Chapter 52 Bridget
“What’s wrong with the lake?” Bridget asked Red.
Flick followed Red’s horse up from the rocky creek bed and to the edge of the dark lake. The half-obscured moon lit the scene like a black-and-white movie, but it didn’t look at all like the lake they’d driven beside moments before the earthquake.
After Red’s shocking words on the trail, Bridget hadn’t had the heart to ask him any more questions and so the ride over the past two hours had been silent.
Bridget took the time to pray. She asked the Lord to watch over Claire and Jenny, Frannie and her friends.
Beth. With every tremor, she’d prayed she and Red wouldn’t be crushed by falling rocks and trees.
Thank you, Lord. It was a miracle they weren’t dead.
But they still had to find her sisters.
Red urged Marigold closer to a crumbling precipice that overlooked the lake.
Bridget wished she could stop Flick from following, but the mule had a mind of her own.
As they drew closer, she could see that the once mirror-smooth lake was choppy with waves and floating deadwood.
Her breath caught as she peered over the edge of the broken-off bank and saw that the water had receded dramatically.
Bridget’s pulse tripled. “Did the dam . . . ?” Were they too late?
Had the lake emptied down into the canyon?
Red slid off Marigold’s back and walked closer to the edge to look down on the muddy lake bottom. “I don’t know.”
The clouds parted and sudden moonlight lit the lake. “What’s that?” Bridget asked. She watched in astonishment as a large house floated toward them, carried on an invisible current.
Red called out. “Hello?” His voice echoed over the water with no response. He walked back to Marigold and pulled himself into the saddle. From his higher vantage point he called again, with no response. “Looks like Grace Miller’s place. She has a fishing lodge on the other side of the lake.”
Bridget added Grace Miller—whoever she was—to her prayers.
“The dam should be a mile or so up this way.”
Marigold, as if sensing Red’s urgency, picked up her pace. Flick followed and all Bridget’s attention went into keeping her seat and not letting her teeth clack together as she bounced behind Red.
Red pulled Marigold to a stop. “This is it.”
The dam wasn’t much to look at. Just a concrete barrier stretching along the narrow end of the lake. Hundreds of floating logs were jammed against it, as if they were waiting to go over the top.
“Seems to be holding, at least for now,” Red said.
Thank you, Lord. If the dam held, maybe her sisters and Jenny were safe. Cold and scared and waiting for rescue, but safe.
“Look.” Red pointed to a constellation of lights that seemed to hang in the dark sky above the dam. “Headlights. And campfires.”
Red turned Marigold toward the points of light, and leaned low over her neck. The horse shot up the hillside. Flick followed and Bridget held on, her heart swelling with hope. Claire had to be here. Safe with Jenny and Beth and Frannie. Please, Lord, let them be here.
At the top of the ridge, dozens of cars and campers were parked haphazardly on a large flat meadow, their headlights blazing.
As Red and Bridget reined their mounts to a stop, flashlight beams swarmed toward them like fireflies.
Men, women, and children—some in pajamas and bathrobes—surrounded them, buzzing with questions.
“Is the road open?”
“Have you heard anything from outside?”
“Is help on the way?”
Red raised his voice to be heard above the barrage. “Has anyone seen a woman and a baby? I’m looking for my wife.”
A chorus of voices answered as Bridget scanned the faces in the flickering lights. She didn’t see Claire or Beth or Frannie. And no baby’s cry met her ears. Red dismounted and glanced back at her. “I’m going to look for them.”
He disappeared, leaving Marigold and Flick and Bridget on their own.
A woman pushed through the throng of people. She was wearing a bathrobe and had curlers in her hair. “Are you a nurse?”
Bridget reached up to touch her nurse’s cap that had miraculously stayed pinned to her hair during the jarring ride. “Yes. Is anyone injured?”
“Thank the Lord,” the woman said with both relief and urgency in her voice. “Follow me.”
Bridget carefully slid off of Flick’s back, her legs aching and wobbly. “Stay,” Bridget said to Flick, and followed the woman up the ridge.
They reached the flat meadow where two lines of cars faced each other. “I’m Peggy Greer,” she introduced herself. “I’ve done what I can, but I only had a first aid course a few years ago.”
Bridget tried to make sense of what she was seeing.
The headlights illuminated at least a dozen people lying on an assortment of sleeping bags and blankets. At first glance, they looked covered in mud, but then Bridget saw the blood, the makeshift bandages, and realized many of them weren’t even wearing clothes. “What on earth happened to them?”
“They’re from downriver,” the woman said. “At the slide.”
Bridget didn’t know what she meant by that, but it didn’t sound good. She searched the faces of the injured, looking for Claire’s wide eyes or Frannie’s pixie haircut, for Beth or little Jenny. “Have you seen a woman with a baby? Or a young girl, about eighteen with short hair?”
Mrs. Greer shook her head. “I’ve been here all night.
Please.” She tugged Bridget toward a station wagon.
“These people just came in, I don’t know what to do for them.
” Bridget followed Mrs. Greer to the open tailgate of a station wagon.
“This is Mildred and Roy Wilson,” Mrs. Greer said.
Three young girls moved aside for her to see the couple.
The woman was pallid but conscious, with blood-soaked kitchen towels wrapped around her arm.
Her husband was covered in mud, his leg wrapped in a dirty bedsheet.
“She’s a nurse,” Mrs. Greer said to the woman. “She’s going to help.”
The woman nodded weakly. “Thank the Lord for you, dear.”
Bridget’s throat tightened, but she reminded herself to remain professional.
Mrs. Greer pointed the flashlight. Bridget gently removed the bloody towels and looked at the wound.
The woman’s arm was almost completely severed at the elbow.
Bridget replaced the bandages. The pain this woman was suffering must be unbearable.
Next, she looked at the husband’s leg. The twelve-inch gash on his thigh went all the way to the bone. He was pale and looked to be in shock.
“He’s lost a lot of blood,” Mrs. Greer said and Bridget covered both the patients again with the sleeping bag, her mind spinning. These injuries were life-threatening even in a hospital setting.
“Will my mom and dad be alright?” the girl asked. Tear tracks lined her face and two mud-covered younger girls clung to her.
“It’s going to be okay,” Mrs. Greer answered for her. “We have a nurse now, and she’ll be able to help them.”
Bridget didn’t have the heart to correct the woman.
Next, she examined a boy named Phillip with a crushed foot. “Help my mother,” the boy begged Bridget. “She’s hurt bad.” Bridget checked the mother, who almost surely had a broken collarbone, but it was her rapid pulse and clammy skin that concerned her most.
“Nurse Reilly will take good care of her,” Mrs. Greer assured Phillip.
Mrs. Greer had far more confidence in Bridget’s abilities than she had a right to. The mother’s injuries were severe, and she might have internal bleeding.
Mrs. Greer continued along the line of station wagons, each holding several injured victims. Bridget caught fragments of the night’s events—an avalanche, a flood, a horrific wind.
Hard to believe, but the injuries spoke for themselves.
They returned to the first station wagon, with the critical older couple and Phillip and his mother.
“What should we do for them?” Mrs. Greer asked.
Before Bridget could answer—if she had an answer—headlights bounced up the hill and came to a stop. “More injured here,” a man called out from the open window of a Suburban with a wheelchair tied to the roof.
“I’ll be there in a moment,” Mrs. Greer said to the driver. A girl of about twelve appeared out of the dark with an armful of towels. “Linda.” Mrs. Greer beckoned her nearer. “This is Nurse Reilly, get her whatever she needs.”
Bridget faltered, but Mrs. Greer was already gone.
She looked at the line of station wagons, the wounded lying on the ground.
The dark, the dirt. The sheer magnitude of the injuries she’d already seen, with more coming in.
She had no plasma or morphine, no penicillin or doctor to consult or X-ray machine.
Not even sterile solution to clean the dirt-covered wounds.
Linda stood at her elbow, awaiting orders. What about Claire and Jenny and Frannie? Were they among the wounded—or worse—were they hurt and waiting for help?
Phillip’s hopeful face was visible in the light of Linda’s flashlight. His hand clutched hers. She felt that tug on her heart, that pull to heal those who were hurting. “Linda,” she said briskly, “bring me the pack from that mule I came in on.”
Linda jumped to comply.
When Linda came running back, Bridget took an inventory of their supplies.
A gallon of clean water in a plastic bottle, a first aid kit with several rolls of sterile gauze, ten gauze pads, and twenty Band-Aids, along with a large bottle of iodine and a tube of surgical dressing.
Bucky had thrown in a tin of aspirin and—“Bless you, Bucky,” she whispered—a pint of brandy.
Mrs. Greer was back, and Bridget turned to her. “What else do we have to work with?”
“We’re using sheets and towels for bandages, we found some canteens of water, and there’s ice left in a few cold chests.” Mrs. Greer looked to Linda.
Linda spoke up. “I found five blankets and a tin of instant hot chocolate.”
It wasn’t much. But it was all they had. Bridget straightened her nurse’s cap and smoothed her hair. “Mrs. Greer,” she said with a nod, “let’s take care of our patients.”