When she stands up, everyone turns to her, waiting.
“We’ll be all right,” she tells everyone as she leads them out into the streets. “Everything will be all right. We’ll take it one step at a time.”
First, we must help the wounded. She and Annie stand for hours that day in front of the hospital wreckage, tending the injured, making sure everyone is bandaged, setting broken bones. There is morphine in the ambulance and they use as much of it as they need. She doesn’t think about saving it until later.
Next, food. She and Annie—trailed by Elyse, who won’t let them out of her sight—find a convenience store two streets over. No one else is here except for a young man who sits slumped at the till. When they walk in, he blinks as though he doesn’t quite believe they’re real.
“People will need food,” Tasha says. She uses her doctor voice—calm, certain, and unhurried. He nods. She wonders if he’s been here the whole time. She pulls her wallet from the pocket of her scrubs and empties all her cash onto the counter. Thirty-five dollars. “If people come in,” she says, “let them have whatever they want. I will pay you for the rest of it later.”
He is young, nervous. He doesn’t ask her how she’s going to pay for the rest of it; he just nods and takes the money. When she turns back to the door, one of the firemen who came with them from the coast—his name is Kevin, and his yellow jacket is smudged with soot—is standing in the doorway.
“There’s a grocery store nearby,” he says. “People are panicking.”
When they get to the store, people are crying and shouting, appealing to a man who stands in the front of the registers with his hands up to hold them back.
“The system is down,” he says. “I can’t ring anyone through.”
“The sky fucking fell apart!” someone shouts. “When do you think the system’s going back up?”
Tasha pushes her way to the front of the crowd. “Hello,” she says to the grocery store clerk. “What’s your name?”
The man looks at her as if she makes no sense, but says, “Alan.”
“Are you the manager?”
He looks around nervously. “One of them. I don’t know where the other ones are.”
“I’m sure they’ll be here eventually,” Tasha says.
Even though she hasn’t asked, he says, “The tills won’t even open when the system is down.”
“That’s okay, Alan. We all understand. But people need to eat.”
“There are restaurants,” he says, feebly. “They have generators. After the hurricane a few years ago the power went out and they were packed for like a week. I remember.” He looks at Annie, then behind her, then back at Tasha. “I can’t—I don’t have the authority to do anything. It’s not my fault.”
Another voice shouts. “This wasn’t a fucking hurricane! Half of the city is gone!”
Tasha ignores the other voice. “I know it’s not your fault.” She reaches out and puts a reassuring hand on Alan’s arm. “But we have to work with what we have right now, Alan, okay? Some of these people don’t have houses anymore. We don’t know what’s happening. When you add that to being hungry, it’s a lot. People just want food. We can pay for things later, when the system goes back up.”
When the system goes back up. This is another thing you learn in the ER—that hope is like a kind of lying.
“There’s no power,” he whispers. “How are people going to cook?”
“We’ll find a way,” she says. His shoulders relax. She beckons to Kevin. “Help everyone get what they need,” she says, and then, leaning close to his ear, “Make sure no one takes too much.” She turns and heads for the door.
Outside, Annie looks at her. “You’ll need to eat too,” she says.
“I’m fine,” Tasha says. Above them, the sky is grey and brown.
Next, we need places for everyone to sleep. When the cell towers are still down late into the afternoon, she gathers the paramedics and the other firemen who came with them, all pale with fatigue but alert—and sends them to survey the houses still standing near the hospital. Asking for shelter when people answer the door. Forcing open doors when no one answers.
She also asks everyone to put their phones away and stop checking for reception. For now. Just for now.
Help will come. Help will come. Until then, we’ll help each other.
Help will come.
Help will come.
She says the words over and over until they mean absolutely nothing.
Later still on that long day in the city, Annie says to Tasha, “You need to sleep. And not on a floor.”
Annie is also tired, Tasha wants to point out. Elyse, who has followed them everywhere today, says, “Should we go back to the house we were in last night and snag the bedrooms?”
Tasha and Annie glance at each other. “There are a lot of houses,” Tasha says. “Let’s find another one for the three of us.”
Elyse’s shoulders slump in relief. They both see it, and say nothing.
Annie is the one who finds them a townhouse one street over from the wreckage of the hospital. The front door isn’t even locked.
“Hello?” Annie calls as they step inside, but no one answers.
Everything is peaceful and quiet. Their footsteps echo on the floor. The windows are dusted with a layer of fine brown dirt, and Tasha makes a mental note to clean them as soon as she can.
The bedrooms upstairs are neat. No children live here, at least none who are small. Both the master bedroom and the smaller one overlook the destroyed backyard. A fence is blown in on the right-hand side. A maple in the garden is split in half, its carcass bent and leaning against the small bedroom’s window.
There’s a couch in the master bedroom. “I can sleep on that,” Elyse says.
Annie shakes her head. “You take the other room.” She slides an arm around Elyse’s shoulders. “It’ll be more comfortable. We’ll be right next door, Elyse.”
Elyse looks away, her lip trembling. “I’m not—I know I shouldn’t be scared—”
“I’ll sleep on the couch,” Tasha says. She smiles at Elyse, at them both. “You and Annie take the bed until you’re comfortable, Elyse. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Elyse looks down at the floor. “I’m sorry,” she says.
“It’s fine,” Tasha says. “None of this is going to be forever.”
She waits for Annie to protest, but she doesn’t say a word.
Over the following weeks, they mobilize their resources. They go to all the restaurants, most of them in ruins, and move the working generators to a spot behind the strip mall. They clear the wreckage of the hospital, searching for supplies. Some of the eastern wing is still standing, along with the front stairwell where people had climbed out from the basement that first afternoon.
Elyse goes everywhere they do. She can’t exert herself too much, so they ask her to sit in a chair in front of the rubble and count and pack what they salvage into boxes. Cotton balls and tongue depressors, scalpels wrapped in plastic. Water from burst pipes has crept over what’s left of the floor, and their shoes squelch as they crouch down in doorways to peer further into the wreckage. Tasha’s sneakers are soaked through. She can tell by the wrinkle in Annie’s nose that hers are too.
They find other things—a baby’s bonnet, a suit jacket smeared with dirt and blood. A watch lying face up in a puddle, the digital face blank. A silver earring shaped like a goose. After a while Elyse gets restless packing boxes and moves around the wreckage, popping random things into a yellow bucket Annie found.