Maisie took Grant’s hand and Patrick melted. As he bolted for the hall, he heard Maisie reassure her brother. “GUP says it will be okay.”
* * *
The roads were surprisingly clear. Patrick gripped the wheel with both hands in preparation for an aftershock. The spring winds that whipped along 111 were strong enough some nights to push a car into an oncoming lane if the driver was unaware; he’d even heard more than once about a truck jackknifing and tipping over. What could an equally strong force do from below? When he noticed his hands turning white, he loosened his grip. He’d seen too many disaster movies where the roads were splitting and falling into massive sinkholes behind a hero who was trying desperately to escape, and that one where a volcano erupted on Wilshire Boulevard and spit flaming balls of lava in the path of geologist Anne Heche. It had been years since he’d driven, but still—there was no need for that kind of dramatics.
“How you doing back there?”
Patrick glanced in the rearview mirror. Maisie was sitting behind the passenger seat with Grant’s head in her lap. He was awake now, but groggy. She met her uncle’s eyes in the mirror. “Is the car even on?” Maisie asked, concerned.
“Yes, it’s on. We’re moving, aren’t we?”
“It’s so quiet!” She still yelled like she was trying to be heard over a revving engine.
“It’s supposed to be quiet. It’s electric.” Patrick stepped on the gas to prove they weren’t in neutral.
“I’m hot.”
“Okay, sit tight.” Patrick reached for the touch screen that housed the Tesla’s controls. His eyes focused on the road, he activated one of the car’s ridiculous Easter eggs, producing a video of a roaring fire on the enormous center console.
Maisie screamed. “The car’s on fire!”
“Oh, god. No it’s not. That’s romance mode. This is exactly why I Uber!” He pushed a few more buttons. The fire stopped, but he couldn’t figure out how to turn up the AC and stay focused on driving, so he cracked the windows instead. “Grant, what’s your name?” He hollered it over the howling wind, wondering if either of them would appreciate that he gave away the answer in the question.
“Maisie,” he muttered, and Patrick thought, Close enough.
The Eisenhower Medical Center lay ahead in Rancho Mirage. Patrick had been there exactly once, when a persistent flu masqueraded as pneumonia. You couldn’t miss the names associated with the hospital. Bob and Dolores Hope. Frank and Barbara Sinatra. George Burns. Lucille Ball. On buildings. On signs. In hospital literature. While all these people were like a thousand years old, Patrick reasoned they wouldn’t have donated to a hospital that didn’t have a pediatric wing. And there was another name on his mind: Greg. The main campus was not far from his brother’s rehab facility, should they need to enlist him for Grant’s treatment.
Patrick was relieved to see lights as they pulled into the hospital drive. Whether they had power or were relying on generators he wasn’t sure and didn’t care. He pulled the Tesla into a parking spot near the emergency entrance just as the first hint of pink appeared in the eastern sky; it was the first time in years he’d been awake to see the sunrise. This morning, it was a welcome sight. “We’re here.”
Inside the emergency room, orderlies produced a gurney for Grant and wheeled him into an examining bay. Patrick stumbled relaying their situation to the admitting nurse: Sara was gone, Greg was unavailable. The nurse tried to steer him toward the relevant facts as he mumbled and overexplained.
“Yes, I know the facility,” the nurse said when Patrick finally got through to her about Greg. She looked tired, her mousy-brown hair stuck to one side of her forehead as if plastered there by a hand propping her awake. An earthquake, he gathered, was more than one bargained for on the tail end of an already brutal shift. “We can call over there and speak to the father.”
Patrick looked at his phone to see if there was any word from Greg. There wasn’t. But he knew his brother, if Greg felt the quake （he wasn’t on pills—even sleeping ones, he presumed—so how could he not have）， he was scaling the walls in an effort to escape. “The thing is, if you do that . . .” He glanced down at Maisie, who was snuggled up next to his side. “Maisie, would you mind getting us a seat over there?” He pointed to the waiting area. When she walked over, settled in a chair, and started staring blankly at a TV, Patrick turned back to the nurse and spoke in a hushed tone. “If you call there and tell him his son’s been injured, he will bust out of rehab. I’m serious. He will break down the front door if he has to. Like in the cartoons. There would be a hole through the wall in the shape of my brother. And I would prefer he not do that. Not leave his treatment, unless that was absolutely, one hundred percent necessary.”