“Cara,” I say. “Can you help me up?”
“I should get a nurse.”
Anurse.I want clarification on that, but I feel claustrophobic in here. The air is dry and hot and I just need to get out of this bed.
“Fine, but help me up first.” I pull my legs out from the tucked-in sheets and hold a pillow against my stomach to brace myself as I lean forward. I kiss Andrew’s hand and put it back on the bed.
Cara helps me up to the window and I gasp. There’s a beautifulwhite-sand beach beyond the empty parking lot. How did a hospital get oceanfront views?
“Are these people good?” I ask. But I know the answer. They have to be if they put me in a hospital room. They’re also more set up than Fort Caroline if they have broad-spectrum antibiotics they’re willing to waste on strangers who have done nothing for them.
“They are.”
“I need you to do me a favor,” I say to Cara. “Get me down to that beach.”
“Andrew should wake up.”
“No,” I say. I turn to him. He looks so adorable, but he also looks like he hasn’t slept in months. “Let him sleep. And can you get me a robe so my butt isn’t hanging out the back of this gown?”
Cara blushes.
The hospital isn’t staffed like a normal hospital; we don’t even see anyone as we make it out to the parking lot. I can tell by the sun it’s morning, but the asphalt is still hot—I feel it through the slippers Cara gave me.
Every step I take pulls at the muscles around my wound, and my gait is short and slow. It takes us fifteen minutes to get to the sand, and by then I’m sweating. Still, the salt breeze from the ocean is worth it. I kick off the slippers and feel the warm sand between my toes.
“I’ll leave you be,” Cara says.
“Thanks, Cara.” She leaves me and I take a deep breath of the salt air. I know she’s going to go wake up Andrew. I want to hear his voice, but I needed to get out of the hospital. Being in a building after traveling on the road for so long felt off, unnatural. I step into the surf. Thewaves pull the sand from my feet and I sink slowly. This feels better.
I thought getting here would be a relief, but now I’m not so sure. Yes, it’s absolutely a relief I’m not dead. But the emptiness in the hospital reminds me of the one in Fort Caroline, despite these folks being more giving with their supplies. The world has changed—even if people like those in Fort Caroline want so badly for it to go back to what it was. The people here, as well. They might be nicer, but they’re still trying to reclaim what was taken from them when the world ended.
The tide is only just starting to come in. I sink lower and lower in the sand as the waves crash against my ankles.
Andrew’s arms wrap around me, carefully avoiding my wound, and he puts his head on my shoulders.
“This is the first time I’ve ever been taller than you,” he whispers in my ear. “Who’s Holly?”
My stomach flips. How does he know about Holly? I try to think back if there was any time I had pointed her out to him at the cabin but can’t remember.
“How do you know about Holly?” I ask.
“You were mumbling about her when you were delirious. Saying you missed her. Do I have someone to be jealous of?”
I frown. “Yes. Holly and I have a special love you could never understand.” I turn back just to see the look on his face. I smile and give him a peck on the side of his mouth. “Holly is a garden gnome I bought for Mother’s Day when I was ten. She sits in front of the cabin on a little toadstool and has a sheep in her lap. Don’t know how you missed her when youbrokein.”
Andrew laughs, just like I knew he would. “I didn’t know she hada name. I just said ‘Bye, gnome,’ when I left.”
“Oh, so goodbye was good enough for Holly, but all I got was a note?” He hugs me again as we turn our attention back to the ocean and stand in silence for a bit. “What if we shouldn’t go any farther?” I ask.
“We’re already here.”
“But what if she’s dead? Amy, I mean. What if we ask around and it turns out she’s dead and all this was for nothing. I got shot and—”
“Stop it, Jamie. You’re alive. We’re here. If she isn’t, we go back. We bring Cara with us if she wants, and we go back and we can give Henri some closure. See if she wants to make a slightly shorter trip. Then the four of us hide out in the middle of nowhere and avoid all the mess of the world for as long as we can.”
“This cabin is getting very crowded.”
“It needed an addition and some updating anyway.”
