Chapter Eight #3
“No, but I played one for six seasons and picked up a few things along the way. But if you have any better suggestion, I’m all ears.”
Ronan says nothing after that. None of us do. We simply watch, useless, as Heather places a hand on Brad’s forehead.
“He’s burning up.” She lifts Brad’s shirt and places a hand on his stomach. “Tell me where it hurts.”
Heather starts to circle his navel, slowly radiating outward. Brad says nothing until she reaches his lower right abdomen. That’s when he screams.
“Shit,” Heather says. “This isn’t good. It might be a burst appendix.”
“Are you sure?” Ronan says.
“No, but the symptoms are the same. Severe pain in the lower right of the stomach. Fever, chills, nausea. Like I said, not good.”
“What do we do?” I say.
“Get him to a hospital. Right now.” Heather looks down at Brad’s writhing form. “If we don’t, he could die.”
Loretta breaks from the group, a blue glow emanating from her hand. Her phone. She walks away, stabbing at the screen before bringing it to her ear.
“Hi, we’re out on New Avalon and there’s an emergency.” She pauses, annoyed. “Yes, the island. There’s a sick man with us. We think his appendix burst and we need to get him to the hospital.”
There’s another pause. A longer one during which Loretta nods steadily, as if she’s trying hard to absorb everything the other person is saying. Eventually she turns to the group and says, “They want to send a medevac. Is there a place to land a helicopter here?”
The rest of us look at each other, struggling to come up with an answer that isn’t the obvious one: no.
This is the only flat part of the island, and there are too many buildings and trees for a helicopter to safely land.
The only open area is the long slope to the dock, and that’s too uneven to be a landing spot.
“No,” Ronan says from our huddle around Brad.
Loretta returns to the phone and relays the answer. She listens some more, frowning as she says, “Are you sure?”
“Sure of what?” Violet says.
Loretta covers the phone with her hand. “They’re saying we should get him to the mainland.”
“‘We’?” Heather says. “What about them?”
Loretta silences her with a raised finger, returns to the phone, listens intently.
“If it really is a burst appendix, time is of the essence,” she says, clearly repeating verbatim what she’s been told.
“The medevac is out of the question, and sending a boat here and back to the mainland will take too long. Especially considering there’s no hospital there.
The closest one is a half hour away. It’ll save time if we take him in our boat. ”
“At this hour?” Violet says. “In the dark?”
“Yes. An ambulance will meet us at the dock.” Loretta brings the phone to her ear again. “They said it’s our only option.”
That’s all Heather needs to hear. Without consulting the rest of us, she says, “Okay, let’s go.”
“This is insane,” Ronan says. “We’re two miles away.”
Heather nods. “And any boat they send will have to travel four. Two on the way here, two on the way back. I agree with whoever Loretta’s talking to. There’s not enough goddamn time.”
She’s right. Which is why I join her at Brad’s side and ask him if he can stand. He lolls his head against the ground, neither yes nor no.
“Well, you need to try,” Heather tells him. “Let’s get you up.”
Watching from her spot several feet away, Loretta talks into the phone. “Okay, that’s what we’re doing. There better be an ambulance on that goddamn dock when we get there.”
Ronan joins us in lifting Brad, whose limbs flop uselessly. He’s as heavy as a corpse. The only sign he’s still alive are the pained moans he grunts out as we move.
“I’ll get his things,” Loretta says, disappearing into the house. By the time she returns with a backpack, we’ve already shuffled Brad onto the flagstone path leading out of New Avalon.
Getting him the rest of the way is hard, stressful, exhausting work. Brad resists every step, at one point almost passing out as we’re halfway down the sloped meadow leading to the dock. When we finally reach it, a new struggle presents itself—how to get him safely into the boat.
We ultimately decide to carry him, with me, Ronan, Violet, and Heather each manning an arm or a leg. Julianne and Susie, meanwhile, kneel on the dock, keeping the boat steady. Once we get Brad laid out across the boat’s two middle seats, Loretta hops in to man the outboard motor.
“I’m going with you,” Ronan says.
“No. I’m the producer,” Loretta says. “He’s my responsibility. I’ll call you when we reach the hospital.”
Then she’s off, twin spotlights on either side of the bow cutting a path of brightness through the dark water. As the distance between us and the boat quickly grows, I’m struck by a thought. A detail I noticed during the chaos but didn’t think about until this very moment.
Loretta bolting from the house with a backpack slung over her shoulder.
A black one.
A Gucci one.
And it was still with her as the boat sped away.
“Oh, my God, our phones,” I say, my voice a reedy croak. “Loretta left with all our phones.”