Chapter 37
37
I f white gloves are required, kid is best. Nylon will earn you a dismissal.
Two days later, Carlisle looked at her stack of boxes and thought of Jane’s even more full garage.
Jane had gotten her shipment, and the boxes were stacked three high and five deep. The apartment overhead was untouched. Jane was leaving it in case she needed a renter to help make ends meet.
She had also refused help from Carlisle. “The mover guys did all the heavy lifting and I'm just the storage. We will have to figure out how to get them from my house to yours later.”
“You have the big SUV and my Daddy has the truck,” Carlisle had said.
But now they were going to send out the first shipments of Carlisle’s Kit.
She almost couldn’t breathe between the excitement and the fear of failure.
The three of them stood in her garage, staring at the table setup. Carlisle, Simon, and Jane. Jane had brought her four kids along but they’d taken one look and run out of the garage, bored before it even started.
Carlisle told them where to find the Red Vines in her kitchen.
“They're going to eat all your chips, too,” Jane protested. “They can be like locusts.”
“I know,” Carlisle said. “That's why I bought their favorite chips.”
Jane's grin was genuine. “Let's do this.” She reached for a box then set it back down. “We really should have looked at one first.”
“I didn't want to open one without you.” Carlisle felt her smile, but it morphed to fear quickly. “Oh my god. I didn’t look! What if they've delivered the wrong thing?”
“Then let's find out.” Simon moved quickly, reaching up and pulling one of the top boxes down. But then he stood there, looking at the two of them. “It's yours. You should do the honors.”
Jane scrambled, reaching back onto the table for the box cutter.
“Careful. Don't cut any of them!” Carlisle warned, feeling like a doom-monster.
“Good point. No damaging the product.”
Simon whipped out his phone and made a note. Carlisle noticed he had been doing that regularly. She was pretty certain he had a list for her, and that the first thing on it was a label printer. Clearly, he added some kind of other box cutter now.
Carefully, Jane opened the box. The two of them peered inside. The kits were small, padded packs, each in plastic. The words Carlisle's Kit were emblazoned in white across the top. They were bright red, with black velcro peeking through at the seams.
Picking one up, Jane handed it to Carlisle first and then tossed a second to Simon. From the corner of her eye, Carlisle watched as Simon turned his sideways, holding it by the handle like a small lunchbox. He gave it a few bounces, making sure it was sturdy. While she was opening hers to see what was inside, he was inspecting seams and rubbing his fingers along the print.
“Why not a zipper?” he asked.
Carlisle reached for hers, grabbing at the edges and ripping it open. She could only shake her head as the memories flooded back. “The first one we ordered had a zipper and?—”
Her words cut off, the memories choking. Jane took over.
“When you're in the situation where you need this,” her partner held hers up, shaking it just a little for further emphasis. “You won't have time to find the zipper. Where did it go? Which end is it on? You don't have the dexterity or mental capacity to fumble with the kit or grab something tiny like a zipper. Instead . . .” She grabbed at the sides and pulled the kit open.
“Smart,” Simon said, and somehow the one word from him brought Carlisle back to her garage and reality. She could step back from the memory that she had first-hand experience with that kind of terror. She couldn't live with herself if she sold these kits and someone didn't survive because they fumbled with a zipper.
“Here,” Carlisle showed him what was inside, slowly putting pieces into his hands one by one. “You’ve probably seen these before. We didn't invent them.”
He hefted the first piece in his palm, the heaviest thing in the kit.
Jane pointed out the working parts. “Car window breaker. It'll shatter safety glass, and you can push it out. Seat belt cutter. Slices through webbing and the blade is buried so you can't cut your finger on it.”
Carlisle laughed as Simon pushed his finger down into the gap. Luckily it was, in fact, too small for his finger.
“Even a kid shouldn't be able to put their finger in it.” This was a conversation she and Jane had many times over. It wasn't a safety kit if it could hurt them.
“Look,” Carlisle held the tool from the kit she’d opened, only then thinking they’d ruined three separate kits. Too late now. She pushed the button.
“A flashlight!” he said.
“But wait!” She grinned, hit the button again, and they all watched as it functioned exactly as designed. Then turned red. Next, it changed to a blinking white light, followed by blinking red and white alternating lights. “Top of the line.”
“If you're underwater,” Jane said it so casually that Carlisle felt her chest freeze again. “Or even if it’s just dark, they might have trouble locating you. This helps.”
“As does this,” Carlisle added. Mimicking her brother from a few days before, she faked being normal. Reaching in, she pulled out one of the clips they’d designed. There were four in each kit, equipped with blinking red lights that activated as soon as you opened the clip.
Simon shook his head, not understanding. She demonstrated. Grabbing for his shirt, she jabbed the clip at him, watching as it grabbed on to his shirt and clung there.
“They can find you now.”
“Brilliant.” His grin lit up her world and loosened some of the clogging in her arteries.
“There are some first aid items,” Jane pointed out, ignoring that Simon’s shirt was blinking with an almost blinding light. She showed him little packs of wipes, band aids, butterfly closures. “But this,” Jane said, holding up the last piece, “This is Carlisle’s brilliant invention and what no other kit can possibly have.”
“What is it?”
“It's kind of a collapsible two-liter bottle,” Carlisle told him and watched as he frowned. “You remember I said I emptied out the bottles and filled them with air? ”
He nodded. “How you saved yourself.”
Ever had saved her but . . . “Well, keeping two-liter bottles in your car is very space consuming. So, look.” She pulled one out, flipped the lid open and showed him even as Jane offered more details.
“In the first version, we had a screw lid. But we tried to operate it very fast and fumbled it a few times. We even lost the lid a few times, so we changed to a flip lid.”
The bag had been folded precisely. And, as Carlisle moved quickly, dragging it through the space in front of her, it worked exactly as planned. Puffing up nicely, it grabbed the air and she flipped the lid closed. Then held it toward him, pointing at the valve in it.
“You don't even have to open it. You can just put your mouth on this and breathe.”
“Holy shit! So you have air for a while if you're trapped underwater.”
“Or in any dangerous situation.” She watched as he breathed captured air from the bag. “It will withstand pressure at depths up to thirty feet.”
For the first time, the thought of that loosened something in her instead of tightening it.
This was a business. She wanted to make money. She wouldn't have any trouble if she and Jane became millionaires from it. But more than that, she didn't want anyone to ever have to panic the way she had. No one should ever have to wonder if her rescuers wouldn’t be able to see her in the dark murk of a lake. Or if there was enough air to stay alive until help came. To think I can't get out of the car, and I'm stuck and I’m going to die here.
“This is the first round of kits,” Jane said. If she caught Carlisle getting pulled into both her past and future simultaneously, she ignored it. “If this does well, we want to introduce a kit with a pediatric version. ”
“What would a pediatric version look like?” Simon looked at the bag in his hand, clearly very interested.
“You know when you get oxygen at the hospital, you have that mask that covers your nose and mouth.”
He nodded and Carlisle found herself jumping in, explaining excitedly, “A small version of that, in case your kid can't hold their nose and use one of these.”
“Oh, yes, that’s perfect.”
He’d called her brilliant, when in fact all she'd been was terrified.
She wondered if Jane and Simon realized she dropped out of the conversation, once again, drowning in her own thoughts. They didn't say anything to her, just chattered back and forth for a few minutes, Jane telling him how they arrived at the final design.
Then, at last, Jane turned to Carlisle, a big smile on her face, but her eyes showed that she understood. “Are you ready, Carlisle? It's go time. It's time to start marketing these things.”
All the excitement and happiness that Carlisle had felt suddenly fled, replaced once again by the utter terror of being underwater.