Chapter Forty-Three #2
He nods, his face set in a grim line. “We’re looking for them. We’ve got someone combing the coastline, looking for the two on the beach, and there are helicopters and ground crews searching the island. The woods are very dense, but we’ll find them, don’t you worry.”
I don’t know how to feel. I’m so thrilled Harmony and the others are okay, but all I can see are Kei and Sue-Ellen, alone on the beach. How could I have left them?
I try to sleep, but my mind won’t settle enough, and watching TV only makes me more restless. Betty brings me a book that someone left behind, but the words won’t register. I don’t know what to do with myself. I feel like a caged animal. So I just wait.
Eventually, I hear sirens in the distance. Betty comes into my room, her face bright with hope. “That’s them!” she exclaims. “Well, some of them. We only have three ambulances, so it will take a while to get them all here, but that’ll be the first of them.”
My heart soars. “Can I see them?”
“Once they’ve been admitted and checked over by the doctor, then yes, you can see them, but you’re going to need to sit tight for a while first. Let me get you a wheelchair—you won’t want to walk on those feet.”
“Cleo Des Rochelles?” I turn to find a middle-aged man with shaggy brown hair in my door. “I’m Austin Mitchell, reporter for the Northern News. Can I ask you some questions?”
“Um—” I start to say, but he interrupts me, holding a phone up to my face.
“Great. Is it true that you swam across Pearl Lake and walked twenty kilometres barefoot to save the ten other people that you were competing against on a reality show?”
I blink. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t know how long a kilometre is.”
He starts to laugh, but he stops short when Betty bursts in the room. “Austin Mitchell, how did you get past the nursing station? You know you’re not supposed to be in here.”
He smiles sheepishly. “Sorry, Betty, just trying to break this story.”
“Well, you won’t be breaking it on my watch. Out you go. Cleo, are you okay?” She eyes Austin Mitchell as he drops his business card on my bedside table before leaving.
I nod gratefully. “Thanks, Betty.”
She holds up a slip of paper. “I know who was in those ambulances,” she says. I sit up. “One of them is the diabetic boy.”
I leap out of my bed, the pain in my bandaged feet barely registering. “He’s okay?” I say, breathless.
“He’s in rough shape. But he’ll be okay.”
“Can I see him?”
“When he’s stable.”
“And Sue-Ellen?”
“The one in the rocks?”
I nod.
“Her name’s not on the list.”
I sink back into the bed, and cry again—tears of relief for Kei, and fear and guilt for Sue-Ellen.
I wait, straining my ears for more sirens.
After an eternity, I hear the ambulances come back again, and Betty reports that Harmony is with this group.
After a few tense minutes, she tells me I can go see her.
She wheels me down the hall, and into one of the shared rooms with six beds. The curtains around the beds are drawn.
“I’ve got someone here to see you,” Betty trills, as she pulls back the curtain and wheels me in.
Harmony and I lock eyes and both immediately start to sob. She holds her arms out to me, and I hobble out of my wheelchair and into her embrace.
“You did it,” she warbles into my hair.
I pull away, wipe my eyes, and climb into bed beside her. “So, what happened after I left? Did you guys get up to anything fun?”
She smiles and rolls her eyes. “Oh yeah, it was a real blast.” Her smiles drops, her face suddenly serious.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” she says, her eyes filling with tears.
“It was so scary, Cleo, watching you guys swim away. We could see you drifting, and it was so horrible because there was nothing we could do to help. Once you guys were out of sight, it was like we all came to the conclusion that you had drowned. And no one could say or do anything to make it better. It was a nightmare. We basically sat on the beach all day, waiting—I don’t know for what.
Sid volunteered to cook, but he scorched the bottom of the pot on the fire, so the rice was burnt, and it was disgusting.
So we went to bed hungry. It was so lonely in the Bunkhouse without you across from me, and without Damian… ” Her voice trails off.
“They’ll find him,” I say, trying to sound confident. “He’ll be here soon.”
Harmony nods, her lower lip trembling. “So, this morning, we were back on the beach, and all of a sudden this boat comes ripping into view, and for a moment, we weren’t sure if it was coming for us, so we all start jumping up and down and screaming like crazy, and then it made this sharp turn and started to come right for us.
It was like a scene in a movie—they had those reflective blankets and they gave us these gel packs.
” She shivers. “They told us you were okay but that Kei and Sue-Ellen weren’t with you, but they didn’t know why. ”
I nod. “Kei is here. He ran out of insulin, so I had to go on without him, but they found him. But Sue-Ellen got stuck in some rocks.” My voice breaks.
She brushes a tear away from my cheek. “They’ll find her,” she says, parroting my words. “She’ll be here soon.”
There is a commotion in the hallway. Betty pops her head in and says, “More new arrivals.”
“Can I see Kei?”
“Not yet, but some of your friends are in the TV room—why don’t you go visit with them?”
Harmony helps me into my wheelchair, and wheels me down the hall to the TV room, which has six seats, all occupied. It takes me a moment to recognize everyone as campers, their bathing suits and sundresses switched out for the same pale blue hospital gowns both Harmony and I are wearing.
They’re all watching TV. Harmony clears her throat, and Isa turns around.
“Cleo!” He jumps up and comes over to me, enveloping me in a hug. And then Valeria is there, with tears streaming down her face. She nudges Isa out of the way so she can come in for a hug.
“You saved us,” she sniffles.
And then Trina and Sid and Garrett are there, hugging me, saying just the nicest possible things. It’s a lot to process, especially since the spectre of Sue-Ellen’s absence hangs in the air.
“Look, you’re on TV,” says Sid.
It’s surreal to see my own face, sunburned and swollen, staring back at me. “I don’t know,” I hear myself say. “I don’t know how long a kilometre is.”
And then Tyler and Gabby appear on the screen, photos of themselves from their social media accounts.
“An international search has begun for the producers of the show, Tyler Clare and Gabriela Elishi,” says a disembodied voice on the television, as more photos of Tyler and Gabby flash across the screen.
“Clare and Elishi were last seen at a Kenora gas station in the early hours of August 13th. Anyone with any knowledge of their whereabouts should immediately contact the authorities.”
I watch, captivated, the coverage on a loop, latching on to every new tidbit of information, until I feel a tap on my shoulder.
“You can see him now,” Betty says. She wheels me out of the TV room, where we’re watching aerial shots of the camp, and down the hall to a private room.
In the hospital bed, Kei looks smaller, somehow. His golden glow has diminished, replaced with a sickly pallor. His eyes are closed, but he opens them when I climb into his bed beside him.
“Cleo,” he says, my name catching in his throat. His face starts to contort, and his eyes well with tears.
“Shhh,” I say, stroking his cheek. “It’s okay, I’m here.”
“I thought you were dead.” A choked little sob escapes.
I shake my head. “No, I’m here. I’m okay. We’re safe now.” I feel the emotion rising in my chest. I’ve cried more in the last two days than I have my whole life.
“You’re my hero,” Kei says, a weak smile stretching across his face. “I knew you could do it.”
“You just said you thought I was dead.”
He laughs, and the sound of it is like a balm for my soul. “I mean, I was scared you were dead, but I knew you could do it.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” I say, nuzzling into the nook of his arm. It feels so good to be here with him, bantering like this. Like us. “There’s an international search for Tyler and Gabby,” I tell him, tracing my finger down the line of one of the veins in his arm. “It’s on every channel.”
“Huh,” he says, taking my hand. “Maybe we’ll be famous after all.”
A chorus of cheers rings out from the direction of the TV room. “We should be out there,” Kei says.
As if on cue, Betty bursts in. “They found her!” she says, flapping her hands in excitement. “The girl stuck in the rocks, they found her! She’s okay!”
Relief floods through me, dissolving the heaviness and tension I’ve been carrying. I feel like I could float away, I’m so light. Again, I cry, the sweetest, happiest tears I’ve ever shed.
“Please, Betty, can we go out and be with our friends?” I plead.
She looks from me to Kei, shaking her head. “He needs to rest,” she says, her tone both sad and apologetic.
“I’m fine,” says Kei, his voice strong. “I promise, if it’s too much, I’ll rest.” Betty looks unconvinced. “Look,” he says, in a lower voice. “We’ve been through so much, and it would really mean a lot to us to be with our friends right now.” There’s my Kei, the sweetest con man around.
Betty bites her lip. “Okay,” she says. “You’ve got thirty minutes. Let me just find you a wheelchair.”
Betty and another nurse wheel me and Kei to the TV room. He reaches out for my hand and squeezes it. “This is what we’ll be like when we’re ninety,” he says with a wink.
In the TV room, everyone is crying as images of Sue-Ellen on a stretcher being loaded into a helicopter ambulance flash on the screen.
Harmony comes behind me and wraps her arms around my shoulders.
The camera pans closer on Sue-Ellen. Her face is sunburned and blistered, and her leg is in a splint.
The news anchor is describing how they had to use dynamite in a controlled explosion to free her leg from the rock, and how she will be treated for her injuries in Toronto.
Isa’s shoulders shake as he silently sobs.
“Nine out of eleven of the participants in what we’ve learned was a fake reality dating show have been found safe and rescued from Minisaabik Island,” says a woman with helmet hair and a grave expression.
She puts a hand to her ear and tilts her head.
“And I’m just learning that the producers, Tyler Clare and Gabriela Elishi, appear to somehow have a connection with organized crime.
” A mug shot of a man appears on the screen, followed by shocked gasps of recognition.
“The body of Bobby McFarland, head of the Toronto chapter of international crime syndicate Calaois, has been found on Minisaabik Island. This story just keeps unfolding, doesn’t it, Tim? ”
“It sure does, Zita, and we will be covering it live as the search continues.”
We sit and watch, barely moving, speaking, breathing, until the sky outside is dark and Betty comes in to tell us it’s lights out. She gives me a hug and tells me she’ll see me in the morning.
I try to convince the night nurse to let me sleep in Kei’s bed, and she won’t hear it, but she does allow Harmony to switch rooms so she’s sharing with me. I listen as Harmony tosses and turns in her bed. I can’t imagine how I would feel if Kei was still missing.
At some point during the night, I wake up to the sound of Harmony crying.
She’s not in her bed; the sound is coming from the hall.
My heart sinks. I climb out of bed and take a tentative step—my foot is sore as hell, but I’m able to hobble into the hallway.
Harmony is at the nurse’s station, leaning forward on her elbows with her head bowed.
Her back is to me, but I can see her body heaving with sobs.
Oh god. I have no words. What on earth could I possibly say to soften this devastation?
She must sense my presence, because she turns around. I’m afraid to look her in the eye, but I force myself to be strong for her. “Oh, Harmony,” I say. But then I realize—she’s smiling.
“They found them!” she gasps.
“What?”
“They found Damian and Giovanni! They’re okay!”
“Where? How?”
“They got lost, and when they ran out of food, they ate some berries that made them sick, and then they were too weak to hike, but they found them!”
“What’s going on?” It’s Valeria in the doorway of her room, rubbing her eyes.
“They found them, Val! They found them!”
Valeria’s face goes from half asleep to wide awake in a split second.
She whoops and runs for Harmony. She picks her up and swings her around, both of them laughing and crying and screaming.
They pull me into the mix, and their joy is contagious.
I start to laugh from deep within my belly. Life has never felt so good.
More campers start to appear, joining in the celebration when they hear the news. We become a writhing mob of joy as more and more people join in. The nurses hover around us, shushing us, saying we’ll wake the other patients, but we ignore them. Their efforts seem halfhearted, anyway.
Amidst the hubbub, I manage to catch Kei’s eye. He’s grinning, and he gives me a wink. “Love you,” he mouths.
I nod. I know it. He loves me. As long as that’s the case, I’ll always be okay. It’s scary, but not as scary as it once was.
I just have to trust.