He placed his head to Grant’s chest and listened. He felt his heartbeat perhaps more than he heard it and the resulting wave of relief made his eyes sting. He ran his fingers across the boy’s forehead to source the bleeding; Patrick hadn’t fully realized how much bigger he was than Grant—he could practically palm his head like an NBA player does a basketball. He found the cut along Grant’s scalp and applied pressure to keep it from bleeding more. He braced himself with his other hand and allowed himself to breathe. Something on the bed wasn’t right. It was hard where the mattress should have been soft. He looked down. The metal sculpture—the one the kids complained about from night one, a midcentury mishmash of gold metal brackets—was now clearly in the bed with him. Sure enough, the wall was conspicuously bare.
He heard screaming again, coupled with barking and an orchestra of car alarms up and down the street, as if he’d emerged from the water with an athletic kick to the surface.
“He’s okay, Maisie.” Information. Information, he thought, would help calm her down. “It was an earthquake. We’re fine. Something fell off the wall and hit Grant. It looks scarier than it is.” She began to nod and he nodded along with her, helping the knowledge down like he was stroking the throat of a dog trying to get it to swallow a pill. Patrick picked up the phone on the bedside table, an extension he barely remembered he had; nothing. The line was dead. He needed his cell phone. “I need my phone so we can get help. Can you get it? It’s on the charger next to my bed.”
She stood frozen. She had her instructions but had yet to digest them.
“Maisie!”
She locked in on his eyes. You can do this. She backed out of the room without saying a word, as if her uncle’s telepathy had worked. Patrick grabbed a bed pillow with his free hand and shook it out of its case. He folded the pillowcase into a bandage as best he could, lifted his hand from Grant’s forehead, and slid it underneath before applying pressure again. Grant groaned, but did not open his eyes.
“It’s okay, kid. GUP’s here. I’ve got you.” What Patrick wanted, though, was someone who had him.
Maisie reappeared, thrusting her arm forward with the phone, the charger dangling like a wild, unorthodox tail; she had unplugged the whole thing from the wall. “Good job,” he said, relieved to have this lifeline in his hand. He fumbled his password twice before seeing the word emergency on his phone’s lock screen. For the first time in his life he pressed it to dial 911.
It rang. It rang again. It kept ringing.
No answer. Sonofabitch.
Each ring screeched in his ear, begging him to do something—anything—yet Patrick remained paralyzed by indecision. The lines were down or the operators were overwhelmed—either way, help was not coming. Staying put seemed wrong. Did he know what to do for a concussion? What if it was more than that? Leaving seemed equally unwise. The streets could very well be impassable. What if they encountered live power lines in the street, or coyotes, or sinkholes, or looters? The phone continued to ring. How could emergency services not be prepared for just that: emergencies? Patrick knew he had to act. But could Grant have a neck injury? Was it reckless to move him? He would be careful. That was the answer. Together they would find a way through.
“C’mon, Maisie. We’re taking the Tesla.” He hoped to god it would start. Was it fully charged? Yes, of course. He never took it anywhere. Did it lose charge from nonuse? They were about to find out. Patrick wanted to laugh—there was a certain “To the Batmobile!” quality to it all—but he was pretty certain that if he did laugh it would not really be because anything was funny; it would be a release, the kind that quickly dissolved into tears.
“GUP.” Maisie covered her mouth with both hands.
“What?”
She whispered. “Your Golden Globe.”
Patrick closed his eyes for no more than a second; was she simply reminding him that he once said he would save his Golden Globe before them? Or had she seen something in her run through the living room, the award broken on the living room floor, the globe itself rolling deep under the couch never to be seen again. It didn’t matter. Things change. Priorities realign. And right now, everything was crystal clear. “Fuck my Golden Globe.”
Grant groaned again as if to voice his concern that perhaps it was his uncle who’d been hit in the head. Maisie gasped. She inched toward the edge of the bed to peer at her brother.
“It will be okay, Maisie.” Patrick peeled the pillowcase slowly from Grant’s forehead; there was blood, but it didn’t appear to be gushing. “Sit with your brother for a moment while I get my stuff.”