All We Can Do Is Wait(8)

She shouldered her bag and walked toward the crowd of people, a mix of ages and faces, some angry, some teary, others ghost-white with worry. As she got closer, she was able to plot a course through the crowd. She was small and slight, only about five-foot-three and skinny, so she could slip between people without much trouble. She scooted past a few people, saying a quiet “Excuse me,” a turn here and a pivot there, and then she was through, past the scrum to where it was, somehow, quieter, like she’d passed through the wall of a hurricane and now here was the eye. Eerie and ominous and tingling with dread, but still.

Skyler looked around and saw an official-looking woman, tall and pale, talking in hushed, serious tones to a few people by some swinging doors. There were two women with babies, both miraculously asleep for the moment. Not many people were sitting, but Skyler saw a girl about her age, looking regal and sad. Something about the way the girl was dressed, the way her blond hair was somehow still shiny even in this drab lighting, in this terrible place, made Skyler think that she was rich, that she probably lived in some big house somewhere and was waiting to hear if her butler had died or something.

Skyler realized she was staring—something about seeing someone her age, also alone, in this very grown-up and real-life place was transfixing—and turned away, back toward the tall, pale woman. She seemed to be finishing her conversation with the couple, putting a bony hand lightly on the man’s shoulder, so Skyler quickly strode up to her, not wanting to lose her chance to ask the official-looking woman what she knew.

“Excuse me?” Skyler croaked, barely any sound coming out. She suddenly realized she hadn’t said anything out loud in probably two hours. She cleared her throat, thought about grabbing the woman’s sleeve but didn’t want to seem like a child. “Excuse me?” she said, louder this time, more confident.

The woman turned and Skyler caught a glimpse of her nametag. It said “Mary Oakes,” and then “Patient Relations.” The woman looked down at Skyler, regarding her with a cold curiosity.

“Where are your parents?”

Skyler was thrown. “Uh. I don’t know.”

“Were they in the accident?”

“What? No. My sister. My sister was.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Kate Vong? Do you know anything about her? Do you know if they’re bringing her here?”

The woman’s face softened a little. But just a little. “The patients most in need of care will be brought here, but extraction at the scene is taking longer than anticipated. It’s a safety concern. I can only tell you what I’ve told everyone else: You are very likely in the right place, there is a high probability that your sister will be brought here, but I cannot guarantee anything. Of course, we will update all of you as often as we are able.”

Skyler felt stuck, and oddly disappointed. She didn’t know anything now that she hadn’t an hour ago. “So I should just wait?”

“I’m afraid so,” Mary Oakes said, turning to talk to the other people who were queuing up to ask her the same question. “If you would all just please wait as calmly as possible, we will know more soon.”

Skyler stood still, not sure what to do now. She looked up at the wall clock: 4:52 in the morning in Phnom Penh. Her grandmother would be awake in an hour or so. She always woke up early and went to bed late. She had trouble sleeping, had had trouble sleeping since she left Cambodia in the 1970s. “I don’t know why you go back there, how you can go back there,” Skyler’s mother had once said to her grandmother. “After everything they did to you.” Skyler’s grandmother had just pursed her lips and stayed silent, as she often did when her daughter, Leap—called Lucy in America—started in on her.

Skyler watched as Mary Oakes surveyed the room and then, with a prim little nod, turned and walked through the swinging doors, disappearing into some inner sanctum of the hospital, which was presumably being prepared for the first rush of victims. Skyler felt the flutter of helplessness rise in her again. Was knowing nothing better than knowing the worst? She wasn’t sure.

She reached for her phone and swiped it open. Her heart sank when she saw that the mysterious number, with an 857 area code, had texted her again. You O.K.? For a crazy second Skyler thought maybe it was Kate, trying to reach her somehow, with someone else’s phone. Impulsively, Skyler began to type back but then stopped herself. Why wouldn’t Kate just call? She was one of the few people Skyler knew who actually remembered people’s phone numbers.

And why would she be asking Skyler if she was O.K., when it was Kate who’d been in the accident? Skyler’s grandfather—who was really her step-grandfather, her actual grandfather having gone missing before the family fled Cambodia—had once told her a story about the ghosts of people tortured and killed by the Khmer Rouge. They haunted an infamous prison, and even years later, guards would set food out for these ghosts, thinking they must be hungry. Skyler found herself wondering, insanely, if maybe Kate was already a ghost and was trying to contact her through the phone.

Which was dumb. The number had texted her last night, before any of this had happened. It was him. She knew it was. The broken, shameful part of herself wanted desperately to write back, to tell him that no, she was not O.K., that her sister was probably dead, that despite everything, she wanted to see him, to have him hold her and tell her that she was going to be fine. But knowing how angry her sister would be if she did that, Skyler didn’t. She put her phone away, hoping he hadn’t seen the little bubbles that indicated someone typing on the other end.