Saturday, 2:29pm
Sally was too stunned to move, but Victor was on his feet before Judy stopped moving. He leaped over the table with surprising grace and in two quick steps was crouched next to Judy, but Magda was there even before him. She looked for a second at Judy, and then turned to Victor, silently shaking her head.
Victor turned back to Sally. “She is alive,” he said, “but she is badly hurt. We need to get her to a hospital immediately.”
Sally’s heart sank and she was gripped by terror. “Oh god, we can’t. We can’t get her off the island. The tide is in! The causeway is flooded. We can’t get off the island for another hour, maybe two. Not even in the jeep.”
“We can’t wait. We may only have minutes.” Victor seemed to be speaking to himself. “We need to go now,” he muttered.
“Victor, you mustn’t,” Magda said, in a quiet but stern voice that surprised Sally and frightened her nearly as much as Judy’s limp form.
Sally looked at Victor. “Mustn’t do what? What do you mean?” There was more than a hint of hysteria in her voice. She tried to stand and was nearly overcome with dizziness.
Victor looked puzzled, as if he wasn’t sure how to answer, and then the moment was broken by a ring from Victor’s cell phone. Sally recognized Adrianna’s ringtone. Before answering, Victor spoke. “Magda, you know that it’s already done. And you know that I need your help. Judy needs your help.”
Magda’s features melted from defiance to acceptance. “Yes.”
Victor opened the phone, lifted it to his ear and, without pausing, said “Call me in the car in thirty seconds.” He immediately closed the phone again and put it in his pocket.
“Sally, we are taking your daughter to the hospital. I need you to come with us. She will need you there. We are leaving now.”
Sally couldn’t answer. She tried to force herself to think, to come up with a plan, to do something, but her mind was consumed with terror. Her legs felt like rubber and a rushing noise filled her ears. She recognized that she was about to faint, and the realization of her helplessness only added to her panic.
“Magda, take Judy to the car. I will bring Sally. Go.”
Magda lifted Judy and carried her out the door with a strength that surprised Sally, even as she battled her terror.
Sally reached for her cell phone, but it wasn’t in her pocket. Maybe she’d left it in the car, she thought. There was no time to look. She rose from her chair and started toward the kitchen, where there was a phone on the wall. She would call 9-1-1. She tried to convince herself that someone would know what to do.
Victor intercepted her and guided out the front door.
“There’s no time,” he said, inferring her intent. “We’ll call from the car.”
Victor supported Sally under her arm as he guided her down the path the driveway. Victor’s car was unlocked. Sally watched Magda ease Judy’s limp form into the back seat and stretched the seatbelt across it. Magda then ran around behind the car to the opposite door, where she climbed in and strapped herself. She cradled Judy’s head in her lap.
Victor lowered Sally into the front seat, and then quickly ran around to the other side of the car and climbed into the drivers seat. Sally was still in a state of deep shock. She watched impatiently as Victor quickly fastened the five-point harness–the first she had ever seen in a passenger car. She wondered how to fasten her own, but when she looked down, she discovered that she was already strapped in. She had no memory of fastening it.
Victor started the car. It made a low rumbling noise that Sally did not remember from earlier, when she had noted how quiet Victor’s car had seemed. She imagined that the exhaust pipes or muffler had already been eaten away by the salt water Victor through which had driven earlier, but she knew that this could not possibly have happened so quickly, and thinking about the causeway reminded her of the futility of trying to drive to the hospital, or anywhere else. The tide was up. The causeway was flooded. Her daughter was going to die before she could get help.
“Call 9-1-1! Maybe they can send a helicopter, or a boat. Something,” Sally pleaded. Victor did not reply.
The car phone rang. “It’s her,” said Magda. Victor tapped a button on the steering wheel and the ringing stopped.
“Where are we going?” Victor asked, backing quickly down the driveway, his head turned to look through the rear window. Halfway down the long driveway, Victor and turned the wheel suddenly and tapped the brakes. The car seemed to pirouette and suddenly the car was facing in the opposite direction, accelerating toward the road.
“New York City, Manhattan, 34th and 1st Avenue Heliport,” answered Adrianna.
“Boston is closer,” Victor replied. “Saint Elizabeth’s is very good, and there are other emergency rooms even closer.”
“The injury is too severe,” Adrianna responded. “The doctor you need is at Bellevue. There is nobody better closer than San Francisco. Tell Sally to be brave, and tell Magda it’s OK.”
“They can hear you,” Victor answered.
“Sally, you must be strong. Help is coming. Don’t panic,” Adrianna said. Sally felt her panic subside. There was something inexplicable about Adrianna’s voice that calmed Sally and gave her unexpected hope.
A cloud of dust seemed to chase after them as Victor accelerated down the washboard road. Sally knew that the narrowness of the road exaggerated the speed of the car, but she knew that they were traveling at a dangerous speed. The branches overhead flew past like the blades of a fan.
“Things are arranged,” Adrianna continued. “Magda will know what to do. I will tell you more in a few minutes, but right now you must focus on driving.”
Magda spoke from the back seat. “Judy’s bleeding from her ear. Hurry.”
“I’m hurrying,” Victor answered coldly.
Sally shouted, in desperate rate. “Call 9-1-1! We can’t get off the island,” Sally said. Terror began to eat away at her calm.
“We can get off the island,” Victor answered. “That won’t be a problem.”
The washboard rhythm of the road had stopped; they had reached the paved part of the road that lead to the causeway. The car felt like was skimming above the road. It seemed to Sally that Victor had been accelerating ever since leaving the driveway. She suspected that they were traveling faster than she had ever gone in a car.
“There’s no way this car can make it across the causeway,” Sally continued. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Manhattan is more than two hundred miles from here! And stop driving like a lunatic! You’ll get us all killed!”
“Sally, you need to trust me,” Victor responded.
The car shot into the open, emerging from the shady scrub pine forest into the bright sunlight at the crest of the dune above the marshes that bordered the causeway.
An enormous orange and white helicopter was hovering a few feet above the road to the causeway. Behind the helicopter, Sally could see that the causeway was flooded for half a mile.
Sally’s hands shot forward to the dashboard, anticipating Victor’s desperate attempt to stop before he crashed into the helicopter that blocked the causeway, and then she realized that Victor wasn’t trying to stop. The car continued to accelerate directly toward the helicopter, and Victor appeared to be be smiling.
Sally closed her eyes and tried to pray.
