Page 34 of Twister

Daniel

Tight, shaking pressure on my shoulder was the first thing that registered through the darkness.

The second thing was the muffled, underwater sound of Rose sobbing and Bucky whining piteously.

A throbbing pain in the back of my skull was the third.

I let out a low groan.

“D-Daddy?”

The tight pressure on my shoulder grew heavier until I groaned again.

I lifted a hand to swat at what I assumed was Rose squeezing the hell out of me.

Why? She only did this when she was feeling hyperanxious about something. She hadn’t crushed me like this in years—not since her mother kept visiting her school. What had happened?

“D-Daddy!” Rose shouted in my ear, or at least that’s what it sounded like she was doing. I turned my head away from her to minimize her attempts to deafen me. “You n-need t-to wake up, D-Daddy! I d-don’t know w-what to d-do! There’s so m-much…. M-Marshall, he’s—”

Marshall? What?

I forced my eyes open, squinting against the pale overhead lighting and wincing when the squinting didn’t help the throbbing headache that had quickly taken up residence in my head.

“What?” I frowned at how gruff my voice sounded, how loud it was. It was supposed to be a murmur, not a shout. I rubbed at my forehead, trying to clear my thoughts.

“M-Marshall….” Rose trailed off.

I turned my head back to try to focus on her and her shouty voice. It took a moment for her face to come into focus, but when it finally did, I could see her bloodshot eyes and the evidence of tears on her cheeks.

“Rosey…,” I murmured, raising my hand to lay against her cheek. “What’s wrong, sweetheart…?”

She leaned into my palm, holding it to her face before she looked sadly to my left. “It’s M-Marshall. He… he w-won’t w-wake up….”

“What?” I blinked, then blinked again. Why wouldn’t he wake up? What had happened?

“I s-stopped the b-bleeding, b-but—”

“What?” My eyes widened enough to shoot a sharp pain through my temple. Marshall had been bleeding? Why?

“D-Daddy…,” Rose said quietly.

Finally. Her voice was finally at an acceptable level.

I watched her look at me, then back at something to my left.

Frowning, I turned my head and saw Marshall lying next to me, his eyes closed and looking so incredibly pale and waxy.

“Marshall?” My eyes widened, triggering that sharp pain again, but this time I ignored it and rolled onto my side enough that I could drag myself the foot and a half that separated us. Then I reached my fingertips out to trace his jawline. “Baby…?”

Nothing.

There was no response at all from him.

No difference in his breathing.

No reaction to my voice or my touch.

Nothing.

My heart began to race, and with that increase in heart rate, so came the memories.

The vision of watching Marshall racing with wide-eyed terror toward me, Lucy cradled in his sweater, pressed against his stomach.

The sound of the glass windows and sliding doors rattling, then exploding inward.

The roar of the monster that had been determined to shred my life to pieces.

The force of Marshall slamming into me, pushing us down the stairs until I felt a thud and everything went black.

I looked up the stairs, wondering why I couldn’t hear anything other than Rose’s heavy, wet breaths and Bucky’s continued whining.

Garbage filled the steps, and the door to the storm shelter at the top of the steps hung lopsided off the bottom hinge.

Everything was a murky gray except for a pop of vibrant red draped haphazardly off the post at the bottom of the stairs.

One of our tea towels that had, up until the tornado forcibly relocated it, been folded and hidden in the back of the kitchen island when we’d realized a year ago that it worked better as an ornamental scrap of material rather than a working drying cloth.

How had it ended up down here? Had the damage really been that bad?

I dragged my focus back to Marshall, studying the way his breathing seemed thin but steady, yet he was unresponsive to stimuli. Had he been knocked out like I had?

My eyes roved over him, stalling when I caught sight of the sticky pool of dark red just above his left ear and the blood-soaked wad of what looked like paper towels sitting in the middle of it.

My hand fluttered over his head, not knowing what I should do, when I heard a rising whine, not realizing at first that it came from me.

Everything else disappeared until all I could focus on was Marshall lying in front of me. My vision wavered before it suddenly cleared, and two wet drops landed on Marshall’s face.

“Baby….” I held his cheeks before I leaned down and pressed my trembling lips so very gently to his. “Wake up…. Please wake up….”

The greatest sorrow I’d ever felt in my life overwhelmed me when there was no response at all. No pressure of his lips working against mine. No movement.

Only the barest whisper of an exhale.

“Baby… no….” I sobbed. “Please don’t leave me….”

The sharp pain in my temple due to my sobbing broke me out of my pity party enough to have me digging in my back pocket for my phone. I tapped at the newly cracked screen, but it remained blank.

“Rosey?” I swallowed back another sob at the terror that filled me. It wasn’t going to do any of us any good if I couldn’t focus enough to get us some help. “Do you have your phone?”

“Yeah, b-but….” I heard her shuffle around behind me before her garishly bedazzled pink phone appeared beside Marshall’s unmoving head. “I t-tried to c-call 911 b-before when you w-wouldn’t wake up….” Her voice shook before I heard her gulp a breath. “No one w-was answering.”

Just like the other day at the gas station. I was really going to need to speak to the mayor about the shortages in our emergency response team. “But you had power?”

“Y-yeah.”

“Okay. That’s good, Rosey. That’s real good,” I murmured and took her phone, then swiped through to her phone keypad and typed in the mobile number I’d memorized a decade ago, ignoring the name that automatically popped up with each new number entered.

I’d worry later about why Rose hadn’t thought to call him when 911 didn’t work.

I listened to the call ring twice before it was answered. “Jackson? I need you.”

Several hours later, I sat at Marshall’s hospital bedside, grasping his left hand as I listened to his heart beat steadily via the monitor attached to his right index finger, desperately willing him to wake up with every loud beep.

Jackson had come through, immediately contacting several of his work colleagues to help haul me and Marshall out of the ruins of our house.

One of them had a flatbed truck that they ended up using to transport us to the hospital because they didn’t want to move Marshall any more than they absolutely had to in order to get him there.

The journey was slow and methodical, with more than a couple of switchbacks to find alternative routes when we found our way blocked by downed trees and other large debris.

During the rescue, Jackson had mentioned that from what he’d seen on his way over, the twister had devastated the east side of Rockdale, which was likely why Rose hadn’t been able to get through to emergency services when she’d called them.

Nobody would know how bad the overall destruction was until tomorrow at the very earliest, when they could track down everyone in the town.

After I’d called Jackson for help, I’d worried that Rose would get even more upset when she saw the bruises that littered Jackson’s face and body.

Thankfully, Jackson had thought ahead enough to put on a turtleneck that covered the worst of the bruising on his neck, and Rose appeared to blame the storm for the marks on his face.

Neither of us were planning on correcting her.

Jackson had stayed behind after Marshall and I had been loaded onto the flatbed to look after Rose, Bucky, and Lucy and to try to find some clothes for us to change into later.

Once he’d helped me up the stairs and through the broken doorway into what should have been an enclosed pantry but instead was the open-air ruins of our entire house, I hadn’t been hopeful at his success.

The destruction was absolute.

The entire roof had been completely ripped away, with only a random small section of every second wall still standing. The kitchen island that had been a pain in the ass on installation because of how heavy the granite countertop had been was nowhere to be found.

Shards of broken glass crunched underfoot with every halting step out, piercing my heart again and again at the growing realization that our entire lives had been irrevocably changed.

From what felt like the only clear patch of grass in the vicinity, an understandably teary Rose and I sat and watched Jackson’s friends maneuver Marshall up and out on what had been the storm shelter door, now repurposed as a makeshift stretcher.

Bucky had whimpered quietly but had never left Rose’s side on our way out of the wreckage, and Rose had Lucy cocooned in the red tea towel.

Marshall had swayed from side to side with their every step, his arms draping lifelessly over the sides of the door, but he’d been in safe hands. They had slid him onto the flatbed slowly and carefully, making sure there was enough room for me and one of the helpers to climb in next to him.

Once we’d arrived at the hospital, Marshall had been taken to emergency immediately because he’d been unconscious for so long. Even though I was injured, I’d been directed to the waiting area because I was awake and coherent enough to follow directions.