, the faster we would move back into the storm. I would be putting Daniel’s life (and my dad’s truck) at risk, but that couldn’t be helped.
I waited a few more minutes as the eyewall moved over us, which featured a particularly intense and sustained wind burst, before suddenly emerging into the surprising calm of the eye. Not that I would recommend it, but being in the eye was a surreal and almost beautiful experience. After 16 hours of catastrophic wind and endless downpour, we suddenly found ourselves in an island of sun and calm.
“Alright, it’s time,” I said as I made my way down to the boathouse entrance. I was carrying a sledgehammer I had found in a workroom in the basement, although I hoped I wouldn’t have to use it.
Outside, it looked like a bomb had gone off. The house we had sheltered in was largely intact, although there was significant damage to the siding and storm shutters. The house beside us had not fared as well, having lost its roof in the storm. Half of its second floor had torn away, leaving a trail of furniture and debris strewn down towards the bay. Two houses further down, there was only a slab left where the entire building had collapsed.
Everywhere, there were downed branches and trees. I looked towards the causeway as I made my way to the boathouse, and although the bridge was still largely intact, I could see several places where the causeway had washed out. I only prayed that the channel under the bridge was still open. If it was clogged with storm debris, we would need to—shit, I didn’t really know what we would do. I didn’t have a plan B.
I reached the boathouse and, after finding that the door was locked, used the sledgehammer to force my way in. The inside of the boathouse was a mess; the rising storm surge had lifted the Yamaha 242X up to the ceiling and then mercilessly smashed it into the rafters. The windscreen was fractured, and the canopy mountings were destroyed, but the engines started first try.
I saw that the boat bay door opened on an automatic lift system, which was clearly a non-starter since we were still without power. My prayers were answered, however, when the manual backup winch was still functional, albeit extremely stiff. It took me more than five precious minutes to get the door partway open. It was still too low for the boat to slip underneath, but I knew that with the eye passing overhead, the storm surge would rapidly recede. Hopefully, it would be enough for us to get out.
I hobbled back to the house as quickly as I could. Rachel looked as calm as she always did, but Martha and her grandson looked to be on the verge of panic.
“Alright, it’s game time,” I said. “Once we get moving, we are committed to seeing this through. We need to stay together and stay focused. Do what I say, when I say. Don’t question, don’t doubt, just do. Trust me, and I will make sure that we all get home.”
With that, we took up positions around Charles and started moving. We were all exhausted, and my ankle could barely hold my weight, but somehow, we made it to the boat. Every step shot agonizing daggers of pain up my leg, but I tried my best not to show it. In situations like this, I knew that it was critical to appear outwardly calm and confident, regardless of what I was feeling. Frankly, I don’t think that Rachel believed it, but this wasn’t really about her anyway. I knew that I could depend on her with my life.
I told Rachel and Martha to stay low and to try to keep Charles as stable as possible while I fired up the 242X’s twin high-output engines. The water level was dropping rapidly as the storm surge receded, almost like water draining from a bathtub, but I waited another five minutes to give us the best shot of making it out without slamming into the partially closed gate.
“Alright, hold on; this could be a bit bumpy,” I said as I revved up the engines and then shifted them out of neutral. As I did so, the jet propulsion system engaged, and we jumped forward. I needed to make sure that we had enough power to push through the gate if it caught on the canopy mounts, without lifting the prow so much that it hit the gate as well. Thankfully, I timed it well, and we were away.
As we hit the open water, I veered sharply left while keeping the boat as steady as possible, heading for the passage under the bridge. The storm surge had crested six feet above the base of the bridge, and the passage underneath was clogged with debris. I looked ahead for the clearest path and saw a narrow but seemingly clear channel close to the leftmost pile. It looked open on the surface, but it was impossible to tell what was waiting just under the surface.
I sped toward the channel, trying to adjust my speed to give me enough momentum to push through the debris on the surface without tearing out the bottom of the boat on any unseen hazards. I warned Martha and Rachel to brace themselves and Charles as I entered the passage. We were almost through when the boat bounced up and to the left. I fought for control, and we skewed back and forth before recovering out on the open water.
Looking down, I could see seawater pouring into the bottom of the boat. I knew we only had a few minutes before the extra weight from the water slowed us down enough that we would start to sink. Throwing caution to the wind, I opened the big Yamaha’s engines all the way up, lifting the front of the boat as much as possible, heading directly for the boat ramp that I knew was halfway down the pier on shore.
As we got closer, I saw a big red pickup truck flying down the coast road towards the pier. I smiled to myself knowing that Daniel had gotten my message. Now I just needed to get us on land without killing anyone.
It was impossible to judge the best speed at which to hit the boat ramp to make sure that we made it out of the water without ripping out the bottom or flipping as we hit.
“Okay, one more time. Brace yourselves,” I shouted just before we hit. It turns out that we came in too hot, and our momentum carried us most of the way up the ramp before the side of the boat slammed into the retaining wall on the left. Rachel and Martha were thrown in the air, but were able to recover well, while Martha’s grandson, who was strapped into the passenger seat, would definitely have some bruising. Unfortunately, I was standing on impact, and my face smashed into the windshield, breaking my nose and loosening at least one of my front teeth.
Dazed and spitting blood, I watched Daniel pull up in Dad’s lifted F250. He jumped out of the cab with Penny in tow. How could he have brought her out into the storm like this? What was he thinking?
I gave him a questioning look, and he just shook his head. He clearly was as pissed with her as I was, but we would have to deal with that later. It turns out that she had overheard Daniel talking to my father about coming to get us in the truck, and she had snuck into the back of the extended cab before he left. They were already halfway to the marina by the time she sat up and made her presence known. Clearly, my daughter had inherited my sense of good judgment and self-control.
“Daddy!” she cried as she ran over and threw her arms around me.
“Hey, Surfer Girl,” I said kissing the top of her head. “I didn’t expect to see you here. There is a young boy in the front seat of the boat. I need you to go get him and make sure he is buckled into the back seat of the truck.”
Just then, I felt the first gust of the returning wind. Shit, we were cutting it close. Looking back at the water, I could see the negative storm surge beginning to bite as the winds on the opposite side of the hurricane began to push the ocean offshore. We only had minutes before we would be back in it again.
Daniel and I jumped into the back of the boat, and each grabbed one end of the makeshift stretcher. Martha wanted to stay with Charles, but I sent her to get in the cab of the truck, as she would just get in the way. My ankle was now a cinderblock of unremitting agony, but I focused on moving forward one step at a time.
“Daniel, we are out of time,” I said to my brother as we got near the truck. “Put him flat in the bed of the truck, I will stay with him to keep him stable.” Daniel looked like he wanted to argue, but he knew I was right. Rachel ran ahead and dropped the gate, and we slid Charles in as best we could. The gusts of wind had now picked up, and we could see the other side of the eyewall moving closer, just offshore. I jumped into the back of the truck as Daniel ran to the front. At the last second, Rachel jumped in the back with me.
“I need to keep his head as stable as possible,” she said with a challenge written in her eyes. “No point in any of this if he doesn’t make it to the hospital.” I knew she was right, and there was no time to argue as Daniel screamed out of the parking lot onto the coastal highway. The road was littered with debris that had settled as the eye passed overhead, which were starting to shift again in the renewed wind.
I knew once the real winds hit, we would be in danger of getting blown right out of the back of the truck. I yelled at Rachel to lie down beside Charles, with her leg half over him and her hands stabilizing his head. In another place and time, it would have been the intimate pose of two lovers at rest, but for now, it put the two of them in a position where I could anchor them.
My vision was still blurry from hitting the windshield, and I likely had a concussion, but I knew that my dad kept strapping attached to the anchor points along either side of the truck bed. I quickly looped the strapping around my ankles and lashed them tight before lying down on top of Rachel and wrapping straps from either side around my wrists. It wasn’t perfect, but as long as my body held out, I would keep Rachel and Charles stable and mostly protected from the storm.
I could see blood from my nose as it trickled down, forming a puddle next to Rachel’s head, and my ankle had now moved beyond pain into a constant white-hot searing agony. I didn’t know how long I would last, but I knew that Daniel was driving as fast as humanly possible. I would make it.
As the wind picked up, I could it feel it reach underneath me, lifting me, as the rain began to pound down once again. I could feel the stress on my arms as they were slowly pulled out of their sockets. The strapping around my legs was imperfectly tied, and I could feel it tightening down, cutting off my circulation. This was going to be bad. Very bad.
I closed my eyes and felt Rachel underneath me. I remembered the first day I met her as a sophomore in high school. I remembered our first kiss. The first time we made love. I remembered the smell of her hair, the sound of her voice as she gasped my name. I remembered the first time that I held Penny, that feeling of absolute love and completeness.
I was exhausted. The muscles in my shoulders and arms were beginning to give out, and the pain was excruciating. My entire world narrowed to the pain suffusing my body and the love I felt for Rachel. For a moment, the two forces were in perfect balance, and I entered a fugue state where there was nothing in the universe but Rachel and me, as my body came undone.
In my semi-conscious state, I heard a boom like a bomb detonating just as Daniel took a hard right turn. The parts of my mind that were still able to function knew that the turn meant that we were almost at the hospital. I found out much later that the explosion I heard was the result of the eyewall passing over a covered market, ripping its entire roof off like the lid from a can of sardines. Daniel told me that it was less than a quarter mile away from us when we made that final turn.
I don’t remember much after that. I knew that we reached the hospital. I remember Daniel unwrapping the strapping from my arms where the friction had rubbed my flesh raw. I remember Penny screaming my name as she was carried out of the storm and into the safety of the hospital. And I remember, although it might only have been a dream, a soft kiss on my cheek and a whispered “thank you,” before I completely lost consciousness.
——
The rest of the storm was almost anticlimactic. Despite her fatigue, Rachel operated on Charles and stopped his bleeding, almost certainly saving his life in the process. She then worked tirelessly until the storm was well past, treating others who had been injured and managed to take refuge at the hospital.
Daniel put the first aid skills he had learned as a firefighter to use for the rest of the storm, helping out in the hospital any way he could. He was given a citizenship award in honor of his work that day.