For the next half hour, neither he nor I move. When a fresh cadre of news anchors arrive at 6:30 to replace the night crew, I carefully slide out from beneath my roommate's legs. Before returning to my room, I tuck the blanket around Michael’s shoulders.
Back in my desk chair, I boot up my computer. While I wait for it to load, I stretch a bit, doing some toe touches without rising to my feet. I'm aching from head to toe and even this little bit of movement is enough to elicit a groan. Ugh. I can already tell it’s going to be one hell of a long day.
After checking that the Internet connection is strong, I sign on to the chat app to wait.
And wait.
And wait.
6:45 comes and goes and still there’s no Shannon, the icon next to her name greyed out, looking just about as empty as I felt. Despite telling myself that fifteen minutes is hardly enough time to start worrying, I can't help myself. Though we don’t technically have a hard talk time, it’s unusual for Shannon to have not called by now.
It’s alright. She’s alright. Everything is alright.
I wait until seven, when I can take no more. I hit dial. Before it even tries to go through, a message pops up. User unavailable. Please try again later.
I open up my phone and call Shannon's cell. For a moment, hope flutters in my chest as I listen to it ring. But on the third ring, the connection is cut mid-trill and an automated voicd tells me that the phone lines are currently overloaded, with many out of commission, and to please try again later.
I try twice more immediately. The second time the same thing happens as before. On the third call, I’m finally able to get through, though I'm shortcut-ed after two rings straight to her voicemail.
“Hi, babe,” I say, doing my best to sound as normal and cheery as possible. A part of me realizes this call is more for me than for Shannon. “Just calling to make sure everything is a-okay. I'm sure you’re probably fine, but I didn’t see you online this morning and just wanted to check. You're probably still asleep. I bet your alarm went out, huh? Anyways, call me back when you get this; I’ll keep my cell on me all day. I love you. Talk soon.”
I hang up with a frustrated sigh and look at the clock in the bottom corner of the screen. 7:37. I was going to be late. McKinney, my boss, had already texted. I needed to be at the old site for a post-installation inspection at eight a.m. sharp. Well, that certainly wasn’t going to happen.
Though I'm out of time, I sit before my computer for a few more minutes anyways, a smile that doesn’t feel like much of a smile upon my lips. Don’t worry, I tell myself over and over and over again. There’s no reason to be worried.
Finally, eight a.m. visited and gone, I get up and go to the bathroom for another shower. This time I linger just long enough to wet my hair and put some energy back into my bones. In the bedroom, I pull on fresh clothes. Before leaving, I take one last, longing look back at the computer. Nothing. And then it’s out the door.
“Okay, kid,” I murmur as I slip my key into the front door lock and twist until it clicks. I set off down the long apartment corridor. Even though I’m over an hour late at this point, I can’t force myself to go any faster than a mosey. “Everything is going to be just fine. She's a strong woman. She can take care of herself.”
I'm at the elevator now. I hit the button and take several more deep breaths as I wait. It’s a minute before the elevator arrives. When it finally comes, I step inside, hit the button for the ground floor, and turn to face the empty hallway.
If I’m so sure she's going to be okay, I ask the line of apartment doors stretching into the distance, then why do I have such a bad feeling about all of this?
9.
Shannon
The water breaches the house just after noon. When it finally happens, and dirty, brown liquid begins to seep in from under the kitchen door, for a moment all I can do is stand there and watch dumbfounded. For the last four hours I’ve been checking the level of the flood outside every five minutes, and so shouldn’t be surprised that the inevitable has finally happened. But I am. As much as I knew this was coming, some part of me had still been clinging to the idea that it was impossible, that it would never happen, not like this, not to me.
Yes, Shannon, this is real. Very real. You are in very real danger.
Clamping down on the thought, I force myself to unfreeze. Turning away from the door, I grab a towel off the pile on the kitchen counter to use to stopper the leak. It'll be useless, I know, but I feel compelled to do something anyway.
Once I’ve dried the floor, I make another run through the house to check for anything of value that isn’t already gathered in neat piles on the kitchen table. Everywhere I go, the drip of water into various pans and buckets and bowls rings in my ear.
In a drawer of the bedside table in my mother's old bedroom I find a pile of photos I’d somehow missed in my morning scouring of the trailer. The pictures are of my mother and me from several years before, before the disease had taken hold of her, before I’d moved back home to be her caretaker. Most of the photos are from a vacation taken out in the swamps of Louisiana, and range from shots of dusty dance floors in backwoods bars to breathtaking panoramas of foggy coastal mornings. It had been a good trip, and one I would never forget.
Wiping away the tears in my eyes, I shuffle the photos into a neat stack before returning to the kitchen.
“Aww shit…”
What before had been no more than runoff from an unplugged refrigerator is now a steady stream of water running in from around the edges of the soaked towel. Walking carefully across the re-slickened floor, I place the stack of newly discovered photos next to a second pile on the kitchen table.
Okay, I tell myself. Better get started while you still can. I would have to worry about the water later. Now that I had gathered everything of importance, I needed to pack it away, just in case. Though water in the house was troubling, I doubted it would rise as high as the table. Still, I wanted to be sure.
And yet...why shouldn’t it rise that far? What was stopping it? The rain wasn’t stopping, so why should the flood? No, the water was going to keep rising and rising, until the entire house was underwater and I was trapped inside, treading water as I was slowly pushed to the ceiling, until my nose was pressed to the plaster and all I had was a few seconds before this last pocket of air disappeared too and darkness took hold my ankles and yanked me down into the depths and—
Get a grip!, I stop myself mid-panic. Things are bad, but they’re not that bad. Now pull yourself together and make sure these things are safe. Everything else you can replace, so stop worrying about it.
Squinting to hold back the tears that if allowed to fall will begin an unstoppable deluge, I nod. Okay. I was right. Grip. That was what I needed. To get a grip.
Faking a smile, I grab a gallon-sized, re-sealable plastic bag from a box on the counter. Inside goes my most important documents—my birth certificate, my social security card, my will, and my insurance, both for myself and for the house. This bag I seal inside two others.
That’s better, I whisper as I set this first bag aside and begin work on the next. Just keep breathing…
***
When I finish packing away everything on the kitchen table, everything triple-sealed and double-checked, I go on an inspection of the house to see if I can find any more breaches. Aside from the front and back doors, there are none, though I do have to empty out several pots and bowls. Back in the living room, with nothing to do, I have no choice but to sit and wait, though wait for what I have no idea.